Page 139 of Smooth Sailing

There were smiles, chuckles, but not much laughter.

Through it, he asked, “Seventy degrees?”

“I’ve got desert girl blood.”

“I guess so,” he murmured, and chuckled anew, saying. “Seventy degrees. You must have been in hell in London.”

“Oddly, no. I grew to form a great appreciation for jumpers and boots.”

“Jumpers?”

“What they call sweaters.”

“Why do they call them jumpers?”

“No idea. Though it was fun learning all their different words for things,” I told him, then asked, “Have you been out of the country?”

He took a turn on Lincoln Drive. “Nope.”

“Ever want to go?”

He shifted his ass in his seat and said, “Never really thought about it.”

He “never really thought about” what he wanted to be when he grew up either.

I found that alarming when I learned it, as I thought it alarming that he hadn’t thought about vacationing outside the US.

If he said, “Nothing I want to see outside this great country,” I would get it, even if I wouldn’t agree with it, because I wanted to go everywhere. It was part of who I was. It was part of why I became who I became.

“I’d already been to London,” I shared. “Dad took me when I was, I don’t know, I think thirteen. We also took a cruise down the Rhine when I was fifteen. It started in Amsterdam and went through Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. And for my sweet sixteen, he gave me an Italy trip. Rome, Milan, Florence. Seeing the architecture, going to the museums was why I decided to do what I do for a living.”

“What was your favorite place?”

“Probably Florence, for the art. But Switzerland is crazy gorgeous, so there for the landscape. Lucerne seriously is downright magical.”

“Would you go back, or would you want to try something new?”

“Both. Though, the new stuff first.” I took a beat then asked, “Would you go?”

“Fuck yeah,” he said. “Hire a bike, ride through Europe. Reckon that would be the shit.”

I relaxed.

Because yes.

That would be the shit.

“Did you have fun with your dad on those trips?” he queried.

I thought about it, then it was me shifting in my seat.

“Yeah,” I said, realizing I’d been so busy holding my grudge, I’d forgotten something important. “He’s a different man away from the office, and he loves to travel. His family wasn’t destitute, but they didn’t have a lot, and he’d always wanted to go places and see things. I mean, part of it was Dad being Dad. He wanted me to experience stuff that wasn’t my every day, so there was a lot of urging to try foods I wasn’t sure I wanted to try, and no matter how much I loved it, he could spend years in museums, and as a kid, that got tired. But he says a mind narrows when a person narrows their world. Like they don’t travel. They don’t try different foods. They don’t expose themselves to different things, like music or theater or whatever. We used to have this?—”

I stopped speaking abruptly because I forgot about this too.

And I’d loved doing it with my dad.

Hugger held his hand my way, palm up.

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