Lane lifts her hands in an exasperated gesture. “I came to check on my parents’ house because they’re out of town and I heard talking— Why am I explaining myself? Why are you here?”
“Uh.” Willa tries to buy herself some time. A curtesy boat check? Sleepwalking? The wind gusts, and the boat lurches forward. Willa stumbles and flails, then grabs blindly for whatever rope is nearest. “Well, I’m…”
“You’re sailing away!” Lane says.
“Yes,” Willa acknowledges. She is, it seems, doing just that. “But I swear I’ll be right back. Just—” The boat sways to the side, bumping along the dock, out of control. Willa reaches out to push the boat away and out farther into the water, but only scrapes her palms on the dock. “Shit, ow. Super quick!”
“Willa, there’s a storm coming tonight, and you don’t know how to work a boat that big. You need to come back.” Lane jogs down the dock until there’s no dock left.
Willa watches Lane and the dock slip away behind her. The boat rapidly picks up speed as it ricochets out of the shallow water. A storm. She doesn’t know how. The waves are so much bigger and more violent that Willa realized; the wind is so much stronger. Another roll of thunder rumbles nearby, and Willa feels seasick. She holds on to the sturdy mast in the center of the boat, closes her eyes, takes deep breaths, and tries to not puke. Okay, she just has to turn around. Just figure out which line releases the boom so she can figure out how to turn the boat. That’s all. Only she can’t seem to let go of the mast. Or open her eyes. Oh, no.
Then there’s a loud thump, and a louder string of curse words, and Willa opens her eyes to find Lane sprawled on the deck.
Ch. 24
Lane groans and sits up. “I hurt my ankle.” She rubs at her right ankle, then hisses.
“Oh, my god,” Willa says. Lane must have launched herself from the edge of the dock; she’s lucky if she only twisted her ankle a bit. “Why did you do that?”
“You froze up! What was I supposed to do?” Lane tries to stand; she hisses and sits back down. “Plus, you were stealing my parents’ boat.”
“I was borrowing it!” Willow protests, but her indignation doesn’t last long. The boat rocks dangerously after a huge gust of wind and then slams into a wave. Willa collapses next to Lane, and is suddenly so, so grateful that Lane stupidly launched herself into the moving boat. In a small, trembling voice, Willa asks, “What do we do now?”
Lane watches the way the sails catch the wind, then scans the shore. They aren’t too far out, though the boat has begun to make it around and out of the sound and is heading toward the open ocean. They aren’t too far from where the race course began, and, with the wind and Lane’s know-how, it shouldn’t take Willa long at all. She’s come this far.
“It’s not too late to head back,” Lane says, straining to reach for a rope. “I just need a little help.”
“No!” Willa knocks the rope away. “I can’t go back.”
“Willa, what is wrong with—”
“I can’t. Please.” Willa hates the way Lane is looking at her, as though she’s some out of control child and she hates even more that she feels like one. “I’ve lost everything. My job and my friends and my reputation and my… followers,” she adds the last one weakly, sheepish, but that meant something to her. All those people who saw the person that she wanted to be mattered to her. Of course, now that she’s dropped her phone into the ocean, this whole redemption cruise will be a harder sell. It’s not just for the followers though; it’s so Willa knows that she can still be that person at least one more time before she has to leave it all behind. “This is all I have, Lane. I need to do this. I need a win. I know you understand what that’s like.”
Lane frowns. Her eyes dart from Willa to the turbulent sails to the black clouds. “Oh, god. Okay.” She shakes her head. “This is so reckless, but okay.” She scoots toward the back of the boat. “I’ll take the rudder; you follow my instructions.”
They get the boat on course; the two of them work in perfect tandem to steer it on the choppy waves, carefully adjusting the sails to the whipping wind. The storm descends in increments, slowly consuming them instead of hitting all at once: It grows dark first, darker than dusk, then darker than nightfall. The hairs on Willa’s arm stand on end from the crackling electricity. The boat itself groans and creaks, protesting the storm. At the rudder, Lane uses all of her strength to push and pull. She shoves her shoulder into the handle and braces herself with her good foot. The mast bends against Willa’s efforts to hold the sails steady; the ropes are pulled so tight they cut into her hands. Waves curl over the side of the boat and splash across Willa’s feet. Her sneakers slip and slide as if the deck is made of ice. But they’re close, so close. Lightning slithers across the sky, and thunder claps a low, angry roar. Willa shivers, sets her teeth, and stands her ground. Then one of the sails rips.
