Page 44 of Swept Away

In a moment of weakness I let my gaze slip down to her shoulder, bared by that oversized T-shirt. And then my eyes catch on the knife.

“Ready when you are,” I say, looking away.

Lexi

Life is fullof extremes right now. Either I’m doing absolutely fuck-all for hours on end, or I’m dashing around panicking. Either I’m lazily daydreaming about Zeke, or I’m thinking he might be about to die. As I sit down next to him and place a hand on his bare chest, I take a moment to appreciate the human brain and its capacity to cope with absolutely mad shit, and then I get on with the task at hand.

Slicing through the thread is difficult—the area is so swollen that the stitch is deep in the flesh, and I can see it hurts Zeke when I finally manage to slide the knife under the thread. Fresh blood blossoms the moment it’s done. I reach blindly for the flannel I brought out and press it down, imagining all the other stitches popping, the wound gaping open like it did at the start.

Zeke lays his hand over mine. “Thank you,” he says, breathing hard.

The contact is unusual; I feel it more than I should, as if he’s stroked me or pressed his lips there. I love it when he touches me—a swift hand on my waist as he moves past, a thumb to my cheek as he wipes something away. Sometimes I long to lean into him,catlike. He keeps his hand where it is, and I hold still, hoping he can’t tell how it’s making my body heat.

“Here,” I say, handing him a mug with the other hand. “I used the boiling water to make us little hot coffees as a post-surgery treat.”

“Am I drinking espresso with a hint of sterilization?”

“You are. Bet you’d pay three pounds sixty for that in some wanky London coffee shop,” I say, and he nearly spits out his mouthful.

I’m funnier with Zeke. He laughs so readily it makes me braver about saying the little things that pop into my head.

“That is so delicious,” he says, closing his eyes as he swallows.

I do the same. It really is phenomenal. I think of all the times I knocked back a coffee on my way out of the door, or left an inch of it cold in the bottom of my mug, and it makes me truly furious with myself.

It’s strange, the things that get to me. I am so pissed off that I didn’t pack a better spare bra, for instance. The two I’ve got are both underwired—I can’t be doing with that nonsense right now. And I wish I had more than two tampons rattling around in the inside pocket of my bag. I’m not due on for another two weeks, so it’s not my period I’m worrying about, it’s just that tampons absorb liquid, and I’ve already decided that they might stop a small hole for a while if there’s a leak.

I keep my hand under Zeke’s, pressing down on his wound. I have no idea how long you’re supposed to do this for, and already the temptation to check if it’s stopped bleeding has set in, like the urge to cough when you’ve got a tickle in your throat. The warmth of his hand is a soft, quiet reminder of how close we are, how bare he is.

“Well,” Zeke says, closing his eyes, “if I’m going to die, at least the weather’s nice.”

“Shut up,” I say sharply. “You’re not going to die. Don’t joke about that.”

He cracks an eye open, watching me. “It’s a coping mechanism,” he says after a moment.

“Well, pick another one. Do denial, that one is my favorite.”

“No thanks,” he says, closing his eyes again. “I don’t like lying.”

My stomach tightens as I think of the words I saw in his father’s logbook.

Paige thinks I should tell him the truth…I sometimes long to, but I know when he finds out, he’ll never come back to this boat.

I’ve never been one for making a distinction between lies and withholding the truth: the fact is,I’mlying to Zeke. But what do I say?I suspect that there is a big dark secret about you in your father’s logbooks? The man does not need that right now. And surely he’ll read them eventually. It’s crazy to me that he’s not cracked and binged them all—I know I would have.

“Tell me about your family,” I say suddenly.

If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “We’re like most families,” he says. “Bit complicated.”

“You have two siblings?”

“Yeah,” he says, eyes still shut. He’s lying back now, head resting in the crook of his arm, knees pulled up in an upside-down V so he can fit on the deck. “We’re quite different. Jeremy and Lyra are super smart, for starters. They both went to uni, whereas I got shitty exam results. Their careers are, like…things they built for themselves. Jeremy’s in insurance, and Lyra’s a lawyer. Me, I hung around doing pond-life jobs in kitchens until my friend Brady gave me a kick up the arse to apply for a junior chef job at Davide’s, which is a proper fancy restaurant in Putney. Jeremy and Lyra were a team,two peas in a pod, and then there was me. The youngest, tagging along. I was always the odd one out.”

Of course, he’s different, the logbook had said. I swallow. I can so see Zeke as the people-pleasing youngest sibling, jogging to keep up with the others; it makes me a little sad.

“What about your mum? What’s she like?”

“She’s…she’s great. She’s good. She wants the best for me.”

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