Page 82 of If All Else Sails
I know, logically, it’s not laughing at me. But I want to throw something at it anyway.
“Hey,” Wyatt says, catching my eye. His voice is gentler than before. “It’s fine. You were doing fine.”
I nod quickly and take a seat, glad when Jib rushes over and plunks down in my lap. She’s lost one of her boots. I tug her hat off—after all, the sun is now beating down on us—and stroke her ears.
Wyatt’s wrong, of course. I was too far over, past the channel markers. And my brain shorted out and took too long to remember the knowledge I needed immediately. I could have run us aground. The thought of how quickly and easily I messed up has my stomach knotting uncomfortably.
“Josie, I’m serious.”
“I wasn’t paying enough attention,” I say, sounding stubborn. “I lost sight of the channel markers.”
“You’re still learning. It will take time for this to be second nature. If you beat yourself up every time you make a mistake or forget something, you’ll make yourself miserable. Stop.”
“Okay,” I say, but I can tell by the way his frown deepens he hears the same tremor in my voice that I do.
“Come here,” Wyatt says, the command firm but not sharp like when he warned me to watch where I was going.
It’s the kind of authority I can’t help but respond to.
Nudging Jib off my lap, I walk sti?y over to him, squinting in the sun. Wyatt takes one hand off the wheel and steps back a little.
“Here,” he says, but I shake my head.
“I need a minute,” I tell him.
Sighing, he pulls the sunglasses from his face and perches them carefully on my nose. All while steering one-handed with an ease and confidence that makes me envious. His fingertips brush my cheek, and though it’s heating up out here, a shiver moves through me. He curls his hand around my waist, tugging me in front of him, facing the wheel.
I expect him to step back and bark orders the way he usually does. Instead, he returns his other hand to the wheel so I’m now trapped in front of him.
I guess...I don’t mind all that much.
“Hands on the wheel, Rookie,” he orders.
I place my hands on the curve of metal, and he slides his hands closer until they’re bracketing mine.
I expect some kind of sailing lesson to follow or maybe more rebuke telling me to snap out of it. And honestly, he’d be right to do so. I’m violently overreacting.
It’s just...I want to do well. I tackled sailing knowledge like I did all of my academic classes—hard. But also excitedly. I’ve babbled on to Wyatt about things I’ve learned, asked him questions, given myself mental gold stars for my efforts.
I’ve got this, I thought.
But Idon’tgot this. Not any of it.
Having my confidence shaken so early in the trip over something so simple as channel markers has rocked me. My insides feel wobbly. My self-doubt is raging, and I’m trying really hard not to cry.
Which only makes me angry at myself for being an overly sensitive baby about this. I don’t like to think of myself as a delicate flower, but here I am. Delicate. Flowery.
Wyatt says nothing. He simply shelters me against the firmness of his body, his thumbs brushing over my pinkies as we cut through the open water of the Chesapeake Bay.
Slowly, the tightness in my chest loosens and the threat of impending tears dissipates like the morning fog.
“Thank you,” I whisper, not sure if Wyatt can even hear me over the wind and the water.
But he leans forward, cheek brushing mine as he says, “Don’t let it happen again.”
I laugh because it’s so very Wyatt. “I can’t promise I won’t steer us off course again.”
“No—I meant don’t doubt yourself again.”
