“You keep saying that.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
The crabs continue their silent judgment. The sun continues its slow arc toward the horizon, and I’m still stuck here with no phone (it’s back at the house, charging on the kitchen counter, because I wanted to “unplug”), no way off this boat, and nothing to do but marinate in my own choices.
“Tell me about the book,” Grayson says again. “Not the plot. The real stuff. Why you wrote it.”
So I do.
I tell him about the letters—how writing to Between the Lines was the first time I’d been honest in years. How her words made me want to be braver. How I started writing the manuscript because I needed somewhere to put all the feelings I couldn’t say out loud.
I tell him about Jessica’s review—the two-star devastation that woke me up. How she was right about everything. How I’d been performing vulnerability instead of living it.
I tell him about how Vera used to say that the bravest thing a person could do was love openly, without armor. How I spent fifteen years pretending I didn’t hear her.
The tide starts to turn. Water creeping back in, slow and patient.
“You should send her the book,” Grayson says when I’m done.
“Yeah?”
“It’s the most honest thing you’ve ever done. She should see it.” He pauses. “Even if she doesn’t forgive you, she should know she mattered enough to inspire it.”
The water rises. The boat shifts, lifting slightly as the mud releases its grip.
I’m about to respond when something hits the deck with a wet thwack.
We both freeze.
Slowly, I look down.
A crab. Blue shell, orange claws, very much alive. Sitting on the deck between our feet like it has every right to be there.
“Did a crab just climb onto the boat?” Grayson asks.
“I think a crab just climbed onto the boat.”
It raises its claws and waves them at us all territorial and aggressive-like.
“Why is it doing that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t speak crab.”
Another wet thwack arrives as a second crab hauls itself over the gunwale.
“Scott.”
“I see it.”
A third and fourth come up arrive. “The anchor line is in the mud,” I realize. “They’re climbing up it.”
“Well, pull it up!”
I grab the line and start hauling. More crabs cling to it, dropping onto the deck as I pull. Grayson yelps and jumps onto his seat, feet off the floor.
“They’re everywhere!”
“They’re just crabs!”
