by Claire Adams
She told me she’d never been on a boat when we made the plans to come here, but I don’t know where else to go from here.
“I would have thought you’d have all sorts of yachting experience,” I tell her.
She smiles a little. She says, “My parents were more the private jet types.”
“Tell me about them,” I say. “It must be pretty unique growing up with them as your parents.”
“I don’t know if it’s unique,” she says. “It doesn’t feel that way to me. It’s what I’ve always known. There were a lot of things I found weren’t universal as I started growing up, though.”
“Yeah?” I ask. “Like what?”
Our first few hours completely alone in almost a week and we’re sitting here talking about her parents. This kind of talk is good for setting the groundwork for a relationship, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to bring back that chemistry that brought us together in the first place.
“Well,” she says, leaning back a little, holding onto the underside of her seat for support, “I remember being freaked out when I got to school and realized not everyone’s parents had a different luxury car for every day of the week. When I went home that night, I asked my parents if they could give some of their cars to the other kids’ parents. You can imagine how that went over.”
“When I was a kid, we almost never had a car,” I tell her. “When we did, we never had it very long before mom wrapped it around a light post.”
This isn’t the way to go and I know it. We should be talking about what we have in common, not the massive differences in our upbringings.
“How’s Chris doing?” she asks. “Do you think he’s going to clean up his act?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather not talk about Chris right now.”
“Oh,” she says, nodding. “All right.”
It shouldn’t be this hard.
“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?” I ask, looking around.
“Yeah,” Ash says. “It’s really pretty out here.”
“It’s funny how this place has been sitting here all of both our lives and we’re both just seeing it for the first time,” I observe.
“Hey, Mason!” Ash says and I look back at her. She’s leaning over the side of the boat, looking into the water. “Come here and check this out. What kind of fish are these?”
I lean a little so I can see where she’s looking, but I can’t see any fish. It’s hard not to smile. I think I know what she has in mind.
“I can’t tell,” I answer. “What do they look like?”
“They’re pretty small,” she says, “but they’ve got all these bright colors. Like that one has a big green splotch on one side. Come over here and look at this.”
Yeah, it’s a trap.
Regardless, I slowly stand and step over to Ash, trying to keep the boat as steady as possible as I do.
“Careful,” she says. “We wouldn’t want you to fall in.”
“Where are they?” I ask as I get close enough.
“Right there,” she says, pointing. “They’re small, though. You have to get kind of close otherwise the tint of the water makes it so you can’t see them.”
Do I have my cellphone in my pocket? I give my pants a quick feel. Nope. Keys and money are either in the car or in the locker the boat rental guy let us stash our remaining valuables in, too.
“All right,” I answer, holding back a grin.
I lean over where she tells me to.
“Can you see them?” she asks. “They’re about six inches from the surface.”
“I don’t see—wait,” I tell her. “I think I do—”
And that’s when she does it. Ash simultaneously rocks the boat in the direction I’m leaning and, with her foot, she pushes me over the side of the boat.
The water’s cold, but not frigid, but that’s not my concern.
“Help!” I scream. “I can’t swim!”
“Oh my god!” Ash cries. “Grab my hand!”
My arms are flailing as I try to stay above the surface of the water, and Ash is reaching out for me, but the push out of the boat put me farther out than our arms reach.
“Mason!” she shouts, grabbing an oar and holding it out toward me.
I grab onto the oar with everything I have and, just when it looks like Ash is standing nice and precariously at the side of the boat, I give it a good, strong tug. Her mouth is open and she’s cursing me as she hits the water.
She comes up and I grab onto her, but she swats my hand away.
“You jerk!” she teases, splashing water at me.
“Oh, I’m the jerk?” I ask, splashing her back. “You’re the one that dumped me in in the first place!”
“You looked hot,” she says. “You looked like you needed a drink.”
“Well, it was so refreshing I thought you should join me,” I tell her.
“Uh, Mason?” she says, looking past me.
“What?” I ask.
“The boat?” she answers, pointing.
I turn around to find the boat is about fifty feet away and gaining distance with the help of a moderate breeze.
“We should probably…” I start.
“Yeah,” she finishes and we take off swimming after the boat.
We’re swimming after the boat and I can hear the rental guy screaming something at us from the shore, though I can’t make out the words. At first, I think he’s just being an ass, but as I turn back toward the boat, something looks a little off.
“Does that,” I breathe, still paddling, “look like,” I breathe again, “it’s sinking?” I ask. I’m not used to swimming, and I’m getting a substantial amount of the lake in my mouth.
Ash doesn’t answer, but increases her speed.
“Why’s it sinking?” she asks, now well ahead of me in the water.
“I don’t know,” I gasp, having to slow down to keep the waves I’m creating out of my mouth and nose. “This isn’t part two of your evil plan?” I ask.
She’s almost to the boat now, and I’m treading water, trying to catch my breath. I really need to get better at swimming. I’m good enough to keep my head above water, but I think I’ve drunk about a gallon of Lake Park Lake.
