“I don’t know! Just... Nina and Ollie.” I turn away and start hurling his clothes into the drawer closest to me. Right now, I don’t care if they’re neat or not. I just need something to keep my hands occupied. “We do that arguing thing, get in an actual fight, make up, makeoutsometimes too. And, you know.” I hold up one of his shoes and whirl it around in a circle. “Lather, rinse, repeat.”
“You’re freaking out,” he says.
“You thinkthisis me freaking out?” I say, chucking the shoe into the drawer. “If you think this is me freaking out, you clearly don’t know me well enough to marry me.”
“We’realreadymarried,” he says.
I shush him. “Everyone will hear you. Can we please not talk about this right now? Or, I don’t know, ever?”
“This is why I wanted to talk about it off the boat,” he says.
When I turn to him, I have his other shoe aloft in my hand. “Why? So you could corner me?”
Ollie groans. “Oh, I don’t know, Neen, I thought springing it on you while we’re stuck on the boat might’ve felt like cornering you, which was why I wanted to have this conversation on land, at dinner, off the clock.”
I hurl his other shoe into the drawer. “Gee, how thoughtful of you! You just showing up for charter season with an ultimatum doesn’t feel at all like being cornered! Well, there’s no need to go to dinner now because there’s nothing to talk about.”
“Then why the hell do you keep me around?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’tkeepyou around. You live almost two hours away. You even date other women! You have great taste, by the way.”
“But you know I’m still yours.”
“You’re notmine—”
“You know I’ll come running as soon as you call. You know I’d leave anything, anyone, if you asked.”
“I’ve never asked—”
“I wish you would.”
I still at his words, a pair of his boxer briefs in my hands. He says itso seriously, I can’t even laugh it off. “YouwishI’d ask you to leave something you want? You want me to rein you in? To take something from you?”
Ollie nearly bangs his head against the top bunk when he gets to his feet. “Yes! For fuck’s sake, yes!”
I hurl his underwear into the drawer. “How hard did you hit your head?” I say. “Do you have a concussion? Do I need to call RJ down here? Because you’re making absolutely no sense.”
Ollie continues as if he hasn’t heard me. “At least then I’d know I matter enough for you to ask. I feel like I live in a fecking funhouse. Iaskedyou if I should apply for the Il Gabbiano job. You told me to do what I wanted, then freaked out when I actually took it. You act like you don’t care, but you’re miserable when I leave. We talk every night, we fuck—”
“It’s just sex.”
He laughs. “That’s why you keep me around? For sex every now and then? C’mon, kitten, you can do better than that.”
“I don’tkeepyou around,” I say.
“Do you want the divorce or not?”
This is a trick question. I should want a divorce, but I don’t. At the same time, I don’t want to be his wife or girlfriend. I just want to be... Nina. I want us to stay the way we are now. If I could explain it to Ollie, maybe I would. But I hardly understand it myself.
“It’s unnecessary,” I say. I turn away from him to face the drawer I’ve filled with his things. God, I’ve made a mess. I sigh and toss the shoes by the door where they belong and start refolding his clothes.
“This is exactly what I don’t get, Neen,” Ollie says. “How many times have you said you can’t be with me? How many times have you told me to move on? Here I am, offering you exactly what you want, and you’repissed offabout it.”
“That’s not why I’m pissed off.”
“Then tell me why.”
“Because you’re being ridiculous! What’s wrong with what we’ve been doing this whole time? What’s wrong with just having fun together?”
