by Jenn Bennett
The boatyard and the Nook are both closed, and I pretend like I’m interested in the tour he’s giving me, pointing out all the boat’s features, but honestly, my mind is halfway between the gutter and a sliver of golden skin I keep seeing above the waistband of his charcoal board shorts when he reaches to switch on lights in the boat’s low ceiling. He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up high enough to show off his bronze arms, and his shorts aren’t just low, they also have a bonus strategic rip exposing one muscular thigh. I mean, come on. He switches the lights on. Off … I signal for him to show me again. He gladly complies. His hips have that weird boy muscle that makes a V shape on either side of his stomach, pointing toward greener pastures.
Kind of hard not to look.
And we haven’t been alone since that day my mom watched me take pictures of the boatyard. Some of them turned out pretty good. Kat is happy, so that’s what’s important.
“So that’s the Narwhal tour,” Lucky says. “How’s your queasy factor so far?”
“Ugh. Don’t say that word, p-wease,” I say around a ginger-flavored lollipop that I’ve been sucking for several minutes in preparation for boarding. I also have a tin of candied ginger in the pocket of my shorts.
“Ginger is proven to help with seasickness,” he assures me. “So does getting back on the water. Practice and practice again. I researched this thoroughly and asked a bunch of hardened, salty old boaters. You’re going to beat this. Mind over matter. We’ll make a sea-loving lass of you yet.”
I pluck my lollipop out of my mouth with a soft pop. “Really don’t know how you talked my mom into letting us do this.”
He shrugs “Just pointed out where she could see us from your apartment window through one of your camera lenses,” he says casually, and sounds like he means it.
“Uh, what?”
“Look,” he says, ignoring me. “If you want to get past this seasickness—”
“I could just stay on land forever.”
“—a bigger boat is a good place to start. That’s why I thought we’d try out the Nimble Narwhal, here. My dad acquired it in a trade earlier this year. Impressed?”
“If by ‘impressed’ you mean ‘is it giving off Cape Fear vibes,’ then yes. Are you sure there aren’t bodies stuffed inside the sofa?”
“You insult me, Saint-Martin. I’ll have you know I spent hours scrubbing everything down here until my fingers bled.”
“Don’t believe you.” God, he’s adorable.
“Maybe not bled. I did clean it, though. And it’s body-free. And rodent-free. I also threw away a lot of insect carcasses. You’re welcome.”
“What is all this for, if I may ask?”
“This is how I’m going to turn you into a water rat.”
“Why?”
He taps the side of his head with his finger and waggles his brows. “I have a plan.”
“Hey! That’s my thing,” I insist. “I’m the person with the plans and schemes.”
“Tough,” he says, shrugging. “It’s upside-down day. You ready?”
“No, I’m not ready in the least bit! I don’t want to get sick again,” I say, clinging to the carrot-colored kitchenette counter. “Especially not in that bathroom.”
“Told you before, seasickness is an inner ear problem. It’s sort of a battle between your senses, right? Your body is used to being on solid ground, and once you’re on a boat, your eyes are seeing one thing, and your inner ears are detecting another, and it’s one big sensory overload, and kablam! You’re sick.”
“Terrific for science. Let’s not do any kablamming.”
“Nope. We’re going to kablam until your body gets used to the water. The ginger helps your inner ear. So does antihistamine. That’s all motion-sickness pills are, really. And I’ve got them in case you need them.” He pats his pocket. “Remember last time, with the old fish and the sealant smells? I think that was a big factor. Strong smells make it worse.”
“It definitely didn’t help,” I agree.
“That’s why I cleaned, see? And I aired everything out. No smells. So today let’s start small. We’re just going to sail out for about a nautical mile, then I’ll stop the boat. Got it?”
Okay, adorable or not, I’m really unsure about all this and moan a protest.
“Mind over matter,” he says, gesturing to the deck above.
