Inhalt

Time Rides the Tide

By
Janice Abel

I ride the waves of imagination. At least that’s what I thought until it actually happened. On this particular night, time slid in on the tide. It would be but a breath of the sun before I realized it.

Like a slow striptease I‘d made my annual escape from Wall Street clamor. Earlier in the day I’d closed the door on an office filled with ‘to do’ lists, and traded my crispy clothes and spiked heels for soft cottons and a beach bag and caught a late flight to Fort Myers. By the time I arrived at the West Wind on Sanibel Island at least from the skin out, I was feeling as free as the wind blowing through my frizzled brown hair. In a few hours I looked forward to the knots in my stomach letting go and as I caught the last slice of the fireball sinking below the deep blues of the sea, I could tell my lips and eyes were already losing their worry wrinkles.

This was the usual stream of events, the stream I could count on. But this time an additional someone was chewing at my insides. Robb Swinson to be specific. At first it seemed so natural, Robb coming to Sanibel with me. Robb had started out touching my business brain and now was touching my heart with his kisses like honey melting down my throat. So, a Sanibel trip with Robb, that would add up to romance big time. I could see it all floating in my head like a giant sailboat billowing in gold light. Torched red sunsets, red-hot midnights and mornings to follow that made you feel like you’d made heaven. And too, Robb would fit well on these Sanibel beaches. His smooth ways would fit right in with all the other guys sauntering up and down the beach swelling with ambition and smelling filthy rich.

But when he called and said, “Hey Jen, honey,” and spilled out, “I've got a deal to seal here. Can you wait a day or two?” My ‘no’ came out so clear and exact-- a gut reaction. Relief was what I felt, not disappointment. Now confusion rattled inside my heart having reached Sanibel-- alone.

Having stopped at Bailey’s Grocery on the way out to the resort, I had a good stash of bananas and apples and crammed milk and cold cuts into the economy fridge. Purging a suitcase just enough to retrieve a pair of shorts and a T-top, I began soaking in the sea air from my sea view balcony. Lingering, I sipped a martini, the olives swirling softly and my heart simmering. The sunset had sucked the sky to an immediate black, not the usual kaleidoscope of blues and reds waning to a starry night. The dark of the night had made the giant blue invisible no matter how hard I strained to see through the screen. I couldn’t get even a flicker of the white foam I knew was out there. But I could smell it and hear it and my mouth watered anticipating the next morning when I would wake to the sun beams calming song and I would stretch until all the knots from my deepest parts were loosened like a melting pot of warm butter. I crawled between the starched sheets and drifted to sleep with the rhythm of the waves slapping the surf.

But the night wasn’t to be its usual. At around midnight, cataclysmic waves echoed up into my second story and tumbled me like a ship caught at sea. The sea’s fireworks exploded and pounded sweat and fear into my dreams. Tangled in a web of sails I grabbed for a face. Robb’s face, a gooey glob, laughed

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Nächste Seite

Seite 1 /