Float Plan

by Trish Doller

  Soon all that’s left is Captain America. Keane unwraps the mug and a wrinkle of confusion forms between his eyebrows.

  “It was Ben’s favorite,” I say. “But you use it so much that I don’t really see it as his anymore. So I figured … Well, maybe someday when you’re off on some remote island, you’ll fill it with coffee and think of me.”

  He turns the mug over in his hands. “Are you sure?”

  “I want you to have it.”

  “This is grand, Anna, thank you.” Keane leans over and kisses my temple. “I, uh—I wish I had something for you, but I—”

  “Saving my life is enough.”

  The rest of Christmas Day unfolds lazily: a breakfast of Swedish pancakes topped with lingonberry sauce, naps, and lots of sprawling in various places around the house. When I go to the bathroom, there is a small stain in my underwear, a reminder that I’ve been away from home for a month. And another thing I never thought about having to manage while living on a sailboat.

  On Boxing Day, Felix drives us around the island, jostling along roads that—in some places—are little more than dirt tracks. We stop at the bubbly pool, a natural tidal basin where waves thunder between the gaps in the rocks, churning the pool into a natural saltwater Jacuzzi. The five of us sit in the shallows, drinking beer while the water fizzes against our skin.

  The holiday officially ends the next day, and I walk Queenie down the hill to the grocery store to buy yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting for Keane’s birthday––his favorite flavor, according to Eamon. We sit for a few minutes on a bench outside the market, where a pair of little girls play checkers on a nearby table. They scramble from their seats when they see Queenie, and she rolls over so they can pet her belly.

  “What’s your dog’s name?” asks the girl with yellow barrettes.

  “Queenie.”

  They look at each other and crack up, laughing for reasons only little girls know, and the other girl, with blue baubles at the ends of her braids, says, “Is she really a queen?”

  “Yes, she’s the queen of the Turks and Caicos.”

  “If she’s a queen, where’s her crown?”

  I drop my voice to a whisper. “She’s in disguise.”

  Their giggles are like music.

  “I like Queenie,” the first girl says.

  “She likes you too.”

  We sit like this for so long, their small brown hands tickling my dog’s belly, that I can feel the strands of happiness spinning themselves, layer after layer, around Ben’s memory. Creating a buffer that makes it hurt less to think about him. Someday, maybe, it won’t hurt at all.

  The spell is broken when the girls’ mother calls them away. Queenie and I trek back up the hill to the house, where I hide my purchases in my room.

  On Monday, the other sailors begin planning the passage to St. Barths. None of the particulars matter to me and I wander to my room. Begin packing for leaving. I am not ready. I’ll miss my sprawling bed and the soothing nighttime peep of the coqui frogs. I’ll miss the outside shower and sitting on the balcony until after the stars appear. Each island I’ve visited has been better than the one before, but I’m worried about St. Barths. Worried about Keane.

  We leave the next evening, following our last dinner at the patchwork house, and Eamon jumps ship to sail with Agda and Felix aboard their forty-eight-foot catamaran, Papillon, seduced by the prospect of his own stateroom and a well-stocked bar. Keane and I have the smallest boat, so we leave first from the harbor and set sail between Jost Van Dyke and Tortola. Through the Narrows. Through Flanagan Passage. Into open water. The other boats come behind, staggering their departures so we can all reach St. Barths at about the same time. The catamaran passes us in the night. Luke and Amanda’s Fizgig, a forty-four-foot sloop, goes by while Keane is on watch. Karoline and Jefferson are with us longer on Peneireiro, but eventually we end up alone.

  I arrange our watch rotation so Keane is doing the first four hours on his birthday. While he is on deck, I mix the batter and slip the cake into the oven. It’s still warm when I carry it up into the cockpit.

  “I’d sing, but it’s best for everyone involved if I don’t,” I say. “Happy Birthday.”

  Keane’s eyes go wide. “You baked this for me.”

  “I’d use the term pretty loosely considering it baked unevenly.”

  “Is something wrong with the gimbal?”

  “Gimbal?”

