Chapter 15
After our conversation is interrupted, Hugh and I buddy up quickly for the afternoon dive. Everything goes according to plan. I relish the feeling of jumping in, when every other sound melts away, and it’s just me and the open ocean. It’s also nice to get off the small confines of the boat.
Wonder Reef was spectacular, vibrant and teeming with life. Everywhere I looked there were flashes of colour and whirls of movement. But I didn’t see anything specifically of note, and I didn’t see a single butterfly wrasse. Instead of being disappointed, I try to use the hour underwater to make me feel more comfortable, mentally preparing myself the entire time for entering the sea later, under the cover of night.
As we set up for lunch, I go through my pictures of the staghorn coral from our four dives so far. I have taken about a hundred and fifty. There are only two that show promising hints of what could be a butterfly wrasse, but I can’t tell for sure, which means it won’t be conclusive enough proof. Identifying fish means you have to see their unique characteristics clearly, and butterfly wrasse are the easiest to identify by the extra fin they have on their underbelly. Neither of the photos captures an underbelly. I just have one fish face that has purple scales behind it and one tail that’s purple with a yellow stripe. Both could be butterfly wrasse, but they could also be something else entirely.
Discouraged, I follow Andrew and Pippa downstairs to take a break and eat lunch. The crew has outdone themselves again. I spot a quinoa salad studded with bright vegetables and platters of fruit. Pippa fills her plate with a sample of each. I spot a container of Oreos in the corner, which fills me with excitement. I pack my plate, avoiding the cookies for now, and balance my tray as I scale the ladders upstairs. I head to the platform to eat in the sun, with the breeze ruffling my curls. I can’t even begin to imagine how wild my hair looks. I took it out of my braids in my attempt to shower last night and couldn’t wrangle it back into one, so now it’s alternating between a messy bun and cascading in a heap down my back.
Right now, I can tell it’s frizzing around my face, so I tie it behind my neck while I eat. Just as I start to dig in, Hugh appears from the side of the boat.
‘Do you mind? The captain’s room is discussing the royal drama.’ Hugh rolls his eyes.
I pat the seat next to me, inviting Hugh to sit down.
‘Like British royal family drama?’ I clarify.
Hugh nods. ‘If I hear another word about it, I swear I’ll feed myself to a shark.’
‘OK,’ I agree, laughing, ‘no royal talk. But I don’t want any shark talk either.’
‘Done.’ Hugh sighs, relaxing into a seat next to me. He places an Oreo on my plate. My eyes widen in surprise. ‘I saw you eyeing them.’ He shrugs. He has one on his plate too.
Both of us are silent as we tuck in hungrily. Scuba-diving is more of a workout than I anticipated. It’s been a long time since I was so ravenous. After a couple of minutes, we both slow down and exchange smiles.
‘The food is way better than I expected,’ Hugh says happily.
‘Me too. I thought all we were going to have was lunchables.’
‘Lunchables?’ Hugh asks, cocking his head at me.
I laugh and explain the concept of pre-packaged slices of meat and cheese and some sort of cracker. Hugh listens, his mouth grimacing in disgust.
‘They’re actually not so bad,’ I say, defending myself. ‘My mom used to get them for Mi—’ I pause in panic right before I was about to say ‘Millie and me’. ‘My mom used to get them for my school lunch,’ I say, forcing out the first word I can think of that starts with a ‘m’ sound.
Hugh seems satisfied with the explanation, but then starts asking me a lot of questions about my upbringing. It’s fun to feel like he thinks I’m interesting, but growing up in the suburbs of Ohio isn’t exactly riveting, which makes answering his deluge of questions difficult. He’s shocked that classrooms only taught American history until high school, and he’s surprised they trusted our parents to pack our lunches, especially considering what my mother was sending us to school with. ‘No fruit or vegetables!’ Hugh keeps lamenting. ‘Not even an apple!’
Eventually, he lets up, and both of us head downstairs into the cabin to load up our plates with seconds.
We settle back into our seats, staring down plates of quinoa, pineapple salsa and a delicious mix of cauliflower and farro. I pick up my camera and look at the only two photos that may contain the tail end or the face of a butterfly wrasse.
‘What’s that?’ Hugh grunts through a mouthful of salad.
