Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships

Continued, Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships #2

“I’m just going to the bar for another drink, like I said.” I shoot her a smile I don’t feel, because I know my hysterics will only hurt her, and Jo is the last person in the world I want to hurt, even when I’m angry with her. “I’ll only be a minute.”

Instead of going to the bar, I prowl the perimeter of Mitch’s, running a hand over the dozens of dollar bills that jump out at me, crowded by the photographs and refuse of people’s lives.

A shame to leave all this money here, still valuable but stuck.

What could a person buy with it all? After making sure no one is watching me, I pry a dollar from the wall, the paper so worn it feels like fabric in my fingers.

I stuff it into my bra beside the photograph.

Drunk on tequila and greed, I reach for another dollar.

Instead of returning to the table, I’ll go down the street to the gas station and buy a pack of cigarettes.

I’ll spend the evening chain smoking in the parking lot.

I’ll inhale the whole pack, one after another, until I throw up.

It probably wouldn’t take long. I haven’t smoked in years.

“One charter season without me, and you turn to a life of crime?” a familiar Irish accent says, startling me as I pull the dollar from the wall.

I didn’t know he’d be here, but a part of me had hoped. Even so, I won’t give him the satisfaction of turning around to face him. “What are you doing here? You aren’t part of the crew,” I say, folding the dollar and tucking it into my bra.

“Alex invited me. He’s not crew anymore, either. Besides, Mitch’s is open to the public, is it not?”

I should’ve known this was Alex’s doing. He and Ollie have become buds over the last year. They even have matching T-shirts with Gordon Ramsay’s face on them that say, Where’s the lamb sauce? I don’t get the joke, and I don’t want to. All I know is Ollie talks to Alex about me, and I don’t like it.

“What’s the craic?” Ollie says, pronouncing craic like “crack.”

His breath is warm against my skin, and he smells like the mint tea he drinks obsessively. My instinct is to lean into him, but I’m not sure if being around him will make tonight better or worse, so I try not to move.

“I don’t know where the crack is, Oliver. Do I look like I buy drugs on street corners?” I know that’s not the “crack” he’s talking about. I’ve picked up more Irish slang over the years than I let on. This is just part of the game we play.

“You know I don’t like being called Oliver,” he says, like he always does when I use his full name.

“And you know I don’t care,” I reply, like I have hundreds of times.

Thousands, maybe. Same old barbs. Same old reactions.

I like to think of them as the grooves of our relationship.

We settle into them when we’re around each other just to remind ourselves they exist. If we stick to the lines, we can play this game for as long as we like.

If we follow the rules, no one gets hurt.

Ollie wraps his arms around me, resting his chin on my shoulder.

I hate how I don’t mind it. How I can’t help but rest my weight against his chest. Before Jo, it was just me and Ollie.

A whole lifetime ago, it seems. He and I have more history than I care to admit.

And though Jo is my best friend, my relationship with Ollie means just as much, albeit in a vastly different and infinitely more complicated way.

Ollie’s barely-there stubble scratches my cheek when he speaks. “You good, Neen?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I say, keeping my eyes on the wall ahead of me. Better, I think. Being around him will make tonight better.

“Heard you might’ve got some bad news,” he says.

I stiffen in his arms. So even he found out about Jo and Alex’s betrayal before me. Worse, I decide. Being around him will make tonight worse. “I’m marvelous.”

Ollie’s nose nudges my neck, and I try to ignore the way it makes me weak in the knees, and not just the bad one. “I’ve missed you,” he says, not at all the way you tell your ex-coworker you miss them.

I want to put some space between us, but Ollie is comfortable, and warm, and familiar. “Where’s your girlfriend?” I ask. Sondra? Samantha? Tall. Redhead. I like her.

“Don’t have one anymore.”

No surprise there. The man goes through girlfriends faster than I can snap up a pair of vintage Levi’s off the rack. “What was wrong with this one?”

“She wasn’t you,” he says, his breath raising goose bumps on my neck. So he wants to play that version of our game.

“Not tonight,” I say, pulling his arms off me with a sigh.

“It’s true.”

I turn, getting the first good look at him I’ve had since I left for charter season.

He’s unchanged, everything about him as in-between as ever.

