He held up his hand and shook his head. ‘It’s OK, Sofia. I asked. It’s not a competition; I’m not trying to win some kind of tragic backstory Olympics. Besides you mustn’t forget my silver-spoon, multi-generational wealth is nothing to be sniffed at.’ He was self-aware too. Sofia wondered where she had got her terrible first impression from. She had thought him all too eager to trip her up but here he was offering her a gentlemanly hand out of the hole she’d dug herself.
‘So tell me more about this life of unimaginable wealth then.’ Sofia had recovered herself, and she was still curious.
‘I don’t think I said unimaginable, did I?’ He chuckled, and then looked thoughtful. ‘My dad’s family, I’m pretty sure they were on theMayfloweror whatever, so the money goes way back.’ He paused, looking a bit uncomfortable. ‘I think that a fair of amount of it was... you know, from slavery.’ He looked so embarrassed that Sofia had the urge to laugh.
Instead she said, evenly, ‘I mean, that makes sense. It’s kind of the backbone of American capitalism.’
‘God will take care of the poor trampled slave, but where will the slaveholder be when eternity begins?’ Jack recited this absent-mindedly, as if to himself, and then caught himself. ‘Oh God sorry, that is the most obnoxious white-man thing I have ever said.’ He looked so nervous.
Sofia raised an eyebrow approvingly. ‘I’m impressed. I like a man who knows his Sojourner Truth,’ she said.
He grinned at her, clearly relieved. ‘So you like me now huh?’
Sofia didn’t take the bait. ‘So you’re woke then?’ she said teasingly.
‘Oh stop it. I’m so embarrassed, I haven’t even read most of that stuff since my undergrad. It’s all just contextless quotes floating around my head, waiting for the perfect moment to mansplain them to some poor passer-by.’ Sofia had never seen him like this. He was self-conscious.
‘What did you study?’
‘My dad’s in publishing so literature, of course, but I minored in sociology, which was actually way more interesting.’
‘My mum teaches sociology, at the local secondary school. That’s the only reason I know about Sojourner Truth. I never went to university – my heart was set on the kitchen,’ Sofia explained.
‘I really envy people who have always known what they want to do. I think I spent a long time just trying to do what other people wanted me to do, and then trying to do what they didn’t want me to do.’ He was lying back again, sunglasses on, speaking to the sky. ‘People, I keep saying, as if it’s not just my dad.’ He scoffed at himself.
‘It’s a bit of a cliché, no? Rich boy rebelling against the life his parents always had planned for him.’ Sofia was feeling empowered to dig deeper. She was the bikini-clad therapist, sat up, legs crossed, hands clasped, with her elbows resting on her knees. He was her patient, tanned chest glistening.
‘Oh for sure, it makes the whole thing so unsatisfactory, to know that running away from that high-powered publishing job to spite my father isn’t even original.’ His tone was light before he stopped. ‘I think my dad found it more amusing than anything else, unlike the situation with my brother. I think that’s what really broke his heart.’ It felt like they had tiptoed to the edge of the abyss. Sofia wasn’t sure she had the stomach to peer down.
She leant back and let out a pent-up sigh. ‘That’s a lot, Jack.’ She wasn’t trying to shut down the conversation but Jack seemed to take it as an admission of defeat on her part.
He looked over at her with a smirk. ‘Don’t worry. Harlow, I’ve already got a shrink; your work here is done.’ He was putting on a brave face but his tone was not quite convincing. A tinge of sadness clung to his voice.
‘Thank goodness for that.’ She smiled, deciding that the inquisition could wait for now. They lay side by side for some time, a comfortable silence hanging between them.
Sofia settled into a sun-soaked doze, and time became elastic. She was right on the outskirts of sleep when she heard Jack gently say something about ‘getting the tender ready’. She nodded, eyes firmly shut behind her sunglasses, and she fell into sleep to the sound of his chuckle as he walked away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When she awoke, she could feel a throbbing on her side. The pain was confusing in her sleepy daze until she looked down. Her skin was taut and alarmingly pink. She had fallen asleep in the sun.What else did you expect?she berated herself. It had been years since she’d gotten burnt. She’d ended up lying on her side, so she was horrified to find the burn resolutely set into the shape of a triangle on her left side and back where the shade had vanished as the sun moved.
She gingerly pressed her fingers against it, wincing as they left three distinct white shadows in their wake.
‘Damn,’ she muttered under her breath.
Then she checked the time, and muttered a much more anxious ‘damn’. The guests would be back in half an hour and she hadn’t even started meal prepping yet. She gathered her things hastily and trotted across the deck to see Jack zipping into the distance, a vision of blazing white among the cerulean waves.
In the kitchen she was on autopilot, chopping and whisking at double speed, but her mind was firmly stuck on the deck, turning over the conversation with Jack. She was worried. Hating him, finding him insufferable, that was challenging; but liking him, that might be its own kind of trouble. She had chastised her lurid brain for spending the night with him, because she couldn’t quite convince her body that it hadn’t happened. Up on the deck, she had felt drawn to him, and when he had told her about his mother, she had felt compelled to hold him.
No good would come of this. She could not keep making the same mistakes. This was a new start; that was the plan. Maybe if she repeated these things to herself, she could override whatever it was she was starting to feel about him.
‘Sofia! How are ya?’ She was startled out of her thoughts by Declan, bounding into the kitchen with the energy of a puppy.
‘Great,’ she lied. ‘How was the trip?’ She looked down and realised the batter she was mixing had begun to separate.
‘It was amazing, honestly. You missed out, although I think there’s something weird going on between Petra and Milly,’ he mused, aimlessly pacing around the small square of floorspace. It wasn’t helping with Sofia’s nerves. ‘And Patricio, honestly, he’s like a genius or something. He knew the name of, like, every plant. It’s crazy.’
Sofia was glad at least to see that any residual awkwardness between them had evaporated.
