kloiterra

it was what some would call a tropical paradise, but to the locals, it was all they knew and therefore not all that special; a group of islands, each one small enough for one residence apiece. not all that far off the furthest coasts of the archipelago, William sat in his boat, defeated. he'd read the anonymously written story by the man who had dared fate and just rowed out one day. the man in the story had disappeared, but the notebook that he had left behind had changed the world and made his mother proud. unfortunately, William wasn't driven by providence, he was just in a state of confusion, somewhere in the gray areas of heartbreak and emotional turmoil. back and forth and back again, the boat rocked and creaked; toward the islands, then back out to sea. he looked at his notebook. he'd tried to do what the man in the story did, but again, not driven by a divine hand, he'd only managed to write down some of the events of his teenage years. "i miss you, Angie," was scrawled over and over on the fifth page of the notebook.
they had been crazy about each other, but neither of them had let the other one know, they just kept playing the game, assuming that the other only wanted to have fun, nothing serious; they had both failed. he had tried to maintain his emotional distance by denying how he felt about her to himself, and never mentioning it to her. his plan had worked too well--he'd even talked about other girls in front of Angie, so she thought he wasn't interested in anything more than the fun they were having. due to circumstances of life, compounded with false assumptions about how the other felt, they began to drift apart.
after a period of minimal contact, they'd been talking again. really talking. they'd come clean about how they'd felt about one another, both of them admitted that they still constantly thought about the other, they both apologized. just when it occurred to William that he may have made a huge error in judgment, Angie pulled the same disappearing act that he'd pulled on her almost a year prior. it drove him nuts. he thought about her constantly, analyzed everything she'd done and said the last time they'd spoken as if trying to crack an alien code. he tried to push her out of his mind with speculations and assumptions. he tried to imagine what she might be up to, why she'd gone away, why she was avoiding him. then, just as nonchalantly as she'd disappeared, she showed up one night in the crowd at the bonfire on the main island. they were stiff and hesitant around each other, both of them wanting to gush forth, both afraid to talk around the others. that night, they took advantage of the circular tides that flowed between the islands; after the bonfire, from the safety of their own islands, they sent bottled messages back and forth. despite the intensity of the correspondence, all they'd really accomplished was acknowledging the fact that they'd both hurt each other, that they still had feelings for one another, they both missed one another, but they were now equally unsure of what to do. they decided that they'd have to talk soon, whenever they were both ready to be completely open and honest. "ready when you are" read the message in William's last bottle.
William was excited and anxious. unanswerable questions flooded his mind: were they meant to be more than acquaintances after all? had he ruined his chances already? he'd already told his friends that he was sure that he'd been wrong about her, that he wouldn't take her back, but now he wasn't so sure. back and forth, forth and back...unlike the man in the story, William wouldn't starve to death in the boat--he had plenty of pride to swallow, not to mention a few slices of humble pie he'd stashed in his pocket.
so William sat in his boat. the wind had shifted a bit and he'd drifted a bit closer to the islands. he gazed at the fuzzy outline of the trees, then turned toward the open sea and looked at the horizon. back and forth, forth and back. he knew he was a strong enough swimmer to go back to the islands, but again, he thought of the inadvertent victory of the desperate man from the story. he reclined in his boat, defeated, waiting for the wind to take him where it would.