Page 10 of Swept Away

“Oh. Well. I won’t miss it,” she says, and fists my waistcoat, pulling me in for another kiss as the fog smokes around us.

My lips feel burned and my chest’s tight, as though something’s winded me and I’m only just getting my breath back. Everything else that matters to me—work, those books, all the shit with my family…it’s as though it’s drifted away and tonight there’s just Lexi.

I love this feeling. Nothing clears your mind like this kind of wanting.

“What the fuck are you doing to me, Zeke?” she whispers. “I’m literally shaking.”

“Shall we go to my boat?” I ask, glancing in the direction of the marina gate and already fumbling in my pocket for my fob. It’s the first time I’ve ever called itmy boat. It feels kind of weird. I’m not a boat person. My dad was the boat person, and I was the person trying not to be my dad.

Lexi is leaning into me. “Let’s go to mine.”

“Sure, OK.”

The moment I press my lips to hers again, she lets out a moan that sears right through me, turns me hard in an instant. We break apart when we reach the gate. She stumbles into the fence just as I reach to fob us in, and I think I’ve missed the sensor, but then the gate swings open and we’re falling through the fog, already grasping each other again.

“Hang on,” she says, pausing for a moment to squint into the darkness.

We’ve ended up right by Dad’s—my—houseboat, its blue paint dim in the fog. You can’t see much: the shape of an old-fashioned bicycle strapped to the roof, the thin metal chimney for the wood burner,The Merry Dormousepainted in white on the bow. I remember Mum carefully touching up those letters with a paintbrush, back when the boat was the family holiday spot, before the divorce—before it became Dad’s home, and somewhere Mum was never welcome. In retrospect, it surprises me that he didn’t rename it.

“Let’s just…” Lexi begins, stepping toward the boat.

I do the same, then remember she wanted to go to her place, so I say, “Are you sure?”

She frowns at me. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Your stern rope’s snapped!” a voice calls down the pontoon.

Paige Something-or-other. I can’t believe she’s still kicking around this marina—her houseboat was always moored next toThe Merry Dormouse. She’s a bit…annoying. She would wander into our family evenings on the deck, “popping by” with a mug of herbaltea in her hand, hanging around until it was borderline uncomfortable. The kind of person who can’t read a room. Her brother died, and after that she wasnever the same again, that’s what Dad used to say—one of those meaningless phrases he trotted out all the time, like his favorite one about the split from my mum:Some things are too broken to be fixed.

“A snapped rope sounds bad?” Lexi says, pulling away from me to look.

“This boat always was too long for this pontoon. Here, it’ll be all right, you can reconfigure your head line into two springs,” Paige says, appearing suddenly through the fog. “That’ll be fine for the night. If your friend gets the center of the rope looped around the cleat on the pontoon, I can make fast at the bow and stern if you just hold on to the boat for me. Tide’s completely slack right now, so should be a super quick job.”

“Thanks,” Lexi and I say in unison.

I’m lost, to be honest. Dad wasn’t particularly good on nautical lingo, and he never taught us this sort of stuff.

“I’ll check in on you again in the morning with some spare rope, so we can get you properly moored,” Paige says. “But this should do you for now, all right?”

She beams at us. She’s probably quite nice, really. I bet she was just lonely, all those times she crashed our evenings. I can see it now that I’m not ten.

“That’s really kind. Thank you for your help,” Lexi says.

I grip the side of the boat as Lexi heads off to follow the instructions she’s been given, and Paige works around us. This, I’ve done plenty of times—holding the boat steady for Dad was my and Jeremy’s specialty, as kids. Lyra less so. It’s always been hard to get my sister to do anything as obliging as helping out.

Things are spinning—I’ve had a shot or two too many, maybe. I take a breath, tasting the fog on my tongue, my body aching withheat and desire. I can’t even see Lexi—can’t see further than a meter or so now, the fog’s so thick—and the weird lost feeling freaks me out a bit.

“Nearly there!” Paige shouts cheerfully from somewhere in the fog.

Almost everything I recall aboutThe Merry Dormouseis from the time after my parents’ divorce—I was only four when Dad came to live here permanently. For a moment I feel as though I can hear him playing his crappy homemade ukulele, or humming his way around the kitchen, or puzzling over a sudoku with Lyra and Jeremy. I remember sitting on the deck with the two of them, Dad hovering behind us as he taught us to fish. Even at that age I could sense how desperately he wanted us to enjoy it, and the pressure of it all had made me sweat, because of course I was shit at fishing, and the others caught so many we had to freeze some.

“Paige’s done, apparently,” says a warm, throaty voice behind me.

I turn to see Lexi appearing from the mist, lips bee-stung, cheeks flushed. She stumbles slightly and her body collides with mine, and just like that we’re kissing again. Within seconds, my mind is one hundred percent her. There’s…I don’t know, there’s something about this woman. She’s different, I think, and then I tell myself she can’t be. She just wants one night.

“Sleep well, you two!” Paige calls, distant in the darkness. The fog whirls and steams, quieting the other sounds of the marina.

“Thank you so much for helping us out,” I call, my hands still resting on Lexi’s waist.

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