21. Grasping at Tiny Paper Straws
Grasping at Tiny Paper Straws
Wyatt
“You only made one real mistake yesterday,” I tell Josie the next morning.
At the flash of surprised hurt on her face, I immediately wish for a large cartoon boulder to fall on my head. Or an anvil. Maybe a baby grand piano.
Because I’m running my idiot flag up the pole and flying it high this morning.
Josie hands me a mug of coffee from the counter with a tight smile. “Just the way you enjoy it—black like your heart. And it’s a little early in the morning for criticism, isn’t it?”
I meant to be encouraging. To tell Josie she did a great job on her first day sailing. One tiny mistake when she missed seeing the channel markers. We didn’t run aground or hit anything. No biggie—though she beat herself up over it. I meant to reassure her.
But what I just said was the equivalent of a negative performance review. Like some kind of terrible boss. Or a very bad captain.
Per usual, I don’t know how to fix my bumbling words.
I take a sip of coffee and study Josie, who is adding cream to her mug.
When I got up a few minutes ago, I was surprised to find her already boiling water.
The sight of her here—in this familiar, nostalgic, and at times painful place—stole my breath as surely as if I’d been hit right in the diaphragm.
It still is. And, clearly, stealing my ability to speak.
“Come up and sit with me?” I ask, a flare of nerves like I haven’t felt for years zipping through me. Somehow, asking Josie to drink coffee with me on deck feels like asking her on a first date.
She hesitates, like she’s mentally scanning through a list of excuses.
“Please,” I say. “I’ll make breakfast in a little while.”
She raises an eyebrow at this. And I get it—she’s done all the cooking since she arrived.
Mostly because I get the sense she likes it.
Once I got off my crutches, I could have taken over.
I know my way around the kitchen. But I didn’t miss the way Josie hums under her breath while chopping and stirring or the pleased look on her face when she finishes a meal.
“You can cook?”
“I make a mean egg sandwich.”
“Deal.” She nods and starts up the steps with Jib scrambling ahead of her.
I do my best not to stare at Josie’s bare legs as I follow her up, but it’s hard. I really like the sight of Josie in her pajamas, which are the same blue ones with clouds.
The back of her neck is a little pink from the sun the day before. A piece of hair escapes her bun, curling over her shoulders as she settles on one of the bench seats on deck. Normally, I’d give Josie space and sit across from her.
Today, I press my luck—especially after my stupid comment— and sit next to her. Josie glances at me, blinking in surprise.
Then, as though my earlier words are stamped on my forehead, she angles her face away, looking toward the thin band of gold glowing on the horizon.
She’s beautiful in the gray light of predawn. Even when she’s upset with me.
There’s something so simple about Josie’s beauty. Natural, like the sky or the sea. It’s in the line of her jaw and the curve of her cheek, the pout in her full lips. The way her brown eyes are lit from within by a brightness that’s all her own.
Right now, though, that brightness has dimmed.
Because of me. And my inability to say what I mean to her. Around her. About her.
I reach over, ghosting my fingers along her forearm until they come to rest on her hand. Josie stiffens. Then with a sigh, she surprises me by turning her hand over and linking our fingers.
But she still keeps her gaze averted, watching a few boats already moving this morning.
“I have this problem with you,” I say, and when she starts to pull her hand away, I realize how that sounds.
I am zero for two this morning. Keeping her hand clasped in mine, I gently squeeze her fingers, holding her hand hostage. If she tugs away again, I’ll let her go.
She doesn’t.
“What I meant to say is that I have this problem around you. I don’t say what I mean. In fact, usually, it’s the opposite of what I mean. Or, I say the right thing in the wrong tone of voice.”
“My mother calls it foot-in-mouth disease,” Josie says, finally turning to look at me, her eyes gentle, her smile faint but there.
“I have a wicked case,” I confess. “But only around you, Josie.”
Those words don’t land with the significance I want them to. And they don’t convey the full extent of what I mean.
Only around you, Josie. Do you hear me? Only you.
Because only you twist me up like this.
Only you matter so much I can’t think when I’m around you. And I definitely can’t be trusted to speak.
With my track record this morning, if I try to tell her how I feel about her right now, how I’ve always felt about her, I’ll probably end up insulting her again somehow.
But she is still holding my hand. So there’s that.