His hair, between blond and brown, between straight and curly, the sides short and longer on top.

He isn’t tall, but he isn’t short either.

Even his outfit—a navy button-down, light-wash jeans, and white sneakers—falls somewhere between formal and informal.

That’s not to say Ollie is plain, because he isn’t.

There’s something striking about the balance of him. Beautiful, really.

The only out-of-balance feature on Oliver Dunne are his eyes.

Blue, but not like the sky or the ocean.

They’re an intense, impossible blue that reminds me of the blue raspberry Slurpees I shared with my father after gymnastics practice when I was a kid.

We’d stop by the 7-Eleven, and I’d stay in the truck while my father disappeared inside.

He kept a lucky penny in the cupholder between our seats, and I’d warm it between my palms while I waited for him.

When he returned, I’d pass him the penny for his scratch-off ticket in exchange for the Slurpee.

Every now and then the smell of copper and scratch-off dust washes over me, making me sick.

I’d thought my father and I were playing a game.

I suppose we were. But that didn’t mean there weren’t consequences.

I’ve encountered many attractive people in my life, ones who wanted exactly what I did—no feelings, no strings attached—but none of them drives me crazy like Ollie does.

At first, I thought it was the accent. But even with his mouth shut I want to kiss him.

I tell Jo I don’t love him. I tell him I don’t love him.

But of course I do. If soul mates exist, Oliver Dunne is the closest thing I have to one.

That doesn’t mean we’re good for each other.

It doesn’t make either of us immune to the damage we can inflict on one another. It doesn’t change the rules.

Ollie looks me up and down. “Nice dress,” he says. It is nice. A knee-length color-block dress with matching buttons down the front. Vintage Liz Claiborne. One hundred percent silk. He catches the hem between his fingers, and his knuckles brush against my thigh. “Where’d you get it?”

“Do you really care?” I should take a step back, but my muscles are frozen. I blame the bad knee.

“Maybe I do,” Ollie says, his eyes on the fabric between his fingers.

“Butch, of course.” Butch, the owner of my favorite thrift store, knows exactly what I like.

“Aye, the one and only Butch. You make me jealous when you talk about him.”

When he lifts his gaze to mine, I force myself not to look away. I hate when he does that—makes me feel stark naked when I’m obviously overdressed.

“You should be jealous. Butch is the man of my heart, and—”

“Jo is the woman, aye, I know.”

“Not anymore.” I look beyond Ollie. Amir, RJ, and some of the other deckhands have joined Jo, Alex, and Britt at the table. Amir says something that makes everyone but RJ laugh. The look RJ gives him could fillet him alive. At least I’m not the only one who’s miserable tonight.

Ollie doesn’t say anything else. When I look up at him again, I catch the soft smile he saves only for me.

Being near him is like sighing into my couch when I first get home from charter season.

We haven’t spent much time together since Jo and Alex got engaged.

The restaurant keeps Ollie busy, and I’ve avoided driving down to see him ever since the last time I ended up in his bed.

Lately, my friendship with Ollie has consisted of phone calls on his drive home from work.

Most nights he calls just as I’ve gotten into bed.

I always put the phone on speaker and close my eyes as we talk, mostly about nothing.

The restaurant, the yacht, weird Craigslist listings.

By the time Ollie unlocks his apartment door, I’m usually half asleep, lulled there by the sound of his voice.

It sounds like a capital “R” Relationship, but it’s not.

I don’t know what to call it. The phone calls and occasional hookups are all I can give.

They’re enough for me. But this phase, the one in which we can be friends, only lasts so long before Ollie is itching for more, something with a label.

And when I refuse, he’ll pull away from me again.

We won’t talk for months, maybe a year. He always says he’s done, and sometimes he finds someone else, someone he really likes.

But it’s no use. We always find ourselves back here, walking this in-between place like a balance beam.

“Did you miss me?” he asks.

Yes. But I’d never tell him that. “We spoke yesterday. Though you failed to mention you’d be here.”

“Wasn’t sure I’d come. But I like to see the faces you make when you’re teasing me.”

“Teasing? Me? Never.”

I rest my hands on his shoulders. “You’re built like a hunky fridge,” I say, my hands sliding down to give his biceps a squeeze.

