“Try to keep up,” Sawyer calls out, already starting toward the shore with swift, precise strokes.
I jumped. I plummeted. I landed.
But watching him swim away is the strangest feeling.
Like I just started falling.
2
The brim of my baseball hat gets knocked up, forcing me to squint at the sun.
“I’d say you look like shit. But frankly, that’s offensive to shit.”
I scowl at Gus. Yawning ruins the effect of my annoyance some. “Your shirt is on inside out.”
Gus rolls his eyes before glancing down. He laughs. “Woke up late. Thanks for saving my ass with Dusty.”
I grunt an acknowledgment.
Augustus Griffin is the most cheerful, genuine person I know. Anyone who’s met the two of us wonders how we possibly ended up best friends. Wonders whyheis best friends withme, rather.
Gus fixes his shirt, runs a hand through his shaggy blond hair, and then takes a seat on the opposite side of the picnic table. “All good, Cap?”
I scratch my forehead, then tug the brim of my hat down moresecurely. “Yeah. You?”
“Uh-huh.”
I feel Gus’s eyes on me, but I keep mine aimed at the horizon.
The view is the main reason I stick with this job. I could make more money caddying, and lifeguarding would be a lot less work. But I don’t want to be stuck staring at the ocean on the green with a bunch of boring rich guys or beyond swarms of screaming kids. I want to admire it like this, interrupted by nothing except the occasional mast. The way the sea is supposed to be admired. On a clear day, like this one, you can see the stripes of the lighthouse located past the breakwater.
“She made it to shore okay?”
Gus’s question is more of a fishing expedition than a simple query, but it’s subtler than the other ways I’ve gotten asked about this topic. Like Cammie’s all-capsWHAT THE FUCK?text waiting when I remembered to charge my phone late last night.
“You’d have heard about it if she hadn’t.” I reach for my mug, covering the Atlantic Yacht Club logo printed on the ceramic with my thumb.
Wren Kensington’s disappearance would have made national news.
If I’d sunk beneath the waves, it would have been a very different local headline.
“You talk to her after?” Gus’s tone falls far short of casual.
I clocked his interest in Wren the second I stepped into that clearing. Gus is a good guy, but he’s not normallythatconcerned with a stranger’s safety.
“Not really.” I sip more coffee.
“Bennett! Griffin! The Ellsworth boat is headed out today. Make sure it’s ready.” Dusty, the marina manager, hurries past, appearing more stressed than usual.
Monday’s the Fourth of July, also known as our busiest day of the season.
“Now!” he adds loudly, without glancing back to check if either of us has moved. “Pratt and Quincy are already down there.”
I have two theories about why Dusty insists on referring to marina employees only by their last names. One, it saves him the trouble of learning our first names. Two, it makes him feel more important. Like a lieutenant commanding troops during battle, not a fifty-something-year-old man in charge of a horde of hungover teens and a fleet of very expensive boats.
I stand with a sigh and stretch, downing the rest of my coffee before heading toward the gangplank. Heavy footfalls tell me Gus is following.
The Ellsworth yacht is impossible to miss. It’s the biggest boat in the yard, sleek and shiny and fast. The younger guys always argue over who gets to service it, wanting their chance to check the bilge and fuel levels and other regular maintenance simply for a chance to get close to the vessel.
