Chapter Six
The ferry to Crete is so massive, I sort of wonder how it floats.
I understand this is a stupid question, but the amount of metal involved feels implausible.
The vessel is huge enough to fit a cavernous parking lot packed with cars and still have room for everyone to bunk for the night, dine at their choice of restaurant, and lounge on one of the decks.
Yet in spite of this wealth of solid ground to stand on, I still end up hanging over the side of the railing an hour into our trip, staring out at the horizon to ward off the seasickness building in my gut.
I’m not sure if it’s actually helping the roiling feeling in my stomach, but at least it’s so breathtakingly beautiful that I can’t focus on anything else.
The Aegean glimmers too much beneath me, a kaleidoscope of all possible versions of blue colliding over and over in its depths.
The waters are clear and sun-warmed, an inviting mix that has me ready to dive off the boat.
Not even as an escape from the seasickness, but just because its siren call is impossible to resist. Each new wave sends a spray of white froth forward that catches fire under the orange of the setting sun dipping toward the horizon.
Seasick or no, how could I take my eyes off it?
Liam, brave friend that he is, stands next to me, rubbing my back.
“You’d think a boat this big could handle a few little waves,” I say, glancing down at the deep crystal water lapping at the edges of the boat.
“The boat can,” Liam points out. “The boat is not the one having the issue.”
I give him a withering look and go back to examining the horizon and inhaling deep lungfuls of salty air. The sound and smell of the sea are somehow comforting, even though the sea is also technically responsible for my current queasy predicament.
Well. No. The sea could never do such harm. I blame the boat.
“Can I ask you something?” Liam asks.
I glance at him. He’s looking at me with his “worried big brother” look, the kind he puts on when he’s concerned about a decision I’ve made and is choosing to lean unnecessarily deep into our ten-month age gap.
“Of course.”
“What was up with last night?” he asks.
I sigh. “I just don’t like it when people can’t respect my privacy. If I say I don’t want to date, that means I don’t want to date. What business is it of anyone else’s?”
Liam nods slowly. He wraps an arm around me, shifting so that his hands are resting on either side of me on the railing. I lean my head on his shoulder, and we stare out at the horizon together.
“That part is fair,” he says. “Lucy can be…a little too willing to over-involve herself in other people’s business.”
“I’ll say,” I mutter.
“But she means well,” he insists. “She cares about you, and we can both see that you’re shutting yourself off from the world.”
“I don’t care that she means well,” I say, ignoring the rest of his sentence. “It’s still unnecessarily intrusive.”
“I guess,” Liam says.
I bristle at his skeptical tone. Liam is usually on my side with stuff like this. The petty cohort dramas are easy to get through when he, at least, always gets where I’m coming from. The idea that he might not approve of my choices is almost enough to make me rethink them.
Almost.
“Do you really think I should be forcing myself to date when I don’t want to?” I ask him.
He shrugs, and I lift my head to take in his expression. His jaw twitches as he stares out at the sea.
“I just think you should ask yourself if it’s what you really want,” he says. “Not shut yourself down so much.”
“I’m not shutting down,” I argue. “I’m here. In Greece. With my friends.”
“Yeah, and you’ve barely said a word the whole time we’ve been here,” he points out.
I scoff. This is patently untrue.
Mostly.
“I’ve been talking just as much as I normally do,” I argue.
“I’m just worried about you,” Liam says softly.
I push off the railing, adding to the air between us. “No need to be. I’m fine.”
Before he can say anything else, I spin away from him and storm around the ferry. The middle of the open outdoor deck is lined with plastic blue chairs, and there I find Melanie digging into a sandwich she got from the ferry’s café.
“Hungry?” she asks when I reach her, holding out a bag of bagel chips.
I’m not, but a bagel chip sounds like it would taste better than the bitter tang of an argument with Liam, so I thank her and take one. She nods to the seat next to her, and I plop down into it.
“How’s the seasickness?” she asks.
I’d entirely forgotten about the nausea that sent me to the railing in the first place. “Better than before. Thanks.”
