Love Overboard

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

Sofia lay back, feeling like she was finally living the life she had naively imagined for herself back in London when she’d first messaged Captain Mary. She was on the top deck, lounging on a recliner with a glass of homemade lemonade. Sunglasses, headphones, and bikini on. She was listening to one of her favourite podcasts, The Last Supper, where famous chefs talked about their favourite foods to eat and chatted about their upbringing. Sofia hadn’t had a moment to relax since she’d stepped on the boat, and she was grateful that she wasn’t having to hike under the midday sun. Stuart had gone to read inside, far from the heat, and Captain Mary was holed away doing whatever it was she did all day. Sofia felt like she had free rein.

Ali Kamar was whispering in her ear about his love affair with saffron, when she felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped, spilling the lemonade she was holding. She yanked her headphones off and turned to see Jack, standing there with a smirk on his face.

‘You scared me to death,’ she protested, still breathless from the shock.

He sat down on the recliner next to hers and chuckled. ‘And here was me thinking you’d finally learnt how to relax.’

She suddenly felt very self-conscious about how few clothes she was wearing. The bright scarlet of her halter-neck bikini now seeming overly ostentatious, and she crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I wasn’t expecting company,’ she said defensively. ‘I thought you were taking them to the island.’ She looked around uneasily, worried that the trip had been cancelled and she would hurriedly have to get back below deck and into her chef’s whites.

‘Relax, Sofia, it’s just me. You can’t park the tender there, so I brought it back. I’ll go pick them up later.’ He casually began unbuttoning his shirt, and Sofia’s heart quickened. She looked away.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asked, although he had already tossed it to the side.

‘Not at all,’ she said, hoping it wasn’t totally obvious she was lying.

He reclined into the lounger, hands behind his head. ‘Good, I’ve been meaning to find an opportunity to top up my tan.’

They lay side by side in silence. Sofia assumed that he wasn’t feeling as uncomfortable with the new set-up as she was. She pressed play, but she could no longer concentrate on Ali Kamar’s dulcet tones; she kept having to rewind and listen again every time she caught her mind wandering off.

She was acutely aware of his body next to hers, and she had an irrational flash of fear that he could hear her restless thoughts. She hadn’t felt like that since she was at school. Except she wasn’t a pubescent teen anymore, so really what excuse did she have for the sweat on her palms and her overly frequent need to swallow?

‘I’m sorry about our run-in the other morning. I was in a bad mood,’ he said suddenly.

Sofia was surprised. She was pretty sure she had been the one at fault, overly judgemental and unfoundedly accusatory, as she remembered it.

‘Don’t be silly, it was my bad. I don’t know what got into me. Let’s blame it on the hangover eh?’

‘Agreed,’ he said. She looked over at him. His eyes were closed as he basked in the sun, his torso heaving softly. Her gaze trailed from the smattering of dark curls on his chest down to his belly button where the path was abruptly cut off by the white trousers of his officer’s uniform. She felt feral.

‘So,’ she started cautiously, ‘I know it’s probably none of my business, but what was all that stuff about a family friend?’

Jack let out a deep sigh. He opened his eyes and turned his head to the side to look at her. She pulled her sunglasses off, feeling like he was about to let her in on a secret.

‘Luchiano, he used to work for my grandmother.’ He paused. ‘And he knew my mother.’ Sofia noted the past tense, and the weight with which he said ‘mother’.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, instinctively sitting up and reaching out her hand. Jack looked down at it, and then back up at the sky. Sofia awkwardly laid it on her lap.

‘I hate that look,’ he said evenly, staring ahead, a distant expression clouding his face. ‘The pity. I think I prefer it when you look at me like I’m a jerk.’

‘Really? Oh well that can be arranged. I think I have it saved somewhere.’ She frowned in faux concentration and then fixed her face into a look of derision, eyebrow raised and lip curled.

He laughed and she smiled. She liked the sound of it, warm and a little raspy. ‘I can always rely on you to not take me seriously, Harlow.’

‘But I am sorry, Jack. Losing a parent, I can’t imagine how horrible that is.’ He held her gaze, and she felt her heart ache at the sadness in his eyes.

‘You close with your folks?’ he asked.

