Rafa glanced down at her hands sifting through the supplies. Her knuckles were bloody. She’d put up one hell of a fight herself.
“We should get you cleaned up first,” he said, motioning toward her hands.
“Oh. Right. I suppose you don’t want dirty hands tending to your wounds,” she said, smiling.
“Here, take the wheel.” He found some antiseptic wipes and tore open a square. One hand at a time, he swiped the cloth over her knuckles as she steered the boat with the other hand.
“Ssssssss,” she hissed, pulling her hand away and wincing. “Sorry, it stings,” she said.
“Need me to kiss it to make it better?” He smirked, and she playfully elbowed him. “Hey, watch the ribs. Here, give me your hand.”
She gave it to him again, but this time she fought through the pain. “You were pretty ballsy back there, taking on two men by yourself,” he said.
“I’ve never punched someone before. Man, that hurts.”
Rafa snickered. “Yeah, it’s not pleasant.”
“Have you ever been in a fight like that?”
“You mean a fight on a boat in the Amazon with two guys trying to steal our stuff at knifepoint? Of course. That’s a regular Friday night where I’m from,” he said with a smile. “I’ve been in my fair share of fights, though.”
“Fair share?”
“Not recently. More when I was in my teens.”
“Were you a troublemaker?”
“I don’t know if I’d say troublemaker, but all boys go through a period where trouble seems to find them whether they created the trouble or not.”
“Oh yeah? What’s the dumbest thing you ever got in a fight about?”
“Let’s see…” Rafa looked up, trying to recall his youth. “In secondary school we had this assignment where we had to write a funny poem. I thought it would be hilarious to write about William Tremblay, the soccer team captain, splitting his shortson the field at the championship game. Seemed a good idea until we had to read the poems out loud in front of the entire class.”
Miri burst out with a laugh. “You didn’t?”
“Oh, I did. That assignment earned me high marks and a black eye,” he said with a wink, quickly bringing his hand to his eye at the sting and wincing. “Apparently, I’m good at earning those.”
His face hurt, but he still couldn’t help but grin picturing the look on Will’s face when he’d read that poem. The shiner had been worth it—the poem was damned good.
“What a talent,” Miri said, laughing. She had a nice laugh. The kind that made you want to keep saying funny things just to hear it over and over.
“Well, I suppose I was asking for it with that one, so maybe I should take back what I said about not being a troublemaker.”
“Did he let you off the hook after that? William, I mean?” Miri asked.
Rafa’s smile fell with the memory. Oh right. He’d forgotten about that part.
“Not really.” He crumpled up the wipe, tossing it on the dash, and ripped open another one before setting back to work on her scrapes and bruises. “He stole my writing notebook from my locker and copied some of my stories. He and the soccer team then taped them up on the walls at school. Spent the next week taking them down before another would pop up.”
That first day when he’d shown up at school, seeing everyone crowded around a photocopy of a page from his notebook, was etched in his brain, buried deep in the crevices, but so clear. So vivid. How could he have forgotten?
His private writings exposed, out there for everyone to see. Stories that weren’t supposed to be read by anyone. Declarations on death. Loneliness. Heavy reflections on life and love by a sixteen-year-old kid who still didn’t understand what those things even meant.
That week had been hell. Or, at least, it would have been if it weren’t for his dad.
“That’s shitty,” Miri said. “I mean, I get that you pissed him off with that poem, but sharing someone’s work without their permission?”
Rafa shrugged. “It wasn’t all bad.”
