Lexi
Lexi
A day passes, and then another. It genuinely astonishes me every morning to wake up and find that we are still floating here. Sometimes it seems so bleak—and sometimes it almost seems funny, like we’re the punch line of a very long joke.
We’re rationing the food more now, being extra careful with water. We’ve finally figured out the water tank systems monitor, a small screen set into the wall behind the steering wheel. You’re meant to input the tank’s capacity when you install it, but whoever fitted it didn’t bother, so it doesn’t tell us how many liters we have left. It just has four lights for the freshwater tank, four lights for the wastewater one. Full, three-quarters, half, a quarter. And empty. Late yesterday, the light for the freshwater tank flicked from a half to a quarter, and Zeke and I finally opened the bottles of tonic and soda water we had been saving up until now. It hadn’t felt good.
I’ve got into a daily routine of sorts, and I always spend at least an hour checking the houseboat meticulously for damage, looking for ways to make her safer. You’d think we would spend our whole time considering our imminent demise, but days are long, and there’s only so much panicking you can do before you get sick of yourself. So in reality, I spend a lot of my time thinking about other things: whether Eugene has feelings; what I might order if I had fifty pounds to spend in Papa John’s; and Zeke. Naked.
That’s a bad one, obviously. I don’t let myself do it much. Hardly ever. And definitely not when he’s there, because he’s starting to get to know me really well, and I worry he can tell what I’m thinking.
By day six, I’ve stopped waking up and going through the horror of remembering where we are. Instead, I wake up and think: I have to wash my hair . The shower doesn’t work, obviously—no power—and though I wash myself every day with hand soap and a bucket of seawater, I’ve not figured out how to do my hair. It’s almost sticky with grease now, and it makes me feel disgusting.
I declare this to Zeke as I march out into the living area. It’s late, nearly midday according to the corgi clock—I was on first watch last night. Zeke prefers to sit indoors in the heat of the day, because although it’s nauseatingly stuffy inside, it’s a little cooler.
I can’t believe the weather we’re having. It feels like we’re in the Mediterranean, not the North Sea. Both Zeke and I have caught the sun in the last six days, and we are turning browner now; when I look at myself in the wardrobe mirror, I’m already so different. My tanned skin makes my blue eyes pop like someone’s edited them on the computer, and the grease almost turns my bleached hair back to its original mousey brown. I’ve lost weight—my chin doesn’t slope into my neck, it juts sharply, and my upper arms aren’t so wobbly. It’s interesting how little I care: back home, I’d have been delighted, but now the exact proportions of my body feel completely irrelevant as long as it’s still in one piece.
Zeke’s different, too. He’s not lost weight the way I have, but his hair is slicked back now, and he’s growing a beard. I like it, though I’ve not said so—it would feel kind of inappropriate. Since our conversation forbidding anything happening between us, he’s been fastidious in friend-zoning me. I find it a constant source of irritation. The more he politely keeps a distance from me, the more I want to press close and make him change his mind.
Which is terrible. He’s being a nice man. I agreed that we should keep things platonic.
But still. I’d love him to just sit up on that sofa, snag his T-shirt over his head, pull me in with one hand on the back of my neck the way he did in bed on that first night and—
“I’d say you could go for a swim with a bottle of shampoo,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
I sigh, settling down on the opposite end of the sofa from him. Neither of us has been near the water since the accident with the knife—it’s changed our whole perspective. We’ve discussed the possible dangers in the sea: sharks, jellyfish, the sheer coldness of the water. And we’ve both seen movement out there, though neither of us can be sure that it isn’t just a trick of the light on the surface. But it looks so inviting right now. Glittering, azure, cool, fresh…
“Could you throw a bucket of seawater over my head?” I suggest.
“Weren’t you the one telling me to stop lifting things?”
I pull a face. He’s healing well—there’s no sign of infection yet, and my anxiety is slowly easing by the day. But the wound still restricts his movement, and I do fuss about him doing too much. He’s a very pliant patient, really—he doesn’t get annoyed when I tell him to sit still. But he does always end up standing again two minutes later.
“Right, yes. Sorry.”
I watch him sip his drink. We’re both thirsty all the time. The pot of Vaseline in my makeup bag has been an unexpected godsend—you feel so much thirstier with dry, chapped lips. We give ourselves four small glasses of water per day now, and we use the seawater bucket for everything we can.
“I could maybe wash your hair for you if you leaned over the bucket,” Zeke says thoughtfully. “Shall we try? It’s not going to make it any dirtier.”
“Oi,” I say, shoving his shin with my foot.
He doesn’t wince, and I relish that small sign that he’s not hurting so badly anymore.
“You’re not looking much better,” I tell him, “and you got to swim in the ocean with Eugene on day two.”
“We can do me after,” he says, unoffended. “No shortage of shampoo—or seawater.”
This is true: we have plenty of seawater available. A lot more than we’d like.
“Your spa is prepared, madam,” says Zeke, once I thump a full bucket of seawater down on the deck and begin untying the rope from its handle.
