I see sails bending and ships reclining in waves, white billows unfurling, and I think of her.
The blown spume in the cool mist and gulls dipping in the haze—the world lost below the waves.
Sandbars glistening in the sun—nights dark and moist with a glimmer of stars, silent as the gloom after a shout…
and I think of her.
“What are you thinking about, Jase?”
The spell broken, I look up into Prue’s gray eyes. “Nothing.”
“Really?” she teases. “A lot of men say that and I believe them, but not you, my Love.”
Head back, chin tilted upwards, she combs her fingers through her hair—a bronzed sea-maiden.
“Do you know why I don’t believe you?”
I shrug.
“It’s because you have spaces inside you so vast, I could get lost in them and never find a way out—not that I’d want to, if you let me in.”
Her voice trials off to a whisper and draws me like an ebbing tide, until I’m tasting the salt spray from her lips.
“Why are you afraid, Jase?”
Her gray eyes are another sky, so vast, I feel a speck in them.
I force myself to look away—to glance out to the horizon. I’m trembling, but not from fear—I need to push away, not have her so near.
“You’re free to go Jase—follow your dream. Yeah, that’s right—sail the Florida Keys, with your friend Mutt. You’re young once, and I know that’s what you want to do.”
“You understand? You won’t mind?”
“Mind?” she laughs, “I’m not your keeper. Hell, go enjoy yourself—get it out of your system.”
“It’s just something Mutt and I talked about since we were kids. I’d be back in a month or two.”
She grabs my chin, eyes flashing semaphores and kisses me deeply and long.
By the time the sun slips red and purple beneath the waves, my lips as bruised, and my heart as wounded surrenders to the inevitable—the reluctance to ever leave her side.
Damn her eyes!
I can do what I want—I’m in complete control. I’m a free agent in the universe.
“Yeah, you are Bud—that’s the Jase I know and love. You had me scared though. I thought you were whipped, Man.”
Mutt’s unruly black curls are bobbing like floats on waves.
We’re in the shallows, in a sunlit cove off the Toronto Islands.
I flutter kick a few yards away from him—he resembles a stern Poseidon, water trilling off the ends of his curly mane.
“Let’s aim for the end of next month, and well put all this behind us.”
I’m exhilarated just thinking about it—vagabond days, blown by winds down the length of the Keys.
He shakes his head scattering water droplets like a monk with aspergillum.
“I’ll believe it when I see it, Bud—you said the same thing last month, and like a fish, she reeled you in.”
He arches backwards straining at an invisible line while his right hand arcs in a tight circle, mimicking the motion of reeling in a fish.
I flush, embarrassed at the memory.
“Okay, Pal—I get the picture—I’m not whipped, believe me.”
“Like I said,” he laughs, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
