Page 19 of Kiss Me, Darling

“You know how to work that thing?” She cocked her head to the side and smiled.

I may have puffed up my chest a little and pulled the classic “fake it till you make it” maneuver. I technically knew how to operate the boat, and had, on occasion, driven it. With Chris. Never alone.

But how hard could it be?

We wouldn’t go far. Just far enough to get some more of that wonderful alone time. The painting could wait.

* * *

I hadno idea what I was doing.

For some reason I couldn’t recall a single thing Chris normally did. I got the engine working and driving a boat is essentially the same as driving a truck. Instead of lanes marked with white lines and dashes, there are red and green channel markers. The rest? Kind of a blur.

Luckily Lucy hadn’t noticed.

Yet.

“Oh that beach is lovely. What is that?”

To our right were the manicured white beaches of the resort. “That’s the Calusa Key Resort. Same place Mom and Dad sang at when we were kids.”

“The reason you moved here.”

“Yep. That’s the largest resort. There are a string of smaller hotels down this side of the island.” Maybe if we circled the island I wouldn’t get lost. I’d never gone the whole way around. Chris always took us in the opposite direction, into the open water. Circling the island might take a long time. Plus I wasn’t entirely sure we’d ever find a spot to stop and relax.

So I made the possibly stupid decision to turn away from the known.

The first spit of island I recognized as one of Chris’s favorite fishing holes. I stopped the boat and dropped the anchor. “Hungry?”

“Starved. I’m impressed.”

“I learn new things all the time.”

“Not for fun. You learn whatever you need to learn for roles. That’s work. Not the same thing.”

She had a point. “I learned to tell my own stories.” Once I realized I didn’t have to write them down by hand or by typing them into a computer, that I could speak the stories aloud the same way I heard them in my head, my life changed. My whole creative process rounded a corner. It was like someone had given me glasses and for the first time and I realized how much more there was to see.

I felt handcuffed creatively these last few months, but the years of doubts and low self esteem had to be addressed. I had to work on me before I could create anything else.

Now that a corner had been turned, the words were pouring out of me again and it feltso good.Almost as good as spending all my time with Lucy. They were different but the same. Both fed my soul.

“What else have you learned?”

“I can catch a fish. I don’t particularly enjoy the sitting and waiting, but it is pretty exciting to reel a fish in. Mostly I do it to spend time with Chris.”

“Well you certainly didn’t learn to paint,” she teased as she handed me a sandwich.

“But I’m damn good at picking up paint from the store. I’m an excellent errand runner.”

“How does it feel? To walk around like a normal person.” She closed the cooler and sat on top of it, opening her own sandwich and taking a bite.

“It’s strange. At first it was the same. People stared. Asked for autographs and pictures. But then everyone got used to me.” I laughed. “They realized I’m nothing special. Sometimes it feels like my real life is a role I’m playing. ‘Normal guy.’ But it feels more real the longer I’m here.”

She chewed slowly. “I can understand why you want to stay here. Maybe even live here.”

“How does that make you feel?” I hadn’t really let myself think that far ahead. I couldn’t make those types of life choices without Lucy.

But now that she said it out loud? It felt good. Right.

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