Page 152 of The Love Haters

I wasn’t even listening to myself at this point.

Meanwhile, my brain kindly, frantically, tried to generate some hope.

Maybe we’d be okay. Maybe the winds would push us away from the worst of the storm. Or maybe there was a soft, sandy shore just out ofsight that we could wash up on. Or maybe Robert’s vintage, handmade pontoon houseboat would astonish us all by bobbing pleasantly over the waves all night, rubber-ducky style.

It was possible, anyway.

The world was full of bad luck—but it was full of good luck, too.

Maybe we’d used up all our bad luck for the day.

Or the year.

What would Hutch have done in this situation? Would he have jumped overboard with George Bailey right after the strike and tried to swim to land? Should I have done that? Never mind that if a solid dock had been a tough sell for this dog—a cold black ocean would’ve been impossible. Or maybe it was better that we’d stayed on the boat. Maybe that post-lightning water was full of electricity? How did physics even work?

Dammit.

All those years of school, and I didn’t know anything that could save my life.

No one was coming for us. At least I knew that much.

Hutch wasn’t going tosteal a helicopterand come get us in a hurricane.

We were on our own. With nothing else to do but ride out the storm.

Twenty-Five

RIDE OUTTHEstormdoesn’t capture it, though.

What is it they say about seasickness? First you fear you’ll die, then youhopeyou’ll die, then, after you survive, it feels like you’re dead?

That pretty much captures it.

I assume, as the storm got worse, we floated farther from shore, though I really don’t know for sure. Between the rain and the darkness, I had zero bearings. All I got was bright flashes when lightning cracked across the sky. Then the sea would appear, all around us, the waves like canyons—so scary, I didn’t even want to look. Soon the windows were so covered with sea-foam spray that it was hard to see out of them, anyway—except for the shattered one. Which let in more water with each crashing wave.

The floors were wet. Everything was wet.

And cold.

At first, I was alert—paying attention in every direction to sights and sounds and cracks of thunder. I even found a sheet of paper, thinking I might try to record information, somehow. The number of lightning flashes? Thunder claps at intervals? Vomiting sessions?

Or maybe I could write something—a will, maybe? Some final deep thoughts? A farewell letter that no one would ever see?

So many choices.

But I never did decide. Soon, I was too seasick to write anything at all.

The constant motion was so exhausting. The churn of the water, the shifting of the angles. We’d switch from tilting one direction to fully tilting the other in seconds—over and over. We tipped up on waves that felt almost vertical, and then we crashed back down into the channel between them. The living room chairs and sofa slid back and forth, hitting the walls and piling on top of each other. The refrigerator came unbolted, and all the food fell out.

It was up and down and side to side—randomly and in no order or rhythm. The weirdest part was going weightless for a minute as the waves tossed the boat up—before feeling gravity double as it slammed back down. Sometimes there was a lull in the waves, but other times, a bunch would hit at once. The boat shuddered and clanked and creaked. We got overtaken again and again with seawater. And every hit from the water wanted to break the boat apart—slamming us with a force like sudden car brakes.

I, at least, had a framework for what was happening—but George Bailey couldn’t brace himself and kept skittering across the floor, clawing madly with his paws for traction. During one sharp tilt, he slid all the way into the far corner, shattering a ceramic lamp and cutting his paw in the process.

He yelped, and whimpered, and as he limped back over toward me, refusing to even touch that paw to the floor, he left a trail of blood.

Something about the blood made me feel hopeless.

Or maybe it was the whimpering.

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