“What I was trying to say earlier is that you did a great job yesterday.”
She scoffs, shaking her head. “Yeah, me and my one mistake.”
“You’ll probably make more today,” I say. Once again—a swing and a big miss. I groan. “That was supposed to be encouraging.”
Josie laughs. “You really do have foot-in-mouth disease.”
“I’m practically touching my tonsils at this point. But in all seriousness, mistakes happen. I meant to reassure you that it’s not a big deal.”
“Do you make mistakes?” she counters.
I nod. “The first time I went sailing with Tom, he let me take the wheel and I ran us aground.” She laughs. “Twice.”
“That does make me feel better,” she says. “Wait—how old were you?”
“Eight.”
She groans. “Okay, now I feel worse. You were doing all this when you were eight?”
“My uncle taught me through the school of Figure it out or fall off the boat . He mostly let me do the map reading and GPS, especially after the running aground thing. One night we couldn’t get a spot at a marina, so we anchored in what I thought was an approved spot.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh is right. We woke up to the sound of a horn blaring. We were basically anchored in the middle of the Ditch, and a barge couldn’t get by.
Tom had to get up and find another anchorage.
One not in the very center of the ICW. Another time—on the same trip—I had him anchor in a spot that was too shallow.
The tide went out and the keel caught on a sandbar. The whole boat was tipping sideways.”
Josie’s eyes go wide. “That can happen? The boat can capsize?”
“We were never in danger of capsizing. It wasn’t that shallow, and the keel is too heavy. The weight prevents it. But the boat stayed at an uncomfortable angle until the tide came in.”
Josie doesn’t look reassured. Then, her expression brightens. “Wait—is this where the expression ‘keeled over’ comes from?”
“Yep.”
“That’s cool.” She takes a sip of coffee, then glances over at me with a smile. “Except all your stories of mistakes you made are now making me think of more things that can go wrong. And I already had a long list.”
“Great. Maybe I should stop talking.”
Her expression turns soft. “Please don’t. I like you talking. Even when half the things you say are borderline insulting.” “More like a third.”
Josie only hums in response, and when I squeeze her hand again, she laughs.
Jib scampers up the steps, bypassing Josie to hop in my lap. Jib knocks my elbow and a little coffee sloshes onto the back of her outfit. Which is a tutu.
I set down my mug and pull the material away from her shaved grayish-brownish fur, not wanting her to get burned. Not because I care about her outfit. Thankfully, the coffee has cooled somewhat and Jib seems fine. But now there’s a coffee stain on her outfit.
“Wyatt,” Josie groans, “that tutu needs to be dry-cleaned.”
I glance down at the pink leotard and scratchy skirt. Ridiculous for a dog. Also, surprisingly cute. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m not.”
“A tutu doesn’t seem very practical.”
“Don’t judge,” she says. “Jibby hopes to star in The Nutcracker one day.”
I snort, and Josie puts a finger to her lips. “Shh! Do you want to be responsible for the death of her dreams?”
She’s grinning at me, and though I don’t smile back, warmth spreads through me like warm honey. I feel it reach the tips of my fingers, the ones linked with Josie’s.
Holding my hand—that’s a good sign, right? Telling me she likes when I talk—despite the things that keep coming out of my mouth—is also a good sign.
Or a sign that I’m grasping at the tiniest of paper straws.
“Can you believe Wanda and Greg are sailing to the Virgin Islands?” Josie asks, shaking her head.
I hadn’t given one thought to the couple we met last night. I’m pretty sure Josie picked them up to be a buffer at dinner. I didn’t mind. Having Wanda and Greg carry the conversation eased the tension between Josie and me, giving me time to regroup and try a different approach before bed.
Maybe standing outside the head in a cramped hallway wasn’t the most romantic setting, but Josie didn’t seem to mind. She fisted my shirt like she was torn between yanking me closer and pushing me away. Which is an improvement from before— when she would have only wanted to push me away.
If she ever got near enough to push me at all.
I didn’t make a confession, didn’t press her for one of her own. Instead, I opened an already cracked door wide and invited her to enter. And hoped...what—she’d come running through, running to me already?
That didn’t happen. She doesn’t seem ready for any next steps, but she also didn’t run away from me.