“I hate sleeping on ferries,” she mutters. “I always get night seasick.”
I grit my teeth. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
She pats my shoulder. “See you out here at midnight, I guess.”
“Bagel chips and ginger ale?” I offer.
She laughs, and I ignore the yearning ache that the sound brings me.
Just because I like to make her laugh doesn’t mean that Liam and Lucy are right.
They’ve inserted themselves so aggressively in the middle of my dating life, where they have no business being.
I don’t need to listen to a word they say.
—
Once we’re armed with sandwiches and baked goods from the ferry café for dinner, Ms. Barlowe leads the entire cohort to an empty deck, where we take our seats and spread our food around us.
“Welcome to our first official decathlon event: the open mic night and talent show,” Ms. Barlowe announces, standing in front of the rows of plastic seats we’ve taken. We cheer in response. “The event will be judged by Ms. Galanis and me and emceed by our very own Melanie.”
She throws her hands out, gesturing for Melanie to join her on the makeshift stage. Melanie jogs up, leaving her half-eaten sandwich to cool on the blue plastic of her seat.
“Welcome, all, to my open mic night,” she says, holding her phone to her lips as if it’s a microphone. “I’m so excited to see what our gorgeous talent has planned for us this evening. Can they do anything other than be nerdy about very old books? Only time will tell.”
“I’ll save you the time—they can’t,” Lucy calls from the back row, where she’s set up camp with a spanakopita the size of her face. She’s met with a round of playful booing from Henry and Bodhi in the front row, both of whom have planned comedy sketches they’re highly invested in.
As Amalia kicks off the proceedings with a song from Wicked, I dig into my sandwich, filled to the brim with roasted vegetables between crisp slices of warm bread.
The sandwich is comforting enough to take my mind off the fact that I’ll soon be “performing” by running as fast as I can from one side of the boat to the other.
I have interests outside of the classics, but there’s only so far track-and-field will take me in the performance department.
A sudden gust of sea-cooled night air sends a shiver through me, and Liam wraps his arm around my shoulders.
I lean into his warmth, taking another bite of sandwich.
As I let my weight sink into him, I wonder why it feels so different with Melanie.
Loving Liam is easy, even fresh off the heels of a disagreement.
It never sets off any of my defenses—except the ones I have to give people when they assume we must be madly in love.
I never find myself needing to prove that he’s right for me.
I just know that he is. At this point, he’s proven that more times than I can count.
There’s never been a hint of romance between us, so there’s never been anything to fear.
That’s the way it has to be with Melanie too, I decide as I watch her cheer for Amalia as the latter bows and heads back to her seat. It’s the only way to make it through the summer with my heart intact.
I’ve seen the alternative. Giving in to romance has swallowed Lizzie whole, and all that’s left of my sister is wedding linens, color schemes, and talking about how perfect her perfectly regular fiancé is.
Andrea has spent half her college prep fretting about how she and her boyfriend will stay together with two hours of distance separating their college choices.
Her entire first semester has been mapped out with road-trip days and nights away from campus before she’s even had a chance to set foot on it.
That’s not going to happen to me. Not if I have anything to say about it. I’m here to finish a solid project and embarrass myself in front of my cohort at this open mic night, not lose my entire personality to loving a girl because her smile makes me feel like a warm puddle of goo.
George is up after Amalia, and he delights us with a series of impressions of ancient Greek philosophers. Henry and Bodhi go next, and their sketch about Zeus having an affair with a Starbucks barista is worth all the hype they preceded the skit with.
Before I know it, it’s my turn. I stride up to the stage, tossing my hair.
“That may have been funny,” I tell Henry and Bodhi, “but beat this.”
Melanie holds up her phone’s stopwatch, and my heart stutters at the sight.
The brain gremlin piloting my neurons has the sudden urge to impress her.
I shake off the thought as I make my way to one side of the deck.
It’s about ten yards across to the other side.
As soon as Melanie shouts, “Go,” I fly across, my sneakers hitting the wooden slats of the floor with a loud thud at every step.
I collide with the white-painted railing on the other side just over a second later.