A smile touched my lips at the memory. “A marlin. Just over eleven feet, I’d guess. Maybe four hundred pounds. Hooked him about twenty miles south of the reef.”
Her eyes went wide. “You’re kidding me. Four hundred pounds?”
“I was out alone a few years back. It was a grueling battle. Took me almost four hours to get him alongside the boat. My arms felt like they were going to fall off. My back was screaming. He was magnificent.”
I could still see it, the brilliant cobalt blue of his back, the flash of silver. The sheer, raw power of the animal as he leaped from the water, silhouetted against the afternoon sun.
Her mouth hinged open. “An eleven-foot marlin! Austin, that’s the fish of a lifetime. You have it mounted somewhere, right? I haven’t seen it at your house. Where is it?”
I shook my head, the memory still vivid. “No. A beast that noble, that fierce… It fought too hard to end up as a dusty decoration on a wall.” I paused, remembering the exhausted elation of that moment. “I got him alongside and took a quick picture with my phone for proof. Then I leaned over, worked like hell to get the hook out clean, and watched him swim away.”
Iris was quiet for a moment, studying my face with new awareness. “None of this is about the sport for you, is it? The catching, the trophy. It’s something more.”
I glanced out the porthole to the glittering water. “I like being a part of it. Part of the process. The waves, the wind, the life humming just beneath the surface. It’s… honest. Pure.” The words were inadequate to explain the deep, spiritual connection I felt out on the open water. I gave a rough snort, a sound of self-deprecation. “As long as the wind isn’t blowing a hundred miles an hour, anyway.”
I’d meant it as a dark joke, a way to deflect from the depth of the conversation. But her smile faded, replaced by thoughtful curiosity.
“Have you been caught out in a bad storm?” She said the words in a soft voice, completely unaware of the landmine she had just stepped on.
Everything inside me went still.
The gentle rocking of the boat, the warmth of Iris’s body against mine, the soft morning light—it all vanished. Replaced by a sudden, roaring darkness, a memory so potent and so deeply buried it was like a physical thing clawing its way up my throat. The air grew thick with the taste of salt, ozone, and a freezing, metallic dread. My smile vanished as I went rigid. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t matter.
The images were burned onto the backs of my eyelids.
Iris placed a gentle hand on my forearm. Her touch was a warm anchor in the sudden, violent maelstrom in my head. “Austin? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch a wound.”
Neither her soft contact nor her murmured apology stopped the memory. But both steadied me, kept me from shoving her away and retreating into the cold silence I’d lived in for so long.
I opened my eyes and met hers. The trust there, the patient waiting, was the only thing that made the words possible. At long last, my guts unclenched. Not all the way, but enough.
“Maybe that wound finally needs to be touched.” My voice came out a low, rough rasp I barely recognized. “Yes. I was in one terrible storm. The one that changed my life.”
At her encouraging nod, I took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I was twenty-one. Thirteen years ago. It was supposed to be a perfect day. A double date. My girlfriend, Caitlin, and I. And my best friend, Leo, with his girlfriend, Beth. Leo had just bought his first boat, a twenty-two-foot center console. He was so damn proud of it. We were all just kids. Stupid kids who thought we were invincible.”
My gaze went distant, past Iris, past the walls of the cabin, to that morning.
“The sky was gorgeous when we left the dock, but the air felt wrong. Heavy. I looked at the barometer before we cast off. It was falling like a stone thrown from a cliff. A voice in the back of my head, the voice my dad had spent years training into me, was pointing out that maybe this wasn’t the best idea. That the ocean was getting ready to do something ugly.”
I looked down at my hands, seeing them not as they were now, but as they had been then. Young and so sure. “There was barely a cloud in the sky, and Caitlin was so excited. Leo wanted to show off his new boat. So I ignored that voice. I told myself the barometer was just hinting at a temporary little squall. That we’d be fine if we stayed in the shallows. I knew better, Iris. I was the experienced one of the four of us. Yet I went anyway.”
The guilt, still knife-sharp after all these years, was a lead weight on my chest, making it hard to breathe.
“We went out to a little cove an hour away that was nice and protected. Snorkeled for a while, hung out on the beach, laughing. It was perfect. One of those days you think you’ll remember forever.” I gave a short, bitter,humorless laugh. “I will remember it forever. Just not the way I was supposed to.”
Iris turned so she could see me better, maintaining her gentle hold on my arm.
“We saw the line on the horizon around noon. It looked like a bruised, angry wall of darkness. We decided to head back. Thought we could outrun it. We couldn’t.”
My voice dropped, the memory taking over. I wasn’t in the cabin with Iris anymore. I was back on Leo’s boat, the deck pitching beneath my feet.
“The storm hit us like a locomotive. One second, it was choppy and spitting rain. The next, the world was just gray. Howling wind, a torrential, blinding rain like needles on your skin. The waves… they weren’t waves anymore. They were just moving mountains of water, steep and black and furious, coming at us from all directions. The boat was too small. Leo was at the helm, fighting it, his knuckles white, but he was out of his league. I took over. I was the captain.”
The title, the one Iris used so playfully, now felt like an accusation branded into my skin. She was completely still, watching me with rapt, fearful attention.
“I tried to keep the bow pointed into the waves, but it was impossible. The boat was being tossed around like a damn toy. I remember Caitlin screaming, her hands clamped onto my arm, her knuckles white. Beth was crying in the stern, Leo shouting something at me that was ripped away by the wind. I was just trying to survive. Trying to get us through the next thirty seconds. The next wave.”
