Ocean Burning Read Online Free

everything he wore, all of it tastefully understated.
    Worst of all, he was taller than me.
    “How rude of me,” Carmen said. “This is Ben Hawking.”
    “Pleasure,” he said, and proffered his hand.
    I took it, and made sure to pour some extra power into my grip. I tried to crush him.
    He grinned affably.
    “Well,” I coughed, “the cost depends on the rental. We can do hourly or daily.”
    “What about a couple of days,” he said. “Can we sleep on board?”
    “Sure,” I said quickly, already thinking of the passenger berths currently crowded with junk. “She’ll sleep four comfortably, six in a pinch. How long were you thinking exactly?”
    Ben stroked his chin, fingered the cleft there in the middle. “However long Carmen wants. This whole thing was her idea. It’s a kind of early wedding present.”
    “Oh?” I asked. “For who?”
    “For us.”
    I stood slack-jawed, just looking at them. After ten seconds of awkward silence, Carmen couldn’t take it anymore.
    “Ben is my fiance,” she said. Then and only then did my powers of observation extend down to her fingers. My head ratcheted down and my eyes scanned her left hand.
    An elegant gold band circled her ring finger, plain as day, and the diamond setting danced in the light, taunting me.
    After that, I barely heard a word either of them said.
    Ben and I quickly agreed on a price because, somehow, I couldn’t even bring myself to haggle. We set a time to leave the next day, and Ben suggested I come out to dinner with them that night. I looked at Carmen, who was looking lovingly at Ben Hawking.
    This is your chance, I thought, to get her back.
    Dinner sounded great, I told them.
    I watched them shrink as they walked down the pier, and then they were gone, and I was alone with the burning Mexican sun.
    I climbed up onto my boat’s sundeck and let its rays flay me over the next few hours. I never felt a thing. I thirsted for water, but filled only the narrow blue glass I use for whiskey. Filled it again and a third time until my insides burned as fiercely as my skin did. By sunset, I’d made a list in my head of all the things I needed to do to make the Regal Purple guest-ready and seaworthy. I needed to make up the beds, refuel the tanks, check the batteries, stock the galley, take on drinking water.
    None of that got done.
    Instead I drank and watched the sun die a slow death by lowering itself into the Pacific. Sunsets down there are usually red, but that night it skewed toward rose. It matched the color of Carmen’s dress exactly.
    I tried not to think about her, which only made it worse. It was like when I try to fall asleep: I know the key is to not think about falling asleep, to just forget about it. But of course in the process of reminding myself not to think about sleep, or my lack of it, I would. And then I would be back to square one.
    So it was with Carmen. She danced in and out of my head, my mind invaded with memories. I’m not good with people, but she and I had been good together. Waking up next to her, morning sun bathing my cheap apartment, throwing back the five-hundred-thread-count sheets she’d insisting on buying me—all of it came back. It filled my head until I thought it would burst.
    Reaching up to rub the spot between my eyes, I realized I could still smell her on me. Carmen always smelled faintly of citrus, light and fresh. Like the infusion of orange steaming off a cup of hot Earl Grey tea, it was always in the background, adding something extra that you never even noticed.
    Until it was gone.
    I’d lived for Carmen, right up until the day she disappeared.
    Five years is a long time to harbor feelings, even I knew that. She seemed happy, and for a second I wondered if it was right to try and wedge myself between her and Ben.
    But Carmen was always happy, that was her gift. She would be as happy with me as with anyone else. My life, on the other hand, would improve ten-fold.
    I folded my sweat-stained canvas chair,