* * *
Afterwards, when she collapsed on the sheets beside me, both of us panting and dripping with sweat, I pulled her into the crook of my good side and she lay there, her head on my chest, her breath warm on my skin.
‘Imagine if I hadn’t walked over to you at the pier that day,’ I said. ‘I almost didn’t. I was on a mission to have a drink and something to eat when I saw you. Mostly drink, courtesy of my mother. I could just as easily have minded my own business and left you there.’
‘You? Mind your own business?’ she teased, then yelped when I tickled her on the ribs.
‘You know what I mean. We might never have met.’
‘In this town? Come on. We’d have met at some time or other. In fact, we’d have meet later that week when I started making home visits to your dad.’
‘True. But if wehadmet for the first time then, when you were working, would we be here together, right now, in this bed? Having, FYI, the most mind-blowingly incredible sex of my life?’
She was quiet for a while. ‘I don’t know. Where are you going with this?’
‘I’m just thinking about how it’s all the little actions, the little decisions we make that can shape our whole lives.’
‘Sliding-door moments.’
‘What are they?’
‘It’s a movie. I’ll show you one day.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I went on, ‘about what my mom said yesterday, down at the dock.’
‘You’ll have to be more specific. Your mother had a lot to say.’
‘About how you can never know what’s just around the corner.’
‘She said that?’
‘Yeah, in a roundabout way. She talked about the men the memorial is dedicated to. How none of them went to sea expecting not to come home again. Leaving behind families, wives, children.’
‘I’m still lost. What are you saying, you don’t want to go to sea any more? Because no one would blame you, after what happened. It would have been terrifying.’
I held her tighter. ‘All I could think about was you. When I thought I was going to die, my only regret was that I hadn’t had more time with you.’
She pressed her lips against my skin. ‘I don’t think like to think about what could have happened.’
‘I’m not going to give up doing things that I enjoy on the off chance that something might go wrong,’ I told her. ‘If I did that, I’d have to give up crossing the street too. There’s an element of danger with everything.’
‘But?’
‘But I don’t want to waste any more time doing something I’m mainly just doing for the hell of it. Being a lobsterman has been great, it’s paid my bills, filled my days, brought me a new appreciation for the ocean and how hard those men work. But it’s time for me to chase my own dreams. Starting tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘The winter formal.’
‘I didn’t think you’d be up for it with your shoulder.’
I shrugged. ‘I once got caught in a rip on my paddleboard and got swept two miles off the coast. Lost my paddle to a wave and had to use my hands to row myself the whole way back in. Took me eleven hours. I think I can handle a dance or two with a sore shoulder.’
She glared at me, exasperated. ‘I’m beginning to understand why your mother wants to wrap you up in cotton wool.’
I grinned. ‘So what was in the box?’
She yelped, diving for the side of the bed where she dropped it. ‘I forgot all about that, thanks to a certain someone distracting me. And before you ask, yes, it was worth it.’