“I’m going to crack open your mind for making me do this, Lucky Karras.” The only thing saving him is that even though I can’t see his spectacular hips at the moment, he’s smiling down at me with that beautiful smile of his, and his hair is a particularly floppy mess today, and it’s all driving me a little wild. All of it. All of him: the adorable parts, the sexy parts, and the parts that did all this research.
This is a much bigger boat than Big-Enough. I wouldn’t call it a party boat, but it’s big enough for several people to take out fishing. I just wish it was someone else instead of me. Especially when Lucky forces me to strap on an ugly orange life jacket—“them’s the rules”—and leads me up four steps to a covered cabin with the boat’s controls and two seats. From here, I can see the deserted boatyard and the backs of all the brick warehouses that line the South Harbor. I can even see the Quarterdeck Coffeehouse, which is where I’d rather be right now.
“Deep breath,” he tells me. “And watch the horizon.”
That’s exactly what I do as Lucky starts up the rumbling engine of the Narwhal. Abandoning the lollipop in a wrapper inside my shorts pocket, I go for the stronger ginger gum, chewing down on it like a camel as Lucky maneuvers the boat around the Karrases’ small dock. Then we motor through the harbor.
I try not to look at anything, but I can tell we’re going the opposite direction from where we went in the smaller boat that first evening. Every once in a while, I allow my eyes to dart away from the horizon—toward the disappearing Harborwalk, cobbled streets, and bright flags blowing in the bay breeze. We’re up so much higher in this boat. It’s strange to be out here, to see it all from this point of view.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Don’t talk to me. I’m trying to concentrate on the horizon.”
“We’re almost there. You’re doing great.”
A few bigger yachts cut through the water near us, a few sailboats, too, but Lucky veers around them gracefully. At least I thought. When I watch the last turn, I feel the queasiness begin to rise up in me—it starts in the back of my cheeks and with a cold sort of sweat that sweeps over my brow.
“Oh no,” I tell Lucky.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “We’re just about where I wanted to be. Yep. Okay. I’m shutting the engine off. Look at the horizon. Are you focused on that?”
“Ugh.”
I feel the boat sway, then it goes quiet. Then it stops. After some loud grinding noise, Lucky puts a hand on the back of my neck. “You all right?”
“Think so.”
“You want to lay down on the deck?”
I think about it for a second. The queasiness is subsiding. Not gone, but better. “I’m managing. If the water would stop moving, that would be great.”
“I can help with that. It’s why I brought you out here.”
I blow out a hard breath and dare to turn in my seat to look up at him. “To kill me and throw my body in the water? I knew this was a Cape Fear situation.”
“Nope. I’m going to teach you to swim.”
I stare at him. “Um, what?”
“Swim,” he says, paddling like a dog. “Me, you.”
“In the harbor?”
“Prudence Beach,” he says, pointing behind us.
I look out over the harbor water, and sure enough, there’s a sandy beach stretching around the southern tip of the coast. No surprise. Lots of beaches around Beauty. One right near the center of the historic district by Goodly Pier, in fact. It’s littered with tourists and bright umbrellas as we speak. This beach, however, is sort of rocky and windy. South of town. Not the pretty beach. Practica
lly deserted.
There’s another problem. Well, there are about a hundred of them, but another big one: “It’s, like, a half a mile from us or something,” I say. “There’s no dock.”
“Nope,” he says. “We aren’t going to the beach. We’re swimming right here.”
Here, he means. In the harbor.
“This is where my dad taught me to swim. It’s completely safe,” he assures me.
“I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“Don’t need one. You can swim in your clothes. The world won’t end. There are clean towels downstairs.”
“You said my mom could watch us.”
“Can she really, though? I said I thought she could. I don’t know anything about your cameras.”
I glance back at the town’s jagged buildings, crowded along the shore in the distance. I’ve got a cheap telephoto lens with a serious zoom for my digital camera, but there’s no way it could get detail this far. She could probably see the boat through it, but not us. What am I even talking about? My mom couldn’t switch out a camera lens if her life depended on it. Bet him telling her that she’d be able to see us made her feel better, though, sneaky bastard.