Progress , I keep telling myself. But the waiting, the tiny steps, the incredible restraint is perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
“They’ll be out at sea—open sea—for days . I looked at our charts.” Josie shivers, like the idea is horrifying.
She is obsessive about looking at the charts, maps, and her book on the Intracoastal, as if she feels like this knowledge will make up for her lack of experience.
I did the same when I started sailing with Tom.
Her excitement refreshes my own. It helps dull the ache of missing my uncle, new experiences with Josie smoothing over years’ worth of memories.
“People do it all the time,” I tell her. “Tom once sailed to Bermuda.”
“No way!” She shakes her head, and coffee spills over the rim of her mug, a single drop traveling down her hand to her wrist. “I couldn’t do it. I need to see land.”
“You took a cruise with Jacob. Weren’t you on the open sea then?”
“Norovirus, remember? I spent five days looking not at the ocean but at the inside of the toilet.” She makes a face. “Or at the inside of a trash can. Anyway, it’s different. A cruise ship is like...well, it’s basically like a whole city. You can’t capsize those things.”
“You can, actually. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.”
Based on her horrified expression, I really should have kept my mouth shut—the theme of the morning.
“Don’t tell me that,” she says. “Now, I’m going to obsess. Actually, I’m going to google it.”
“Don’t,” I tell her. “You don’t want to see it.”
“There’s a video?”
“Videos. Plural.”
Shut up, Wyatt. Any old time now.
“And you’ve seen them?” Her expression is shocked, like the idea of me watching ships sinking online is so outrageous.
I don’t know why I did it, honestly. Probably the same weird drive that makes me watch shark attack videos and footage of sports injuries happening in the middle of games.
All are things I have no business watching—no one does, really—but somehow, it feels like if I desensitize myself to them, I won’t worry as much.
But I know it would be the opposite for Josie. If she watched any of the videos showing cruise ships sinking or capsizing, she’d probably climb off the boat now with Jib and swim to shore.
Something she also might do if she knew I don’t actually need her to sail.
At the follow-up appointment just before we left, my doctor— not to be confused with “Dr.” Parminder, the PT—cleared me for normal activity. Running. Exercise. Sailing. Hockey.
He didn’t seem to understand why I wasn’t elated.
All I could think about was telling Josie I didn’t need her after all.
I worried she might pack her bags, tuck Jib under her arm, and drive back to Fredericksburg.
She only agreed to come on the trip because she thought she was needed.
And she’s only here in the first place because Jacob is paying her.
So...I didn’t tell her.
In my defense, she didn’t ask.
Okay—I realize this is a terrible defense. No defense at all, really.
But I wanted her here. Needed her here. This trip feels like it —one big chance to finally tell Josie how I feel.
Clearly, broaching the subject on the first night was a mistake. I need to slow down, even if I feel like I’ve already been waiting forever. Josie has to set the pace. If there will be a pace.
Please let there be a pace.
If Josie isn’t ready yet, I won’t force her. But I won’t say goodbye at the end of this without letting her know how I feel. Which starts by making her feel safe.
Josie and I are quiet, sipping coffee as the colors start to wash over the sky, going from pastel to blinding brilliance, our hands still clasped. It’s a perfect moment. And while I want so much more, for now this is enough.
“I’m excited about the Great Bridge Lock,” Josie says after finishing off her coffee.
“Yeah?”
“It’s the only lock on this stretch of the Intracoastal,” she says like she’s reading straight from the guidebook she’s always lugging around.
“Did you know that today and tomorrow we’ll pass every kind of bridge and have every kind of experience that we’ll find on the whole stretch of the ICW? My book calls it an appetizer.”
“Sounds delicious,” I say, and she elbows me lightly. “Have you memorized that book?”
“I wish. But I have highlighted, underlined, and tabbed it about to death.”
“Tabbed?”
Josie proceeds to tell me about tabbing books, a subject she apparently can talk at length on.
Normally, I guess, it’s something people do for fiction books, but she applied it to her guidebook.
While the sun continues its slow ascent, painting Josie’s cheeks with a gorgeous glow, I watch her mouth and her eyes and her hair as it steadily escapes from her messy bun with every passionate gesture of her hands.
I want more moments like this. In fact, I want nothing but these kinds of moments stretching out ahead of me for as long as possible. Quiet mornings and afternoons and evenings with Josie telling me about things I only care about because they matter to her.