A Star to Steer Her By

by Beth Anne Miller

  “You scared the shit out of me,” he said. “One minute, I was holding your hand, showing you some stupid fish and thrilled that you were doing okay and having fun, and the next, you’d pulled your hand free and took off like a bat out of hell after that manta, which was in the middle of a deep dive. I didn’t know how far you’d go before I got to you.”

  “I didn’t even realize I’d done that until you grabbed my arm,” I murmured.

  Without answering, he looked away from me to where the sun inched toward the western horizon, leaving behind streaks of orange, crimson, violet, and magenta. We watched together in silence as the sun dropped into the sea. When the last vestiges of it had melted away, he finally spoke.

  “My mum always loved to watch the sunset. She used to say that the world seemed to go quiet in silent homage to the sun as it slipped away for the night.”

  The abrupt change in topic threw me off track. I was glad that he was opening up to me about his mother, but what did it have to do with the dive?

  “She was an amazing woman,” he continued, “and my father was completely besotted with her. She was a literature teacher when they met, and he was taking groups of students out to sea in the summer, working at the docks during the winter. Then he started getting full-time work captaining schooners, and she happily gave up her classroom job to go to sea with him, teaching the students on his ship to love literature the way she did. She had a weakness for all the old romances, which is how I ended up being named Tristan, after Tristan and Isolde.

  “They kept going to sea, even after I came along. She homeschooled me until I was twelve, because she didn’t want to be apart from my dad, and went back to teaching full-time when I started school.”

  “It sounds like it was a wonderful childhood, Tristan,” I whispered, my heart breaking a little, because I knew that idyllic life ended up in pieces.

  “Aye, it was. When I finished high school and began working toward my mate’s license, she retired from the classroom to go back to sea with my father. But every summer, they’d take a week off and we’d sail together for a week in my parents’ small sailboat.

  “I spent all of last summer working as a mate on a ship in the Mediterranean, and only had one week off, at the end of August. It was the week my folks were going to do their annual trip. But my best mate was able to borrow his cousin’s sailboat the same week, and invited a bunch of us lads to come sail with him to the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. I chose to do that instead of joining my parents. They were disappointed, since I hadn’t seen them in a while, but I figured they’d get over it and I’d see them in the fall sometime.”

  Oh no. I swallowed the lump that rose in my throat, knowing that this was not going to have a happy ending.

  “We were out in the middle of nowhere, with no cell service. When we came into cell phone range a week later, my phone started to blow up. There were a million voicemails and texts from my father, growing increasingly panicked. Mum wasn’t feeling well. They were taking her for tests. Prognosis was bad.” He paused, took a deep breath. “And the last one, from the night before, was ‘she doesn’t have much time left. I’m taking her home. Hurry.’”

  “Tristan,” I whispered, taking his hand. He didn’t respond at first, but then his hand clutched mine so tightly I thought he’d crush my fingers. But I let him hold on. “I knew he was taking her to their sailboat—it was the only place she’d want to go. We fired up the engine on our boat and hauled ass to shore, where I jumped in a taxi and raced to the marina in Greenock, getting in late in the evening, just as the sun was about to set. I ran down the dock to the boat. They were sitting on the deck. Mum was in Dad’s lap, wrapped in a blanket. She looked so frail, like a wraith. But when she saw me, her face lit up.” His eyes were so distant as he spoke—it was as if he’d forgotten that I was there.

  “I sat down on her other side and took her hand. I started to say something—I don’t even know what—but she put her cold finger to my lips and said ‘Let’s watch the sunset first.’ So I didn’t say anything. It was the most spectacular sunset I had ever seen.

  “And as the sun slipped into the sea, she died in our arms.” A single tear spilled from his eye, catching in his lashes before running down his cheek, leaving behind a silvery trail.

  My breath hitched on a sob. “Oh, Tristan, I’m so very sorry,” I whispered, blinking back my own tears. Useless words, but they were all I could give him.

  “I blew off my family’s trip to drink beer and fuck around with my mates, and I missed my mum’s last days. I never even got to say good-bye.”

  He finally looked at me, his eyes shining. “When I went after you on that dive yesterday, all I could think was that I’ve had enough goddamn loss this year—enough for a lifetime—and I couldn’t lose you, too.”

  My heart skipped a beat, then kicked into overdrive. I licked my suddenly dry lips. “Tristan, I—”

  Something flared in his eyes, my only warning. I clutched the topmast as his right arm came around my waist, and he hauled me up against him, his lips coming down on mine.

  This wasn’t sweet like the kiss on the bowsprit, or slow and full of longing like the one on the beach. This was fast, hot, intense, even a little angry. I whimpered with need for him, eagerly meeting his fierce kiss, wondering why it took so long for us to get here, to this moment. He slowed down a bit, kissing me even more deeply. He held me tightly to him, and I felt oddly safe despite our precarious position.

  I gave myself over to the joy of his kiss, the strength of his embrace, the freedom of being up at the top of the world with the wind whipping around me.

  When we drew apart, both of us were breathing hard. He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, his hand lingering against my cheek. His eyes were nearly black in the fading light.