  Keane laughs. “It’s the mechanism that keeps the oven level under sail.”

  “Well,” I say, handing him the cake, “that would have been a great thing to know about thirty minutes ago.”

  He kisses the top of my head. “You are a star, Anna. Thank you.”

  “A candle won’t stay lit in this breeze,” I say. “But I think you’re still allowed to make a wish.”

  He squints one eye, as though considering, and nods. “Done.”

  We share a fork and his last bottle of Guinness as we eat the entire cake in one sitting, licking the melty chocolate frosting from our fingers. The sun is a sliver of fire on the horizon. We sit in silence, watching it rise, watching the sky turn gold.

  “I think—” I turn to look at Keane. In the new morning light, his skin is as gold as the sky and the words dry up in my mouth. We look at each other too long, and his jaw twitches; he knows it too. I look away first. “I think it’s going to be a good day.”

  “In my experience, today is usually not.”

  “Then you are very lucky I’m here.”

  Our eyes meet again. “Yes. I am.”

  I flee to the cabin with the excuse of needing to wash the dishes, but what I need is to escape the intensity of his gaze. Except I can’t control my body’s response to him. Can’t slow my racing heart. Can’t get beyond the thought that friends don’t look at each other the way we did.

  Is it too soon to want someone else? What happens to my love for Ben? Where does it go? Is this even real, or is it proximity? I sit in the cabin and try to pull myself together. Keane has gone from stranger to sailing partner to friend. Anything more could be a disaster. Or it could be really fucking incredible.

  “Anna,” he calls. “Come play Scrabble with me?”

  “Only if you use actual words.”

  He laughs. “I should have bought you a Scrabble dictionary for Christmas.”

  The tiles are still locked in place from our last game when I unfold the board on the bench between us. “How convenient that you didn’t.”

  “You are a sore loser.”

  “You cheat.”

  Laughing, he reaches over and pushes the bill of my Crabbers ball cap down over my face. We play Scrabble until we get hungry and Keane volunteers to make lunch. He prepares heaping turkey sandwiches and thick slices of mango from a tree back in Jost Van Dyke. I roll the ball on the foredeck for Queenie to chase, then take over while Keane snoozes in the sun. We are back to normal as we sail into night, but when the following day breaks and we get closer to the green hills and red-tiled roofs of Saint Barthélemy, Keane grows tense and quiet, and I wonder if we haven’t made a mistake by coming here.

  loud and defiant (24)

  Gustavia is a beautiful village with tidy buildings and clean streets, and the beach off which we are anchored is covered with more seashells than anyone could count in a lifetime. Yet everything about this place feels wrong. Keane is a walking thundercloud, and as we weave our way through the New Year’s Eve crowd on the Rue Jeanne d’Arc, I keep waiting for his past to ambush him.

  And then it does.

  “Sullivan?” A man with salt-and-pepper hair springs up from a table filled with young sailors wearing matching red crew shirts from the New Year’s Eve regatta. A massive gold watch shines on his wrist, glinting when he shakes Keane’s hand. “God, it’s good to see you, kid. I didn’t know you were in town. Were you out on the racecourse today?”

  The muscle in Keane’s jaw flexes, but the man misses it as he flicks the ash from his cigar onto th
e sidewalk. “No. We arrived this morning from Jost Van Dyke.”

  “Good for you, kid.” The man clamps the cigar between his teeth and talks around it. “We won, so come have a victory drink.”

  Keane glances at me, his expression uneasy. I don’t like St. Barths. The harbor and the water along the coastline are swarmed with mega-yachts owned by Russian billionaires, American politicians, and rap moguls, and I feel as out of place on this island as I did at Barbara Braithwaite’s dinner table. And I don’t know whether Keane is looking for an excuse to leave or permission to stay, but I am not the boss. I shrug. “Why not?”

  Over glasses of ti’ punch that are terrible and strong, I am introduced to Jackson Kemp, the founder of the biggest waste management company in the United States, and the owner of the boat Keane sailed aboard five years ago. The same man whose email rejection in Nassau pushed Keane into a drunken binge.

