The reality was that he looked delicious with the ocean air rushing over him and the dark expanse of water at his back, and it was too damned distracting for me to form words. That, and I'd dropped my life story at his feet like the big bucket of shambles it was, and instead of sneering at it all, he offered up his own shambles.
We were headed north, toward Truro, and the best part was that I didn't even have to steal this boat. We'd found a lobsterman heading out on the water, and he'd looked us over with about as much suspicion as we deserved before accepting us as deckhands before the break of dawn.
Nick turned back toward me, his hands shoved into his pockets. "What's it really like? What do you love? What do you miss about the States?"
"That's hard to describe," I said. "I love discovering new places. It's one hundred percent true what they say about travel enriching your life. It's like…if you explore the world long enough, you'll stop trying to understand it, and then, suddenly, you will. It'll sneak up on you."
He nodded at that, bobbing his head as if I was preaching a sermon he'd already heard. "I have a buddy from med school who just left for a year-long rural medicine residency in New Zealand. He, and his wife and kids, are going to be rotating through villages and small towns, and that sounds fucking amazing," he said. "I'd love to do that some day. I've been thinking about applying to Doctors Without Borders."
I edged into Nick's space, my shoulder bumping his chest as if to saywhy aren't you touching me right now?And wasn't that a shocker? Of all the things I'd expected from this weekend, cozying up to a random guy wasn't one of them.
But I knew that Nick wasn't arandom guy, and maybe that was because I'd steamrolled right past the pleasantries, told him most of my sad stories, and convinced him he wanted an adventure. But I didn't want to spend any time examining my attraction to him. For me, this was unusual, but it felt right and I wasn't about to kill that by putting it under a microscope.
"What's holding you back?" I asked. Nick glanced down at me, and my shameless nudges for his affection. It was a wonder he noticed at all. His chest was rock-solid.
He folded me into his arms and rested his chin on my head. "The fellowship I'm in now, it wraps up near the end of the year. I don't have much flexibility until then, and I haven't finalized what I'm doing after that point."
"You're waiting until you have the chessboard in order," I said.
I had one arm around his waist, but my free hand was flat on his tummy and lightly tracing the hard ridges of his abs. This right here?Thiswas irresponsible.
"Yeah," he said, "pretty much. I don't have the next steps mapped out quite as well as you do, Skipper."
"Mapped out? No, I'm just an evergreen researcher," I said, shaking my head against his chest. "The only thing I have mapped out is which volcanoes I expect to blow next. Other than that, no plans."
"If it's working for you," he said. It almost sounded like a challenge, as if he doubted whether I truly preferred to tuck my life into a few trunks and never know anything but short-term homes. Or maybe I'd only interpreted it that way. "I'd sign on for Doctors Without Borders, or a rural medicine program, but I couldn't do that forever. I want to travel, but I need some permanence, too."
"What's next for you? After the fellowship?" I asked.
"Same stuff, different cities. Houston, Denver, Charlotte. And Boston," he added. "My mother is advocating hard for Houston. She seems to think I'd be dropping by for dinner, even though Houston is more than three hours away from Dallas."
"I think that's what mothers do," I said.
"You're probably right. My sister Dahlia and her husband are nearby, they're in Dallas, but my sister Maya and her husband moved farther out into the country last year. Yeah, Mom didn't handle that move too well. I'm the youngest, but Maya's the baby." He nodded, and his chin bobbed against my head. "Can I ask you something, Skipper?"
"Sure," I said. I'd tell him anything so long as those arms stayed locked around me.
"Why'd you bring me out here?" he asked.
"I'm opposed to moping of all manner," I said. I believed that too. It was okay to feel pain and burdens and regret, but it wasn't okay to let them take over. The line was fine, and it was hard to see it in the dark, but that didn't make it any less necessary.
The easier option was to take Nick back to the inn and climb him like a jungle gym. He looked like he was up to date on all the new developments in sex. Like he did a thoughtful, technical study of porn—the mass production shit but also the feminist films because he was an enlightened lover, and he damned well knew it didn't make him any less of a man. Which I appreciated.
But how often were we here, with a full moon sliding into the horizon and miles of open water ahead? Not nearly enough to pass this up. And that was the simple reason why I drank basement-distilled moonshine, snuck into Eastern Bloc countries, dragged my ass all the way up Machu Picchu, hitchhiked (sort of) to a sub-Antarctic Australian island to witness a rare eruption, and, once upon a time, recruited a high school baseball team to steal some cannonballs. These opportunities didn't come around with much frequency, and when you saw them, you had to seize them.
"That's it?" he asked. "I think there's more to it than that."
"More?" I asked. "Nothing more thancarpe noctem."
"Seize the night?" he asked with a smirk.
I was deflecting, absolutely. Nick knew it, too. But I just didn't want to talk about heartbreaking things anymore.
"I was expecting another chapter from your theory of the universe, and how a night on a lobster boat would cure all that ailed me."
Before I could respond, the captain leaned away from the helm. "I hope you two know what you're in for," he said.
"I hope you do," Nick whispered into my hair, "because I don't."
