“Your family’s office has so many awards. Who is Charles Junior? Your brother?” Willa gives a low whistle. “How many does he have would you say?”
Lane’s face hardens; her jaw flexes and her nose flares. Willa is certain she’s hit the wrong button, that Lane is going to send her out on her ass, but then Lane sighs. Her shoulders drop. She directs an unfocused gaze out of the oversized living room windows. There’s a long, heavy pause and then, “You know what? Okay. Yeah. Why the hell not.”
Willa shouts in excitement, but Lane holds up a finger. “Only enough so that you don’t kill yourself before you even get the anchor up. A few times out. That’s it. I make no promises that you will finish the race, let alone win it.”
“Yes, okay. Understood.” Willa bounces with the effort of not squealing with joy. Lane Cordova is the answer to her prayers. She knew it. And she could still, maybe, kinda, sorta, kiss her for it. Maybe.
Ch. 8
Willa doesn’t hear from Lane right away. Weeks pass, and nothing. Winter rolls in, turning the island still and cold. The shop is dead. The beaches are empty. Bodhi spends most of her time burrowed in her bed, hibernating like a freckled blonde bear, and Willa spends most of her time waiting: waiting for her phone to ring or a text to come, waiting for her endless shifts at the sail shop to be over, waiting for likes and comments, waiting for sleep, waiting for morning. On the coldest day of the season so far, she finally gets a text from Lane, asking for her address and saying she’ll be over in twenty minutes.
Maybe I’m busy, Willa texts back. Presumptuous.
Are you? Lane sends in reply. Willa has spent the last twenty minutes on the couch trying get marshmallows to land on top of one of the slowly spinning fan blades above her. She’s been waiting for Lane to get back to her for ages and had nearly given up. But still. Presumptuous.
I can be available in twenty, Willa replies.
As she gets ready to go, Bodhi emerges, bleary-eyed and wearing only a T-shirt and underwear with a blanket loosely wrapped around her. Her bed-head manages to look casually disheveled, like a celebrity dressed down to go to the grocery store, unlike the frizz-fest that Willa contends with every morning.
“Can I use your foul weather gear?” Willa asks as Bodhi rummages through the once-again-sparse pantry and fridge. The race takes place in the spring, which should mean that Willa won’t have to hustle for sponsored posts to grift for her own insulated and waterproof pants, coat, gloves, boots, and hat.
“Yeah. Training today?” Willa nods. “Awesome,” Bodhi says. “Cold as hell, dude, but awesome.”
Willa goes into Bodhi’s room to bundle up while Bodhi calls someone about meeting for breakfast and then fishing. Willa is pretty sure Bodhi is supposed to work today, but that’s Robin and Jenn’s problem for now. Well, it is every day, really, but today it is not also Willa’s problem. Willa finds the coat and pants in the back of the second bedroom’s closet; they’re both bright blue and thick, made of slippery vinyl fabric. She has to jump to reach the hat and gloves and boots on the top shelf and curses when the rubber boots clatter down onto the hardwood floor. Someone in the bed groans and rolls over, still asleep.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had company?” Willa hisses after closing the door behind her. Don’t they have a system for this? Sock on the doorknob? A head’s up of some sort?
Bodhi shrugs. She’s plunked down cross-legged on the couch, scooping up handfuls of marshmallows and shoving them into her mouth. “It’s just Hunter.”
Willa steps into the pants and pulls the straps over her shoulders, then shrugs on the jacket. “Hunter? Are you guys…?” Last she knew, Bodhi and Hunter were just friends, though, given the lack of options on the island, sometimes “just friends” turns into something else. It’s unfortunate if so, because Hunter hangs around them too much as it is.
“It’s whatever.” Bodhi’s response is garbled by a mouthful of marshmallows.
“Okay then,” Willa says, as if Bodhi’s answer means anything. She’s pulling on the high, stiff boots when the doorbell rings. “Got it.” Willa limps over, one boot partly on, opens the door to Lane, and says, with more than little irritation that she’s early, “Gimme a sec.”
