Someone Else's Ocean(36)

“That one’s yours.”

I put my own s’more together in seconds and shoveled it into my mouth. I was ravenous because I’d missed lunch and dinner.

“Holy shit,” he said with a mouth full of goodness, “that’s delicious.”

I waggled my brows with my own mouth full and chewed.

His full smile had my heart pounding.

I’d told Jasmine he was handsome.

I was such a liar.

Ian Kemp was beautiful at fourteen. He was gorgeous when he was twenty-five and stood on his parents’ porch waving at me before he left me with a crush. At thirty-eight, he was devastating, sitting next to me watching me inhale my dessert.

“More wine to wash that down?”

“Please,” I said extending my glass.

The breeze kicked up at that moment and neither of us saw the tide had come in until a rogue wave came through and wiped out our fire.

Ian leapt to his feet and swept me out of the chair just before the gasping flames licked my dress.

His hands were all over me as he checked to make sure I was unharmed. I squirmed beneath him as I saw the bag with my dinner began to wash out to sea.

“Damnit!” I dropped my shoulders, helpless as we both watched the tide’s greedy retreat and I managed to reclaim my soaked bag.

Ian gripped the corked wine and brushed it off before he presented it to me with a wry smile.

“Well, grapes are in a food group,” I sighed nodding at his offering. “Come on, I have more of them.”

“You sure love your wine,” he said following me up the stairs into my house.

“My only vice.”

Inside my house, I lit candles and turned down the music. Ian stood unsure at my kitchen counter.

“What?”

“I hope I haven’t given you the wrong impression.” He glanced at the candles and then back at me.

It had been an eternity since I’d entertained a man sexually, it took me a second to catch on. “Yeah, uh, I light candles every day of my life.” I clicked on a lamp. “It’s an anxiety thing.” I turned to face him head-on. “But, should I be pissed you don’t want to make love to me with all this highly romantic ambiance?” I lifted my hands, palms up.

He sheepishly put the bottle on the counter and moved to find glasses.

“That’s right, go hide behind the cabinets. I’m pretty sure they can’t shield that inflated head of yours.”

“You sure do know how to bust a man’s balls,” he muttered lifting two glasses from the cabinet.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to assume I wanted your balls or any other part of your anatomy, professor. Besides,” I said as I stood on the other side of the island while he poured more wine, “I’m sure your students are all too eager to play teacher’s pet.”

He grinned down at his wine glass. “Never went there. Had a few chances.”

“Ah, that’s right. You chose to break your gentlemen’s virtue on the side of my house.”

His head snapped up and my smile vanished as something passed between us. Three or four heartbeats later, he looked over my shoulder.

“You know you’re living in a time capsule. No TV, no computer, what gives?”

“My sanity. Do you even remember life without cell phones?”

“I do. Barely.”

“Well, I use them only when I have to. Do you have any idea how much time I got back in my day from putting that damn thing down?”

Still smiling he answered, “I can only imagine.”

“So much time. So. Much. Time.”

“I want to be you when I grow up,” he said softly.

“I don’t want to grow up,” I whispered back.

“Suits me.”

An hour later, we sat on my porch love seat after finishing another bottle of wine and listened to my latest mix as Neil Diamond sang “Love on the Rocks.”

Throwing myself into the song I mouthed the words, using my fist as my microphone and he chuckled and shook his head. A few minutes later, we were back to comfortable silence before he spoke up.

“God, this is so true,” Ian whispered.

“What?”

“This song. It’s so true. Every bit of it. You get so high off love and then it all turns to shit.”

I laughed inappropriately at his bluntness and glossy eyes before I saw brief emotion flicker over his face. I sat up and winced. “Sorry.”

He pulled up to sit and clasped his hands between his legs. “Don’t be. I haven’t been upset about my wife in years.” He stood and looked over at me. “This was truly a great time, Koti.”

“It was a unicorn type of night, right?”

“Most definitely.”

He looked over to me with a warm smile. “Goodnight, puffer fish.”

“Goodnight, crocky.”

I stood and leaned over to blow out the first candle.

“Koti.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

I bit my lip and nodded before he disappeared out the door.





HOURS LATER, FLESH BURNING FROM the wine, alcohol-induced insomnia had set in. I rose from bed still in my dress and washed my face in the bathroom. I cranked my AC unit up high and spent a few minutes in front of it, cooling my skin from burning thoughts.