Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
“What is this?”
“It’s a sandbar. This one’s temporary. The sand shifts with the water. But it’s a nice place to spend the day.” I push past her, placing my hands on her hips for a moment. She looks over her shoulder at me, but I’m just getting by so I can drop the anchor.
She follows me out, hopping on her foot, and stops on the back deck, shielding her eyes as she looks around. There are about fifty or so boats already here. “This is why I wanted a smaller boat,” I tell her. “The last yacht was too big to just ease into a place like this. We still have to stay on the edge, but at least we can get out of the channel.”
She’s just lookin’ around like this might be the best moment of her life. I want to ask her a million questions about the last four years—about her life here in Florida, and what she’s done, but mostly what she hasn’t done. So then I could do it with her and it could be a first.
But I already know that it wasn’t a life. It was just an existence. And it’s fair to say that I’ve been living mine in a similar way. But I went out, mostly because Davis and Wade would invite me places and it was just easier to say yes than no.
Irina didn’t have a Wade and a Davis to take her out. She calls Nandy her best friend, but it came with conditions. Nandy is in school. She’s on some kind of academic path and that’s her life. They meet up occasionally. They go to bars, or dinner, or whatever. Irina has no path. She just… exists. Like she’s waiting for something to happen to her instead of making things happen for her.
Once the anchor is down, she turns to me. “What do we do here?”
“Swim. We can snorkel. Not much to see down there. But I’m sure there’ll be some fish brave enough to join the party. I’ve got breakfast too. Or we can join someone else’s party.” I nod my head to all the people.
Her eyes track that direction, taking it all in. There’s music playing. People laughing. Swimming, splashing. Kids. Men comin’ in on jet skis. Women dancing on the decks.
Irina just shakes her head. Like she’s never seen anything like it. “It’s a party. Where anyone can come and no one knows who you are.”
I smile at the way her mind works. “That’s one way to look at it. Do you wanna go join them?”
She shakes her head again, but this time not in wonderment. She just wants to watch.
That’s fine with me. I didn’t bring her here to spend time with strangers. “Hungry?”
“Sure.” She sits down at the dining table, still distracted by what’s going on around us. But she pops out of it when I set a bowl of fruit down in front of her. She looks at it for a moment, then up at me. “Where did you get this?”
“I have a concierge at the marina. Ya just call ahead and they stock your boat for ya.”
“Hmm.” She eats a strawberry.
“What are you thinking right now?”
Irina lets out a long breath. “I think I’ve been missing out.”
“Ya like it here?”
She nods. “I do. This looks fun. I’ve seen these parties before. They have them all up and down the coastline of Brazil. But we never got close. It was a supply ship, ya know? Huge and… there would be no way to join in on something like this. You have to stay in the shipping channel or in the designated areas around the ports.”
I grab the little can of liquid bandage and bend down to her injured foot, picking it up in my hand so I can spray it. She jolts a little—it’s a cold spray, I know from experience. But she relaxes after a moment.
I blow on it, to help it dry quicker, and this makes her squirm. “There you go.” I let her foot go and stand back up. “It should last all day. Do you wanna swim?”
She thinks about this the way she thinks about everything. Carefully. Like it’s a big decision. I want to prod her, but I force myself to wait it out.
Finally, she looks up at me. “Where do they get those fun rafts?” She’s pointing at a kid trying his best to mount a blow-up floaty horse.
“The store. But I have rafts, if you want to float.”
“You do?” Her eyes are bright and wide.
“Sure. I don’t have one of those”—I point at the horse—“but I can go steal it if ya want.”
Irina laughs.
“You think I’m kidding?”
She tsks her tongue at me. “You’re not gonna steal a floaty from a child.”
“Watch, grasshopper. And learn.”
Then I pull my shirt off, kick off my deck shoes, and walk out, diving head-first into the water.