Smash!
Somehow I manage to get the soup in the saucepot without spilling, though that last impact nearly threw me off balance. I had a complete disaster with the eggs the other day.
Tai yells something inaudibly from up top, so I go up the stairs and peer into the cockpit.
It’s soaking wet, like a wave just crashed over.
Tai is at the wheel, wearing a red Helly Hansen rain slicker. Richard is at the side of the boat, dressed in a yellow one that’s too big for him, trying to pull in a sail.
Both of them have life jackets on, which is now required if you’re going up top. Tai said earlier if this front gets nastier, anyone up top will have to be tethered to the boat with a cable, just in case.
I don’t want to admit it, but I’m scared.
Lacey is scared too, that’s why she went to her cabin to lie down, and took a bunch of her anxiety medication, pills that I very much want right now.
“What is it?” I yell at Tai. “Is everything okay?”
It’s hard to keep the panic out of my voice.
“It’s fine,” Tai says gruffly, spinning the wheel like he’s trying to gain control of the boat. “I need you to close any open hatches. Waves are getting bigger.”
“Okay!” I tell him, happy to be doing something to help.
I go back downstairs and head to the open hatch over the couch. I get on the couch, reaching up for it but it’s stiff, like the sea salt has rusted it in place.
I try with all my might to pull it down but no luck. It’s like my muscles have atrophied from being away from the gym for so long.
I growl at the stubborn hatch, hating that I couldn’t do it myself, further proving that I’m more or less useless, then head back up to Tai.
“It’s stuck,” I tell him reluctantly as a wave sprays over the side, nearly getting me.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he grumbles, just like I knew he would. We’ve been getting pretty close to each other on our night shifts, but when it comes to anything to do with the boat or the ocean, he gets pretty worked up. It’s like the old man and the sea every day. Ahab and Moby Dick, except there is no whale, it’s just the ocean.
“Want me to take the wheel?” Richard asks, ropes in his hands.
“No, I’ll put her on autopilot for a second.” Tai angrily pushes a button at the helm and then storms over to me.
I quickly go down the stairs and get out of the way before he jumps down.
“I could take the wheel,” I offer. I know he doesn’t like to use the autopilot on the boat because he says it can be finicky.
He gives me a loaded look—yeah right—and moves swiftly to the couch, just as grinding noise fills the cabin.
The boat suddenly lurches to the left, like we’ve swung halfway around.
Boom!
We slam sideways into a trough and water goes flying over the side of the boat.
Over the open hatch.
Down into the couch.
Drenching everything.
I can see Tai’s face turn an angry shade of red right before Richard lets out a girlish yelp from up top, which would have been funny had this not been such a dangerous situation.
In a fury, Tai pushes past me and hoists himself upstairs.
Meanwhile, seawater continues to pour down the hatch.
And now Lacey is up, stumbling out of her cabin, her hair a mess from sleeping.
“What’s happening? Where is Richard?”
I don’t have time to tell her because I’m not sure what’s happening.
I fly up the stairs to the cockpit, holding onto the handles so I don’t fall, and see Richard at the wheel, trying to steer the boat, spinning it between his hands.
Tai gets him to move over and takes control.
“I almost fell overboard,” Richard says, his face white as a ghost, spray covering his glasses. “Thank god I held onto the boom.”
He looks at Tai, whose face is furrowed in concentration as he brings the boat center again. Looks like we almost swung all the way to the direction we came from, though to be honest, with all these waves and this grey, dark sky, it’s hard to tell.
“It’s the autopilot,” Tai says, smacking the wheel. “The fucker gave out.” He looks at Richard. “You did the right thing by grabbing the wheel. Make sure you never touch the autopilot going forward, got it?” He looks at me and Lacey. “That goes for you both as well.”
“Are we going to be okay?” Lacey asks as we hit another wave. She grips the handles by the stairs and I lean against the boat, distributing my weight for balance.
“We should be fine,” Tai says. “This is the tail end of the front. Wind isn’t too bad, there’s no rain. The waves should ease a bit but even so, if anyone is up here, I think we should start clipping on to the boat. Just in case. There’s another system moving in tomorrow and I have no idea how that’s going to go. It’s going to push us to the east, which is a shame. Might need an extra day to tack upwind and get to Suva.”
We all nod silently. It’s not the best news, but at least this is going to die down soon.
Only problem is that fucking hatch.
The entire couch is soaked.
AKA my bed.
I don’t want to bug Tai about it, not now, so I motion for Lacey to head back down the stairs and then the two of us go about trying to close it. It’s tough, and standing on the couch is like standing on a waterbed that sprung a leak, but together we manage to close the hatch.
“Some honeymoon, huh?’ Lacey says, going over to the loveseat and sitting beside my luggage, leaning against it tiredly. There’s a silly face on it now that someone drew with a marker. I wiped half of it off and then left it, figuring it’s probably Tai’s handiwork. Serves me right for packing so damn much, especially since I’ve pretty much been wearing the same clothes day in and day out.
