Page 19 of Swept Away

Then…it gets dark.

“Well, it’ll be easier to spot other boats,” Lexi offers, pulling a hoody on and then tugging her leather jacket back over the top.

We’re standing on the deck, looking out at where the sun went, as if maybe we can wish it back. The air smells cool and sharp. I shiver. It feels more like a wilderness out here when it’s dark. Empty, but in a threatening way. Not in a nice, nothing-coming-to-get-you way.

“Though we don’t have any lights, so it won’t be so easy for them to spotus,” Lexi continues. She says it briskly, as though she’s just being practical, but I notice her shoulders drooping a bit. “We should do shifts. One of us keeps watch.”

“Mm. That’s a good idea. Do you want first or second shift?” I ask.

“You choose.”

“I don’t mind—you pick.”

I hear her huff of frustration, and wince. It probably makes me seem young, being so indecisive. I’m just kind of used to someone else wanting to make decisions.

“Fine, I’ll go to bed now, we can swap over at two,” she says.

“Great.”

She doesn’t go. She turns her face up to the moon, breathing deeply.

“This is all so fucking mental,” she says quietly. “And I know when you come in to get me there’s going to be that moment you always get when you wake up somewhere new, you know? Whereyou haven’t quite realized what’s going on, where your brain and your body assume you’re still where you’d usually be. And then there’ll be the moment after that. When I remember.”

“And you’re scared of that?”

The low, wetschlupof the sea against the boat beneath us is so much louder now that it’s dark.

“I’m not scared,” she says.

I’m not sure whether to call bullshit on this. If she needs to tell me she’s not scared, maybe I should let her.

“How about if I make it quick?” I ask eventually. “If I wake you up like, ‘Good morning, it’s two a.m. and you’re stuck on a houseboat in the middle of the ocean with your one-night stand’? Just get it all out there?”

She snorts. “How kind.”

“Or do you want that second where you forget about it all?”

She’s quiet. “No,” she says. “I’d always rather know the truth.”

“Same.”

“Then I’ll bear that in mind when it’s my turn to wake you.” She shifts away from me, opening the door. “Good night, Zeke.”

“Night.”

Maybe I’m being ridiculous, but…I feel like I know the exact moment she falls asleep. It’s just a different sort of quiet. The stars are properly out now, and they’re crazy—they’re not dotted around the blackness, they’re covering everycentimeterof sky. I convince myself I can see the Milky Way, but I’ve no idea whether I’m even looking the right way.

I have a bit of a cry around midnight. Thinking about my dad. Looking up at the sky and wondering if that’s where he’s gone, up into the universe, singing out Bob Dylan among the stars. I wonder if Jeremy’s right—if all the answers I’m looking for are hidden on this houseboat somewhere. Up until now, I’ve been a bit too busy to go looking, but Lexi’s right. We’ve got nothing but time.

Daytwo

Lexi

“Wake up, you’retrapped on a houseboat with an uncaffeinated, unshowered harpy.”

Zeke opens his eyes slowly and looks right at me. He’s on his back, his curls thrown outward onto the pillow like the lines from the sun in one of Mae’s drawings. I expect to see the penny drop in his eyes, the way it did in mine when he woke me at two in the morning, but his gaze stays steady. Zeke seems permanently dreamy—maybe moving from asleep to awake isn’t such a big deal for him, as if he exists in that space anyway.

“Hello,” he says softly. “What’s a harpy?”

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