Page 88 of Swept Away

“Yep,” I say, running a cloth down the side of the leakiest window, braced on the sofa cushions. Things have become increasingly frantic—Zeke and I are mostly communicating in bursts.

“Go,” I prompt him, glancing up. “Now’s good.”

“I love you,” he says. “Sorry. I had hoped to do a big buildup and everything, you know, wait for the perfect moment. I was going to tell you once we’d got you home to Mae, but…now I’m wondering if we might be short on time, so I figured, I’d better just let you know.”

I am crouched on the tatty sofa, my greasy hair scraped up into a bun, wearing a striped jumper ransacked from the rig—it sags from my collarbones, stretched by open-sea winds and overwear. I am afraid, and tired; I am simply living, doing, being. Right now I’d say I’m my rawest, truest self.

I look at Zeke. His hair is thickened by salt and dirt, his beard framing his jaw, his eyes a soft, hopeful shade of amber. The waves are reaching hungrily to our windows, but for a moment, I don’t even care.

“I love you so fucking much,” I tell him, my voice catching.

The boat rocks violently, and I have to grab for the back of the sofa to keep from falling. For a fleeting moment, I think of the romance I wanted when I was a little girl with a pillowcase on her head like a veil, dreaming of her wedding day—the fairy-tale ending. And I think of the romance I’ve had: dirty, gritty, bare, laced through with danger and wildness. If we’re going to die on this houseboat, I’ll die knowing I lived a love story far better than any I could have dreamed up.

“Come here,” Zeke says, so softly I almost miss the words over the rain and the rattling cupboards.

I climb down unsteadily from the sofa. He takes two steps to meet me halfway, and he gathers me up and kisses me, as hungry and desperate as the wind beating against our windows. The boat tilts backward and we lose balance, stumbling, but when my back hits the wall we just keep kissing, his arms braced around me.

We strip down fast, our hands frantic. I’m shaking with panic and desire. There is a lastness to this, a sense of ending. Everything is heightened. This need I have for him has a new depth to it, and if I had to name it, I’d call itgrief.

“I’m so sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so sorry if we die because I thought it was brave to get back on this boat instead of staying on the rig.”

He pulls me down to the floor. “I love you,” he says again, as we tug off our trousers, cold hands finding warm skin. His voice is hoarse and dry. “Don’t you dare even think about dying.”

We don’t wait. I’m slick and shaking with want even as the fear courses through me. I feel sure that if anything will kill me right now, it’s not having Zeke.

As he reaches a hand between us, the boat tips so far that I think we’re gone. We’re rammed against the bathroom wall, every inch of us touching, and in that endless second where the boat waits to plunge into the sea or to right itself, Zeke presses into me, his eyes full of fierceness, as if he’s denying it all, as if he’s saying,There’s just us, nothing else.

I cling to him. I’m feeling everything: his hard body, the terror of balancing on the precipice, the sharp thud of my heart against his chest. I don’t know how long the moment is—two seconds, ten—but I have never felt this alive before. It’s as if I’ve woken up and found my whole life was a lazy dream, and in reality,thisis living, this quick flame-bright thing.

When the boat tips back, it carries us with it. We slam into the kitchen cabinets, my elbow cracking on the edge of a cupboard door even though I can feel Zeke turning into the impact to try to soften it for me. We don’t part, not even for an instant. I’m crying, crying out. Behind us I hear something break, perhaps the glass of a window. I don’t care. I have him, his body enveloping mine, mine enveloping his. We’re part of the boat now, our bare skin pressed to her straining, creaking boards.

“Hold on for me,” Zeke breathes roughly into my ear. He’s still moving, still sending that heat coursing through me as the waves beat hard at our sides. “Just keep holding on, Lexi. Keep holding on.”

Zeke

We stay there,naked, together. The boat rolls us like we’re coins in a jar. Lexi’s body starts to chill against mine. At some point in the darkness, our flagpole snaps, and the noise of the sail going flying is terrifying enough to get us up off the floor. What we see brings a sound from Lexi I’ve not heard before and never want to hear again.

There’s no way we’ll make it through the night. Dim moonlight leaks through the broken windows and lights long pools of water across the floor, staining the sofa cushions in streaks, and the bathroom floor’s slick with water coming up the shower drain. The crack in the roof’s running like a tap. You can smell the sea everywhere—it’s on us now.

“We’re lower,” Lexi says, voice raised over the rain and the wind. “We’re lower and rocking…we’re going to sink.”

I can’t even reassure her. Usually, we take it in turns to freak out, but there’s nothing else to be done in the face of the facts.

“Get a bowl,” Lexi calls, already scrabbling for her clothes in the darkness. “And start bailing.”

I pull a muscle in my shoulder and break a nail, which sounds like nothing, but is actually bloody and excruciating. Lexi’s sick. Eventually, I am, too. Every so often in the madness and darkness we find each other and press our shaking bodies together, her chin tucked to my chest, her bun bouncing against my jaw, and then we break apart again to try to stay alive.

Then the boat starts to list, nose rising, bedroom dragging backward into the deep. I grab for Lexi in the darkness, my feet slipping on the drenched planks.

“I love you,” I shout, holding her as tightly as I can.

“I love you,” she says. “I love you, Zeke.”

Only this time she doesn’t spin away to keep bailing and scrambling and fixing what’s broken. She sags into me. As if she’s the thing that’s breaking.

“Don’t give up,” I say, but my voice is so hoarse I don’t know if she can catch it.

“I can’t keep going,” she sobs. “I’m just—I’m out. I can’t keep going.”

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