This was different from the other times. Not desperate like the first night. Not tender like the morning after. This was fun. Playful. Clara laughing when the boat lurched and she had to grab the gunwale for balance. Jack groaning when she shifted the angle and found something that made his brain go blank. Both of them shushing each other and then immediately being louder, because who was going to hear them? The seagulls? The fish?
Clara came first, biting down on his shoulder to muffle the sound, her body clenching around him in waves that pulled Jack right over the edge after her. He buried his face in her neck, arms locked around her waist, and they held each other through it, the boat swaying gently, the water keeping its own quiet rhythm beneath them.
After, they sat there tangled together on the bench, half-dressed and breathless, the night air cool on their skin.
"So," Clara said, her cheek against his shoulder. "How's your boating education coming along?"
"I think I just earned extra credit."
"Don't flatter yourself."
"Four stars?"
"Three and a half. The boat rocking was distracting."
"That was physics, not me."
"I'm grading on results, not excuses." She lifted her head, and in the faint glow of the dock light, her face was soft and happy and completely unguarded. "Take me inside. I'm cold and you're warm and I want to sleep in an actual bed."
Jack helped her off the boat—managed the dock line on the second try, progress—and they walked up the path to the lighthouse, shoulders bumping, fingers linked, the comfortable silence of two people who'd run out of things to prove to each other.
Inside, they fell into bed without ceremony. Clara curled into him like someone who'd been doing it for years instead of weeks. Jack pulled the quilt over them and listened to her breathing slow toward sleep.
Through the window, he could see the gallery railing. The southwest post he'd repaired. The spindles he was going to replace with cables.
In September.
"Jack?" Clara's voice was drowsy, already half gone.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you sank your boat."
He smiled into her hair. "Me too, Hawkins. Me too."
thirteen
The second email arrived on a Tuesday.
Clara was at her drafting table, inking a panel where Marina was standing at the edge of a cliff, deciding whether to jump into water she couldn't see the bottom of. The metaphor was so on-the-nose it was practically a self-portrait, but sometimes subtlety was overrated.
Her phone buzzed on the table beside her. She glanced at it out of habit—probably Sarah sending memes, or the group chat debating Tim's latest menu addition—and then her stomach pitched.
From:[email protected]
Subject:Re: Representation Inquiry — Tidal Lock
Clara's pen stopped mid-stroke, leaving an incomplete line across Marina's face like a scar.
She'd been ignoring the first email for five days. Had read it seventeen times—not that she was counting—and had composed and deleted six different responses, each one worse than the last. Some were too eager. Some were too guarded. One was just the word "hi" followed by nothing, which she'd stared at for four minutes before closing the app entirely.
She hadn't told anyone. Not Jack, not Lena, not Maeve. Had shoved it into the same mental drawer where she kept things she wasn't ready to deal with, right between "call Mom more often" and "figure out what you actually want from life."
But Nora Achebe hadn't gotten the memo that Clara was avoiding her.
Clara opened the email.
Hi C.H. — Just circling back on my earlier note. No pressure at all — I know these things take time to think through. I did want to mention that I recently recommended Tidal Lock to an editor at a publishing house I work with closely, and her response was enthusiastic. She used the word "brilliant," which in publishing is a very good sign of interest.
