The Lighthouse
"Storm strands him on the island. The lighthouse keeper hasn't had company in three years—and the weather won't clear for a week. The light keeps turning, but they never leave the bedroom."
The storm came from nowhere.
One minute I was sailing, enjoying a solo trip along the coast. The next, waves were throwing my boat like a toy, and the only light visible was the beam sweeping from Morgan Island.
I made it to the rocks.
Barely.
The lighthouse keeper was waiting on the shore.
Her name was Grace.
Sixty-one years old. Three hundred pounds weathered by salt and solitude. She'd been the Morgan Island keeper for eighteen years—the last eleven alone.
"Boat's gone," she said after helping me inside. "Storm surge took it."
"How long until I can get off the island?"
"Weather service says a week." She wrapped a blanket around my shivering shoulders. "Maybe longer."
"A week?"
"It's not so bad." She smiled. "I'll keep the light on."
The lighthouse was surprisingly comfortable.
Living quarters on the second floor. Kitchen, bedroom, a sitting area with books and a radio that mostly worked. Grace had made it a home.
"You live here alone?" I asked over soup she'd heated.
"For three years now." She sat across from me. "Assistant left when budget cuts hit. They were supposed to automate the light, but..."
"But?"
"But I'm still here." She shrugged. "The light needs a keeper. So I keep it."
That first night, I slept in her spare room.
Listened to the storm rage against stone walls that had stood for a hundred years. Listened to Grace moving above me, checking the light, ensuring it turned.
In the morning, she made breakfast.
"You don't have to take care of me," I said.
"I haven't taken care of anyone in three years." She set down coffee. "Let me enjoy it."
By day three, we'd run out of small talk.
I knew her history—married young, widowed at forty, found the lighthouse posting as a way to escape grief. She knew mine—corporate burnout, sailing as therapy, the storm as unwanted interruption.
"We're both running," she observed.
"I'm not running. I'm sailing."
"Same thing." She looked out at the endless gray. "We come to the edges of the world because the center is too loud."
"What do you do out here? Alone?"
"I wait." Her eyes found mine. "For the light to need me. For the weather to change. For something to happen."
"And does something happen?"
"You tell me."
I kissed her that night.
Not planned—just standing in the lamp room, watching the light sweep across churning water, and suddenly aware of how close she was.
"I shouldn't," I said against her lips.
"Probably not." She kissed back. "But the storm won't clear for days. What else are we going to do?"
We went to her bedroom.
The light turned above us, casting moving shadows through the windows. The storm howled. The world outside was chaos.
Inside, we found calm.
"It's been so long," she whispered.
I undressed her slowly. Revealed a body that the island had kept hidden—massive and soft and starving for touch.
"Three years?"
"Three years." She pulled me onto the bed. "I forgot what it felt like to be wanted."
"You're wanted." I kissed her belly, her breasts, the curve of her hip. "Right now, you're the only thing in the world I want."
"Prove it."
I proved it.
I made love to Grace while the lighthouse light turned.
Slow, patient, the way the island demanded. No rush—we had a week, maybe more. Nothing but time and storm and this.
"God—" She arched beneath me. "I forgot—I forgot how good—"
"Let yourself remember."
"I'm remembering." She pulled me deeper. "I'm remembering everything."
She came while the wind screamed and the waves crashed and the light swept across waters that had almost killed me.
We didn't leave the bedroom for two days.
Made love. Slept. Woke and made love again. The storm continued, and we continued with it.
"What happens when the weather clears?" she asked on day five.
"What do you want to happen?"
"I want you to stay." She said it simply. No games. "I've been alone too long. And you—you don't have anywhere to go back to."
"I have a life—"
"Do you?" She touched my face. "Or do you have routines you're trying to escape from?"
I couldn't answer.
The storm cleared on day eight.
A supply boat came with mail and provisions. The captain looked at me strangely—I was supposed to be lost at sea.
"Coming back to the mainland?" he asked.
I looked at Grace. At the lighthouse. At the island that had saved my life in more ways than one.
"Not yet," I said. "I think I'm needed here."
One year later
I'm the unofficial assistant keeper now.
Help with maintenance. Handle radio communications. Make sure Grace doesn't work herself to exhaustion keeping the light on.
"Any regrets?" she asks sometimes, when we're tangled together in the lamp room's shadow.
"None."
"You could be anywhere."
"I'm exactly where I want to be." I kiss her. "On an island. With a lighthouse. With you."
"The light needs keeping."
"So do you." I pull her close. "So do I."
The light turns.
The waves crash.
We keep each other.
It's enough.