‘You don’t want to know,’ I tease, holding the camera out of his reach.
‘Did you see one?’ He grabs at the camera, his previous decorum gone.
‘I don’t know,’ I confess. I keep the camera out of his reach, but lean in to show him the photos. Our shoulders graze when he scoots closer to me for a better look. Neither of us move to keep them apart. Hugh stares intently at the camera screen.
‘What do you think? And be honest.’ I give him a serious look, and he returns my gaze with one just as serious. His eyes are a deeper blue. I make a mental note to stop thinking about how often they change colour.
‘I don’t know,’ he says hesitantly.
‘Are you just saying that because you don’t want me to find one?’
‘No, Millie, honest.’ He crosses his heart with his fingers in a gesture that reminds me of children. It’s so endearing that it softens the blow of his answer.
‘It’s not enough, is it?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t think so.’
A pit forms in my stomach.
‘We still have a lot more dives to go,’ he says, his voice soft and reassuring.
‘You shouldn’t be the one comforting me about this.’ I try to sound nonchalant, but my voice comes out flat and glum. ‘I bet you’re thrilled.’
‘No,’ Hugh corrects me. ‘Although I have to confess, I don’t know why you’re so hell-bent on finding this fish. You can prove corals can rebound another way. You can emphasise the pollution problem another way.’
‘I could, but people can identify with a fish; fish are less abstract than coral.’
Hugh nods thoughtfully. ‘OK, but coral bleaching is often one of the easiest ways to make people understand what a crisis global warming is because something literally changes colour . Take what happened in Florida, for example. One hot summer and boom, all the coral turned black – and died.’
‘But most people don’t even know that coral are animals. They don’t even know what dead versus bleached coral looks like! They don’t even know zooxanthellae!’
‘Millie, hardly anybody knows zooxanthellae. They can learn. And that’s beside the point.’
We’re seated so close. I feel more heat under the scrutiny of his gaze than I do from the blazing sun. ‘Why do you care so much whether or not this fish exists anyways?’ I ask.
‘Well.’ Hugh sighs and leans back. ‘Because I really don’t think it does. I think coral bleaching killed it, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. We have to make people see that sometimes there is no coming back from the decisions we’ve made. We can’t turn back time.’
‘I think I’m going to prove you wrong.’
‘We can agree to disagree.’
‘Fine.’
‘Fine.’
I don’t want to keep thinking about the wrasse, so I change the subject. ‘If,’ I say, leaning back and closing my eyes against the bright sunlight, ‘you could have had anything for lunch, what would you have?’
‘Every day for lunch or like just today?’
I crack an eye open. ‘Hmmm . . . what about both?’
‘Okay,’ Hugh leans forward. ‘Today, fish and chips. I couldn’t eat it every day, but we’ve been working hard out here and, man, does that sound good. For every day . . . a salad maybe or a grain bowl. Something light.’
‘Something light?’ I tease. ‘You sound like you’re on the cover of a women’s magazine.’
‘Well, you said every day. I can’t be eating a hamburger for lunch every day. What would you eat?’
I pause, mulling it over. ‘Today, I would eat a BLT on an everything bagel. Every day . . . I guess a salad,’ I mumble the last bit.
‘A salad?’ Hugh howls. ‘You hypocrite!’
‘Oh, come on, it was weirder when you said it.’
Our conversation continues as we clear our plates, sneak a couple more Oreos and reapply sunscreen. Casually, Hugh hands me the sunscreen bottle and asks, ‘When you’re done making fun of me, can you get my back?’
‘Wait!’ he says, when I’m centimetres away from placing my sunscreened palms onto his shoulder blades. ‘I didn’t hand you the sunscreen you brought, did I?’
‘Hugh Harris, I swear to God, do you want me to help you or not?’
‘Fine,’ he says, with a chuckle.
Tentatively, I spread sunscreen over his tanned, muscular shoulders. I rub into his neck, and down to the hem of his swimsuit. This is the most we’ve touched, and I ache to think of a way to fill the silence. I feel jittery all over, like I just drank six cups of coffee.
‘Want me to get you?’ he asks.