Lane steps inside and sweeps a long, assessing gaze around the living room and kitchen. Willa finishes gearing up, glad that she was bored enough this morning to clean, though Lane clearly thinks so little of her that Willa isn’t sure she could sink much lower, even with a filthy house.
“You have foul weather gear? I thought—” Bundled up in her own gear, Lane stops and glances at Bodhi. “I thought you… quit a while ago.”
Thankful for Lane’s decision to lean into Willa’s lie, she decides to be more polite. “It’s Bodhi’s. Would you like something to drink? Water?” And on her way to the kitchen, she nods toward the couch. “This is my roommate Bodhi. Bodhi, Lane.”
“Hey,” Bodhi says, then holds up the bag of marshmallows in offering.
“I’m— I’m good. And I’m good on water too. We should really get going.”
“Okay. I’ll just get water for myself.” Willa checks the cup cabinet, the dishwasher, the cabinet with a disorganized and random collection of plastic storage containers. “Bo, have you seen my water bottle?”
Bodhi stands to help, and, as she does, the blanket wrapped around her slips from her shoulders, revealing just how little she’s wearing. Lane snaps her eyes to the ceiling, crosses her arms tightly across her chest, and yells, voice strained, “I have water, can we go.”
“Okay, god. Sorry.” Willa grabs her keys and phone and tugs a knit wool hat onto her head; her curls stick out like tufts of clown hair from the sides. “Let’s go.” Lane discovering Willa lived in a dirty, unkempt house would have been better, it turns out, than learning that she lives with a weird half-naked slacker who eats fistfuls of marshmallows for breakfast.
Lane drives them to the other side of the island, the sound-side, the southern tip of which is mostly a protected nature preserve, and then to an area where large, beautiful homes sit tucked back in the woods, facing away from the sound, all with their own private docks and slips with jet skis and multiple boats parked like a show-and-tell of wealth. Lane turns onto a narrow dirt road and drives up to a stately brick house hidden demurely behind two massive magnolia trees.
“You live here?” Willa is unable to keep the awe out of her voice.
“My parents live here. But this is where my boat is docked.” Lane turns off the car and pauses with her hands on the keys. “Your roommate. She’s…” Lane seems unable to decide how she wants to finish that sentence.
A weirdo? Willa guesses. “She’s like, a free spirit. I dunno. It’s annoying sometimes; there is such a thing as too easy-going, you know? But it’s a good energy to be around.” Willa unbuckles, and Lane does the same. “Bodhi’s good people.”
Lane nods, though her expression seems to indicate she’s unsatisfied with that answer. “And she sails?”
“Oh. Yeah,” Willa says, catching on now. “But not competitively. And she doesn’t know, you know, that I can’t.”
“Right.” Lane gets out of the car and walks at her purposeful pace toward the house, and Willa scrambles to catch up. They walk behind the house, past a double garage, through woods, then across the wetlands, where the line of trees gives way to shrubs, which give way to swishing sea grass and thick mud. They walk single file down a dock, and beneath them small crabs scuttle away from the thump of their footsteps. As the dock leads them over shallow water, small schools of fish dart around the wooden posts. The wind slices across the water and hits like ice on the bits of skin that Willa’s gear isn’t covering. Three boats are moored down a floating slip: a large daysailer, a sleek motorboat designed for water sports, and a tidy little RS Elite keelboat.
“You know, I do have a boat,” Willa points out. It may be a borrowed one that is no
where near as nice as Lane’s, but still.
Lane shakes her head. “It’ll be faster to show you on mine.” Of course. Willa wouldn’t expect Lane to spend any more time with her than is absolutely necessary. “Come on.” Lane climbs into the boat with practiced ease and waits expectantly. The wind rocks the boat up and down and side to side. Up close it looks so small and insubstantial, and the ocean so rough and powerful. Willa shivers and not because of the cold. She steps forward.
Ch. 9
As Willa lowers herself into the boat, the wind feels even colder, as sharp as thorns whipping against her, blowing her hair into her face. She shoves all of her hair under her hat, then shivers as the wind licks across her newly exposed neck. The boat bobs and sways as she and Lane check the rudder and lines, then hoist the mainsail, which rattles and rocks the boat back and forth with each gust. It seems foreboding: a warning that this a really bad idea. But Willa does as she’s told because she trusts that Lane knows what she’s doing; she has to.