“Well, you did want an adventure,” I tell her, leaning against the galley.
Oh shit, the soup!
I turn around and start stirring it, though half seems to have burned at the bottom.
“Ugh,” I moan. I’m not sure I can salvage this. I might have to start again.
“We never did learn the home domesticity skills, did we?” Lacey comments.
“Nope,” I admit, dumping the soup in the garbage. “Though you have to admit that I do some mean scrambled eggs. And you do some pretty fine loaves of bread.”
“I suppose that’s the extent of what mom taught us,” she says. “Though I learned how to make bread when I lived with my old roommate in Portland.”
“And I learned my scrambled eggs from YouTube.”
The secret is a dash of curry spice.
“I wonder what mom really wanted for us,” Lacey muses, bracing herself as the boat slams down another wave. It’s rare to see her this reflective and I like that fact that she’s talking to me, so I don’t want to screw it up like I usually do.
“I’m sure she just wanted us to be happy,” I say carefully. “I mean, off the bat, both mom and dad knew we had no interest in the family business.”
“None at all. You were all whales and I was all plants. Actually, at the time, it was roses.”
“I remember your rose garden behind the house,” I tell her. It was small but you could walk through it and Lacey had meticulously pruned all her roses to showroom status. I think she was maybe sixteen at the time.
Lacey is silent for a moment, apparently lost in the memory, as I get a new can of soup. Then she adjusts her glasses and looks at me.
“Are you?”
I glance at her. “Am I what?”
“Happy.”
The soup slides out of the can and into the pan with a plop.
Perfect punctuation.
“Happy?” I repeat, not sure what to do with that question. “Of course I am.”
Of course I am.
“That’s what I thought,” she says after a moment. “How could you not be?”
I want to bring up, you k
now, what I’ve been talking about since I got here which is my bad luck streak, but there’s no point in bringing it up. I can tell that Lacey wants to argue, wants to prove some point, and I’m just going to let her at this point. I don’t have it in me to fight.
So I just smile at her and start humming a song that’s been in my head as I stir the soup, and she eventually sighs and goes to her cabin.
“Dinner will be ready soon,” I call over my shoulder, but I don’t think she cares.
Turns out, no one was hungry anyway, including myself. All the waves and rocking makes you feel extremely nauseous when you’re down below, so I stay up top with my life jacket on, keeping out of the way. Tai and Richard are constantly running around and adjusting things, but other than that, the waves are getting smaller and things are starting to calm down.
Then night falls.
Lacey and Richard take their shift, both of them wearing lifejackets, clipped in for safety. Richard insisted on Lacey staying down below, but Lacey insisted otherwise and she’s definitely the domineering one in that relationship.
That leaves me with a predicament.
“Where should I sleep?” I ask Tai as we get ready for bed.
“Take their bed,” he says, heading into his cabin.
“Ew.” I grimace. My sister’s bed on her honeymoon? “No.”
He pauses and looks back at me. “Then sleep with me.”
I want to give him the same answer but I can’t.
Because it’s definitely not ew, and I definitely don’t want to say no.
“Or sleep wherever,” he says. “All I know is that I need the sleep for this upcoming storm and that couch isn’t an option.”
Tell him to sleep in Lacey and Richard’s cabin. It’s not ew to him.
And yet…I don’t want him to.
“Okay,” I say. “So as long as you don’t mind the company.”
He gives me a wary look that says he actually does mind the company.
“I promise I won’t snore,” I add.
“Or drool,” he says.
I blush. “Or drool.”
“Or talk. Or move.”
I nod. “I promise.”
I quickly grab my night clothes and change into them in the tiny bathroom where there’s barely enough room to turn around, my elbows banging into the walls. I use a makeup wipe to clean my face since the last time I used the sink I got water everywhere.
I have to say, getting into bed with someone that you’re not going to have sex with can somehow feel even more intimate that doing the deed. It doesn’t help that both Tai and I have to share the same sleeping bag spread on top of us, since mine got wet beneath the hatch.
Wet beneath the hatch, I repeat the thought to myself as I cautiously get under the covers. Suddenly everything seems lewd.
“Am I in the way? Drooling? Moving? Snoring?” I ask him as I place the pillow in front of me, which thankfully was spared the deluge.
“Not being quiet,” he says to me, rolling over onto his side so his back is to me.
Hmmpf. Fine. No fun at sleepovers, I see.
I mean, he could at least be going to bed without a shirt on. I’ve only caught a glimpse at him shirtless this entire time and it wasn’t long enough to really appreciate how magnificent his body is.
There’s actually enough room in the berth that we aren’t crammed up against each other, unlike his truck. Although it is a V-berth, which means our feet are more likely to touch than any other part of us. Maybe playing footsies is on the menu.
I decide to stick a toe out just to see.
I poke him right in the back of his calf.
“Daisy,” he warns me, his voice muffled.
“Was just adjusting myself,” I tell him, flipping over on to my back.
A pause. “Then how come I can hear you smiling?”
