Can we just meet at the marina after work instead? Closer for me. Bring an overnight bag? Might be easier.
Might be easier.
Like she wasn’t suggesting we quietly move our whole relationship onto a boat.
I smiled so hard my face hurt.
Yeah,I wrote back.Yeah, let’s do that.
Technically,Artemiswasn’t even mine.
She was Tony’s.
But after all those nights fixing her up, she felt like mine anyway.
Tony barely used her.
So I did.
And now?—
Now she felt like ours.
Down in Boston Harbor, the docks knocking and groaning, gulls crying overhead, ropes slapping lazily against fiberglass.
She’d walk down the pier toward me every evening like clockwork.
Dress. Flats. That oversized bag on her shoulder.
Every time I saw her, it hit me the same way.
There she is.
Like the day didn’t start until that moment.
We stopped pretending it was “happy hour” after the first night.
It became… life.
Some nights I brought takeout—greasy paper bags, warm containers fogging up the air inside the cabin.
Other nights she’d show up with little plastic tubs of food like she’d planned it all afternoon. Fruit cut perfect. Cheese. Pasta salad. Things that saidI thought about you while you weren’t there.
We’d eat on the stern with our shoes kicked off, feet bumping under the tiny table. The sun melting behind the skyline. The water turning copper and glassy.
Then I’d untie the lines.
Ease her out.
Just far enough.
Far enough that the marina noise disappeared.
Far enough that it felt like we’d slipped off the map.
I’d moor out in the harbor where it was quiet and safe, the city lights distant and blurred, the boat rocking slow and steady.
Private.