“But, why?” I ask.
“I told you already, I’m turning you into a water rat.”
“Not following.”
He sighs dramatically and explains. “You were upset about not knowing how to do things like ride bikes and swim, because that’s what real families do, you said. Therefore, my plan is to help you beat your seasickness by getting you used to the water in this boat. And when you’re used to the water, I teach you to swim. When you learn to swim, you love the water. Once you love the water, then you’ll love Beauty. Once you love Beauty, then you’ll forget about your dad’s fancy house in Malibu and start thinking of alternate ways to diffuse the ticking time bomb of your grandmother’s impending return from Nepal.”
I stare at him, awed. It’s a plan, all right. A scheme. A strategy. A plot. I’m both touched and impressed. “That, sir, is conniving and beautiful,” I say, hand on my heart. “You’re basically trying to ruin my dreams, though?”
“Sort of a bad person, remember?”
“Liar.”
“I’m seriously not trying to ruin your dreams, so please don’t joke about that. I’m still supportive of your dreams, from one artist to another.”
“Thought you were a craftsperson, not an artist.”
He feigns annoyance. “However,” he says, holding up a finger, “if you are going to live with your dad, which I still support, for the record, I want you to know that there are lots of boats in coastal California—like so many. It’s a beach, Josie.”
“Point taken,” I say, smiling. “Oops?”
“So you should be prepared. I’m doing you a favor, really.”
I chuckle. “Okay, fine. Favor accepted.”
Grinning, he pops the latches on his life jacket. Ditches it. Then pulls off his shirt and tosses it on the deck. If I thought his arms were nice, I was a fool. Because there it is, his entire naked torso, all lined with muscles that I don’t know the names of, and the color of warm sand. His stomach is bisected by a dark slash that leads into his shorts, which hang far too low and provocatively on those spectacular hips of his. It’s all too much. If the seasickness doesn’t take me, I’m definitely going to faint from all this titillation.
“Let’s learn to swim, Saint-Martin,” he says, squinting down at me from under black lashes, as if he’s completely unaware of the power he’s radiating. Or is he doing this on purpose?
Am I being seduced?
With … swimming? Is that a thing?
I CAN’T TELL.
One by one, he tugs off my sneakers while I remove my life jacket. We both empty our pockets. Then he urges me off the chair and leads me to the back of the boat, where we step down onto a half-moon deck that curves around the tail. We sit side by side on the inner edge of the moon, legs dangling into the warm water. It … feels really nice, actually.
“How’s your seasickness?”
“Huh?”
A smile splits his face. “See? Your signals aren’t scrambled. Baby steps, Josie. Baby steps.”
Before I can respond, he slides off into the harbor, feet first. A seal slipping off a rock into the ocean. He holds his nose and disappears under the surface for a moment. And when he reemerges, he’s glistening, hair slicked back, lashes blinking away water.
“Feels fantastic today,” he says, kicking in place with his feet. “You ready?”
“For what?” I say, terrified.
He swims below me and reaches up to grip my hips with sun-kissed arms. “Just hold on to the deck with your hands and slide on in, feet first. I’ll catch you, don’t worry. I won’t let you drown. Lifeguard training with the Red Cross when I was fifteen. Totally certified.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“You have those super tight lifeguard trunks and everything?”
“Nope. Mom wanted me to do it, but I started working on the motorcycle instead,” he says, grinning and a little breathless. He playfully slaps my hip with a firm hand. “Come on, Saint-Martin. On three, two, one.”
“I’m not ready!” I shout, but I slip into the water anyway with a terrible splash.
Warm, briny water engulfs me and soaks my clothes as gravity pulls me down. For a shocking moment, I’m terrified that I’ll plunge right through the surface. That I’ll keep going. The harbor is endless and deep, and I accidently suck in salty water, but—
Steady hands snag under my arms.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “Stop fighting me. Put your arms around my neck. There you go. Okay, okay.”