“I’m not smiling,” I protest with a gasp, but it’s a lie, because I am. How can he tell?
“Go to sleep Daisy,” he says.
As if I can just fall asleep sharing the same bed as him.
Yet, somehow, I do.
* * *
I’m having a most excellent dream.
I’m on a beach somewhere. A deserted island, the kind you see in travel brochures. You know the one, small and round with a green jungle interior, fringed by white sand, shallow blue glass-like water, palm trees dipping over the sand like hammocks.
I’m lying back on the beach, and it feels so real that I feel the sand hot and soft against my skin.
I’m completely naked but I’m not alone.
Tai’s head is between my legs.
I don’t see him. From my perspective I only see sky.
But I know it’s him.
My fingers are wrapped in his hair, luscious thick hair, and his stubble is scraping against the sensitive skin of my inner thighs.
His tongue is a work of art.
He laps at my clit like a cat at a bowl of cream, each powerful stroke sending shockwaves through my body. He’s so good that I’m on the verge of coming right away and then my body is shaking and he keeps going.
Again and again.
I stare up at the bluest sky and it’s like being born all over again.
And then…
My dream starts to dissolve.
Like the sky is suddenly brighter and brighter until it’s all white and…
My eyes open.
For real.
I’m lying on my back in the cabin, the cover off of me, my heart pounding especially loud in my ears, my breath ragged.
One of my hands is in my underwear, a few fingers inside me.
The other hand is at my breast, my nightshirt pushed up so that they’re bare.
Tai is beside me and staring at me with the most intensely primal gaze, his focus on my open mouth.
OH MY GOD.
I jolt, as if suddenly coming back to life, ripping my hand out of my underwear, pulling down my shirt.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, reaching for the covers and yanking them over me. “What…what was…”
Tai clears his throat. “You were having a dream,” he says, his voice sounding thick and throaty.
Turned on.
“A sex dream,” he adds, as if that wasn’t obvious.
I swallow, feeling my whole body go hot and red.
Shit, shit, shit.
I am never going to live this down.
“And so you just sat there watching me?” I ask him, avoiding his eyes.
“Your moans woke me up,” he says in a murmur.
“And so you just sat there watching me?” I repeat. I risk a better glance at him. He’s on his side, head propped up on his elbow, as if he was just so casually watching me get myself off.
I mean, yeah…it’s hot. It’s fucking hot as hell.
But it’s also mortifying to have someone like him see me in such a vulnerable state, no matter how hot it seems.
“I turned on the light to wake you,” he says. “It worked.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Uh huh. And how long did you watch me for first?”
“Well, it was hard to see with it being so dark,” he says. “Also, you come pretty fast. Each time you came, I figured it was over and then you just started up again.”
I can’t EVEN.
I close my eyes, putting my forearm over them for good measure.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he says, and I know he’s mocking me. “You finally got to show me your tits. Definitely worth the wait.”
My arm flies off my face and I stare at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
His mouth curls slyly. “Don’t you remember the wedding? When you wanted to go skinny-dipping, you spent a good amount of effort trying to remove the top of your dress. Then you tried to take off my shirt, to no avail.”
I don’t think my face can burn any hotter. Even my chest feels like it’s on fire.
“Well then you should take your shirt off,” I whine. “Make things fair. Ev
en things out.”
He bites his lip but makes no move to indulge me.
God, why does he have to be so hot?
“Fine. Fine, you saw me get off,” I grumble. “You happy now?”
“Very.”
I cock my brow, the words taking a moment to rest on my tongue before I spit them out. “Did it make you hard?”
Yeah. I said it.
A bold look flashes in his eyes, more intense than the darkest coffee. “What do you think?”
I think yes.
“Are you still hard?”
I don’t know where the hell I’m getting the gumption to ask him these questions, but fuck it. It’s only fair now.
The look in his eyes intensifies and I watch his throat as he swallows.
“Why don’t you find out,” he manages to say, his words measured.
Maybe he’s taunting me, maybe he’s serious.
But it doesn’t matter because before I know what I’m doing, I’m rolling over to my side closer to him and reaching down over his stomach to his crotch and…
Yeah.
I mean, that’s a very big yes.
A very big, hard, thick yes.
Hot and pulsing gently against my palm, even through his boxer briefs.
I shouldn’t be doing any of this to begin with, but I give him a hard squeeze, feeling every inch of him in my hand.
A soft moan falls from his lips, flooding the cabin, making me ache between my legs.
Oh, fuck…
I glance up at his face and he’s watching me through his dark lashes, his breath uneven, mouth open, and I want nothing more than to pull his cock out of his briefs and—
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
The door to the cabin rattles.
Both our eyes widen in unison and I immediately snatch back my hand. It felt like it was God knocking on the door, telling me I’m making a big mistake.
“Yes?” Tai asks, his voice hoarse.
“Everything okay?” asks Richard from the other side of the door. “It’s three-thirty.”
“Shit,” Tai swears under his breath. “Uh, sorry about that. Must have overslept! Be right there.”
Lovewrecked Page 10