  “That was…w-wow,” I stammered when I could form words again. “So…what changed since the other night, when you told me we had to stay away from each other?”

  “Life’s too short, Ari. One moment, my dad had a wife he loved, and I had my mother. And the next, she was gone, leaving us alone and broken. What happened yesterday—it made me think of how much you’ve come to mean to me, and how I don’t want to waste any more time.”

  His words were thrilling—almost as thrilling as his kiss. “What about the captain?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “He can’t find out. Marine Classroom is really strict about it, and I just can’t put him in that position.” He watched me closely, his eyes searching my face for any sign of uncertainty. But there wouldn’t be any.

  “Okay.” I cupped the back of his head and brought his lips back to mine.

  When we parted for the second time, the sky was lavender and gray, the light nearly gone. We stood quietly on our narrow perch, watching the first stars twinkle to life.

  “In Scotland, we call this the gloaming,” Tristan murmured, “the time between sunset and full dark.” He smiled slightly. “I’ll have to show it to you someday. You’d love it there, Red—the standing stones, the castles, the glens, the lochs—it’ll take your breath away.”

  I looked at him in the fading light, the wind plastering his shirt against him and tossing his hair around his face. His expressive eyes held so many emotions: wistfulness, grief, longing, joy, desire.

  I smoothed back a lock of hair that had tumbled over his brow. “You take my breath away,” I said. He put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close to his side.

  There was something else I wanted to say, while it was just the two of us staring at the sea. “Tristan?”

  He turned to look at me. “Yeah?”

  “For what it’s worth, I believe you did get there in time to say good-bye to your mother, even if you don’t realize it. She waited for you so she could have everything she loved most in the world with her at the end.”

  He stared at me for a moment, and then he pulled me into his arms, burying his face in my hair. “Thank you for saying that,” he murm
ured. “I never thought of it that way. Thank you.”

  He kissed me again, so tenderly I wanted to weep. Then he slowly pulled back. “We need to go back down now, Red,” he said, his features barely discernible in the growing darkness.

  We were over seventy feet above the deck of the ship and the swirling sea. In the dark. “Right. Is it easier to go down than to climb up?”

  “Not really.”

  “You couldn’t lie to me?”

  “I don’t lie. Scoot over to your right.”

  “Um, to my right is air.”

  “Okay, move this way a wee bit. Good.”

  He unclipped his safety line, maneuvered around me, then unclipped my line. “Hold on tight.” No problem there. He climbed down a few rungs, and then swung around so that he was on the inside of the ratlines, facing me. “Okay, look down so you can see where to place your foot.”

  He stayed with me the entire way down, clinging to the underside of the shrouds like a spider.

  Finally, my feet touched the rail, and I just stood there for a moment on the non-wobbly surface. Tristan dropped to the deck. He reached up, his hands holding my waist. I grabbed his shoulders for balance, and he lifted me down, sliding me slowly, slowly down his body until my feet touched the deck.

  “I guess you worked everything out.”

  We jumped apart. I’d forgotten about Kevin, who sat on a locker a few feet away.

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

  He grinned knowingly. “Good. Now that you’re back on deck in one piece, I’m going to bed. ’Night.” Without waiting for a reply, he vanished down the companionway.

  We tossed our harnesses in the bin and then I followed Tristan down the ladder. When I reached the bottom, he turned me to face him. I could just barely see the glint of his eyes in the darkness. He glanced around and then pressed his lips to mine in a quick, hot kiss that left me tingling. “See you in a few hours. Sweet dreams.”

  Indeed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Our watch that night seemed to drag on forever. I stood bow watch in the last half hour of true darkness before dawn would lighten the eastern sky. There was literally nothing out there, so I just let my mind wander as I scanned the horizon.

  I had been assigned a bunch of tasks to do on this shift and hadn’t yet taken the helm. Which meant I hadn’t had any time alone with Tristan. Under cover of darkness, I could chat quietly with Tristan while I steered, but once the sun was up, I worried that people would take one look at the two of us and know that he and I were together.

  How the hell were we going to pull this off? Way up above the deck like eagles in an aerie, with my hands in his hair and his lips pressed to mine, it had seemed possible. But in the close confines of the ship, with people always around?

  I heard the deliberate scuff of a foot on the deck a moment before arms came around me from behind and warm lips pressed the side of my neck. My body arched into him, every inch of me eager for his touch. After only a moment, though, he let go and moved a few feet away.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked in a low voice.

  “I wanted to have a few minutes with you while it was still dark,” he said. “What were you thinking about? You looked pretty focused.”

  I glanced over at the dark shape of him against the rail. “I was thinking that us being together in secret is going to be impossible.” He laughed softly. “What’s funny about that?”

  “Well, a month ago, you thought going back in the water again was impossible. Six months before that, you thought walking was impossible.” He took my hand, pressing it to his lips. “This is not impossible.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I always am.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You sound just like Josh… Ohmygod, Josh! I didn’t tell you!”

  “Tell me what? Is everything okay?”

  “Better than okay. I called Josh after we got back from the dive.”

  “That’s fantastic! But why now?”

  “I realized that by going off after that manta, I’d done exactly what I was furious with Josh for doing.”

