Luckily, we had plans for a Saturday date. It had been Noah’s idea. He wanted to go out on the boat, something we hadn’t done together since we were in high school. We didn’t have a specific destination in mind, but we never needed one. There were a few small islands off the coast of King’s Bay, and we’d explored them in our youth. We’d had picnics on their shores. Then there was just the water, tossing down the anchor and enjoying the feel of the boat rocking beneath us as we stayed out, untouched and untethered from reality.
That was the plan for our date. We just wanted to be alone together, no interruptions. Noah had even mentioned packing something to eat. All I had to do, according to him, was set the course and get us there.
Noah was waiting for me on the pier when I got there. His face was flushed, like he’d been rushing around. When I got onto the boat, I noticed that one of the ducks I’d returned had fallen from its perch in the living room. I picked it up from where it lay on the floor and put it back. I hadn’t thought the water at the pier had gotten that rough over the past few days. We’d had clear days, sunny skies, and no storms. It hadn’t even been particularly windy.
But I’d owned my boat long enough to know that stranger things had happened than a rogue wave knocking over one of my ducks.
Within twenty minutes of meeting Noah, I had the boat untethered from the dock and I’d backed out of the slip. I steered us toward the open water while Noah settled onto the couch across from my captain’s chair. We made small talk until we were out of the marina, and then, steering required a lot less of my attention.
“We should get you a little captain’s hat,” Noah teased as he watched me fiddle with a few of the boat controls, making sure everything was well within the normal limits for my boat.
I leaned back in the chair once we were on a straight course. “I have one,” I admitted. “Brooke bought it for me when I was in college. Her going away gift before she dropped out.”
“Why don’t you wear it?”
I loved that he had no problem with the fact that it was a present from an ex-girlfriend. He had never been an insecure person. He also, clearly, did not remember how terrible I looked in a hat. “Because I do not have the head shape for hats. Especially not captain’s hats. I’d offer to show you a picture, but there was only ever one taken. By Brooke. And I made her delete it.”
It had not been a flattering picture.
Noah’s grin only grew bigger at that information. “Oh, come on,” he pleaded. The puppy dog eyes would be far more effective without the shit-eating grin. “You should wear it special for me.” He reached across the small living area and danced his fingers up my thigh. “With nothing else on.”
Okay, that was a little tempting, but no. There was no way he was going to see me in that terrible hat. I caught his wrist and shook my head. “No way.”
“Please?”
“No.”
He let the topic drop, but there was something about the expression on his face that told me it was not really dropped. He was retreating, not conceding. I’d seen that look before, when we were younger, when he would find himself on the losing end of a debate. He didn’t give up. He retreated, gathered new information, and then he returned more determined than ever to win.
Something told me that he would find the perfect combination of words and puppy dog eyes to make me cave.
But this was not that time, and I took his silence and ran with it. I changed the topic. While I drove the boat, he told me about the last forty-eight hours of his life. It wasn’t that we hadn’t talked on the phone, and it wasn’t new information, but I didn’t mind. I loved listening to him talk. I loved the way he got expressive, his hands waving around when he’d tell the climax of the story about some heated debate about art placement he’d gotten into with one of the guys at the museum. I told him about a conversation Holden and I had earlier that day, a debate about a show we’d watched when we were younger.
Had I told it to him specifically so Noah would agree with me? Yes. And I would be texting Holden about it tomorrow to let him know that Noah agreed with me and therefore he was wrong. My boyfriend wasn’t the only one that liked to win.
An hour later, I hit the button to lower the anchor.
“Want to go to the roof?” Noah asked. His eyes lit up as he made the suggestion, and I didn’t understand why. Sure, we’d had many memories on that roof when we were younger, but it hadn’t changed much. He’d seen it the day I brought him to the boat, after we had lunch.
Maybe he just wanted to make new memories. Wasn’t that what we were doing? Making new memories, building a new future.
“Let’s go,” I agreed. I reached across the living room space and took his hand.
I didn’t let it go until we started climbing the ladder to the roof, Noah ahead of me. I knew his anxieties about the open water. It was the reason he needed help jumping the small gap between the pier and the boat. It was the reason he always pulled in a deep breath before he stepped outside on the boat or climbed the ladder. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do much if he slipped and fell, but it made him feel safer.
And I wanted to make him feel just as safe as he made me feel.
Noah reached down for my hand once he reached the roof. I didn’t need to take his hand, didn’t need the help, but I took it anyway. I loved the feeling of his hand holding mine, the simple press of his skin against mine. I let him guide me off the ladder and onto the roof.
I’d expected to see it set up the same way it always was: heavy furniture without cushions arranged around the deck, the weatherproof box where I stored the cushions, and not a lot else.
I was wrong. The cushions were out and put into place. A picnic basket sat on the table with two of the special glasses I’d bought for my longer sailing trips, the ones with weighted bottoms that didn’t spill with the waves. There was a bottle of wine sitting on the two-seat lounger. I suddenly understood the excitement in Noah’s eyes. There were even fairy lights strungaround the area. I wondered if they were the fairy lights I kept in a drawer for night sails, for the peace of coding under the twinkling lights on the open water or having drinks up here with my best friends.
He might have found them when he’d gone through the boat, looking for personal items to bring to me when I was staying at him.
“You set this up? How?” He dropped my hand and pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and dangled them in the air between us. I looked at them for a moment and then, even though I knew I’d just used my keys to get into the boat, I dug through my pockets until I felt my own set under my fingers. They weren’t my keys. “Who… Wh—How?”
“I got them from your dad.” He looked so smug, so proud of himself. I couldn’t stop myself from bursting into laughter. “That’s okay, right? You’re not going to be mad at him for letting me use the spare?”
