The Gilligan
A few things happened at once as I approached the end of the dock. My flip flops were like soft clicks against my heels as I’d peeked inside all the boats, but not soft enough to escape the ears of whoever was occupying this last one.
I froze mid-step at the rustling coming from inside, a speed that made the boat rock, water lapping.
No way was the first thought I could have at the low music this person was listening to, before this person revealed himself with the same speed in his words.
“Hey, I was just—”
He froze now, his hand mid-air with a pointed thumb toward where he just appeared from, his lips parted, his eyes unblinking on mine.
I unfroze a second after he did, his hand lowering to his side, then my slightly raised foot connecting flat with the wood.
A held breath blew from his mouth. “You’re not my dad.”
I took a step closer at the relief in his voice—a trust step, toward a fellow wanderer? And a boy .
“Is he strict too?” My voice sounded rusty, then higher than usual in my push to make sure he heard me, and I tried not to cringe.
“About his boat. And he doesn’t want me sailing without him. He could make a presentation for all his lectures on sailing at night.” He laughed, sounding nervous, saying all this as he climbed to meet me on the dock, revealing himself more in the lights as not just a boy, but a cute boy. One of the most beautiful boys I’d ever seen.
He was blond, but his face more than made up for that.
He smiled, a half one, revealing a dimple, as his eyes held mine again. They were bright blue. His hair was wavy, some waves over his forehead.
My imaginary first boyfriend had nothing on him.
“I’m Levi.” He grazed his hands over his shorts as I repeated his name to myself, then he held one out to me.
How old is he?
I laughed on the inside. He was obviously a teenager, and I didn’t know any teenage boys who introduced themselves with a handshake.
I waited too long to give him my hand, because when I finally did, he was lowering his with a flustered face, and I overreached, grabbing at his hand and bringing it back between us in an overeager yank for him to know I wasn’t trying to leave him hanging.
And now he’d passed his fluster onto me, his half smile from before back in bloom, but with an amused lift in his brows.
I loosened the squeeze I had on him, letting his warm palm warm mine, then released a breath that left me able to smile back. “I’m Summer.”
He mouthed my name, his lips coming together so softly, gluing my gaze right to them. His hand fell from mine with a brush of his fingers I’d still feel once the night was over.
“Wanna come aboard?” He pointed his thumb again toward the boat, encouraging in how he shifted that way for me to follow, with another lift in his brows like hope I wouldn’t leave him hanging again, as he’d just admitted he wanted me to stay. “I have sodas,” he told me, but he didn’t have to say any more, and I didn’t even have to ask what kind before I was nodding my answer.
I could’ve argued this also wasn’t smart, but that label sneaked out of my system the moment I sneaked out of my house. I was always the smart girl, but now, in the dark, I was just being a girl. I was just being .
And practically skipping along behind this boy, and he didn’t miss it, giving me another smile over his shoulder, as I was ratted out by my shoes.
“I got it,” I murmured through my flush when he held his hand out to me again. I wanted to take it, but climbing onto this boat was much easier than climbing down a trellis.
“Welcome aboard the Gilligan,” he said once my feet landed beside his, nodding with an adoring look around, just over my head, as if the boat were his and not his dad’s.
I chuckled, then his gaze slid down to me. “Gilligan?”
“ Gilligan’s Island ?” he asked back, and I shook my head, no bells ringing.
He waved it off as he turned and bent for a mini fridge. “My dad’s old.”
I chuckled again, but it was silent, stalled in my chest as I watched him—Levi—taking more of him in. Mostly how his light green shirt stretched along his lean muscles as he pulled out two sodas.
And I was suddenly aware of how I looked. In my pajamas. My dark, curly hair more frizz than curl.
I was fingering the few locks draped down my shoulder when he passed me one of the cans, giving me the chance to occupy my hands and my thoughts with the coldness and popping the tab.
We ended up sitting beside each other on a bench seat, silent and sipping, exchanging small glances, until the music he was listening to reregistered, and I shimmied in my revived excitement as I said, “You’re listening to my favorite band.”
His swallow of soda went down slowly as he looked at me, intensifying the goosebumps I already had from Kai Coleman, lead singer of Ten Decembers, as he crooned his heart out.
Then he took another sip, still looking at me, and there was a spark of something there, like he was thinking what I now was. We’ve met each other at a time when no one should and now we like the same music.
“I’m listening to my favorite band too,” he said, confirming and adding a weight to the thought, with a subtle flutter in his lids—the spark.
My hand wrapped around the can was still cool but my chest was warm. That’s the feeling I’d go on to associate with Levi. Varying degrees of warmth.
“This your favorite song?”
He bobbed his head with his next swallow, between a yes and a no. “It’s one of them. You?”
I copied him, the head bob and all. “It’s one of them.”
He chuckled, as I hoped he would, his smile holding to his lips, and I tried to subdue another shimmy as my brain sang, cha-ching!