  I launched into the story, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice. When I finished, he gave me a quick hug. “I’m so proud of you, Red. I know how torn up you’ve been.” He glanced at the sky, which was turning gray as dawn approached. “I’d better get back aft before someone comes looking for me. See you in a bit.” His lips touched mine briefly, then he stepped back, leaving as quietly as he’d come.

  As I watched dawn explode into sunrise, it suddenly occurred to me that if Tristan’s mom hadn’t died, he wouldn’t be on the Meg, and we never would have met. I might never have gotten back in the water or fixed things with Josh. I definitely wouldn’t be as happy as I was now. And how fucking unfair was that?

  A few hours later, Jenny, Kevin, and I plopped down on the salon roof to eat breakfast before class. “So, Ari, did you get things sorted with Tristan last night?” asked Jenny.

  “Yeah, she did,” said Kevin, nudging me in the ribs.

  “Kevin!”

  “Wait, what happened?” asked Jenny.

  “Ari went aloft after Tristan in some kind of reverse Romeo and Juliet moment. It was awesome.”

  “What? Spill!”

  “It wasn’t like that—”

  “Dude, you totally climbed up the mast after him, and you both came down all starry-eyed. Sounds pretty darn ‘…it is the west, and Tristan is the sun’ to me, wouldn’t you say?” said Kevin, paraphrasing—that is, rewriting—the famous balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet.

  “I didn’t know you knew how to read,” I said. Jenny snickered at that.

  “Only those illustrated classics children’s books. But you’re evading.”

  “We just talked it out. Nothing more.” I dug my elbow into his side, willing him to zip it.

  Jenny stood. “I’m gonna run to the bathroom before class. See you in a few.”

  When she was gone, Kevin turned to me. “So, are you and Tristan together?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I—we’re—it’s complicated.”

  “This isn’t your Facebook relationship status. Did he kiss you? Okay, your face is turning bright red, so I’m guessing yes. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And we’re together.”

  “I knew it!”

  “But you can’t say anything. No one can know.”

  “Not even Jenny?”

  I shook my head. “She and I have had a rocky relationship. We’re getting closer to being real friends, but please don’t tell her right now.”

  “Fine, I won’t say anything,” he said. “But how the hell are you two going to keep this a secret? Every time he looks at you, the air sizzles.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “And it’s not like there’s an abundance of privacy on this ship. Or any, actually.”

  “You’re not helping, Garcia.”

  …

  We were on another long-haul journey at sea. It was about 450 nautical miles from Dominica to San Juan. We generally averaged close to a hundred miles a day, depending on the winds, but two days into our run north, the winds were pretty calm and we weren’t moving much.

  As I’d feared, it was torture to be around Tristan while on watch and have to keep my distance. The heated looks he kept sending my way didn’t help. I longed to feel his lips on mine, to touch him. I had to settle for our usual late-night chats while I was on helm, or a few stolen moments while I stood bow watch in the dark, or the “accidental” brushes of his hand as he passed by.

  Hopefully, we’d be able to steal some time in San Juan. If we ever got there.

  With no wind, my shifts at the helm were pretty boring. I just had to keep the ship pointed in the right direction, making tiny adjustments here and there. It was also scorching hot without the wind on my face. It was better at night without the blinding Caribbean sun, but the thick air made
me lethargic.

  It was somewhere in the middle of the midnight watch, and I was at the helm, trying to keep my eyes open. Tristan emerged from the chartroom to stand in his usual spot.

  “Talk to me. I’m in danger of dozing off over here. I know you want to be a captain. Is that what you’ve always dreamed of doing?”

  “Oh, aye. The sea has been a part of me since I was a wee laddie. All I’ve ever wanted is to be out on a ship with the wind in my hair and the salt spray on my tongue. I know most guys my age probably don’t want to do what their fathers did—they want to be their own man and do something different. But not me.

  “I’ve worked with students of all ages, from little kids to college students. I love watching them go from hesitant landlubbers unable to coil a line to confident sailors who run up the rigging to set the topsail, from surly eye-rolling punks to mature kids who stand at the rail and inhale the wind. It doesn’t matter whether I’m a first mate on a brigantine or a deckhand on the Meg, every voyage is different, every voyage shows me something about myself that I never knew. A ship teaches you responsibility, teamwork, and conservation, and I want to be a part of that experience, to impart my love for the sea to a new generation.”

  His words stirred something deep in my soul. For him, the sea was a calling, a summons he was not only compelled to answer, but yearned to answer. Tears came to my eyes unexpectedly, and I dashed them away, sniffling a little bit.

  “You, uh, still with me?” He sounded a little sheepish, like he’d said more than he’d intended to.

  “Can you come over here? Just for a moment?”

  I heard the slight thud of his footsteps on the deck, and then he was beside me, a tall form in the darkness. I looked around, but my watchmates were either at midships or down below—nowhere in sight.

  “Red?”

  Keeping my left hand on the wheel, I went up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his, trying to show him with my body what I couldn’t convey with words. The kiss lasted only a few seconds—I didn’t dare push our luck.

  “What was that for?” he asked when I drew back.