When Mia stepped out of the shadows, her hands were back in the pocket of her hoodie. The hard lines of her face fell, and she looked like a kid again. “Aunt Jo,” she said, her voice smaller than I’d ever heard it. “There’s something I didn’t say. Something about Samson.”
I tried not to flinch at the sound of his name. I tried to keep my face smooth, to shove that urge to run somewhere else. But Mia saw it, of course she did.
The raw pain on her face hardened again. “You know what? Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”
She stepped forward, and I hoped she would sit beside me and lay her head in my lap, letting me brush my fingers through her hair like she had a few weeks ago. I could comfort her without words. But instead she pushed past me through the door and into the condo.
I sat alone on the step, thinking of Beth at our father’s funeral. She’d only been a year older than Mia was now, and her expression had been broken as we sat side by side in the church pew. At Samson’s funeral Beth hadn’t cried. She’d looked like Mia had tonight—sharp and dangerous. Afterward, Beth and I sat at her kitchen table. Talking to her that week was a delicate task, like ironing the silk sheets on the boat. “At least it’s over,” I’d said, referring to the funeral. “It’s never over,” Beth had said, anger in her face. “You know that.” I hadn’t bothered to say that wasn’t what I’d meant. But there was nothing I could say to help her. My words could only hurt.
And now my silence had failed Mia and Kitty. How could I make them see that they weren’t what made me uncomfortable? It was me, my words, always the wrong words. How could I explain that I’d only make things worse? Or that sometimes, all you could do was close your eyes and stay as still as possible. That the only thing that helped was tricking your mind into not existing for a while.
It was only when I crawled into bed and turned off the light that I thought about Alex again. And more specifically, that we had work the next day, which meant carpooling. No way in hell was I getting in his van and enduring twenty minutes of humiliation. I sent him a text saying I needed to go into work early and would drive myself. I knew he’d see through it, but I hoped he’d let it be.
I set my phone on the nightstand and turned to face the wall. If hetexted me back, I didn’t want to read it. Now I could see everything I’d gotten wrong. And not just about his feelings for me, but mine for him. They couldn’t be real. They were only another distraction, like finishing the list. A distraction that had backfired in spectacular fashion. I closed my eyes, pushing away thoughts of him, and Mia, and Kitty, and Samson, and Beth. Instead, I thought my way into stillness from my toes up to my scalp, until finally, I fell asleep.
—
As soon as Nina arrived on deck the next morning, I dragged her into the master suite and collapsed onto the bed, covering my face with my hands.
“If you’re trying to seduce me, it’s working, but you could at least give me a heads-up first,” she said.
I peeked between my fingers to glare at her.
Nina sank onto the bed beside me. “What’s going on, babe?”
What wasn’t going on? I’d gone from having one of the best nights of my life to one of the worst in a single hour. The confrontation with Mia... I couldn’t tell Nina about that. If I did, I wouldn’t make it through the day. But I had a more immediate situation to take care of, and Nina was the only one who could help.
“I have to quit.”
Nina snorted. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t show my face here ever again.” I rolled away from her and crossed my arms over my chest. “And it’s your fault, by the way.”
Nina stretched out beside me on the bed. “I’m guessing this has something to do with Alex. Excuse me,Ocean.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded.
“All right, what happened? Which body part of his am I chopping off?”
I looked up at the ceiling, trying to get the image of Alex pulling away from me out of my head. “Last night after you left, I may have... tried to kiss him.” Nina didn’t need to know about everything that hadhappened: Samson’s YouTube channel, the crying. That would open an entire part of me I couldn’t deal with right now.
“Youtriedto kiss him?”
“And he rejected me.”
“What?” The bed shook as Nina bolted upright. She paced the room with her hands on her hips, then halted, her unicorn earrings swinging against her cheeks as she faced me. “He didwhat?”
“Don’t make me say it again.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. He’s clearly in love with you.”
“He’s clearly not.”
Nina sighed and sat at the foot of the bed. “Well, I hate him again. And you aren’t quitting the boat. The obvious solution here is to duct tape him to a table covered in plastic wrap, stab him in the heart, stuff his body into a heavy-duty biodegradable trash bag, and dump it into the oceanic trench off the coast of the Bay Harbor Islands.”
I stared at her. “That is oddly specific.”
“I’ve watched a lot ofDexter,” she said. I laughed, and the flicker of a smile appeared on Nina’s face. “I know he’s a chef and is good with knives, but I’m chief stew, and I’m good with party supplies.”
