Ramifications

18 April

We'd seen Hilly and Jack off at the docks just a few hours before and almost immediately I had felt unsettled. For several hours I couldn't fix a cause to it. Here I was on a small island in a four story condo complex, deserted except me and Colin, and it felt all out of kilter. I tried to shrug it off. What could possibly be wrong? I had two days of total seclusion to look forward to. Then again, I also had only two days to look forward to us being alone, didn't I? Then it would be that gut wrenching departing to alleviate once more. Perhaps that was it. Yet I knew that wasn't it, not yet. That would happen tomorrow or tomorrow night and Colin wasn't exactly dancing around either. In fact, he was being mildly aloof since we'd gotten back. Plausibly more down than I was.

"Hey, you want dinner? I can cook something up fairly quickly?"

"Not particularly."

"You sure? It's no bother."

"What part didn't get through?"

He'd been sitting in a recliner in the living room, but got up at my query, stared at me with neutral eyes and walked out onto the patio.

"If I get hungry enough, I dare say I can get something myself."

"I'm assured you can I was just offering."

I'd just gotten some weird signals from him I was in no way prepared to receive. I had no clue what was sticking in his crawl and it wasn't a time I wanted to waste exacerbating the situation. I grabbed a coke out of the fridge, a book off a shelf and planted myself in the living room. One thing I had learned from experience; men get angry and they want to talk about it, but pushing it wasn't the way to get it out of them. However, the flip side was that when they finally were ready to discuss it they inevitably want to know why you were so inconsiderate as to have not asked. It was a no win. From Colin, a minor problem would be brought to my attention in two hours or less, medium would be before bed, major might not be until tomorrow. I might have to remind him that we'd made that pact not to go to bed angry with one another again. I couldn't remember if this extended to exterior concerns and/or worries or not, but I was not about to have a grump in my bed tonight either. I also couldn't recall what I had done in the past six hours that may have gotten him irritated with me. I came to the conclusion it was something else altogether.

Ten minutes later he came in and walked past me like I wasn't there and headed for the bedroom. Two minutes after that he came back out with the car keys and walked out the door. That was it. I dropped the book, snatched the door keys off the table and ran after him.

"Colin."

I knew he heard me, but he opted to fake being deaf. I started moving in double time until I was two feet behind him as he attempted to unlock the car.

"Colin Firth, what the fuck are you doing?"

I took hold of his arm as tightly as I could and got a scowl in return as he tried to loose it. Then I got him with two hands on the same arm.

"Let go."

"Like hell I will."

I dug my heels in and pushed off him landing against the door and glared at him.

"This isn't going to get solved driving around this island. Where are you even going to go? And if your issue -  whatever the hell it is - is with me, you better start talking."

"I'm not ready to discuss it."

"Well get there...fast, because you're driving me nuts already. Hilly and Jack have been gone a grand total of five hours and this, this thing....has been coming over you since the minute that boat pulled away. I won't waste the two days we have left. Do you want to? Don't answer that. You promised. Now get your thoughts together; then get your scrawny ass back up in that flat and get through this with me. Whatever this is!"

Even if no one else was around I wasn't going to continue to stand out there and argue with him about something I had no idea. I relaxed my stance and walked away from him back inside. Before I reached the exterior door I held onto the handle for a few moments.

"Colin, I've no idea what's eating at you. I don't see that I've done anything to irritate you so, but I'll wait until you're ready to talk, just don't drag this out. We don't have the time."

I can't say if that was what got him back inside or if he had just come to the point he wanted to be to share, but he followed me a few minutes later as I stood pacing on the patio. I'd heard the door close and walked over to, but stayed standing at, the sliding patio doorway. He walked across the living room throwing the keys against the wall, then turned and stared at me.

"I can't believe I did this to you."

"Did what?"

"I fucked it up, all of it. The shoot, the whole bloody film. Your career."

"Wait. Whoa...whoa...whoa. Hold on here. Rewind, replay."

"I don't want to. It's all I've thought about the past few days. I've made a complete mess of your life."

"Have you?"

"As I see it and I've owned it all."

