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 look around at 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 Asher 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.
The boat is moving up and down, riding waves from the current of a large ship that passed us. By the time the boat settles down to a calming bob in the water, Asher is standing at the back of the boat, staring out in the sea.
With his hands placed on his hips and his head bowed, Asher breathes deeply. I maintain my spot by the controls and watch him. We stand in silence for a long time. 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 Asher is 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 lowers his gaze back to the box and 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 Asher 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 Asher 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. His eyes skim over it a few times before 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.