Page 55 of Swept Away

I catch the ghost of a smile before she swipes it away.

“Do you mind if I lie down again?” she asks, her voice a little weak.

“Course not,” I say, moving as close to the door as I can to give her some space.

I feel embarrassed now. Only two or three one-night stands foralmost five years? It’d been four months since I’d last had sex when I took Lexi back to this boat, and I felt like a monk.

“Penny’s dating life was enough to put me off every time I considered dipping my toe in again. She’s only ever had a string of terrible men who left her the second things got serious.” She sniffs. “You know, this one guy walked out because she asked him to pick her up a Mooncup from Boots?”

I laugh.

“He just said,Look, love, no offense, but this isn’t really my scene. I know I shouldn’t generalize, but it just seems to me like men can’t handle the nitty-gritty. Real-life stuff, shit happening, the grind. Over and over, that’s what I’ve seen. I think if any of the other men I’ve encountered in my life had been on this houseboat with me, they’d have…” She pauses—nausea getting worse for a moment, maybe. “They’d have taken charge to begin with,” she continues. “Then they’d have got angry because they were scared. Then they’d have given up and sulked and gone to pieces. But you’ve not done any of that. I don’t think you would have left me out here even if you could have.”

“Of course not,” I say, shocked that she’d even think it.

She lies down with her head in my lap, which surprises me, but no complaints here. I stretch my legs out as best I can in the tiny space as she wriggles her hairband free and then massages her scalp. Her eyelids dipping in pleasure. I swallow. She looks so gorgeous, even after vomiting all night. I want to say,I would never, ever leave you, but I can’t, because that’s not what this is.

“What about you? Come on,” she says, snuggling in, knees curled up to her chest. “Entertain me with tales of your exes. I know you’ve slept around a bit, but what’s your dating history?”

I stay quiet, chewing my cheek. She cracks an eye open, turning her head to look up at me.

“Come on. First serious girlfriend? There must have beenone.”

I don’t often think about Nicky. She’s come up in therapy a bit—how could she not, really—but these days, it doesn’t hurt to remember her. Just makes me kind of curious. Who would I have been, if I’d never met her?

“Oh, therewasone,” Lexi says with satisfaction.

“Just one, yeah.”

“Broke your heart?”

“I mean…”

I guess she did, really. Or changed it. I was just a kid, looking for someone to make me feel at home, and for a while, I was hers—installed in her flat, hardly ever out of her bed, as obsessed with her as she seemed to be with me. But it barely lasted two months.I’ve taught you everything I know, cuteness, she’d said.You knew this wasn’t going to last. You’reverypretty, but we were never going to be anything serious, were we?

“How old were you?” Lexi asks.

“I was sixteen.”

“And she was…”

Lexi’s so good at reading me now.

“Twenty-eight,” I say reluctantly.

Her eyes snap wide open. “Twelveyears older than you?”

“Mm.”

“How didthathappen?”

“We met when I was waiting tables at a golf club one summer.”

She’d caught my eye with a glass of wine dangling between finger and thumb, at lunch with her father and his new wife. Draped in her chair, languid, beautiful. I’d seen her straighten at the sight of me. When I’d reached the table to take their order, she’d said,I don’t suppose you could show me to the bathroom?By the time we’d reached the corridor outside the restaurant doors, her body was already brushing close to mine.I’m Nicky, she’d said.I’m here all summer and I’meverso bored.

“You totally have a thing for older women.”

I frown and shake my head. “I don’thave a thing, I just…” But I trail off, because I kind of do, really. “I just always feel more connected to women who are a bit older than me. They know what they want, they’re…They just seem more interesting.”

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