I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure I liked him as a person, but I definitely liked looking at him. I liked watching the way emotions shifted over his face like sunlight on water. I liked hearing him talk…
Or at least I had, back when he’d actually been speaking, back before I’d told him that story about Aimee and Rafe and he’d clammed up for the rest of the car ride.
I resettled my bandanna on my head. “I take it you don’t like boats?”
“Of course I like boats! I love boats. Boats are delightful. Boats are a feat of human engineering. Riverboats, ferryboats, yachts, cruise ships? Beautiful. I’m fond of all vessels that don’t require me to actually become one with the ocean.”
“Well.” I scratched the back of my head. “The goal is to not become one with the ocean today either, otherwise we’d be swimming out to Menucha.” I hefted the cooler full of water bottles, ice, and snacks we’d just picked up at Pickles’ grocery store into the tender also. “Instead, we’ll both be wearing life jackets.” I nodded at the yellow vest in his hand, which I’d gotten out of Fenn’s cubby at the Goodmen Outfitters office. My dad made fun of me for still wearing a life jacket every time I went out, but I’d lived on the water too long not to take safety seriously. “And we’ll stay inside the boat, on top of the water.”
“This is not a boat,” Toby informed me, a thread of uneasiness in his voice. “That is a boat.” He pointed at the Mary Anna, Goodmen Outfitters’ fifty-foot tour boat. “This is… this is an overgrown pool float! I saw Taylor Swift and her girl squad on something like this in her backyard over Memorial Day.”
“Taylor Swift and her girl squad had a twelve-and-a-half-foot aluminum frame PVC dinghy with an outboard motor? In her pool?” I gave him an exaggerated frown. “Badass.”
Toby huffed and rolled his eyes.
“I told you before,” I added more gently. “You don’t have to come if you’d rather not. You can take the Jeep and go back to the guesthouse. Sit by the pool. Or you could hang with my dad.”
Toby set his shoulders and shrugged into the life vest. “Yeah, right. I said I was coming, so I’m coming.” He lifted his chin like a queen. “But if we die, I am so blaming you.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” I said solemnly.
“You ready to come aboard?” I held out a hand since it was a bit of a step down from the platform. “Be careful in those sandals—”
Toby clasped my hand and stepped, but his hand was slippery from the sunscreen, and he stumbled. I caught him around the waist and held him firmly against me as the little boat rocked against the dock. The scent of his cologne along with the ocean air and my coconut-lime sunscreen was basically the best scent in the entire universe, and I nearly groaned at the feel of his skin under my hands for the second… no, third time that morning. This was worse than either time before, though, because his mouth was mere inches from mine, and—
“Sweet Benedict Cumberbatch! I’ve defied death three times this day!” Toby pushed weakly at my arms.
“Whoa,” I said softly, gripping the shoulder of his life jacket with my other hand. “Settle for just a second. I’ve got you. You’re alright. You’re fine.”
“Yeah.” Toby took one deep breath and another, and then he pushed me away again and cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course I’m alright.” His voice still had a slight quaver to it. “I’m confident that Rose felt just this way whilst boarding the Titanic.” He sat primly on the seat in the middle facing aft with his hands folded in his lap. “Like she was boarding the vessel that would ultimately seal her doom.”
I couldn’t help smiling a little. “Doesn’t Rose survive?”
Toby sniffed. “Beside the point.”
“Sure.” I took a minute to cast off and coil the ropes, then sat in back where I could work the tiller. I took up a lot of the space between the seats, and my knees ended up just a few inches from Toby’s, close enough that the movement of the boat was going to make our legs touch as soon as we got out on the water.
I attached the safety switch to my own life jacket and pulled the cord to start the motor.
The morning was strangely quiet on the water, especially for a summer weekend. Once we cleared the small dock near the center of town, the only sounds were the hum of the engine and the call of startled gulls.
Toby took in the waves and the sunshine without saying a word, and that was fine—I wasn’t a person who needed to talk or be talked to—but it was different from the way he’d been all morning. Back at the Bean and later in the Jeep, when he tilted back against the seat and grinned at me, he’d seemed open and relaxed. I wasn’t sure what had happened to get his back up, but it reminded me a little of Marjorie when I first found her.
“I hate Florida. Only Florida could turn something like beautiful sunshine into a thing that’s abusive and rude and hurtful. I can feel myself crisping like bacon.”
I dug a hat out of my gear bag and plopped it on his head. It looked kinda cute on him.
“Hey!” He pulled the hat off and looked at it. “I am not wearing a hat that says Bubba’s Bait.”
“Why not? No one will see you but me, Trey, and we’re already madly in love, remember?”
Toby blinked like I’d startled him somehow, but he replaced the hat on his head without a comment and went back to staring out at the water, which seemed unlike him.
Unlike him. Because you know him so well, Beale? I rolled my eyes at myself but couldn’t help asking, “Everything okay?”
“You mean, aside from the obvious? No phone, no credit card? Having survived near-death experiences with cats and kitchen appliances and yoga stretches? Out in the middle of the great, wide ocean with only the thinnest rubber membrane between me and the briny deep? No, other than that I’m peachy.”
“I meant more like, did I do something to upset you? ’Cause for a minute there, you almost seemed like you were having fun, and then…” I shrugged. “You didn’t.”
Toby shot me a look—another of those curiously vulnerable looks—before his face blanked. “I’m fine. Perfectly fine. Are you okay?”
“Me?” As we passed out of the little harbor, I nudged the throttle a little and sent the boat skipping on the waves. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Toby clutched the baseball hat. “Because people were rude to you back at the Bean.”
“Nah.”
“Yeah,” he insisted. “There was a whole vibe going on about your crystals and stuff. I didn’t like it.”
I was honestly surprised he’d noticed. I didn’t love it either, but…
“I’m used to it. I believe in things they don’t.” I shrugged. “It’s just their way.”
“Disrespecting your worldview is not ‘just their way.’ They don’t have to believe what you believe, but they don’t get to give you shit for it. If you were Buddhist or Wiccan or Catholic, would it be okay for them to make snide remarks?”
“No. Of course not.” I frowned. I’d never thought of it that way before—as something that people ought to take seriously, simply because it was important to me.