Sofia had to look away. She couldn’t handle the intensity of it anymore. ‘Yeah, I’m an only child so me and my parents have always been close. I guess you could say I was spoiled with a deeply functional and happy upbringing. How to explain the neurosis then, I hear you ask?’ She had meant it to be self-deprecating, but as soon as the words were out she realised how callous she sounded.

‘Shit, I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I didn’t mean...’ She scrambled for the right words.

He held up his hand and shook his head. ‘It’s OK, Sofia. I asked. It’s not a competition; I’m not trying to win some kind of tragic backstory Olympics. Besides you mustn’t forget my silver-spoon, multi-generational wealth is nothing to be sniffed at.’ He was self-aware too. Sofia wondered where she had got her terrible first impression from. She had thought him all too eager to trip her up but here he was offering her a gentlemanly hand out of the hole she’d dug herself.

‘So tell me more about this life of unimaginable wealth then.’ Sofia had recovered herself, and she was still curious.

‘I don’t think I said unimaginable, did I?’ He chuckled, and then looked thoughtful. ‘My dad’s family, I’m pretty sure they were on the Mayflower or whatever, so the money goes way back.’ He paused, looking a bit uncomfortable. ‘I think that a fair of amount of it was... you know, from slavery.’ He looked so embarrassed that Sofia had the urge to laugh.

Instead she said, evenly, ‘I mean, that makes sense. It’s kind of the backbone of American capitalism.’

‘God will take care of the poor trampled slave, but where will the slaveholder be when eternity begins?’ Jack recited this absent-mindedly, as if to himself, and then caught himself. ‘Oh God sorry, that is the most obnoxious white-man thing I have ever said.’ He looked so nervous.

Sofia raised an eyebrow approvingly. ‘I’m impressed. I like a man who knows his Sojourner Truth,’ she said.

He grinned at her, clearly relieved. ‘So you like me now huh?’

Sofia didn’t take the bait. ‘So you’re woke then?’ she said teasingly.

‘Oh stop it. I’m so embarrassed, I haven’t even read most of that stuff since my undergrad. It’s all just contextless quotes floating around my head, waiting for the perfect moment to mansplain them to some poor passer-by.’ Sofia had never seen him like this. He was self-conscious.

‘What did you study?’

‘My dad’s in publishing so literature, of course, but I minored in sociology, which was actually way more interesting.’

‘My mum teaches sociology, at the local secondary school. That’s the only reason I know about Sojourner Truth. I never went to university – my heart was set on the kitchen,’ Sofia explained.

‘I really envy people who have always known what they want to do. I think I spent a long time just trying to do what other people wanted me to do, and then trying to do what they didn’t want me to do.’ He was lying back again, sunglasses on, speaking to the sky. ‘People, I keep saying, as if it’s not just my dad.’ He scoffed at himself.

‘It’s a bit of a cliché, no? Rich boy rebelling against the life his parents always had planned for him.’ Sofia was feeling empowered to dig deeper. She was the bikini-clad therapist, sat up, legs crossed, hands clasped, with her elbows resting on her knees. He was her patient, tanned chest glistening.

‘Oh for sure, it makes the whole thing so unsatisfactory, to know that running away from that high-powered publishing job to spite my father isn’t even original.’ His tone was light before he stopped. ‘I think my dad found it more amusing than anything else, unlike the situation with my brother. I think that’s what really broke his heart.’ It felt like they had tiptoed to the edge of the abyss. Sofia wasn’t sure she had the stomach to peer down.

She leant back and let out a pent-up sigh. ‘That’s a lot, Jack.’ She wasn’t trying to shut down the conversation but Jack seemed to take it as an admission of defeat on her part.

He looked over at her with a smirk. ‘Don’t worry. Harlow, I’ve already got a shrink; your work here is done.’ He was putting on a brave face but his tone was not quite convincing. A tinge of sadness clung to his voice.

‘Thank goodness for that.’ She smiled, deciding that the inquisition could wait for now. They lay side by side for some time, a comfortable silence hanging between them.

Sofia settled into a sun-soaked doze, and time became elastic. She was right on the outskirts of sleep when she heard Jack gently say something about ‘getting the tender ready’. She nodded, eyes firmly shut behind her sunglasses, and she fell into sleep to the sound of his chuckle as he walked away.