“Damn,” Lane says. “We need to take in the sails.”
“What?” Willa glances back. Lane is pale faced; her hair sticks in sweaty clumps to her face. Willa realizes that Lane’s exhausted as well. “We’re almost there! We have to keep going!”
“If we keep going, we won’t have a boat left to make it there!” Lane yells. “Take in the sails, Willa!”
Willa hesitates, torn between her own need to finish this no matter how dangerous and the reality that Lane is right and they’re in danger of losing the sails altogether, maybe even snapping the mast or rudder. Fighting the wind and water and her own reckless instincts, Willa releases the tension on the line she’s holding and frees the sail.
Lane tries to help as much as she can, but Willa has to haul in the lines, drop the sails, and lock the tiller to leeward. Then, nearly spent, she helps Lane hobble across the slick deck and down the stairs to the small cabin space.
“So, we’re just drifting now?” Willa says, panting and weak in the entryway of the cabin. The cabin is no bigger than a walk-in closet with much less headroom. A U-shaped sitting area takes up most of the floor space, and there’s a tiny kitchenette and tinier bathroom. Its shining caramel-colored wood and white leather accents give it a certain elegance. And, unlike the Cordova’s home, it’s filled with personal items. A fishing hat is nestled into the small shelf that runs above the seats; a floppy white sunhat is tucked companionably next to it. There are well-loved books and a stack of board games, a pair of binoculars and a canister of fancy herbal tea. There’s even a picture of Lane’s whole family: her parents and brother and a younger Lane smiling on the deck of this same boat. Her family seems to be happy only when they’re gone; it must have been so hard for Lane to give that up and stay in one place.
“That was when they first got it,” Lane says. “Our first trip out.” She ducks, carefully makes her way to the edge of a cushion, and drops down with an obvious wince. “There’s water and towels in the floor compartment; grab me one of each.” She nods at a handle tucked flat into the floorboards; it’s a cabinet that’s hidden below the seating area. There’s food, too, Willa discovers as she curiously opens and closes all the little hidden nooks and crannies to find just dry goods and some jugs of water. “And no,” Lane says, finally answering Willa’s question. “Since we lashed the helm in place, the bow will be kept to windward of the beam. It should hold us steady.”
Willa collects two bottles of water and hands one to Lane. Then she opens the bathroom closet and realizes it’s not big enough to change in and there isn’t anywhere to strip off her damp clothes in private.
“I need to—” Lane plucks at her soaked shirt.
Despite being on a boat getting tossed around at sea during a storm with no one at the helm, Willa’s most pressing concern is the awkwardness of the situation and the memory of the last time they were nearly naked in front of each other.
“I’ll just—” Willa turns away, coming nose-to-nose with the wall and hunched over like an old witch in a kids’ movi
e. She waits until Lane gives the okay, then tugs off her wet shirt. She sits on the other side of the U in her board shorts and bathing suit top.
Lane, wearing less beneath her towel, stretches out, propping her injured ankle on a seat back. Too much of her bare leg shows when the towel slips off her strong thigh. Willa has to look away. “It’s swollen,” she says, eyes fixed on Lane’s ankle.
“Yeah. Hurts too.”
The boat rocks and sways, waves slap the side, thunder and lightning chase each other in a rapid series of flashes and booms.
“Now what?”
“You keep saying that,” Lane replies.
“Well, you’re the one who knows what they’re doing here.”
Lane leans back on her elbow; more of the towel slips off her thigh. “I don’t sail in storms. Never took the chance. I couldn’t have done that without you. I wouldn’t have done that without you.” She takes an audible breath and looks at Willa with dark, serious eyes. “So, Willa. Now what?”