My mouth is so dry I can only nod in response. His hands are strong and so large that they cover most of my back without even moving. In slow circles, he massages the lotion across my shoulder blades, slides a hand underneath the strap of my swimsuit, and works his way down my back to the hemline of my bottoms. With a single finger, he rubs sunscreen right up against the line of my swimsuit.
I feel so weak at the knees that I grab the table to steady myself as soon as Hugh turns to head upstairs. When I meet him back on deck, he dives back into our back and forth without a second thought. I feel like my head is filled with cotton. We get comfortable, both of us reclined. I listen to Hugh explain to me why coral bleaching is, actually, the best example of climate change, and my eyes slowly start to close. The rocking of the boat is lulling me to sleep. The sun is beating down relentlessly. My last thought before I fall asleep is that his accent is melodious, it’s like listening to a song.
I wake up with a start, confused. My copy of The Marinist is no longer in my hand, and my head is on a chest. A strong, tanned, hard-as-rock chest, that somehow has just enough give and warmth to be comfortable. It smells like coconut sunscreen and a touch of man’s deodorant. Just as I’m nestling back into it to keep sleeping, I realise what I’m doing and bolt upright. I sit up straight into the edge of the hammock, and my head crashes into Pippa’s bum.
‘Oi!’ she shouts, scrambling upright, causing the hammock to swing erratically back and forth.
Hugh grumbles and opens his eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, sleepily.
‘I fell asleep,’ I respond breathlessly. I scramble up and stand on the deck, grabbing the rails.
‘OK,’ says Hugh. He flops his forearm back over his eyes.
Pippa grunts and nestles back into the hammock to continue her nap.
I stare out at the horizon. I can’t believe I just fell asleep on his chest. I cannot keep fraternising with the enemy like this!
I am not this person. I am not someone who lets a hot guy get in the way of her goals. In the past, hot guy distractions have been Millie’s vibe. She’s bungled a test after a night out, she’s shown up late for a family dinner with a handsome random man in tow. But I have never let myself get that carried away, and I am not about to start now.
I promised myself I would take this time to think! Not get swept up in some dumb boat fantasy with someone I will never see again. I glance back at Hugh, who seems to have already fallen back to sleep. He makes it so easy for me to forget why I’m here. I could be going back over the photos I took; I could be interviewing Miguel or Vanessa about potential sightings. I could be reviewing Millie’s notes.
I am usually more in control than this. I am always planning. I am steady and reliable. I am the sister and the daughter who is always in the place she needs to be, even when I don’t want to.
Growing up, Millie was always the loudest and the most exciting. She had the most polarising opinions; she glowed the brightest in every room. She looked better in clothes. She was, and still is, habitually late, but the energy she brings into a room makes up for it every time.
Everyone has to find their own space in a family – where they fit, where they find a niche of comfortability, where they add value or feel loved. I found mine being everything Millie wasn’t. It felt so natural at first: I would be early everywhere, I always kept my room neat as a pin. Those were easy compliments to get from my parents – Millie’s room was so messy but Andi’s, Andi’s was perfect. I loved that praise.
Somewhere along the way finding my space snowballed into creating my personality around it. I always remember birthdays, but I’m never the first person invited to a birthday party. I can talk knowledgeably about a lot of subjects, but I never have a hot take that makes people gasp in salacious delight. When we get in family disagreements over dinner, even when I think everyone else is being pig-headed, I keep my mouth shut and nod with a tight smile. Nobody ever seems to notice that I don’t really agree with what they are saying. Not like Millie, whose face is as expressive as an eighteen-month-old baby that just learned how to say no. I am Millie’s perfect foil. That’s why we are best friends.
I look over at Hugh, whose arm is still draped over his face. His abs are glistening in the sun. He looks like a Greek god except for his hair drying in a wild poof on top of his head. I know he is the kind of guy Millie would go for. Well, usually – in this specific case she hates him, but he does look like a lot of her past boyfriends.
Is this why I like Hugh so much? Because I’m so fully trying to be Millie? Why does it feel so good? I don’t even want to admit it to myself, but the voice in my head asks quietly, Why does it feel more like me ?
I try to remind myself of all the things he does that irk me. He’s condescending, he’s stubborn and . . . and . . . I run out of steam. The list of things I hate about Hugh is getting shorter by the day.