Page 54 of Swept Away

“I guess,” I say, but I don’t think that’s all of it. Opening those books means actuallylisteningto my father, a man I’ve chosen to shut out for most of my life, and I don’t know what he’ll say, but I’m pretty sure it’ll hurt me. I know he never cared for me the way he cared for Lyra and Jeremy. Turns out I’m just not ready to see that written in black and white.

“I mean, does it matter if your birth father was someone else?” Lexi says. “Because yourdadis your dad, right? I don’t think the scumbag who knocked up Penny has any right to be part of Mae’s life, personally, and on the same basis…”

“I think, if my relationship with my father had been better…” I clear my throat. “Yeah, maybe I’d feel that way. But I feel like there’s something missing. I’ve always felt like that. That I don’t belong. And maybe finding my real dad…”

Lexi closes her eyes again. “I worry about that all the time, you know,” she says. “With Mae. That she feels that absence.”

I want to tell Lexi that I’m sure she’s enough for Mae, that her little girl’s not missing anything, but Ihada dad and I still wanted another one, so…I’m not really one to talk.

“I don’t think everyone feels the way I do,” I say eventually. “Lyra calls meperpetually lost.” Lyra likes using words likeperpetually, words I’d never be able to spell. “Always grass-is-greener. Maybe this is just that.”

Lexi moves suddenly, pulling herself up and retching into the toilet. Her shoulders slump in exhaustion.

I reach over and smooth her hair back, then pause, hand hovering. But she leans back into my palm like a cat wanting to be stroked, so I do it again, careful to avoid the lump on the back of her head.

“God,” she says, as she reaches for the pump handle to flush the toilet. “I would never, ever let a man see me like this usually, you know.”

“Not even your boyfriend?”

She raises her eyebrows, taking a sip from her thermos. The houseboat lurches beneath us—a bigger wave, I guess—and Lexi and I lock eyes. We hold our breath for a second. This has happened a few times now. We’re getting into the new rhythm. Got to roll with the punches out here or you’d spend your whole time screaming your head off, basically.

“I don’t date men nice enough to hold my hair back when I’m throwing up,” she says, setting down the thermos and pulling her blanket closer.

I’ve wondered about Lexi’s dating life. She’s thirty-one—she’s had eight years of dating on me. She must’ve had men lining up to take her out. So why’s she single? Who was stupid enough to let her go?

“What kind of mendoyou date?” I ask.

I take a sip from my own thermos. Water is seriously underrated. I guess when I get home I’ll gulp it down without thinking again, but right now I can’t imagine seeing a glass of water as anything other than a miracle.

“You want the short history of my dating life?”

“Or the long one.” I want it all, really—everything about her.

“Well, there was Johnny, in Year Eleven. He was the one everybody wanted, so I hung on to him at all costs, and the cost was fairly substantial,” she says, shifting into a more comfortable position. “Then there was Lee. He was very nice until he wasn’t. He taughtme why ‘crazy’ is a bad word even if they’re laughing when they say it. Then there was a string of casual ones, all as bad as one another, and then Theo, who left me after I took on supporting Penny and Mae, and then I just gave up, really.”

I stare at her in horror. She snorts.

“Believe me,” she says, “this is not an unusual story, tragic as it is. Every thirty-something single woman has at least a few nasty ones in her history, even if she doesn’t recognize it. Good men are hard to find.”

“How old did you say Mae is?”

“Four. Four and two months, to be precise, which she always prefers you to be.”

“And Theo left you before she was born?”

“Yup.”

“And you’ve not dated since? Not…atall?”

She snorts at my expression.

“Sorry,” I say, blinking fast. “I just thought…that’s a really long time to go without…”

She shrugs. “I had the odd encounter at The Anchor that ended up in bed. Two or three times, maybe. But yeah. Didn’t you clock that I was a little rusty?”

I think about that night. Kissing the skin of her stomach, feeling her nails scrape my shoulders. Burying myself inside her and justlosingit as the world seemed to fall away around us.

I clear my throat. “No,” I say firmly. “You did not seem…rusty.”

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