When the guys of Ten Decembers’ hearts broke, they bled the saddest and, sometimes, angriest ink. “Going through a broken heart?” I asked him now, going off the song, my fingernail picking at the can tab, the clinking getting louder the more I regretted the question.
His headshake stopped the noise, and I managed a smile through another question I gave myself an inner facepalm over.
“You’re just a soft boy?”
The facepalm? More for how I asked. I was flirting, and I’d never flirted before, and the awkwardness in my voice told me I needed to work on it.
“Is that what you like?” he said right after me, sounding like a real question and a flirt back, and a couple things happened at once. My eyes widened and I blinked them back to normal as his mouth formed a cringe, like his words were as much of a slip as mine were.
We looked down at our cans at the same time, laughing at ourselves and each other.
I didn’t think either of us knew what was happening, but we were here, making equal fools of ourselves, and here was where we wanted to be.
“I like their soft stuff the most,” he told me after swallowing a big drink, with a kind of settled tone that I could forget his question. But it’d already settled in me. The whole reason I was out.
I didn’t really know what I liked…where that was concerned, but I liked him. I liked having his company. And I thought he liked me and mine too. He seemed like he was like me. He wasn’t a Rapunzel, but maybe a bit clumsy, too, with stuff like this.
We were both sitting more comfortably now, his legs stretched out and mine criss-crossed, when he moved us on with, “How strict is your dad?”
I told him. I told him my dad was the only person I had in my life. I told him how my dad vetted anyone else I could want in my life and decided they weren’t good enough. And how if I disagreed, he would give me silent treatment, when he was all I had to talk to.
Like the other time I was on one of those school-hour field trips and a school friend’s family had invited me for dinner, and I’d braved the call to ask my dad. He’d hung up on me. I’d felt so guilty, and I was already in the car with them, because I’d hoped , and I had them take me straight home. I was crying. He was shaking, really worked up. You can’t put me through that, Summer.
I told Levi that too.
I told him how it was just school and home and hanging out with Dad, all the time.
I was dumping, but he was quiet, watching and listening to me without moving a muscle—except that one jerk in his jaw when I told him that story, that still put something hollow in my heart when I thought about it, the one I thought about the most, because of how rattled my dad and I both were.
Levi didn’t tell me he was sorry, but I got something more important than a throwaway apology; I got his understanding.
It was validating. And then confirming in a hopeless kind of sense.
And the combination of all that from him encouraged me to dump more.
I told him how I sneaked out. Then I told him about the move. All the moving. . .
And that’s when we both found out we were the same age, in the same grade, and his eyes wore that spark again before his mouth formed that similar cringe, but this one from sympathy.
“Starting a new school at anytime doesn’t seem fun but senior year? That’s rough.”
I bent a knee, tucking my leg in close to my chest. “It’s not as rough as living a controlled existence where nothing can happen to you.”
“You want things to happen to you?” His question was low but my answer was lower.
“I need it,” I whispered, like it was a secret, still buried wishes, with my lips against the mouth of my can, avoiding his attention before quickly diverting it. “You come out here every night?”
“Whenever I can,” he said, after swallowing the last of his soda. Then he looked at me a long moment before he said low, “But no.”
But tonight, he did. Just like I did.
He got on his feet with a glance back at me and a point to his can as he moved to grab another. I shook my head, shaking around the soda I still had left.
Levi was a sea boy. I loved the water. I loved learning about it. And I’d seen and read about boat rides, and those seemed fun. Unless a shark was involved.
I could imagine the wind in my hair, the rush of the waves, the vibrations. . .
“Why can’t you take it out at night?” I asked next, with a look to the boat, as he sat back beside me, a bit closer than he was before, and popped the tab on his fresh can.
He eyed me, like I asked if we could, shaking his head now. “Too dangerous,” he said with a deeper tone, like he was imitating one of his dad’s lectures he’d mentioned, but I couldn’t smile for that, my smile becoming a laughing off of what I thought he assumed. Like I wanted this guy who’d just met me to take me out on a boat.
“I wasn’t gonna ask if we could, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“You looked like you were.” His mouth had a quirk in it, like he was fighting his own smile.
“You know my looks already?” I challenged, from the zip of giddiness in my veins, from him.
His eyes traced along my face. “Do I?” It was another real question, with a hint of a challenge back, and maybe I was thinking about him being with me when I imagined the wind and the rush and the vibrations, but I wasn’t admitting that.
I shook my head again behind a sip of soda and he chuckled behind a swallow of his.
“Ask me during the day. You can meet my dad,” he said, just throwing that out as if I wouldn’t choke on my drink, before another cringe found his mouth as he probably remembered I couldn’t do anything during the day.
“You want me to meet your dad?” I blurted after my strained swallow, letting go that I couldn’t meet him.
