“Cameras,” he whispers as he points upwards, and I remember the shoddy screen feed I noticed a few nights ago on the bridge. He motions for me to duck my head and sneaks me beneath the camera until we can scramble up to the center of the bow.
“My lady,” he says, gesturing down to a monogrammed Vela Bianca blanket that’s been laid out on the dash. Above us, stars pepper the sky like tiny fragments of sunshine cast free for the night. The thick smell of briney air fills my nostrils and wraps its misty tendrils around my bare skin. He’s even brought out a single glass of wine, presumably for me, as I think Caleb would rather be sharkbait than let himself have a drink on the job.
A bioluminescent lagoon is hard to beat, but this has to go down in history as the second-best date ever.
Caleb lies down beside me and I nestle into his arms. This close to Caleb’s skin, stars are the last thing on my mind. But I follow his gaze upwards.
“See that?” He points to a five-star constellation that sits low on the horizon. “That’s the Southern Cross. It’s the constellation sailors used to navigate by.”
He holds my hand up and guides my fingers to trace it in the sky.
“Not the Big Dipper?”
Caleb shakes his head.
“Wrong hemisphere, love. But don’t worry. If we get lost out here, you’ve got a local looking out for you.”
“And a multi-thousand-dollar navigation system…” I remind him.
Caleb groans.
“We don’t need to talk about that.”
The end of his sentence gets lost in my hair as he buries his face in it. A shiver bucks through me as his lips finally find mine, warm and unyielding, his hand pressing firmly against my back to pull me closer. My body moves without asking my mind for permission, twisting over and curling into him like a vine reaching for the light. His fingers trace constellations across my ribcage as I wrap my legs around him, desperate for more.
“Stella…” he moans, tracing some secret message into my skin with his lips. But if we might get caught in the engine room, surely he knows we can’t do this on the bow of the ship.
I try to think of something I can say that will cool this down, but I don’t want to. This thing Caleb does to me where my brain turns to mush has seriously got to stop.
He eases back without letting go of me and breathes out, slowly. Even in the dark, I can see from the bulge beneath his shorts that I’m not the only one who needs to take a break. Heprops himself up on his side, and I try to think of the least sexy conversation I can start. But Caleb beats me to it.
“Have you told Jules about your fellowship yet?”
That’ll do it.
“Nope,” I tell him, eager to change the subject. “I actually have an alternative plan. Now that I know how to navigate—thanks, by the way—I’m going to commandeer the tender and head for the furthest island I can find.”
Even if I feel braver around Caleb than I’ve ever been (tiger shark encounter, anyone?), when faced with this particular conversation, I still want to disappear. I bury my face in the soft fabric of his uniform as he rubs his thumb in circles around the heel of my hand. It’s strangely calming.
“Let me get this straight,” he says. “You expect me to believe that the girl who ran down to the sea in her underwear and jumped off the bloody ship is concerned about announcing a potential career change?”
“You don’t understand, Caleb. I’m notlikethese people. The only reason they’re giving me the time of day is because they think I’m doing something useful with my life.”
Caleb sits up so he can raise his eyebrows at me more effectively.
“Stella, can I give you some advice?”
“Could I stop you if I wanted to?”
As the oldest child, it’s my born right to think I’m hilarious. But right now, Caleb isn’t laughing.
“Your worth isn’t dictated by what you do,” he says slowly and deliberately, his eyes never leaving mine. “Not by the degrees you collect, or by how many buildings have your name on them. It’s dictated by the kind of person you are. By the effect you have on those around you. You are kind, Stella. You’re curious and passionate and brave. You convinced Patricia Warren to spend an afternoon elbows deep in a coral tank, for god’s sake. If you think forone second I’m going to buy into this ridiculous idea that you have nothing to offer, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”
My breath catches in my throat: not because of his lips, this time, but from the words coming out of them. Passionate? Brave? I haven’t heard anyone describe me that way since… well, since my dad was alive. But coming fromCaleb?Mr. upstanding? X-rated Eagle Scout Ken doll? I can’t help but feel he truly believes them to be true. That somehow he believes inme.
There are these bracelets you can wear on ships, Gia told me, to keep you from getting sea-sick: they zap you with electric waves. I guess there’s something about the steady thump of electricity against bare skin that tricks the body into thinking it’s on solid ground. That’s what Caleb is to me in this moment. The beat of his heart, pulsing and tangling with my own, is the anchor that holds me in my body. The thing that makes me forget I’m supposed to be afraid.
I grab him by the collar of his polo and pull him back down to me, my lips finding his in the starlit dark. The whole ship could be standing beside us and it wouldn’t stop me. The last three years of my life are in full perspective now: the emotional cruise control I engaged seeming bleaker and blander than ever. Compared to this passion, this fire—how could I ever settle for flatlining?