I only put one arm around his neck. The other I use to grip the deck of the boat. “I can’t do this!” I tell him. “I’ll pull us both under.”
“Nope, you won’t. Look at my face. Hey, hey. Look at me.”
I look at him, and he smiles at me, head just above the water’s surface. I can feel his legs kicking below. And after I stop panicking, he tells me how he’s doing it, like an eggbeater. And how I can do it too, if I hold on to his shoulders from a little farther away. The funny thing is, I actually am able to.
“I’m doing it!”
“You are.”
“I’m kicking.”
“You’re treading water.”
“I’m treading!”
“Kablam.”
I laugh, but it makes me lose my rhythm, and I nearly choke him to death when I panic all over again and try to cling to him like a monkey. He’s not deterred by my loss of progress. “Let’s see if you can float.”
Patiently, he shows me how to grip the half-moon deck with both hands and let my body gently float out behind me while he keeps guard, one hand on my stomach in case I slip.
“See? This isn’t hard,” he tells me after a few false starts.
“Famous last words.”
“Just hang there and try to relax,” he says. “Talk to me. Talking keeps your mind off what you’re doing.”
“Talk about what?”
“How about the obvious … Heard from your dad lately?”
“Uh, no. We don’t talk on the regular, though. I was sort of waiting until I had something to tell him before I called him.… You know, like the internship. Only I’m still too chicken to write my contact. I composed the email, but I haven’t sent it yet, because of the naked photo of my mother circulating around town and whatnot.”
“I don’t think that’s the reason.”
“Oh, really? I don’t see a naked photo of your dad floating around town, so how would you know what it feels like?”
“Hey. My dad struts down our hallway from the shower to my parents’ bedroom every day without a stitch on, because ‘it’s only a body, Lucky, and we all have them,’ ” he says, imitating his father. “Trust me, if that hairy body floated around town, it might trigger an actual apocalypse. Buildings would collapse. The portal to hell would
open up and swallow the entire town.”
“Shut up,” I say, laughing. “I can’t balance!”
“You’re doing great. Keep it up,” he says. “Okay, what else? How about … tell me everywhere you’ve lived.”
“Oh, good God.”
“Come on,” he says in a teasing voice.
“Too many places to name. Everywhere in New England, pretty much. Easier to tell you where I haven’t.”
“Okay, what was the most favorite place you lived?”
My hands are starting to cramp on the deck. I stretch them out one at time. “Vermont. It snowed so much in the winter, and there was nothing to do, so mom and I would play board games all night. We lived in this kooky apartment that had chalkboard paint on everything—like, the previous tenant went overboard, you know? And we kept a tally of all our games on a cabinet that was painted like a chalkboard, who was winning which games. Only, she would sneak into the living room and erase my wins, and I had to catch her cheating.…” I laugh and nearly choke in the water. “You had to be there, I guess. It was just a fun winter.”
“Your mom was always fun.”
“She can be.”
“Can I ask you something about her? If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. Don’t get mad.”
“Kinda have me in a precarious position here,” I tell him.
He laughs, holding on to the boat deck beside me, and then goes serious. “Does your mom really date … a lot of people?”
“Is my mom the giant slut that everyone says she is?”
“Whoa. I didn’t say that. I’m not the morality police. No judgment.”
“It’s fine,” I say, a little weary in both my arms and my mind. “Honestly? I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. She says she’s not interested in relationships, and she just likes men. But I don’t even know if that’s true, because she’s never happy about it.”
Last year, when Mom was managing a bookstore up the coast, one of her assistant managers, a woman in her late twenties, had a similar dating philosophy: new guys every weekend. Marianne was loud and proud about it, and all her online dates met her for the first time at the store, were introduced to all the booksellers on shift, and they gave the thumbs up or down—it was all boisterous and funny, and even though I felt sorry for the men she dumped, at least Marianne was honest about it. At least I believed her when she said that’s what she wanted.