Chapter 16 #2
He leans back in his seat, arms crossed, looking far too amused. “So we’re just stuck here until the tide comes back in.”
“About an hour. Maybe ninety minutes.”
“Perfect. More time to discuss your emotional problems.”
I drop my head against the steering wheel. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t. I’m your only friend.”
“That’s not true. I have—” I try to think of someone else. “Rodney.”
“Your agent doesn’t count.”
“He sends me a card at Christmas.”
“Because you make him money.” Grayson stretches out again, settling in. “Face it, Scott. You’ve spent so many years hiding that you forgot to have a life. I’m literally the only person who knows you.”
The worst part is he’s right.
I stare at the mud flats surrounding us, the boat tilted slightly as the water continues to recede. A fiddler crab emerges from a hole, waving its one oversized claw like it’s taunting me.
“So,” Grayson says. “This manuscript. What happens in it?”
“I’m not summarizing my own book for you.”
“Does the hero grovel properly?”
“There’s groveling.”
“Grand gesture?”
“A modest gesture. Proportional.”
“Does he get the girl?”
I watch another crab emerge. Then another. The mud flat is coming alive with them, hundreds of tiny bodies going about their crab business.
“In the book, yes.”
“And in real life?”
“In real life, I’m stuck on a sandbar having feelings while crabs swarm around me.”
Grayson laughs. “This is the best Saturday I’ve had in months,” he says. “Michelle is going to love this.”
“You’re not telling Michelle.”
“I absolutely am. She specifically asked me to report back.”
“Grayson.”
“She’s invested, Scott. The whole book club is. Apparently there’s a betting pool.”
“A betting pool about what?”
“Whether you two will get together by Thanksgiving, Christmas, or ‘never because you’re both too stubborn to live.’” He grins. “I’ve got money on Christmas.”
I close my eyes. Take a breath. Remind myself that murdering your business partner, while satisfying, would be logistically complicated.
“When we get off this sandbar,” I say, “I’m pushing you in the water.”
“No you won’t. You love me. I’m your only friend.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
The crabs continue their silent judgment. The sun continues its slow arc toward the horizon, and I’m still stuck here with no phone (it’s back at the house, charging on the kitchen counter, because I wanted to “unplug”), no way off this boat, and nothing to do but marinate in my own choices.
“Tell me about the book,” Grayson says again. “Not the plot. The real stuff. Why you wrote it.”
So I do.
I tell him about the letters—how writing to Between the Lines was the first time I’d been honest in years. How her words made me want to be braver. How I started writing the manuscript because I needed somewhere to put all the feelings I couldn’t say out loud.
I tell him about Jessica’s review—the two-star devastation that woke me up. How she was right about everything. How I’d been performing vulnerability instead of living it.
I tell him about how Vera used to say that the bravest thing a person could do was love openly, without armor. How I spent fifteen years pretending I didn’t hear her.
The tide starts to turn. Water creeping back in, slow and patient.
“You should send her the book,” Grayson says when I’m done.
“Yeah?”
“It’s the most honest thing you’ve ever done. She should see it.” He pauses. “Even if she doesn’t forgive you, she should know she mattered enough to inspire it.”
The water rises. The boat shifts, lifting slightly as the mud releases its grip.
I’m about to respond when something hits the deck with a wet thwack.
We both freeze.
Slowly, I look down.
A crab. Blue shell, orange claws, very much alive. Sitting on the deck between our feet like it has every right to be there.
“Did a crab just climb onto the boat?” Grayson asks.
“I think a crab just climbed onto the boat.”
It raises its claws and waves them at us all territorial and aggressive-like.
“Why is it doing that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t speak crab.”
Another wet thwack arrives as a second crab hauls itself over the gunwale.
“Scott.”
“I see it.”
A third and fourth come up arrive. “The anchor line is in the mud,” I realize. “They’re climbing up it.”
“Well, pull it up!”
I grab the line and start hauling. More crabs cling to it, dropping onto the deck as I pull. Grayson yelps and jumps onto his seat, feet off the floor.
“They’re everywhere!”
“They’re just crabs!”
“Yeah, but with claws!”
I’m trying to detach the last of them from the anchor line, but one has attached itself to my shoe. I shake my foot, but it just holds on. I shake harder, and it pinches.
“Ow!”
“Get it off!”
“I’m trying!”
The boat is now home to approximately eight crabs, all of them apparently furious about being brought aboard against their will.
Grayson is standing on his seat making sounds I’ve never heard from a grown man.
I’m hopping on one foot trying to dislodge my attacker while two more advance on me like I’ve insulted their mother.
I grab the boat hook and start gently pushing crabs toward the gunwale. They resist, and one grabs the boat hook and won’t let go.
“This is a nightmare,” Grayson announces from his perch, “and I want to wake up.”
“Would you help me?”
“I’m providing moral support!”
“You’re standing on a seat squealing!”
It takes fifteen minutes to evict all the crabs. By the end, I’m sweating, Grayson is still on his seat even though the deck is clear, and my shoe has a definite pinch mark.
We stare at each other.
“Never speak of this,” I say.
“Michelle is going to hear about this immediately.”
“Grayson.”
“There’s no way I’m not telling the best story I’ve ever witnessed.”
I slump against the steering wheel. The tide is high enough now. We could leave. But I don’t start the engine yet.
“I’m going to send her the manuscript,” I say.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.” I look at him. “Not because I expect anything. But because she deserves to know the truth. Even the parts that make me look pathetic.”
“You don’t look pathetic,” Grayson says. “You look like a guy who fell in love and didn’t know what to do about it.”
“Is that better?”
“Marginally.” He finally climbs down from his seat, checking the deck for stragglers before committing to standing. “For what it’s worth, I think she’ll forgive you.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on the fact that she came to the committee meeting. She didn’t have to. She could have handed it off to someone else.” He shrugs. “She’s still showing up. That means something.”
I think about the meeting and Jessica calling me Mr. Avery with frost in her voice. Her hand brushing mine over the timeline and both of us pulling back.
About the fact that she didn’t tell anyone my secret, even though she easily could have.
“Maybe,” I say.
“Definitely.” Grayson sits back down as I start the engine. “Now take us home. I need to call Michelle and tell her about the crabs.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t.”
“Too late. I’m already composing the text in my head.”
I guide The Meet Cute back through the channel, the water high enough now that the mud banks have disappeared. The marsh grass glows amber in the late afternoon light. Somewhere behind us, a pelican calls.
By the time I get home, I’ll have an email to write.
Not a grand gesture or a manipulation.
Just the truth, finally. In eighty thousand words.
And whatever Jessica decides to do with it is up to her.