  “You’re looking great, kid.” Jackson claps him on the shoulder. “They’re doing amazing things with prosthetics these days. Almost as good as the real thing.”

  The dismissive way he calls Keane “kid” crawls up my spine and settles between my shoulders. I don’t like this man or his careless language. Keane shoves a hand up through his hair and I don’t understand why he would continue doing something that causes him so much pain … until I realize I do understand.

  “Shame they haven’t found a way to replace insensitive assholes yet.” I mutter it into my drink, but apparently loud enough for Jackson Kemp to hear. Keane blinks at me as if I am someone he’s never seen before—and right now I am. Jackson’s eyes widen, and he unleashes a booming laugh.

  “Guess I deserved that.”

  “I guess.”

  “Listen, I’m throwing a party tonight at my villa. Y’all should come.” He looks from me to Keane and back, offering what might be as close to an apology as Keane is going to get. “The champagne will be flowing, and we’ll have a prime view of the fireworks.”

  I set my drink down on the table and look at Keane. “I just remembered there’s somewhere I need to be.”

  “Anna, wait.” I hear his voice behind me, but I don’t turn around. He catches up to me before I’ve made it to the end of the sidewalk. “Where are you going?”

  I wheel around to face him. “I don’t know, kid. Maybe I’ll sail to Saint Kitts or Nevis. Anywhere is better than here. You can stay if you want, but I have no interest in anyone who doesn’t recognize you for the exceptional human being you are.”

  Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, he circles his arms around my shoulders and draws me to him. I slip my arms around his waist and press my cheek against his soft shirt. “You deserve so much better than this. Come with me.”

  He exhales into my hair and kisses the top of my head. “Let’s go.”

  Together we walk down the Rue de la Plage to Shell Beach and motor the dinghy out to where the four boats are rafted together in the small harbor. Eamon is playing poker with the other guys on Fizgig—Queenie sitting beside him as if she’s learning how to play—while the women sunbathe topless on Papillon’s trampoline. Keane crosses from one boat to the next to speak with his brother, while I take off the sail covers and secure our gear. I’m in the cabin when Eamon comes belowdecks.

  “Anna.” He pulls me into a hug. One of my favorite things about Sullivan men is how unreserved they are with their affections. “Thank you for letting me sail with you. It’s been grand.”

  “You’re not coming with us?”

  “My holiday is nearly over, so I’ll fly out from here in a day or two.”

  “Thank you for the autopilot.”

  “Thank you for looking after my brother,” he says. “I know you think he’s helping you, but I reckon it’s the other way around.”

  When we’re ready to go, Eamon helps us detach from Peneireiro and hands me the dock lines. “Fair winds, Anna. I hope we’ll meet again one day.”

  “Me too. Have a safe trip home.”

  We motor through the field of boats anchored off St. Barths. One of the mega-yachts we pass is at least five hundred feet long and has a black hull so shiny, I can see my boat reflected. Tonight that boat will be filled with beautiful people drinking champagne as fireworks burst over their heads. Maybe Keane and I will be able to see the fireworks from wherever we are when the New Year arrives. But once we reach the open water and raise the sails, I find I don’t care about fireworks at all.

  “Where should we go?” I sit beside Keane in the cockpit. He’s wearing his favorite shirt—the one he was wearing the first time I saw him—and a smile that makes it impossible for me not to smile back. I can’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but the stress lines between his eyebrows have faded away.

  “I’d like to take you to my favorite island in the whole Caribbean.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  There are at least half a dozen islands within easy sailing distance of St. Barths and I could probably figure it out if I tried, but he is happy and we are at sea. “Okay.”

  After Ben died, I imagined my life proceeding in shades of gray, but tonight, as the sun sinks below the ocean, the sky and sea are purple. Queenie presses her warm body against my thigh and my brain pushes against the guilty feeling that it’s too soon. That I’m not allowed to be this happy yet. I lean my head back, my face tilted up to the sky, and I say the words, loud and defiant. “I am so fucking happy right now.”