This is it, the moment that she finally becomes the person she’s been pretending to be. She should be excited. She should be relieved. But instead she can’t stop trembling so hard that her teeth chatter and her voice shakes and her legs repeatedly threaten to go out from under her.
Lane barks instructions and scowls, a lot, and, when Willa does something wrong, she snatches the ropes and hooks from her gloved hands. “The topping lift is too loose, we need to watch out for the boom in this wind. Tighten it.”
“Say please,” Willa replies to Lane’s yelled command, then nearly falls into her lap when the boom yanks her forward.
“Carefully.” Lane uses her foot to push Willa upright. “Jesus.”
Willa sets her jaw and fumes; it’s been nothing but yelling and eye rolling and cursing at Willa’s incompetence. How is she supposed to know what to do? Isn’t that why they’re here? And it’s freezing cold; the bitter wind fills her eyes with tears and makes her fingers ache even through the gloves. It’s almost as if Lane intentionally picked the most miserable day to do this, as if she wants Willa to suffer.
“Not like that,” Lane barks, again, when Willa does something wrong.
Willa spins around, body aching, tears in her eyes from the wind and from frustration. “I’m trying my best!”
“Well, your best isn’t good enough,” Lane yells back.
Willa spins back around, yanks the line from its winch in order to re-cleat it, tighter, but due to the combination of her anger at Lane, her frozen fingers and watery eyes, and the ominous, angry wind, the line slips free from her grasp. Lane reacts fast, instinctively diving for the heavy wood beam that makes up the boom, which is swinging back toward Willa. But Lane can’t stop the strong forward momentum, and Willa can’t get out of the way fast enough; the boom hits her in the gut and sends her falling backward, arms helplessly flailing at her sides as she goes airborne.
The water is so cold it punches the breath out of her.
And then she slips under and can’t take a breath in.
Is she dead? Would she be wondering that, if she was? No. Then no, not dead. Not yet. She’s disoriented. Everything is water, gray and opaque. She can’t tell which way the surface is, can’t find the sun or sky through the endless gray around her. She’s shocked by the cold. Her brain is slow to fire off synapses; her limbs are even slower to respond when she does. Swim, she thinks. Move. Her lungs ache, desperate for a breath. She can’t last much longer. Blackness spins in front of her eyes.
And then she’s tugged, up, up, like a fish on a hook, and deposited on the boat deck, sputtering and gasping for air.
Lane stands over her, eyes wide and wild and hand still twisted in the collar of Willa’s jacket. “Seriously? You’re just gonna drown?” As if Willa did it on purpose, just to annoy her. Still heaving lungfuls of air and violently shivering, Willa can’t do more than blink up at Lane.
Lane shakes her head, then pulls Willa up by the scruff of her neck. “Come on.”
Willa shuffles along, leaving a trail of freezing water, shivering and struggling to follow Lane to the house. Lane retrieves a key from her car and takes Willa inside through a back utility room, then tells her to wait in a downstairs guest bathroom. It’s bigger and nicer by far than the bathroom Willa shares with Bodhi and blissfully warm. Willa stands under a vent, face upturned, letting the gentle heat wash over her. The water-resistant foul weather gear more or less did its job; only her head and hands got truly soaked. She takes off the hat and gloves and plops them, sopping and heavy, on the marble-topped counter. Her feet are wet but not waterlogged, just damp inside of her boots. Cold water seeped in through the open collar at her neck and down her chest and back and made a damp line across her shoulders and down her chest. She drops the coat on the floor. The joggers she’s wearing under the waterproof overalls are wet at the waist and ankle, bands of cold damp against her skin.
“Here.” Lane returns with a stack of clothes, thrusting them out to Willa as if they’re playing a game of hot potato.
“It’s not that bad.” Willa turns away. “Can I just use a towel—”
“Not those!” Willa pauses at Lane’s outburst, stopping before she can grab one of the fluffy, pristinely white towels from a towel rack. “Those are decorative. Hold on.”
