The waves and wind in our ears make it hard to hear anything. That’s okay. I have the intense feeling of Asher behind me, the smell of the sea and the sounds of ocean. I use the hymn of the humming motor and the sound of it muffling with each crash down on a wave as a down beat in my head. Soon a chord plays over that and I hear the sounds of my violin. The chords build up and I internally hear them playing out an amplifier, and then another violin joins in and then another until there is an electronic symphony in my head. It is exactly the sound I was working on before the accident.
Before I couldn’t play anymore.
Before I couldn’t feel anymore.
I’m torn between feelings of excitement for my breakthrough, or fright for what it could mean, when the boat starts to slow down. So caught up in my own head, I didn’t realize Asher had released me.
I crane my head back to look at him. His gaze is fixed ahead. His face is pensive, lost in thought. I don’t know when the mood changed. I check out my surroundings and see water on all sides of us, the island lost in the distance.
Asher turns off the engine. This should be about the time I wonder if the hot guy I met on vacation is really a murderer who dumps bodies in the middle of the ocean. If that’s the case, I should have a weapon and, unfortunately, all I have is a rose.
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?”