He laughs, and I shoot him a glare. “What? You’re frigid, and bulky, and occasionally provide food.

” I’m making quite the spectacle of myself tonight. Maybe it’s time to give up the tequila.

“That face. Right there,” Ollie says. He presses his thumb to my lips. “And you say you don’t tease me.”

The moves my heart are doing now would be physically impossible for anyone but Simone Biles.

If he wants to play this version of our little game, then that’s what we’ll do.

Screw the consequences. I take Ollie’s hand in mine, tracing my fingers over the back of his hand before flipping it over to squint at his palm like a fortune-teller.

I know the callous at the base of his forefinger, could map out the small scars and discolored burns that run up his hands and arms. Even when I don’t want to, I think of them whenever someone else touches me. It’s a real mood killer.

“No new injuries, I see.”

“Not on this hand, no.”

“And the other?”

He puts his other hand in mine, and I spot a new burn right away, just behind the knuckle of his pinkie finger. “New line cook who doesn’t look where he’s fecking going,” he says.

“I wish you’d be more careful,” I say, regretting it as soon as I look at Ollie and see his smile has become a smirk.

“So you did miss me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You seem to care an awful lot about what happens to me.”

“Because I plan on being the one to kill you.”

“Oh, you’ll be the death of me, all right,” he says.

“Good. We agree. Follow me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I drop one of Ollie’s hands, keeping a tight grip on the other as I pull him through Mitch’s and toward the door that leads to the back parking lot. This will only make me feel better for a little while. I know that. But I’m not very good at taking advice, especially my own.

As soon as we step outside, I press my hands to Ollie’s chest, pushing him against the brick exterior of Mitch’s.

“You smell like a tin of Altoids,” I say.

“Probably taste like them too,” he says.

“This means nothing.”

“Sure thing, Neen.”

I lift myself onto my toes, Jo’s news and the ache in my bad knee all but forgotten.

At first the kiss is soft, almost sweet.

Kissing Ollie is like working a charter—familiar, but never boring.

He tastes exactly as I remember. I’d bet all my tips he has a still-warm tumbler of peppermint tea in his car.

Ollie’s fingers slide into my hair and he pulls me closer, deepening the kiss.

My hands find his shoulders again. Really, does the man do anything besides swear, and cook, and work out?

When we pull apart, Ollie drags a hand over his mouth. “This is a little fucked-up, Neen.”

I ignore the comment and lean in to kiss him again, but Ollie catches my shoulders, holding me back. “You want to tell me what this is really about?”

A flame of annoyance licks through me. This is not part of the game. We don’t talk about why we do things. We just do them. “I’ve been at sea for four months, what else could it be about?”

Ollie pushes my hair, down from its usual high ponytail for once, over one shoulder. He tugs gently at one of my unicorn earrings. “These give a man false hope, you know.”

My eyes leave his to run over his gently sloping nose, to his mouth, the full bottom lip, bowed on top. “Please, don’t,” I say, surprised to find myself blinking back tears.

How do I always end up kissing Oliver Dunne in secret?

Despite what he says about missing me and breaking up with his girlfriend, this thing between us is not serious.

We shouldn’t be anyway. And as Ollie said, this is fucked-up.

I should be inside celebrating the next chapter of my best friend’s life.

But instead I’m in a bar parking lot making out with the ex Jo doesn’t even know is an ex so I can forget about it.

Ollie’s hand drops from my ear. He pulls me closer, and I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he tucks my head beneath his chin, holding me to his chest. “It’s all right,” he whispers, one hand rubbing my back in big circles. “Nothin’ has to change. You and Jo will be the same as ever.”

I want to believe him, but Ollie is wrong.

I can feel it. My entire universe is being reordered, just like when he quit the boat last year.

Things between us changed, and now we hardly see each other.

My bad knee is throbbing now. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m on the Serendipity and know a storm is coming.

The sky may be cloudless and blue, and RJ and Xav can tell me there’s nothing on the radar until they’re red in the face, but I’m never wrong about storms. It’s like they’re a part of me.

Ollie can pretend he doesn’t feel it, but I know he does.

Everything is about to change.