Ugh. I was hoping he didn’t notice that. “Guess I’m in the wrong town if I’m not good on boats, huh?”
“Don’t give up just yet,” he says, tying up the boat. “After all, you could acclimate. Might surprise yourself one day.”
Maybe I’m surprised already.
WELCOME TO BEAUTIFUL GREEKTOWN: A white neighborhood sign sits at the junction of Battery Street and Atlantic Avenue. The earliest Greek immigrants to settle in Beauty were fishermen who worked in the South Harbor in the late 1800s. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 12
Nothing happened.
Not really.
But if that’s true, why do I still feel like this? How come, now that I’ve been back on shore for a couple of hours, no trace of seasickness, all I can think about is Lucky?
And the way he looked at me. The way his hand flexed when he reached out to touch me.
The way it made me ache when he didn’t.
Because that’s the worst part of it. I wanted him to touch me.
I think about that. I think about his hand on my back when I was in the middle of that dizzy spell, and the way his thumb circled the bones in my spine. How shockingly warm his skin was when we bumped into each other. The way he stared at me. The way everything felt different between us.
The way we talked when we left each other, like nothing had changed.
Maybe I’m still seasick after all.…
“School is boring, Mom. I want to hear about Nepal,” Evie says to Aunt Franny on her laptop as she lies sprawled across her bed.
I’m sitting below her on the floor, out of sight from the screen, on a braided Amish rag rug that’s leaving marks on the backs of my thighs. It’s just after eleven p.m., and Mom left the apartment an hour ago because she needed to “take a drive around the harbor” and “get some fresh air.” Hard for me to argue with that, seeing how I took a forbidden boat cruise earlier tonight. Anyway, I was giving Evie the lowdown about said boat outing when her mom Skyped; it’s morning in Nepal.
I don’t really want to be here, listening in to their private mother-daughter convo, but Evie made me stay. They don’t talk long, and she wants to hear the rest of my juicy boating story. I’m not sure I want to give her all the details. It feels too raw right now. And how do I explain it? He “looked” at me in a different way? Sounds ridiculous. Maybe because it is?
I’ve got to stop thinking about him.
Aunt Franny looks thin and tired—I caught a glimpse of her on the screen before I ducked down here. She’s only five years older than my mom, but I don’t think Nepal agrees with her. Guess it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone if my grandma’s Having a Great Time! postcards are all one big fat lie. It’s the Saint-Martin way, after all.
While listening to Aunt Franny tell Evie about the school in Nepal that she and Grandma are teaching at, trying to get my mind off Lucky and the boat ride, I stare at a shelf of Evie’s weird taxidermy collection—a mouse wearing a tiny wizard outfit is the only one I truly like—and space out momentarily.
Until I hear Aunt Franny say something.
“—surprised she has the guts to move back to Beauty, frankly, since whatshisname is out of the navy and back in town.”
Hold up a minute. What’s this all about, now?
I look up at Evie on the bed.
She looks down at me with wide eyes.
Aunt Franny is talking about my mom … and some guy. Some navy guy.
“Who’s ‘whatshisname,’ Mom?” Evie asks when I prompt her by yanking at her pajama pants leg and mouth the question. “Who are you talking about?”
“I can’t remember his name. It was high school.”
“High school? Why would Aunt Winona care about someone from high school?” Evie says. “What’s up with this mystery man? Spill the beans, Mom.”
Her mom is silent for a moment. “No one, baby. I shouldn’t have said anything. That’s all in the past, and not our business.”
“Mom—”
“Evie,” her mom says over the laptop screen, “that’s enough. If Winona wanted us to gossip about her, she’d tell us herself. End of story.”
Great. Mom will never tell me, and I definitely won’t be asking. Mom will shut that down faster than a food inspector visiting a rat-infested pizza parlor. But now I’m super curious about Navy Man, who was possibly some boy