Page 44 of We're One

I laugh. “Then today will be a fun day. We better hurry though. We’re wasting the best fishing time.”

She finally smiles at me, and I want to skip down the damn sidewalk. It’s crazy how much I want to please this woman. I finally understand how my brothers felt on their own journeys. I’m not fighting it anymore. I’m going to embrace it and see exactly where it leads me.

Chapter Nineteen

Sia

The boat rocks gently under the clear blue sky as I’m nestled against Zach’s side. I’ve given up trying to put space between us. It’s like we’ve gone back in time. He’s the same man I fell in love with nine years ago, but more carefree than he was then. He can’t keep his hands off of me, and I like it... a little too much.

The sun grows warmer the longer we’re on the water, and the brightness shimmers on the surface as a gentle breeze carries the scent of salt and freedom. Life goes a different speed in Seaville than in Seattle. I love it. I want to kick myself for not appreciating it when I was visiting here.

We have a great group on the boat. Callan’s driving at the helm with Sasha by his side, looking for crab pots and buoys. She announced she’s the greatest co-captain ever. Of course Callan agrees with her. The way Callan looks at Sasha warms my heart. I’m glad my friend has such a wonderful man to love her. If I let down my guard, I might be able to admit Zach looks at me the same way. No matter how much I try to push back the negative thoughts, though, I wonder how long he’ll look at me this way. Will it be long enough for me to fall in love with him all over again, only to have my heart shattered? That’s my biggest fear. I don’t think I get a choice anymore though. It might be too late already.

Nikki, Emily, and Jess are sitting around the large deck of the boat, soaking in the sun more than fishing. I haven’t done a whole lot myself. Growing up in a coastal town, I saw lots of people fishing, but it never appealed to me. Now, riding in a boat on a flat ocean is pure heaven. I love fishing once I have one on my hook. I only hate how long it takes sometimes.

“This really is heaven,” I tell Zach. “Thanks for renting a boat.”

His arm tightens around me and he leans in and gives me about the hundredth kiss of the day. My friends have stopped teasing me about it. They’d have to keep making kissy sounds every five minutes and they grew bored with it.

“I’ll do anything for you. I love seeing you and your friends having fun. We can buy a boat and come down here every week if you like,” he says. The scary thing about these words is I think he’s serious. He certainly has the money to go out and buy any boat he wants. But in this moment, I think he believes we’ll stay together long enough to come back here again and again. I want that. I’m not so foolish as to believe it’s not what I want. I’m cautious about expecting to have just that. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. That mantra goes through my head twenty-four/seven since Zach stepped back into my life.

Nikki moves to the edge of the boat and casts her line into the water. She grins over at us. “You know my grandfather taught me to fish when I was barely walking. He started with that little fish game they still sell in stores, then got me my first real kid rod when I was about four. I caught my first tiny fish that year and have loved it ever since.”

“I remember spending hours at the dock with you. I’d lie in the sun while you’d sit all day, sometimes never catching a single fish,” I tell her.

She grins at me. “It’s all about patience and the right bait, of course.”

“Don’t you ever get bored with it?” I ask.

“Nope. Never. It’s relaxing. Sure, I want to catch as many fish as I can, but if it was super easy, no fish would be left for us to catch. I’m glad people get turned off by it. That means more fish in the sea for me.” Her line dips and she turns back to the water, giving a little slack as she tries to draw her fish in. She has a real knack for snagging the suckers when she’s starting to get a bite.

“I don’t have the patience for fishing,” Emily says with a laugh as she adjusts her sunglasses. “I love being on the boat though with good friends, good beer, and better conversation.”

“More fish for me then,” Nikki says as she wiggles her line.

“I’m with Emily,” Jess says. “I’ll leave the fishing to the experts. I can’t stand touching the bait. Totally grosses me out.”

“Quit sounding like such girls,” Nikki says with a laugh.

“Look who’s talking. You might like all things fishing, but I remember that one time a tick got on you and you screamed like a two-year-old. You took an hour-long shower and demanded we all check every inch of your body, including going through your hair three times to make sure there weren’t more.”

A shudder goes though Nikki. “Ticks carry Lyme disease. Those tiny little pests are deadly,” Nikki says. “A worm has never killed anyone.”

“I don’t know if you can prove that. Some worm somewhere might’ve killed a person. Those creatures in whatever alien movie that was looked like giant worms, and they sure killed a lot of people.”

“That’s fiction,” Nikki says.

I’m laughing as we all banter back and forth. “Fishing makes for the best stories though. I remember one time on my uncle’s boat, he was reeling something in for about an hour. When it finally came up to the boat, it was an eight-foot shark. He was trying to bring it onboard and all of us were screaming. We could see its teeth, and that thing was beyond ticked to be pulled up. It was ready to take some flesh out of each one of us.”

“I love watching the videos online. There’s a great one where they’re all fishing, and a shark launches itself right into the back of the boat. There was a lot of screaming as the camera dropped right in front of the huge thing and we all got a good view of its massive teeth,” Jess says.

“I would die if that happened. I’m telling you all right now, I’m throwing you to the shark if it jumps on board,” Sasha says from the front.

“Not a chance. You’d be the one to save us all,” Emily says with confidence.

“I think we’d all die, because we’d be saving each other and the dang thing would pick us off one by one,” I tell them.

“That’s true,” Nikki says. “But if I do catch a shark, it’s coming on board. I’ve never made a shark recipe before. That could be fun. I wonder if it tastes as good as tuna.”

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