Page 46 of Swept Away

I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud before. When Mum’s cancer was finally picked up by the doctors, it was so late, and things happened quickly—we only had two weeks to say good-bye. It was unspeakably awful, the worst time in my life; I can still hardly bear to think of those final days. The idea of selling The Anchor was the last thing on our minds.

“Obviously the pub was her dream, and I wanted to carry that on for her,” I add quickly.

Zeke looks at me, thoughtful. “It’s not what you chose, though,” he says.

“I chose them. Mum, Penny, Mae.” I shrug. “They’re my family. And my mum was amazing. Even though she was run off her feetallthe time, even though she had a pub to look after, somehow she always made me feel like she had time for me if I needed her.”

It used to be so hard to talk about my mother, and it still makes me ache with missing her, but it feels good, too. I don’t ever want to forget a fraction of her: I want to remember the daft songs we’dmake up in the car, and the exact smell of her hair after she’d washed it, and the way she’d chuck my chin if I was scared and say,Hey, I’ve got you, OK?

“She sounds amazing,” Zeke says softly. “And she looked after Penny, too?”

“Like she was her own. Penny stayed over most weekends from the age of about…six, maybe? Her mum was a singer, when she was clean enough to work, so she was often out late or disappearing off to some other town for a gig. Eventually, when Penny was ten and pretty much living at ours, Mum just turned our spare room above The Anchor into her bedroom. For most of her teens, Penny never went to her mother’s—she called the pub home.”

I remember the first time she did it, and what a thrill I felt—like we’d finally managed to steal Penny away for ourselves. I loved the nights when Penny slept over. We’d watch cartoons together on the living room rug in our pajamas; we’d make friendship bracelets and all sorts of wild promises about being together forever. Then we’d wake up in the morning and tumble down the stairs to eat our cereal at the bar while Mum got the pub ready, and I’d feel like all my favorite things were in one place.

“Did it ever bother you that your mum left the houseboat to Penny? Even though she wasn’t her kid?” he asks.

“Mae’s not my kid, but I’d leave everything I had to her.”

Zeke’s eyes widen slightly. I might have sounded a bit snappy there.

“Sorry,” he says.

“No, it’s OK, I just…There’s more to family than blood. In my opinion,” I say, tipping back my coffee mug and catching one last drop from the bottom, letting it moisten my dry mouth.

“Definitely. Sorry.” He pauses, thinking. “You guys grew up together at the pub, then? What was that like?”

It was loud and warm and chaotic. It was toddling between barstools and petting dogs by the fire and watching Mum pulling pints, hair falling back as she laughed her big, rough, dirty laugh. It was cold leftover burgers for dinner and homework at the always-empty table by the toilets, then it was shifts that bled one day into the next, with only a short trip upstairs to sleep in between.

“It’s a way of life all of its own,” I settle for. “Pub life.”

“Did you drink a lot?”

I shake my head. “Not me. Penny did, for a while. She leaned into the whole sexy-young-barmaid thing, always doing shots with cute tourists. She only really snapped out of it when she got pregnant. Before that, she was all about the late nights and one-night stands.”

“Late nights,” Zeke says, pressing his lips together to hold back a smile. “Wild.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Let me guess.” He cracks an eye open. “The sensible one?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“I bet you could be wild,” Zeke says, opening his other eye, lifting his forearm to shade the sun so he can look at me properly. “I feel like it’s in there. Just kind of…trapped.”

“Oh yes, I am Eugene in his cardboard box,” I deadpan, but I like that he’s said it. I like that he sees me that way. “Shall we?” I ask, tilting my head toward his midriff. We’re sitting with our thighs almost touching now, facing each other, flank to flank on the deck. The sun is getting fierce: I lift a hand to my wet hair and find that it’s almost dry at the back already.

Zeke moves the flannel. The wound is red, and there’s pus leaking from the end where the stitch had been infected.

“It’s OK,” I say quickly, because his face has fallen. “It’s good that it’s coming out.”

“Yeah,” Zeke says. “Yeah. Maybe I should let it breathe?”

I really have no idea. We’re so completely clueless. I hate thesemoments—I can kid myself that we’re coping fine out here when we’re sipping espressos and talking in the sunshine, but when I’m staring at the vicious red line of Zeke’s wound, I feel like a child. Sometimes I fantasize about waking up from this to a soft bed and a person in a white coat saying,It’s going to be all right, Lexi—it was all a bad dream. I rub my eyes with my thumb and forefinger; my head is feeling a little fuzzy in the heat.

“You need a water,” Zeke says, looking at me closely, sitting up on his elbows.

“I’m fine.” I drop my hand.

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