"Well don't. Jeezus. Why would you take this on at all? My life is fine. I'm fine don't you see that?"

He got up and walked towards me but stopped short of reaching me.

"What are you supposed to do now? I've killed your movie. You've lost the income. Where are you theoretically going to go now? Do now?"

"Oh Christ."

"I find this in no way trivial."

I couldn't believe this was what he was banging on about; why he had been so moody and aggrieved. I couldn't fathom he'd gone beyond the obvious solutions to the situations we had found ourselves in and started beating himself up over it. It was completely unnecessary. This was something I might not be able to help him resolve. I walked past him towards the bedroom.

"Colin, what the hell have you done to me and mine? I can't see you've done anything that hasn't been put right."

"I did. I took away your movie and you're income...you're not writing. It was wrong of me to do so. To have even thought I could. I had thought I was .........."

That was it was it? He'd thought he'd injured me in some way?

"Colin, no. You haven't done any of this. I got my fee up front. You paid that. You paid my salary."

"What of future revenues?"

"That's it you see. Future. I wasn't counting on that for anything. Had no plans for future money. How can one do that when you've no idea how much or when it might come into existence?  The movie? Fuck it. I never wanted a movie in the first place. As far as I'm concerned it's no longer arguable. I can put the book back where it belongs and be happy. As for writing? I'm in a lull, it happens. I'll write again. I've been a bit pre-occupied for close to six months, wouldn't you say?"

I collapsed in a chair and ran my hand through my hair.

"If anyone got injured or hurt by this, it was you. You lost everything you put into this."

"Not all."

"Enough. All those expenses you'll never recoup. I still have my fees."

"And I still have you."

"Always."

My last statement gave me the impression it had assuaged his condemnation of himself. His face had relaxed and the tension that had possessed his body drained away. I got up shaking my head because I was still unsure why he had come to the theories at all. Okay, maybe I could but I had thought we had gone through this before the final curtain was felled on Working Title. I wanted to leave him to work it out now, in a more relaxed state and eased conscience. I picked my book back up, went to the bedroom, sprawled out and started reading where I'd left off. Some twenty minutes later he walked in.

"You okay now?"

He stood there leaning against the door jam with an playful twinkle in his eye that told me he had recovered.

"I believe so, yes."

He raised one hand up; holding one of the poker chips from last nights little coup d'etat.

"Care for a swim?"

"You're not seriously going to hold me to that, are you? It was all in fun, just a game right?"

"I am."

I rolled over on my back and put the book over my face.

"Good Lord."

"Oh, and no swim suits."

I pulled the book off my face, slammed it down on my abdomen and feigned shock.

"Can I take a towel at least? You know, for my hair?"

"Not that long, it will dry quickly enough."

"But you have something that is quite long and we can't have you dripping all over the place, now can we?"

"That will dry out also."

"Or dry up."

I wasn't given another chance to say anything when he walked over, scooped me up and carried me all the way to the pool. He set me down, we both undressed and I dove in. When I broke the surface and whipped my hair around to clear the the water from my face and eyes he was sitting in a chair watching me.

"What's wrong? Did you expend all your energy carrying me here and now you're too tired to even make a modest attempt?"

"Not at all, I was watching you glide through the liquid mirror with the moonlight accenting your frame."

I wasn't arguing with that.

"Oh."

I put my hands on the edge to push up and get out.

"Stay there."

He dove in and emerged on the opposite side of the pool; then swam the length and stopped at the built in steps in the shallow end.

"Join me?"

His face lit up when I acknowledged and raced through the water to meet him. He pulled me to him the last few feet and sat me on his lap. I wrapped my legs around his back. He reached over towards the deck, picked up a palm leaf and started tickling me with it.

"When did you put that there?"

"My secret."

"I won't pursue it. Just want to get back to pursuing you."

We were situated on the step next to bottom so that the only part of us above water were our heads. I raised up, he pulled me back down directly onto him. As he made his presence known to me I could feel the water inside me being exchanged with and for his fullness. The thrusts were stronger, the ride wilder and the climaxes heightened. We expended ourselves twice then dragged ourselves to a lounge chair on the deck where we fell asleep and woke up with the sun.