chapter NINE #2
I remain standing by the controls while he walks down to the lower cabin. He stays down there for a few minutes and comes back with a cardboard box and places it on the floor at the back of the boat.
We’re moving up and down, riding waves from the wake of a large ship that passed us. Our boat settles down to a calming bob in the water and Asher is standing at the back, staring out in the sea.
With his hands placed on his hips and his head bowed, he breathes deeply. I maintain my spot by the controls and watch him. We stand in silence. I’m not sure how long, because I’m not wearing a watch, but it feels like a long time.
Finally, Asher turns around and lifts the cardboard box off the floor and opens the top.
From inside, he takes out another box. This one is a black cube.
It’s a thicker material than the cardboard and from the way he’s handling it, I can tell its contents are important.
He holds the black box in his hands for a moment, staring at it and not saying a word. His expression is solemn and distant.
Asher breathes in deeply and when his head lifts and sees me still standing by the controls, his expression softens.
“This is my grandfather.”
His grandfather? In a box? This is so not how I saw the day playing out.
“Nice to meet you?” I say to the box with an awkward wave.
Asher lets out a sigh. “This is weird.”
I shake my head in agreement. “This is weird.”
We both share a grim look, which causes me to snort and him to laugh, and a tiny bit of the tension is lifted off the boat.
When he told me stories about his grandfather, I hadn’t realized the man was dead. And by dead I mean cremated in a box ten feet from where I’m standing.
When Asher was ten, he was sent to live with his grandfather, who was difficult to please. That must have been a nightmare. Being ripped from your warm and loving home? That’s just cruel.
I didn’t press for more of the story last night, and I won’t today. Obviously, this is something he is trying to work through. I don’t have my own shit together, let alone have a say in how someone I just met should handle his emotions.
“I’ve been holding onto this thing for a year. First, it just sat in my apartment collecting dust. My grandfather, he was a control freak. He planned everything about his life. Hell, he even planned his own funeral. But the one thing he never did was tell me what to do with the fucking ashes.”
Asher is looking down at the box, observing it like its the first time. He lifts the top.
“For six months I’ve been sailing around the world trying to find the right place to leave him. Nowhere back home seemed right.” Asher frowns. “Isn’t that strange? I couldn’t think of a single place to scatter the ashes back home?”
Confusion and desperation sound in his voice. I search for the right words to comfort him.
“It sounds like you were trying to find the most perfect place,” I say, and then dare to go further. “Or maybe, you just weren’t ready to let him go.”
Asher slowly shakes his head but doesn’t answer. He opens the door to the small diving port off the back and takes a step down closer to the water. Kneeling, he balances the box on his knee and opens the plastic bag inside containing the ashes.
I walk over to where he is and take a knee down beside him. “You don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”
He swings his body toward mine and those molten caramel eyes look so soft.
“I didn’t know where to put him because my contempt is so deep I didn’t care where he went.
Then yesterday, you spoke about how magical this place is.
You said you could live here forever, and I just knew. This is where I should put him.”
Last night I made a comment about an island and he decided he was going to scatter the ashes here and I had to come along for the ride. Hell, he even invited my sister.
“Have you always been this impulsive?”
Asher’s lips widens in a closed-mouth smile. “Every second of every damn day.”
I know I should be alarmed by his actions, but I totally get them. I understand what it’s like to put your emotions on hold. Avoidance has been my companion for the last six months. Asher’s been dating the emotional devil for a year.
Actually, something tells me they’ve been together for years.
He takes the box with its opened plastic bag inside and holds it upside down over the water. Gray ashes drift out of the box, hitting the water and drifting off with the breeze. Either his grandfather was a small man or there aren’t as many ashes from a cremated body as I assumed there would be.
When the box is empty, he gives the bottom a final pat before setting it down on the floor beside him. Our legs are getting wet with the current that splashes up.
The two of us sit here for a while, watching the ashes drift away from us. A pile seems to stay close to the boat, not wanting to leave but after a while as the boat drifts away, the ashes gain some distance.
I won’t tell him that I’ve already said about fifty prayers in my head.
I say most of them for the man the ashes belong to.
I say a few more for Luke. He would have been twenty-one years old today.
I bite back my tears and let out a breath to control the feelings falling from my eyes.
Hopefully Asher just thinks I’m emotional because of the experience he is sharing with me.
“What would you have done if Leah came?” I ask.
“This wasn’t as monumental a moment as you think. I didn’t care who was here. I just wanted you.”
He has to stop saying things like that. It makes my heart beat twice as fast and my head spin in twenty different directions of anxiety.
“Why would you want me here?” I sidestep my words a bit. “I mean, I’m not weirded out or anything.”
Asher doesn’t miss a beat before looking straight into my eyes and explaining with deep conviction, “I’m drawn to you. When I want something, I take it. You already caught on to how impulsive I am. It’s just the way I operate.”
I envy him. Everything about my life had been planned out. Now I don’t know what to do. I want to be impulsive and free too. Maybe losing control is the only way to really gain it.
Asher didn’t drop anchor so we are drifting out, the ashes now far in the distance. We’re surrounded by nothing but the open ocean with the mainland in the distance.
My hands rub along the top of my thighs, and I catch his eyes as they follow the action.
He rises on his knees, those intense eyes bearing down on me.
I know he is going to kiss me and for a second I think about leaning forward.
But, instead, out of sheer loss of control of my own nature, I spring up on my toes and dive into the water.
Cold Mediterranean water cools my warm skin. My body is submerged under and I break away, diving further down before swimming up to the surface.
My arms rise to push my hair smooth against my scalp. Looking up, I see the sun shining above me, beating down in approval. My body spreads out onto of the water, my arms and legs out like I’m making a snow angel. Instead, today, I’m an ocean angel looking up at the heavens.
This is for you, little brother.
Weightless, I bob and weave with the waves, a spatter of water covering my face but I’m not concerned. I don’t have any real cares at the moment. Everything feels so buoyant and it feels wonderful.
A splash awakens me from my date with the sun. Asher sidles up beside me and takes a place with me. We’re like two starfish in the middle of the ocean.
If anyone passes us they’ll think we’re out of control.
Because we are.