Ch. 25
Lane looks at her expectantly, as if Willa has any idea of what to do. The boat rocks hard enough that some books and the binoculars fall to the floor.
“Are we in like, immediate danger?” Willa says, with a nervous glance at a porthole window. Lane makes a noise that Willa does not find reassuring. Willa really screwed up here. Again. It wasn’t bad enough that she’s put herself at risk, stole a boat, and lost her phone. She’s put Lane in danger too. “I’m sorry,” Willa says, not sure what she should apologize for first. “I can’t get anything right. I’m such a fuck-up, I’m sorry.”
With some effort, Lane sits up. “Willa, we’re gonna be fine.”
Willa shakes her head; tears cloud her vision. “I’m not.”
Lane is quiet, then says, “My parents always keep a bottle of wine here. Check in that skinny cabinet next to the stove. Corkscrew should be in the drawer above.”
Willa gives her a quizzical look, then does what Lane instructed, finding a bottle of red wine that has a label written entirely in Italian and is probably very expensive. “Is now really the time?” Willa wonders, handing everything over to Lane.
“If there was ever a time for wine, this is it.”
They skip the glasses, instead passing the bottle back and forth. It’s bitter and harsh to Willa’s untrained palate—when she drinks it’s usually tequila shots or cheap beer or something pink and fruity—but after a few swallows the wine becomes warm and velvety on her tongue.
“Better?” Lane’s eyes are bright when she takes the bottle back; her cheeks and lips are flushed. Willa notices that her hair, usually so perfectly straight and styled without a strand out of place, is drying in messy, fluffy waves. It makes her look sweeter, Willa thinks, softer at the edges.
“Better,” Willa says.
“My last race,” Lane starts, taking a swig of wine, then setting the bottle between her bare knees, “I knew I had to go out with a bang. Nothing but first place was good enough, not like it ever was, but. I trained my ass off. It was like, if I could just get that one last big win, then giving it all up would be fine. My parents had been pressuring me to join my brother at their office here and start doing these showy yacht club regattas instead of comps. But it didn’t matter that it was the last thing I wanted, because I was going out on top and they’d be proud of me. That’s what I told myself anyway.”
“And you did,” Willa guesses. “Of course you did.” Lane is amazing and actually has her life together and is not a complete disaster of a human like Willa.
Lane passes the wine back. “You feel as if no one will love you for you, only for what you can do or what you can offer them, right? With my family, hell everyone I’ve been close to, that’s exactly how it was. As long as I was sailing and winning races I could justify giving up all these pieces of myself.”
Willa sips the wine, wipes her mouth, and says, “Yeah. That’s crap though. I mean, if they don’t love you for you, then they don’t deserve to be in your life. Cuz you’re awesome.” Lane lifts an eyebrow.
“Oh,” Willa says. That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? The boat lurches dangerously, and Willa has to grab for the wine as it pitches toward the floor.
Lane tips her head in acknowledgement. “Anyway, my last race. After hovering in the middle of the pack for a while, I got a break and started to pull ahead. Third place, then second. I pushed myself to the absolute limit, way past what I should have, but I could taste it, you know?” Willa offers her the wine bottle, but she doesn’t take it. She’s too busy gesturing and leaning close to tell the story; she has a distant look in her eyes as if she’s right back there in the action, so close to victory and, perhaps, to proving her own worth to everyone who has convinced her that she doesn’t have it.
“So finally, on the last leg, I’m gaining on the first place position. I cut left, close, helm to stern. But that’s as close as I can get, no matter what I do. Now, you’re supposed to give a warning when you pass that closely. That’s a hard rule because it’s a safety issue. But they hadn’t noticed me, and I thought: I need an advantage. I justified it by telling myself that I had no choice. So I cut closer and decided to not to alert them. And—” She hits the palm of one hand against the fingers of the other. “They shifted port just a little, and we collided. Their boat was okay, but I was disqualified. That was the end for me.”
Willa’s head is swimming from the wine and the way the boat is swaying and a little bit from the way Lane leaned close while telling her story. The towel fell loose from her shoulders as she grew more and more animated.
