“Sleep in them,” he murmurs, quiet and final. Then his weight lifts, warmth pulling away, and the bunk creaks faintly above me.
I yawn into his pillow. “I stand in Ika’s scent every day. I feel your protection of him in everything I do. I’m drowning in his stead... and I don’t even know him.”
The bunk is very quiet for a long time. Not a single groan.
And then, gravelly, “He doesn’t have a penguin story.” He exhales. “And I wasn’t always the brother I should have been.”
“You had fights?”
A long pause. “Mm.”
“I mean... you shared a room. If you didn’t annoy one another that would be strange.”
His voice sounds muffled, like he might have an arm thrown over his face. “Once he wrote all his wishes in a letter and sealed it into a bottle. He threw it out to sea, and I got mad. Told him off. He really wanted me to let it go; to let his wishes be carried over oceans. But I...” Trent breathes out shakily. “I fished it out of the sea.”
“You were worried about pollution?”
“More than his wishes.”
I curl on my side, whisper, “Do you think you made them not come true?”
He breathes out, long and ragged.
It’s easier, talking in the dark.
Easier talking drunk.
“Did you ever open the bottle?”
The silence stretches, long and uncertain. A breath. A shift above me. Maybe his arm moving, or just the mattress stretching around the shape of him.
I don’t think he’ll answer.
And then, on the quietest breath:
“I thought about it.”
tangled fishing nets
Unintended entrapment.
I wake up surrounded by his scent, reliving the night before.
I muffle a groan into his pillow and quietly extricate myself from Trent’s bed. I needn’t have worried about the squealing bunk giving me away. Trent is no longer in the room. I fish for my phone and find it. Almost eleven.
Time to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and shower while I’m at it. Groggily, I stumble into the bathroom and absorb steam, only to hit a slight snag after towelling off. No clean clothes.
Either I put on last night’s underwear again, or...
With hair dripping down my arms, I pass through the living area wrapped in a towel, only to be startled by two things simultaneously—a female voice calling out if anyone is home and announcing she’s coming in, and Trent leaping up from behind a book in the armchair in a whoosh of air that might’ve well shouted ‘shit’.
I blink, and suddenly Trent is scurrying me into the kitchen, away from the approaching footsteps. “Hide.” He flings doors open and steers me in.
I whisper-shout. “This guy doesn’t chill in the pantry!”
“I owe you,” he says breathlessly and shuts the doors.
I stand dripping in the dark, only a little light seeping in through the slats.
