You, the Ocean, and Me

[Marie stands over the remnants of a shattered tea cup, liquid spilled across the floor. She begins to cry as she picks them up, unafraid of cutting her hands on the glass shards. Her cries become sobs.]

Marie: Oh my God. Oh my God.

Marcus: I wish I didn’t have to leave you. I wish you didn’t have to remember me by old tea cups and that medal that I won in grade school (why doesn’t my mum have that?) and–

[Marie, without any indication of what she’s about to do, hurls the shards of the tea cup across the room, narrowly missing Marcus. She, of course, does not know that.]

Marcus: Oh, Marie.

He follows her around the cottage, his boots heavy on the cold ground. Ivy wonders a thousand things in the sixty seconds it takes to walk from the back garden to the front door. Has he lived down the road all his life? What’s he doing out here, at the frozen coast in the middle of winter? The only people who live on the coast year around, she knows, are people who have lived here all of their lives, and people who are hiding from something, like she is. What’s he hiding from?

“Shoes off?” Harry asks, stopping a polite distance behind Ivy in the doorway. She nods as she pushes the door open and kicks off her own shoes.

“If you don’t mind, yeah. Trying to keep it as clean as I can, you know,” she tries to explain. She’s only just met this bloke, so he certainly doesn’t need to know how much she hates picking twigs and leaves out of carpet. Whenever Joshua came over, he always forgot to take his shoes off on the way in, and after he left, she found herself on the rug, cleaning up after his footprints.

“Do you mind if I…”

“Hmm?” Ivy looks up to see Harry move toward the fireplace, the fire dwindling inside. “Oh, sure. Thank you.”

He stoops down as he lifts some of the logs from the pile and puts them into the fireplace. She admires the slope of his back, the back of somebody who isn’t afraid to lift things and set them down again with the confidence that they’ll land smoothly.

Ivy turns away from him into the kitchen and lifts the kettle from its home on the stove. She carries it to the sink and tries not to get caught up again in the view out the window as she fills it. After setting it on the stove and lighting the burner, she opens the cupboard and pulls out the basket of tea.

Ivy knows that tea expires just like all other foods do, that it loses its flavor over time, but Ivy’s mum doesn’t seem to care. Even though she only stays at the cottage during the summer months, she keeps a fully stocked supply of teas of various flavors, adding to it even when it isn’t depleted. Ivy sets the basket on the kitchen table and waits for Harry to join her.

“My mum’s collection,” she says as he pads softly across the living room. His socks are striped with olive green and black, and they remind her, though she doesn’t know why, of her father, who, so far as she can remember, always wore plain black socks.

“Hmm.” Harry pulls a teabag out at random and flips the packet over, lifting it close to his face to read it. “I really ought to see an optometrist.”

“I’ve got perfect vision,” Ivy says, though he didn’t ask. “Bit of a curse more than a blessing, really. In school, all of the other girls had cute glasses, made them look smarter, and there I was, with my boring, plain face.”

Harry lifts another teabag out of the basket and looks at her, an eyebrow raised. “I don’t think you’ve got a boring face.”

Ivy cocks her head and studies him. He avoids her gaze, dropping his eyes to the teabag in his hand, and she thinks she sees him blushing. “Thank you,” she says.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “You’re welcome. I’ll have this one, I think.”

It’s a mint green packet, one that Ivy doesn’t recognize, but she nods. She pulls two mugs from the drainboard beside the sink and passes one to him.

“Which one are you having?” Harry asks. From a box on the counter, Ivy grabs a packet of her favorite chamomile tea and holds it up for him to see.

“My favorite,” she says, ripping the packet open. “I don’t drink anything caffeinated.”

“What?” he asks. “No caffeine? I thought you were a writer.”

“You can be a writer with–” out coffee, Ivy was going to say, but she changes course. “How did you know I was a writer?”

Harry sits down at the kitchen table and deposits his tea bag in his mug. It’s one of the matching ivory ceramic set that Ivy’s mum bought at Ikea for the cottage, and it’s nowhere near as exciting as the ones Ivy has in her collection at home. “You’re a bit of a topic of gossip in town.”

“Am I?” Ivy’s just about to join him at the table when the kettle begins to whistle. She grabs a potholder and wraps it around the handle before bringing the kettle to the table. She fills Harry’s cup first and then hers.

“You are,” Harry says, lifting his cup to his nose to get a whiff of the steam. “Do you have any milk?”

“Of course,” Ivy says, getting up to find the carton in the fridge. “Now tell me about this gossip.”

“Oh, they just say the usual small town stuff,” Harry says, taking the spoon Ivy offers him. “Wondering if you’re crazy and that. Since you’re single, living on your own, a writer.”

Single, Ivy repeats in her head. Lonely as fuck is more like it. And inviting a stranger into your tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere for a cup of tea isn’t something a sane person usually does, so Ivy suspects she might actually be crazy.

“Am I living up to your expectations, then?” Ivy asks. “Wait, you knew I was here! You absolutely knew I was here!”

“I did, but–” Now he’s definitely blushing, and it’s almost sweet. Sweet, and a bit disconcerting, because he now appears to be a nosy neighbor investigating her so he can report back to the rumor mill. “But I really didn’t mean to lie about it. I just didn’t want to startle you.”

“You did,” Ivy says, attempting to look annoyed, but it doesn’t last. There’s something so genuine, so open about Harry, her neighbor from down the road who, she suspects, actually does take care of her mum’s garden when she’s not here. He seems too sincere to lie about that. “I suppose it’s alright, though.”

Ivy wraps a hand around her mug and, sensing that it’s cooled down enough to drink, lifts it to her lips. Over the rim of the mug, she can see Harry doing the same. Neither says anything for a while as they drink. Outside, the rough winter wind howls, shaking the windowpanes.

“I should be going,” Harry says after what feels like a few minutes but, Ivy realizes when she looks down at his now-empty mug, has actually been much longer than that.

Ivy nods and stands as he dumps his teabag in the bin and sets his empty mug in the sink. “Be sure to report back to the town gossips that I’m not crazy,” she says, following him through the living room to the door. “Or, do, actually. Tell them that I’m absolutely bonkers.”  

Harry laughs as he steps over the threshold and onto the porch. “I will. I’ll do that.”

“Good,” Ivy says, suddenly sad to see him go. “Maybe I’ll see you again soon, Harry.”

He cocks his head at her and smiles. “I suspect you will, Ivy.”

He turns and steps off the porch, so she goes inside and closes the door. But from the front window she watches him walk down the drive to his truck, and she watches him drive away, her mind establishing a whole new list of questions about him.