Ash gets to the boat and turns around, seeing I’m still a ways back. “Come on!” she calls. “I can’t save this thing myself!”
I’m starting to feel really sick, but I suck it up and start going again, this time resolved not to let my mouth open for anything. Still, every time I bring my head up to take a breath, my mouth comes open automatically and I get another gulp of lake water.
After an amount of time I’m not particularly proud of, I catch up with Ash. She’s trying to lift the edges of the boat out of the water enough so we can dump it out, but that’s not going to work and we don’t have time.
“Here,” I tell her, gripping one side of the boat. “Put your hands here and just hold on for a minute.”
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
“I’m going to go around to the other side and start tilting the boat toward you,” I tell her. “If it’s going to pull you under to hang on to the side, let it go. What we’re going to do is try to lift it like that up just far enough that when we tilt it back, whatever water’s still in there isn’t going to drag the boat down where it can fill back up again, okay?”
Her eyes are wide open, her eyebrows up. “I don’t—” she says. “I don’t think I can lift it.”
“I’m going to help you,” I tell her. “With both of us, it’s going to be okay. When I start tilting the boat, though, I need you to help me get it exactly on its side. You’re going to need to help it rotate, okay?”
“Your job sounds easier,” she says.
“Whichever way you want to do it, we’re going to have to do it now,” I tell her.
She looks at the boat which, from where I am, looks like it’s already a lost cause. “Okay,” she says. “
I’ll do what you said.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “If at any point you don’t feel safe, just yell and swim away, all right? It’s just a boat. Nobody has to risk anything more than a security deposit, okay?”
“Okay,” she answers weakly.
“Ash?” I say, trying to put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her, though it ends up being little more than a pat. “Are you okay?”
She looks up at me, her eyes searching mine.
“Hey,” I tell her. “We can do this, okay?”
“Okay,” she says and nods, only the rim of the boat where she’s holding on is below the surface of the water now.
I swim around to the other side of the boat, holding my breath. When I get to the other side, I reach down to grab my half of the boat.
“Okay,” I tell her. “It’s far enough down now that we’re not going to be able to lift it all the way,” I tell her as she holds on with one hand now, using the other to tread water. “Let go of your side and push it down. I’ll—”
“Push it down?” she shouts. “Are you insane?”
“You push your half down and I’ll pull my half up, that’ll get it rotating,” I tell her. “Once it’s as close to on its side as possible, swim closer and grab next to where I’m grabbing. We’re going to have to see if we can…”
I stop talking. The boat is too heavy even to hold onto, much less to get out of the water.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You can let go.”
“No!” she says. “We’ve got to save the boat! How are we going to get back to shore?”
I let go of my side and say, “Look around. There’s land everywhere and both of us can swim. We can’t save the boat, but as soon as you let go, we can get to land.”
It’s hard to tell whether she let go on her own or she lost her grip, but it’s all right either way. She nods and we head back in the direction of the boat shop.
As we go, I stumble into the realization that if I don’t slap the water, but guide my hand into it and then complete the stroke, I can take a breath without feeling like I’m drowning.
The boat took maybe three minutes from the time the boat rental guy started shouting to when Ash let go, but it felt like an hour. The swim back to shore, by contrast, seems to take no time at all.
We get to land and Ash and I crawl our way to shore, lying back on the grass once we’ve pulled ourselves out far enough. We’re both breathing heavily, trying to recover from the ordeal.
I roll over onto my side as soon as I’ve regained the energy, and I stroke Ash’s face as she looks at me.
“That turned into a bit of a thing, didn’t it?” I ask.
She coughs laughter, but cuts it short, saying, “I’m so sorry about that.”
“What are you sorry for?” I ask. “It’s at least as much my fault as it is yours.”
“No,” she says. “If I hadn’t pushed you over, we’d both still be in the boat, dry,” she breathes, “not exhausted, drenched and lying by the side of the lake like bodies drift ashore.”
“You make pretty mouth words,” I tell her.
This time, she full on laughs, and I laugh with her.
“We both had good intentions,” I tell her, “but something bad happened. What matters is that we’re all right.”
“Yeah, but you’re going to have to pay for that boat,” she says. “The whole thing’s in your name. I’m just down as a passenger.”
“Hopefully the security deposit covers catastrophic loss of boat,” I respond. I kiss her on the lips.
She smiles. “Thanks,” she says.
“For what?” I ask.
“For not being a dick,” she answers. “You helped me snap out of it when I was too freaked to realize what was happening was happening, but you weren’t mean. You said what you needed to say and you were very reassuring, thank you.”
“You taste like lake water,” I tell her. “Gross.”
She smiles, chuckles, shakes her head. This might be the closest we’ve ever been and I only had to sink a boat to do it.
Actually, I’m not going to tell Ash this, but I’m pretty sure the whole thing’s her fault.
Shh…
“Well, I’m glad someone’s having a good time!” a voice comes from toward the shop.
