been better than the one before, but I’m worried about St. Barths. Worried about Keane.
We leave the next evening, following our last dinner at the patchwork house, and Eamon jumps ship to sail with Agda and Felix aboard their forty-eight-foot catamaran, Papillon, seduced by the prospect of his own stateroom and a well-stocked bar. Keane and I have the smallest boat, so we leave first from the harbor and set sail between Jost Van Dyke and Tortola. Through the Narrows. Through Flanagan Passage. Into open water. The other boats come behind, staggering their departures so we can all reach St. Barths at about the same time. The catamaran passes us in the night. Luke and Amanda’s Fizgig, a forty-four-foot sloop, goes by while Keane is on watch. Karoline and Jefferson are with us longer on Peneireiro, but eventually we end up alone.
I arrange our watch rotation so Keane is doing the first four hours on his birthday. While he is on deck, I mix the batter and slip the cake into the oven. It’s still warm when I carry it up into the cockpit.
“I’d sing, but it’s best for everyone involved if I don’t,” I say. “Happy Birthday.”
Keane’s eyes go wide. “You baked this for me.”
“I’d use the term pretty loosely considering it baked unevenly.”
“Is something wrong with the gimbal?”
“Gimbal?”
Keane laughs. “It’s the mechanism that keeps the oven level under sail.”
“Well,” I say, handing him the cake, “that would have been a great thing to know about thirty minutes ago.”
He kisses the top of my head. “You are a star, Anna. Thank you.”
“A candle won’t stay lit in this breeze,” I say. “But I think you’re still allowed to make a wish.”
He squints one eye, as though considering, and nods. “Done.”
We share a fork and his last bottle of Guinness as we eat the entire cake in one sitting, licking the melty chocolate frosting from our fingers. The sun is a sliver of fire on the horizon. We sit in silence, watching it rise, watching the sky turn gold.
“I think—” I turn to look at Keane. In the new morning light, his skin is as gold as the sky and the words dry up in my mouth. We look at each other too long, and his jaw twitches; he knows it too. I look away first. “I think it’s going to be a good day.”
“In my experience, today is usually not.”
“Then you are very lucky I’m here.”
Our eyes meet again. “Yes. I am.”
I flee to the cabin with the excuse of needing to wash the dishes, but what I need is to escape the intensity of his gaze. Except I can’t control my body’s response to him. Can’t slow my racing heart. Can’t get beyond the thought that friends don’t look at each other the way we did.
Is it too soon to want someone else? What happens to my love for Ben? Where does it go? Is this even real, or is it proximity? I sit in the cabin and try to pull myself together. Keane has gone from stranger to sailing partner to friend. Anything more could be a disaster. Or it could be really fucking incredible.
“Anna,” he calls. “Come play Scrabble with me?”
“Only if you use actual words.”
He laughs. “I should have bought you a Scrabble dictionary for Christmas.”
The tiles are still locked in place from our last game when I unfold the board on the bench between us. “How convenient that you didn’t.”
“You are a sore loser.”
“You cheat.”
Laughing, he reaches over and pushes the bill of my Crabbers ball cap down over my face. We play Scrabble until we get hungry and Keane volunteers to make lunch. He prepares heaping turkey sandwiches and thick slices of mango from a tree back in Jost Van Dyke. I roll the ball on the foredeck for Queenie to chase, then take over while Keane snoozes in the sun. We are back to normal as we sail into night, but when the following day breaks and we get closer to the green hills and red-tiled roofs of Saint Barthélemy, Keane grows tense and quiet, and I wonder if we haven’t made a mistake by coming here.
loud and defiant (24)
Gustavia is a beautiful village with tidy buildings and clean streets, and the beach off which we are anchored is covered with more seashells than anyone could count in a lifetime. Yet everything about this place feels wrong. Keane is a walking thundercloud, and as we weave our way through the New Year’s