Page 89 of An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love
We glide past the alligators, who don’t even open their eyes, and continue on for another half hour or more. Time doesn’t seem to behave the same way in the quiet of these watery tunnels. Suddenly, one of the girls up front is calling back, “It’s eleven. Shall we?”
“Yes, please,” Amanda says.
“Shall we what?” I ask.
“You’ll see! I can’t ruin the surprise.”
“Does this involve swimming? I didn’t bring a towel.”
The others just laugh.
“Did you bring your appetite?” Francis asks.
Wondering if they somehow packed a picnic without me noticing, I nod eagerly. “I could definitely eat.”
But they don’t stop on a sandy bank and reveal a picnic basket; we keep paddling toward some small buildings on the water’s edge that I never would have looked at twice. They’re ramshackle, to say the least. One of them appears to be a boat repair place, whichmakes sense given the location. It looks like these places can only be reached by boat, but that wouldn’t make sense, would it?
I am so confused. But still optimistic. There used to be a famous poke bowl place in Seattle that was hidden inside a gas station, so. Anything could happen.
Francis is the first one to tie his kayak to the dock and hop up the ladder. “Honey, we’re home!”
“Does he live here?” I whisper.
Amanda bursts out laughing. “No, he’s just a clown.”
We all follow Francis inside the place. I’m expecting an office building or something, but it’s a restaurant. A tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. (Maybe hole-in-the-marina would be a more apt description.) It smells vaguely of Lysol and fish. But I decide to put on a brave face and be game for anything.
An older gentleman who towers above all of us, with a mop of thick gray hair and a face that’s never been touched by sunscreen, gestures to a table by the window. For all Francis’s familiarity, the man doesn’t seem particularly familiar with the group as he hands around some menus and lists the two daily specials. Until Francis asks about the weather, and his eyes animate.
“Seen the storm forecasts, have you?” he asks in a gravelly smoker’s voice.
“I know you have, Buddy.” I internally cringe at Francis calling him buddy—seems a little too try-hard—before I realize that that’s his actual name.
They trade a few back-and-forths about the likelihood of seeing the season’s first hurricane this weekend. I’d forgotten about hurricane season. That’s one rather large silver lining to my situation: leaving town before hurricane season starts in earnest.
Before we have time to look at the menu, let alone discuss it, one of the other girls—Melissa—orders for the table. I’m a littleshocked, but also a little relieved. I’m not expecting much, so I’m fine with whatever other people are eating.
A few minutes later, Buddy drops off a veritable feast of seafood. A shrimp cocktail, fried scallops, a huge platter of raw clams, and a whole crab surrounded by piles of steak-cut fries. He returns with a dozen little silver cups of ketchup, mayonnaise, and tartar sauce. And maybe I’m extra hungry from the kayaking, or maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, but this is without a doubt one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever had.
“Oh my God,” I say repeatedly, slurping down clams topped with vinegary hot sauce, and dredging morsels of crab through melted butter.
“I think she likes it.”
“Don’t they have seafood up in Seattle?”
“Of course, but it’s different. We don’t have clams like this, that’s for sure. I’ve never had clams, actually.”
This gets some appreciative hoots, and Amanda asks Buddy to bring us another dozen. As we demolish the food, I’m awash with the group’s easy conversation and laughter. I haven’t asked how Amanda met these friends—I’m not even positive about a few of their names—but that doesn’t seem to matter right now. It’s just the atmosphere. The easy way their chatter flits from kayaking, to triathlons, to family drama, to a concert they saw recently, to Fourth of July plans. There’s nothing stilted: no awkward pauses, no introductory questions, no effort to catch up on recent events in each other’s lives. It’s justeasy. I wonder if—not like this would ever happen, butif—I lived here, whether I would be part of this friend group. Amanda seems to like me enough to invite me to hang out with them. I imagine it for a minute: what my life would look like. Catching up with Amanda at her bar, spending weekends doing outdoorsy things with this group, being invited to their birthdayparties and barbecues. I see myself riding my bike to work in the perennial sunshine—to some hazy, imaginary job—and returning home in the evenings to drink a glass of chilled rosé in the sunroom of Pebble Cottage.
Okay, Mallory.I straighten up, wipe my mouth with a paper napkin, and chug my tall glass of lukewarm water. No point going down that imaginary road. I’ll just enjoy the moment now and not worry about the fact that it won’t be repeated.
Chapter 30
It’s Sunday afternoon and I have made an enormous mistake.
I decided to work on the flooring without Daniel; after all, he has a life, and I can’t keep spending hours with him one-on-one. It’s not good for my sanity.
But I must have already lost my mind when I decided to attempt this myself. I’ve fastened down the vinyl boards across almost the entire living room—feeling obnoxiously proud of myself all the while—only to realize that I completely screwed up. The room isn’t entirely rectangular, and the way I started the planks along the longest wall means I’ll have to cut the remaining ones and finagle them to fit the room and it will look completely wrong. Frantic googling has led me to understand that the only solution is to start over, and that I was supposed to start laying the planks in the doorway—not along the opposite wall.
