Free A Matter of Time by David Manuel

seen
anyone
, any age, learn faster than he did.” He shook his head at the memory.
    In her mind she could see him teaching the young boy. She liked what she saw.
    “That’s the thing,” declared Colin, warming to his subject. “If someone really likes what I really like, I’ll teach them as
     fast as they can learn. Eric loved sailing—the boat, the life, the whole thing. And you know what? When the trip was over,
     it was hard to see him leave.”
    “He never went again?”
    Colin shook his head. “He loved it too much. Told my brother he wanted to grow up to be a sailor, like Uncle Colin.” He sighed.
     “His father had other plans for him.”
    The waitress returned and asked if they would like coffee. They would.
    “And so,” Amy summed up, “other than someone like Eric, you prefer your own company. Just you and Lady
Care Away
.”
    He looked her in the eye. “You got it.”
    Well, he might be blunt, but he was honest. And his message was unequivocal: No woman could ever persuade him to put her before
     the boat. Amy shivered. Time to get back up to periscope depth again.
    “So the solitude never gets you down.”
    “Not really. Time does a funny thing out there,” he mused. “I’ll think of something I need to take care of, a project that
     might take most of next morning. I’ll resolve to do it, but when morning comes, I’m sitting there in the cockpit under a clear
     sky and—it doesn’t get done. Nothing does. But I’m content.”
    He laughed. “That’s probably the most valuable skill a sailor can have—the ability to just sit.”
    She smiled. But when she’d first asked, she thought she’d seen him start to remember something, then shy away from it. So
     she asked again.
    He hesitated. “There
was
one time….” His voice drifted off, and he looked out at the bay again, his eyes narrowing. “Sometimes a school of flying
     fish will run with you awhile, jumping alongside. Occasionally one will land on the boat. If you can reach it in time, you
     throw it back in the water. If not,” he shrugged, “you just kick it over the side. Or if you’re hungry, you cook it and eat
     it. They’re quite good.”
    He did not take his eyes off the distant water. “One perfect afternoon, sunny, rolling sea—I’d been out about a month—the
     wind was moderate, and I was making three, three-and-a-half knots. All at once, this school of flying fish kind of adopts
     me. You could see them shimmering, silvery blue-green, just below the surface, blending with the broken pattern of the sun’s
     reflection. Every so often—for sheer joy, it seemed—one would arc up into the air like a mini-dolphin and dive back in. Then
     another would show that he could do that, too. And another, and another.”
    He laughed. “Hey, I cheered them on! They were having fun, and they were fun for me.” He paused. “Somehow I think they knew
     that. More and more of them broke the surface, and it was like we were on parade!”
    He stopped smiling. “I didn’t notice that a young one, not more than three inches, had landed on the deck. He was in the sun,
     and he was still. But his scales still glistened. Moving fast, I scooped up a bucket of seawater and started trying to revive
     that little fish. ‘This is crazy,’ I told myself, ‘just pop it in the skillet.’ But I kept at it forhalf an hour, moving it in the seawater, bawling like a kid.”
    He shuddered and fell silent, and she reached out and touched his hand.
    “So,” he said, his voice rough, “I guess the solitude
can
get to you.” He turned away quickly before she could see what was in his eyes.
    But she saw. And wanted to comfort the little boy she saw in him. Whoa, girl! Lighten up!
    “Had you ever thought of taking an animal with you?” she asked lightly. “A cat, maybe?”
    He smiled. “You’re not the first to suggest that. And you know, I
have
thought about it. Ian even offered me a kitten, a gray-and-white female from their