Page 7 of The Couch Where It Happens

She continued to read.

After three summers here, I have a system: work my ass off Monday and Friday, then read, research for my dissertation on eighteenth-century shipwreck literature, swim, and tan for the three days in the middle of the week.

This sweet gig ends after Labor Day, when I head back to New Jersey for grad school.

The people who own the house next door have a college-age son. My first clue to the drip’s intentions came on a mid-AugustWednesday afternoon, when a car gunned its engine up the driveway on the other side of the hedge. I’d assumed the earlier vehicles I’d heard crunching up the gravel were staff—because, Wednesday, duh—but “We’re Not Gonna Take It” booming out of the car meant Boy Wonder was throwing a party. On one of my peaceful Wednesdays. Shithead.

I apologize to you, Readers, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that I swear too much.

Emma thought that was a good way of describing her mouth too. She might deploy that phrase on Hank, since she swore more than he did, and six months ago, they’d watchedPride and Prejudicetogether, so he wouldn’t be clueless. This magazine was almost, almost, keeping her from thinking about Hank.

I refastened my bikini top, as one should when near the offspring of junk bond traders or leveraged buyout kings, and left my lounger.

By nine o’clock, the party next door had been blasting long-ass guitar riffs for over two hours. Although scheduling a bash at a time when no neighbors were in residence to call in a noise complaint indicated a primitive cunning in their frontal cortexes, nevertheless, I did not admire their planning for the basic fact that it upset mine. There I was, huddled on the dock, arms around my knees, watching a full moon on the rise and sulking in the certainty that these rich douchebags had the boozeto get through hours upon hours of badly shouted versions of “Cum On Feel the Noize.”

I was not rocking these boys.

Then an indigo shape on the moonlit water caught my attention. One of the neighbors’ boats drifted between their dock and ours, about fifty feet away. I decided to retrieve it, which turned out to be a most excellent decision.

Given both the darkness and my disaster-filled dissertation research, I donned a life jacket, stepped from the dock into our dinghy, and cast off. The loose boat was about the same size and scarcely bobbing, so I used the oars instead of the outboard. No need to add to the decibel count. In moments, I came alongside, snagged it with a boat hook, and fastened a towline around a bow cleat. The rubber fenders hanging on my dinghy thumped quietly against the other one.

I love being on the water, where the sounds and rhythms of the sea saturate your bones and remind you that you are small. While you may succeed at a task like catching a meandering dinghy in a calm bay, the ocean is large, larger than a nav chart can render or a photo can express, larger than motes of dust such as we are can comprehend, and it follows none of our rules. Maybe epic disaster paintings like Gericault’sRaft of the Medusacome close to rendering the ocean into an idea that we can grasp—

“Over here.” A male voice interrupted my night-on-the-water mental meandering.

I jerked on my bench, thumped an oar into the hull of the captured boat, and made both boats rock. One of the dickwads, fuck him.

“Can you tow it in?”

I shouldn’t have been annoyed by his question, but I didn’t yet know that was how the hottest night of my life would begin.

Rowing one boat while towing another meant I worked up a glow before I slipped next to the neighboring dock. The guy waiting for me seemed to be over six feet, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped, but I was sitting low in a dinghy, so I could have been wrong. He was dark blond, but moonlight could be tricky. Maybe his hair was light brown.

“Toss me the line,” he said. “I’ll tie you off, and then you can push the other one forward.”

Since he was able to catch it and stand at the same time, this douche was plausibly sober.

“Why are you messing around with the boats?” My question was sharper than I intended.

“I wasn’t.” He looped the line around the base of the cleat, made two crossovers into a figure eight, and finished with a flawless half hitch.

When he stretched his arm for the stern line, I wanted to forget about my responsibilities and grab his hand for myself. But I flicked the second one to him like the lobsterman’s daughter that I am. When those big hands caught it almost tenderly, I felt a surge of jealousy for that inert nylon. “A dinghy doesn’t have thumbs to undo itself.”

“But the three guys staggering back to the house did.”

We used the boat hook to maneuver the escapee to her spot on the dock and, within minutes, shook out the lines that had been dragging in the bay, secured them to dock cleats, and coiled them neatly. By this point, I didn’t have to watch him to check his work, so I watched him for pure enjoyment. He knew how a length of wet rope chafed and kept it from slapping into his khaki shorts or snagging on the edge of the wood planks. Better yet, he knew his half hitches. He liked working the lines, and I liked watching him.

“Thank you again,” I said.

“No problem. Glad I came down.” In the glow from the lights back on land, I could see him checking me out. It had been several months since someone who hadn’t stepped out of Lisa Birnbach’sPreppy Handbookhad looked at me with that much interest, and I wished I wasn’t swaddled in the bulky life jacket. I’ve been told I have great tits. At least the orange canvas-covered foam blocks didn’t conceal my legs.

“Wise beyond your years.” I had no game.

“Doubt I’m much younger than you.”

He was right. He was probably twenty or twenty-one, and I’m twenty-three. It’s the house responsibility that makes me feel older. “So why are you here?”

“Here, meaning the dock, or here meaning—” He gestured behind us toward the mansion.

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