Levi’s next words stalled in his mouth, his jaw popping open with just a breath. “Well—” he started, taking another breath, his fluster back on his face that made me laugh—it was the giddiness—and he laughed, too, a loosening in his shoulders. “I mean, you’ll probably meet him, anyway. Small town. Everyone around here knows my dad.”
I felt my back slump into the seat. “I’m not from around here.” I said it as a sighed reflex, from how it was everywhere I went, a moment of feeling like that still wouldn’t change, despite what was happening right now.
I existed in towns. I didn’t live in them.
“I know,” Levi said, not unkindly as he went along with me. “I would’ve remembered seeing you,” he added, with a smile that made my stomach do a flip, and I smiled back from behind the biggest drink.
Time seemed like it was passing too quickly. So many Ten Decembers songs played like a soundtrack to our words and looks and smiles. So many that I feared I’d start to attach my favorite band to this guy. I knew about how attaching a person to a song could make you cherish the song more or ruin the song forever. And it was easy to do—attach—since I hadn’t had moments like these to do that with, and that was what tonight was all about. Letting things happen.
And as we talked more, this night just becoming more and more perfect, I didn’t think Levi could ruin anything.
Both his second can and my first were sitting empty at our feet, both of us sitting even more comfortable, our limbs as loose as they could be, our bodies completely facing each other, when he asked me if I was into aliens.
We were on to a kind of game, asking any random question we could think to ask. It was his idea. Anything that popped up. And we couldn’t think about it too hard.
I followed his gaze downward, to my pajamas, and tugged at the shirt, eyeing the patterned green alien heads with their big black eyes. “I’m into the design,” I answered. “The colors. Green is my favorite.” The word faded from my mouth as I looked back up and reregistered his green shirt.
He grinned, then told me, “I like red.” And I told myself I wasn’t imagining that hint of suggestion in his voice. I immediately pictured the few reds I had in my wardrobe, while also advising myself, if I were to see him again like this, not to be obvious, or potentially presumptuous, and wear any too soon.
“You don’t like Jell-O?” he asked, when we’d transitioned into food, his jaw dropped, looking at me as if I just tried to sink his dad’s boat.
I made a gagging face and his shock increased. “Yuck,” I added for emphasis.
“Really? Yuck? ”
I laughed. “And I really don’t like watching people eat it.”
He laughed now, and my face heated as I realized what I told him. “People eat a lot of Jell-O around you?” He was teasing, but still pulling for the story.
“It’s something I do in my free time,” I said low, then summarized, “I watch food videos, and I’ve seen a lot of Jell-O.” I always had someone besides Dad to eat with sometimes.
But simply, like most people, I loved food, and I loved to see people enjoying eating as much as I enjoyed eating.
“That’s because it’s good,” Levi stressed his defense, still wearing a smile that softened. “That’s cool.”
Then, after a smile back from me—it was very cool—he moved us on. “Well, no one likes chicken more than me.”
I copied his shocked face. “Chicken beats Jell-O?”
“Chicken and barbeque sauce is the best pairing, hands down.”
The thought made me hungry and I blew out a sigh. “I could go for some barbeque wings right now.”
“Oh no, you have to get the chicken plain and dip it in the sauce. Your favorite sauce, because every sauce lover has a favorite, and everyone uses something different, and that, and the dipping can make or break the chicken.”
My simmering laughter bubbled over at that phrase. I couldn’t remember the last time I cracked up as much as I did listening to Levi talk about chicken. He had a serious passion for that poultry.
He was nodding to himself, with his mouth scrunched in defeat, but his dimple was showing the slightest bit to give him away that he was amused too.
“No, that’s cool,” I assured him back, rushing out the words as my laughter simmered back down. “Favorite sauce. Plain to dip. We don’t wanna break the chicken.”
His lips smoothed out, deepening his dimple. He opened his mouth, when a ringing jolted us.
The sound zipped through me, freezing me, my lungs seizing my breath, in the second I thought my dad was calling. He saw I wasn’t in my bed and the jig was up.
I didn’t remember I had forgotten my phone until Levi pulled his from his pocket, comforting my body back to normal. The ringing was sharper as he stared down at the screen.
In his stalling, I leaned over to get a peek. “Who is it?” Then I leaned back after the question left my mouth, practically able to see my nose for how I was sticking it in.
“Adam,” he said low, stalling a moment more before he answered the call. “Hey. I’m here, yeah.”
I leaned back a bit more as he talked, letting my eyes trail around the boat and my ears take in the music to tune out the conversation. Even though Levi didn’t move from beside me, I still assumed the call was private and personal for being this late at night.
I didn’t tune back in until I caught Levi shifting his gaze to me.
He paused as he met my curious stare, his almost an uncertain one. The shade of blue seemed to darken, his entire expression seeming to do the same, right before he said into the phone, “Come to the dock.”