Page 21 of Swept Away

Zeke is now down to a pair of boxers. They’re bright red—I am unsurprised that Zeke does not have ordinary boxers—and they sit low on his hips. I look away, out to the water, where the seagull staggers a few steps forward across the broken kayak.

“I am wondering whetherget in the seais such a great plan after all,” I say, eyeing the very amateur rope ladder we’ve just made so that he can climb back up again—or either of us can, if we ever fall in. “It’s only a bird. Birds get injured and die all the time. We should be worrying about ourselves.”

“I can do that, too. I can multitask,” Zeke says.

“The bird will probably die anyway.”

“OK.” Zeke gives a one-shouldered shrug. “But we’ll have tried.”

Something shifts a little in my chest, like a block of ice breaking loose. Look at him, framed against the seascape with his abs andhis chocolate-and-gold eyes, talking about saving an injured seagull. I may be a tough woman, but nobody is that tough.

“I won’t do it,” Zeke says, voice softening. “If you don’t want me to.”

I look at the bird. “Fuck,” I say.

Zeke waits.

“You’re just looking for something to save because we can’t save ourselves,” I tell him.

“Uh-huh,” he says, not missing a beat. “Absolutely.”

I blink. I don’t know any men with enough self-insight to accept that without pause. The surprise throws me.

I look back at the bird. “Fuck,” I say again.

“You swear a lot,” Zeke says. And then, “Why do I like that so much?”

That makes my stomach flutter, a strange sensation after the heavy, sickening panic that’s sat there for the last day and a half. I look at him sharply, but he’s looking at the sea; I can’t tell for sure if he’s flirting.

“Fine. Let’s do it,” I say, turning my gaze away.

Zeke bends to grab the rope, the one we tied to itself—sometime yesterday he sorted that loop on the side ofThe Merry Dormouse, which I was grateful for, since every time I saw the rope snaking over the railing it made me want to scream at our own stupidity. Now that we’ve made a ladder from the only spare I could find on the boat, this is our one remaining rope. He ties it around his middle, shoots me a brief, almost exhilarated look, and then dive-bombs into the sea.

The moment he hits the water, he lets out a huge gasp, almost a scream. My whole body flinches at the sound.

“Zeke? Zeke?”

“I’m OK, I’m OK. It’s just…cold.”

I watch him smooth his sodden hair back, his legs kicking in thewater as he adjusts to the temperature, still breathing hard. I am a lot more nervous about this than I’d realized. I know he’s right there, only a meter or so below me, but now it’s just me up here on this deck, alone, feet bare on its grainy surface, hands clinging to its flimsy railing. It’s not a good feeling.

Still breathing hard against the cold, Zeke swims toward the broken kayak. The seagull squawks, flapping. Zeke tugs the kayak closer to the boat, until his back is against the houseboat’s dark blue paintwork and the seagull is inches away from him, still clinging to its life raft.

“Lexi?” Zeke says, treading water. He has the kayak in one hand and the rope in the other. “What do wedowith Eugene when we’ve got hold of him?”

“Eugene?”

He looks up at me, squinting against the sunlight. His breathing is steadier now.

“You don’t like it? I think it suits him.”

“We don’t even know it’s a boy seagull.”

“You want me to check?”

“My plan this morning did not involve examining seagulls for penises. Can you remind me how we ended up here?”

“Uh, well, we basically tied the houseboat to itself instead of…”

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