Ash and I look over and there’s the boat rental guy in full scuba gear, holding the hooked end of a rope on a wench.
I feel bad for the guy, I really do, but the sight is just too much and I start laughing. That might have been forgivable, but the fact that I’m in hysterics has caused Ash to start busting a gut, and I think we might be giving boat shop guy the wrong impression.
“I’m—” I laugh.
“We’re so—” Ash cracks up.
I try again with, “We didn’t mean to—” but it doesn’t work. The very fact that we can’t get through what we’re trying to say because we’re laughing is only making us both laugh harder.
“I’m keeping your deposit, Chuckles!” the man shouts before putting his mouthpiece in, his facemask on and walks into the lake, grumbling in muffled grunts as he slowly disappears into the water.
“You know,” I tell Ash, “that might have been the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I know! He’s like Mr. Underwater Tow Truck, isn’t he?” she chortles.
I kiss her again and then lie back and look at the sky above, making sure my hand finds Ash’s. She scoots over next to me and rests her head on my chest.
“We should probably wait and help him get the boat drained and back wherever it needs to go when he gets out of there,” I say.
“You’re such a Boy Scout,” Ash says, patting me on the chest.
“We did sink his boat and then laugh in his face uncontrollably about it,” I tell her. “It just seems like common courtesy to give the guy a hand.”
When the owner of the boat rental shop surfaces, holding the line between the boat and the wench to make sure the connection stays taut, Ash and I get up and help him. Until that, though, we’re just lying here on the cool grass huddled together both for warmth and affection.
By the time we finish helping the owner of the boat shop, Morris, undo most of the damage that we’d done, he’s offering to give us our deposit back. We turn it down, though. He definitely earned it.
The world is a great, gorgeous fairy tale until we’re driving back to my place and we have to pull over before we get there.
There are five police cars in front of my house—two in the driveway, two off the curb and one on the front lawn—and the near-immaculate moment Ash and I were enjoying together craters into brimstone.
Ash gets out of the car, but I hesitate.
I know exactly what happened. Maybe not the specifics of what he did this time, or even whether this is just the fallout of another scam-gone-bad from who knows when, but the police aren’t there because someone broke into my house.
I get out of the car, more for the sake of not leaving Ash out there by herself than anything, and policemen start coming out the front door of my house.
“You don’t have anything in there that would give you away as a boxer—fighter,” she sighs. “You know what I mean.”
“No,” I tell her. “There’s a lot of MMA stuff, but nothing that would give away anything. This is all him.”
When they bring Chris out of the house, Ash grabs my hand. We’re in front of the neighbor’s house, but he sees me. I don’t know what the look on his face is, but there’s almost a ferocity to it back somewhere beneath the expressionless face itself.
I don’t try to get closer or try to stop it. I don’t call out that I’ll have his bail tonight or that everything’s going to be okay.
I don’t want to lie.
We just stare at each other until he’s put in the back of a police car.
Chapter Twelve
The Fourth Letter in the Alphabet and the Longest River in the World
Ash
“Good morning!” Mason’s voi
ce comes out of a dream and into my irritating reality.
“Why are you waking me up ever?” I drone, my face a little more than half covered by the pillow.
“It’s nine,” he says. “It’s late. Come on, I made you breakfast.”
“Great,” I moan. “You can eat it yourself, which should give you the strength to try again in another three hours.”
“Come on, Ash,” he says cheerily. “It’s a beautiful day outside.”
I put my whole face in the pillow now and wonder if I have the resolve to be the first person to intentionally smother herself with a pillow. After a couple of seconds with decreased oxygen, though, I decide to live. Even if that means I have to get out of bed.
I turn my head to the side, catch a bit of sunlight too directly in the eye, and I’m strongly reconsidering my options.
Mason’s been Mason for the most part, but that’s kind of the problem. For the first hour or two after Chris got taken away, Mason just said he didn’t want to talk about it. After that, it was like a switch just flipped and everything was fine.
Now, when the topic of Chris comes up, he says, “What happened is what happened.”
Breakfast out of bed at nine o’clock in the morning on my day off, though? This must be stopped.
My knuckles hit the floor shortly after my feet do as I drag myself out of bed. It’s been nice staying at Mason’s, but he’s got to stop picking my clothes off the floor before I’ve had a chance to get up in the morning.
I walk over to the dresser where my clothes are all folded neatly—okay, the folding is new—and I get dressed. The television is on as I enter the living room and Mason’s just coming around the corner from the kitchen.
“Oh hey,” he says. “I didn’t know if you fell back asleep or not. Breakfast is ready when you are.”
“Mason,” I tell him. “You have to let me sleep.”
“Ooh,” he says, “come check this out.”
He grabs my hand and leads me into the kitchen. I’ll give him this much, breakfast does smell really good.
Sleep smells better.
“Look,” he says. “There’s been a chipmunk going up and down that tree all morning. I’ve never seen it before.”
“That’s because only chipmunks and the elderly are awake this early,” I tell him.