  “I’ve never been so glad to put a place behind me,” he says. “I thought going to Saint Barths might…”

  “Exorcise the demons,” I finish. “I understand too well how that doesn’t work.”

  The tension falls out of his shoulders. “I’ve never told anyone except my parents, but the person driving the Mercedes that night was an American senator.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Keane nods. “He keeps getting reelected by championing family values, but on that particular New Year’s Eve, he was drunk, his mistress sitting in the passenger’s seat. Now, whenever I need a new prosthesis, I send the bill to a Washington, D.C., post office box and the bill gets paid. As long as I keep his identity a secret, I’m set for life.”

  “Are you ever tempted to go public?”

  “Sometimes,” he says. “But I have the best prosthetics the senator’s money can buy and he has to live with his hypocrisy.”

  “Do you really think he does?” I ask.

  “Perhaps not, but karma will catch up to him one day,” Keane says. “Anyway, it was pretty fucking spectacular hearing you call Jackson Kemp an arse. I don’t imagine he’s used to anyone being bold enough to try that—at least not to his face.”

  “I wanted to punch him but figured calling him an asshole would be slightly more polite,” I say. “I’m sorry if I ruined your relationship with him. Listening to him talk was painful.”

  “I’m sorry I dragged you through my mess.”

  “Your mess. My mess. At this point I feel like we’re in this together.”

  “It’s strange letting go of something that’s played such an enormous role in my life,” Keane says. “Not sure what to do now.”

  “What about the Paralympics?”

  “There’s a guy who’s been after me to get my citizenship and join the US team, but I’ve always felt like it would be admitting I’m not capable of racing against able sailors,” he says. “Which is an ableist thing to believe, but that’s the ugly truth of it.”

  “Okay, so … what if you assembled a team of sailors with disabilities and compete against able crews?” I suggest. “If you can’t join them, beat them.”

  He regards me silently before the corner of his mouth kicks up in a wry grin. “I’d need a boat.”

  “So we’ll get sponsors.”

  “We?”

  “Do you think I trust you to do this by yourself?” I say. “Besides, you’ll need someone to handle the operations while you’re off racing—and I don’t
have a job.”

  Keane laughs. “I’ll need three references and a letter of recommendation.”

  “Can I use your brother as a reference?”

  “Not if you want the job.”

  “The first person you should probably contact is Jackson Kemp,” I say. “A little guilt money to get things started.”

  This could all be for nothing, but talking keeps our minds off an unknown future, gives us something to plan, and late into the night we discuss building a nonprofit organization. And when the clock strikes the end of the year, Keane and I have filled his little notebook with possibilities.

  To the west, fireworks paint the distant sky, which rules out St. Kitts as a destination. Maybe Keane is taking us to Nevis. Maybe Antigua or Guadeloupe or Dominica. It doesn’t really matter, because we’re together.

  “It’s midnight.” He says the words as I’m thinking them, and my stomach twists itself into a knot. “Happy New Year, Anna.”

  “Happy New Year.”

  He kisses my forehead with his eyes closed, as if he can find the way without a map. His lips are feather-soft, and then gone. He touches my face, trailing his thumb from the corner of my mouth to a spot just below my ear, and tiny earthquakes explode in its wake. His eyes are open now, met with mine, and I can hardly breathe because what happens next will change everything. I am not in love with Keane Sullivan, but I could be. All it would take is accepting the heart he wears on his sleeve and promising not to break it. He leans in, his smile a spark that sets my nerve endings on fire.

  And he is kissing me.

  Slowly.

  His fingers never leave my face.

  There is no frantic clutching of clothes. No wild clash of tongues. This is not kissing as a precursor; this is him kissing me as if I am first, last, and everything in between. It feels so damn good, I can’t help but smile and his reply is a soft laugh that I catch in my mouth. The line between love and not-love is so very thin. Minutes pass. Hours. Decades. Lifetimes. His lips come away slowly, then he kisses the top of my nose and shifts his arm so I can tuck up against him. It’s not so very different from the way we always sit, except my mouth is filled with sweetness. His fingers move gently in my hair. And my heart is beating him, him, him.