Decorative. Willa eyes the towels which look like the big bath towels she uses at home, only newer and much more plush. Why have towels no one uses? They have towels in the cottage set aside for summer guests, but people use them. What kind of guest are they expecting? A surgeon ready to scrub in, right here in this sterile bathroom? Lane returns with a dark green towel that doesn’t look much different from the forbidden white ones, but Willa takes it and dries her face and hair, which forms into tufts of frizz.
“You should still change,” Lane says, still giving orders. Willa should find that irritating, but now that she’s thawing out a bit it’s starting to dawn on her that Lane sort of saved her life.
“Okay, I will.” She tucks the towel against her chest. “Um, thanks. For. Ya know.”
Lane dips her chin and walks backward out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her. When Willa emerges a few minutes later, she’s dressed in a pink velour track suit that says “juicy” on the butt, paired with thick wool men’s socks, and Lane is nowhere to be seen. Willa pads through a formal living room that’s outfitted with furniture made of heavy wood and shining leather and gives off the same untouched air as the forbidden towels. She passes an office and a dining room filled with more polished wood and glossy leather, then walks into a den that is also outfitted with expensive-looking new furniture but that at least looks as if humans inhabited it sometime in the past decade. There’s a stone fireplace with a stone mantel. There are paintings on the walls but no pictures, nothing personal, nothing to indicate anyone lives here at all. It’s so strange.
“Willa?” She follows the sound of Lane’s voice into a kitchen with gleaming appliances and more marble countertops. “Did you get lost?”
Willa casts a glance back at the den. “Yeah, a little.”
Lane gives her an assessing look, then says, “Uh. Sorry about the outfit. Had to grab something my Mom wouldn’t miss.”
“Oh.” Willa looks down at the flared-leg pink pants. She was so happy to be warm she barely gave the clothes a second glance. “Yeah, it’s pretty terrible,” she says, then winces at how ungrateful she sounds. Willa is strictly a board shorts, joggers, hoodies, and T-shirts over a bathing suit kind of person, but Lane could have just let her go home wet and cold.
To her shock, Lane gives her a kind look and sets a cup of steaming coffee on the counter. “I don’t know, you’re kind of pulling it off.” She hands Willa a mug and stands close enough to be disconcerting. “Drink some. I don’t want you to get hypothermia.”
“I— I’m fine.” Willa says, but wraps her hands around the warm mug anyway. She’s war
y of Lane’s nice act. Is she getting Willa comfortable before she unleashes an angry lecture about how badly Willa screwed up and if she would just listen—
Catching Willa off-guard, Lane apologizes. “Uh. Some of my inner demons came out there. Those are supposed to stay buried, so that’s unfortunate.” She laughs, but it’s tight and sharp, cold like the ocean water still clinging to Willa’s hair.
“That’s— I—” Scowl gone, face lit by the huge picture window in the kitchen, Lane is beautiful. Her chin is dipped, her lashes are dark against her cheeks, and her lips are softly downturned. “It’s okay,” Willa says, voice shaky—from the water, she thinks.
“Though, in my defense, you’re really bad at it.”
Willa’s eyes narrow, sympathy evaporating. “Right. Okay.”
“I mean, way worse than I thought and that was already a very low bar.”
“Maybe I need a different instructor then,” Willa snaps, reacting instead of thinking.
Lane nods. “You’re right. I don’t know if I’m the best person for this, Willa.”
“Oh,” Willa says. She tries to backtrack, to tell Lane that they can just try again because she really is Willa’s last and only hope, but Lane catches her off-guard once more, reaching out to Willa’s face and stopping with her fingertips a breath away from Willa’s mouth. For the second time today, Willa freezes.
“Your lips are blue.” Lane moves her hand away.
Ch. 10
Willa hasn’t been able to get warm for days. It doesn’t matter how many blankets or layers she puts on, she shivers, and her fingers are like ice, and her nose is numb with cold, as if the freezing ocean water has seeped into her bones. She can’t stop thinking about the moment she hit the water; her lungs seize at the memory. And she can’t stop thinking about Lane and the strange moment of vulnerability in the Cordova’s home.
Tack & Jibe Page 4
