Someone Else's Ocean(29)

In mere seconds he had simplified it so… perfectly.

Soul-searching!

I chuckled at how na?ve I’d been to expect that no one else would understand what I was going through and felt a weight lift from my shoulders. Ian had just put it all into perspective in seconds.

In that moment, I wanted to throw my arms around him in gratitude. Instead, I watched him as he took a sip of my coffee. “Oh, man this brew could kill a horse.”

“Like it?”

“Hell yes.”

I grinned, and he grinned back keeping my cup in his hand. He glanced at me over the lifted cup before he spoke. “In my creative writing class, I deal with a lot of saturated minds and half of their problem is they want to expand those minds past the walls they built around themselves to become better people, better writers, but how do they do that? What tools could I give them?”

“You can’t, right? They have to experience things for themselves, figure out how to open their own minds.”

He nodded. “And that’s exactly what I tell them. Unless they want their intellectual palate to be the size of the box of knowledge they already possess, they have to get out there and gain some real-life experience to add to that imagination. It’s what makes the writing authentic and original.”

“Can’t write about a broken heart as well as a broken heart can?”

“Precisely. How do you ever really know true living if you do it vicariously?” He looked at me attentively. “And what if… what if that person sipping coffee in the background of your life, what if they,” he said pausing to take another sip, “are the next chapter?”

My heart galloped as I stuttered through my next sentence. “So, w-what you’re saying,” I managed to mutter keeping my door opened for his invitation, “is that you get what I was saying.”

He chuckled as he followed me into the house, and I pulled another mug from my cabinet pouring us both a fresh cup. We sat there wordlessly sipping for a few minutes. I glanced over at him, but his eyes remained fixed on the sea.

“This place,” he said low before shifting his gaze to mine, “I never really appreciated how beautiful it was until now.”

Heart hammering, I made quick work of changing the subject. Some part of me knew that I was seconds away from offering Ian more than coffee and small talk. The way he undressed me with his eyes, not only to my bare skin but deeper, had me squirming where I stood.

“You know, Ian, you said something to me when we were kids that stuck with me.”

“Oh?” The twinkle in his eye was gratification enough, but I still paid him the compliment.

“You were only, what, fourteen?”

He nodded.

“You told me even if I was mad, or humiliated, or scared to have fun anyway.”

He grinned at the thought, surprised. “I did?”

I nodded. “You did. Pretty insightful for a kid who told me I didn’t have tits big enough to be called a miss.” Ian chuckled and it made my stomach flutter.

“You made a bit of an impression on me,” I confessed, my back to him while I dug through my cabinet and threw the ingredients on the counter. Turning back to him satisfied, I saw his face light up in recognition.

“You’re an addict,” he commented as he saw the mass amounts of chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers I kept on hand.

“I told you, you didn’t give yourself enough credit, Professor Kemp. You taught me well.”

He gawked at the massive pile of chocolate on my multi-colored tile island. “So, are we dining on s’mores for breakfast, then?”

Disco chose that moment to raise the Devil’s hell from her box in his living room. “Guess not,” he said with the shake of his head.

“I would go get her, but I’m allergic.”

“And full of shit. You are a terrible liar and that’s a wonderful thing, Koti.”

Ian put his empty cup on the counter and moved to free Disco from her box of shackles. He paused at my back door. “How about tonight? I’ll set up one of our bonfires for old times’ sake?”

“I was beginning to think you forgot.”

His grin took my breath. “Quite the opposite.”

My chest filled with warmth. “Okay, but how about you use regular wood this time?”

He gave me a guilty smile. “Agreed.” He glanced around the room and then back to me. “There are no crystals in here.”

“Made you look though,” I retorted playfully.

“Koti?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for asking me.” Penetrating silver eyes stared me down and I had to force myself to speak.

“You really do get it, don’t you, Ian?”

“I really do. I’ll see you tonight?”

“See you, professor.”





I SPENT THE DAY RUNNING around like a mad woman with Jasmine by my side. Her car had been vandalized at the grocery store where she had left it the night before to meet her date.

“Okay, I’m going to tell you about last night,” she said with a sigh.

“You banged a bag boy?” I asked, glancing toward the grocery store.

She turned to me, her dark hair tied up in a bun on top of her head, clad in an electric blue dress. She was rummaging through her thirty-gallon purse. “Me and the captain’s love affair is officially over.”