“Just like—” Willa says.
“Just like you. Only I knew better.” Lane, noticing how low her towel has fallen, blushes and shrugs it up higher. “You’re not a screw-up. After that race, after being forced to come crawling back to my parents to a job I never wanted, I stopped trying. But, god, you try so hard, Willa. Please never be ashamed of that.”
The boat sways, or maybe it’s just Willa, and she finds herself listing forward, holding on to Lane’s shoulders to keep herself steady. Moving in just a breath more to kiss Lane, soft and slow, seems like the most natural, the most right thing she’s ever done.
Willa moves away to catch her breath, far enough to check with Lane and make sure that was okay, though the way Lane responded, with hands immediately cupping Willa’s jaw and mouth moving against hers and the high, wanting whine she gave when Willa pulled away seemed to be an enthusiastic yes. But still. Things have been weird between them, and Lane sort of panicked on her last time they tried this, so better be sure.
“Are you—” Lane’s eyes are still closed; her face is lifted and mouth slightly pursed. It makes Willa chuckle. “Um. Are you sure…”
Lane’s eyes pop open, and irritation crosses her face. It’s a look Willa has believed to be her fault for being an idiot, but it seems to just be the way Lane is wired with a filter-free expression of emotions rather than Willa’s approach, which is to pretend everything is fine even as it all crashes down around her.
Lane shakes her head, as if to clear it. “You’re right, maybe I— I’ve had too much wine.” She frowns, and Willa’s heart sinks. She did it again, ruined the moment. Then Lane heaves a breath. “Look, I’m not totally comfortable with you and Bodhi’s whole thing. But I can deal with it, if that’s what you— Maybe I’m just old? Dating is so confusing nowadays.”
Willa squints, fuzzy with the wine and the lingering effects of kissing Lane, and runs that over in her head a few times before it sinks in. “Me… and Bodhi? What… What thing?”
“You know the—” She waves a hand. “Open relationship? Polyamory? Is that the term you all prefer? It’s just not my thing? No judgement! I looked it up. I’m fine with it. Or, I’m sort of not but—”
“Wait.” Lane stops rambling. Willa focuses her thoughts. “Bodhi and I do not have any sort of relationship. Open or
otherwise.”
Lane’s mouth parts in surprise. “Oh.”
This is ridiculous. Lane couldn’t have possibly thought— All this time— “I thought you were into Bodhi!” Giddiness mingles with confusion, and Willa almost laughs. It’s not funny, not yet. “The way you were looking at her at the party, I thought…”
“Oh, that.” Lane blushes. “You saw that. I mean, she’s quite attractive? For so long I hadn’t let myself look at attractive women without convincing myself that I wasn’t looking. So maybe I…” She frowns. “Maybe I was being a little obvious.”
Willa laughs, then Lane laughs. The situation is absurd, she thought Lane liked Bodhi and Lane thought she was with Bodhi, and if Bodhi was here she would think it was hilarious too. Well, if she didn’t hate Willa for being a liar, she would. That thought is sobering enough for Willa to focus back on Lane. Does that mean then that Lane is actually into her?
“So,” Willa says, moving back into Lane’s space. “Have you been looking at me?”
Lane nibbles on her lip coyly. “As a matter of fact—”
Crack!
They both startle. Something happened above them on the deck; a lightning strike or something snapping off in the high wind.
“I’ll go,” Willa says, without a moment’s hesitation, and climbs up, right into the storm.
“Willa, wait!”
Ch. 26
The mast has broken just as they worried it might; it snapped in two right under the top spreader. The upper portion is now flapping loose in the wind, banging against the intact bottom portion. The jib has fallen limp, leaving no mainsail to keep the boat on course. Without it they have nothing to hold them steady against the wind and waves, nothing to stop the storm from tossing them about aimlessly. She has to lower it, Willa realizes, then take control of the tiller and steer the boat with it and the smaller secondary sails as best as she can. Fighting against the wind and the violent waves, Willa pulls and pulls, rain blinding her, slipping and grunting, and manages to get the mainsail down and the secondary sails up.
Tack & Jibe Page 11