I glance up to see him topless in his now-battered velvet trousers, with a new clean strip of one of my T-shirts tied around his midriff. He’s got a washing-up sponge in one hand and his bottle of shampoo in the other. It’s a manly black-packaged one, called Recharge or Ravage or something equally masculine, like the mere fact of washing is inexcusably feminine and must be counteracted by all means possible. It’s not really Zeke’s style, and the way he’s examining the label makes me think it wasn’t his.
“Nicked it from Brady, my flatmate,” he says, seeing my expression. “I’m a terrible packer. Hate it. I leave it to the last minute because I know I’ll forget ten things anyway.”
He’s mentioned his friend Brady before—the name always conjures up a loping, teenage roommate, thoughtless and yawning. I find these peeks into Zeke’s real life both fascinating and unsettling; it’s almost impossible to imagine. I wonder if he’s different back home. I wonder if I am.
“How are we doing this, then?” I ask, diverting my attention to the sloshing bucket on the deck. “I kneel like I’m about to be beheaded?”
That makes Zeke laugh. He crouches down beside me as I throw my hair forward over the bucket and lower my head in as best I can. The water is much colder than I expected, but I’m sweating with the exertion of pulling up the rope, and the sun is so hot I don’t mind the shock of it.
“Hold still,” Zeke says, dunking the sponge in the bucket and then squeezing it over my head.
I shriek as a rivulet comes jetting down my neck, soaking the top of my T-shirt.
“Sorry,” Zeke says, but I shake my head.
“No, this is great.”
Zeke starts to rub the shampoo through my hair, and I let out a moan. It just feels so good—the clean, cologne-ish scent of the shampoo, the feeling of the water on the skin of my scalp, his fingers massaging me.
Zeke stills for a moment, shifting slightly, then resumes. I close my eyes, forget all about the fact that I’m bent over a bucket of seawater, and just think about his thumbs rubbing over the muscles at the base of my skull.
He clears his throat. “You need to…OK. Hmm. You need to not make those sounds?”
My eyes fly open. “Oh. Umm.”
“Sorry. It’s just…quite…distracting.”
I can’t decide whether to laugh or blush. “Got you,” I say, pressing my lips together.
I shouldn’t be gratified, but I am. Sometimes, when I look at Zeke, it strikes me as totally impossible that he slept with me. He’s so gorgeous, so young, so…I don’t know, the word that comes to mind is special . I bite down on a smile. It’s nice to know that I’m a distraction, even if I am essentially the only woman on the planet right now.
He rinses my hair out carefully, cupping his hand at the back of my neck to stop the water drenching me too badly.
“Lexi! I’m not even rubbing you.”
I start laughing. I hadn’t noticed myself making a sound.
“Sorry. It just feels really good. Shutting up now.”
Zeke’s bare forearms move on the edge of my vision, muscles bunching, water droplets shining on his tanned skin.
“You want me to wring it out?” he says eventually. “Untangle it?”
My hair is long—it reaches down to my waist. It’s very impractical hair, and a total vanity thing, as Penny always likes to point out to me. You kick around all day in stained trackies but you groom that hair like it’s your pet , she told me last week, when she caught me running oil through the ends after my shower. So many elements of this memory feel alien to me now: Penny, showers, the luxurious smell of hair oil.
I should say no—I can wring out my hair myself.
“Would you?” I find myself saying instead. I like being like this, with his hands in my hair, and knowing he likes it more than he should.
He hesitates for just a moment, then shifts the bucket aside.
“Sit back,” he says, fingers combing against my scalp.
I do as I’m told. He comes to sit behind me and twists my hair in his fist, squeezing gently to wring out the droplets. I close my eyes, heat lancing through me as he begins to comb out the tangles with his fingers.
“When was the last time you did this?” he asks.
His voice makes me shiver.
“Washed my hair?”
“No. Let someone do something for you.”
“Oh.” I blink. “I mean…Well…”
Answering this question is harder than it should be.
“Penny makes dinner sometimes?”
“Don’t you guys live together? I feel like that’s just…normal.”
“Oh, maybe…”
His fingers are firm and gentle.
“I mean, when was the last time you let someone treasure you? Look after you?”
“I wasn’t really raised that way,” I say. “My mum was not big on spoiling us.”
“Well, OK, you’re thirty-one now, not five.”
“Are you saying it’s too late for me?”
“Yes, Lexi, for once I am saying it’s too late for you,” he says, laughter in his voice. “You’re unspoilable. I don’t think there’s any danger in letting someone…” His fingers slip through my hair as he thinks. “I don’t know, letting someone give you the night off from looking after Mae just because. Or letting someone…give you a massage. Make you your favorite food for dinner. Cherish you.”
I swallow. The idea is so alien to me. It feels totally decadent, almost shamefully so. I associate doing things for yourself with the way my father behaved, I suppose—when we talked about him, he was always the selfish one who abandoned his responsibilities. My mum was the woman who stayed; she fought to keep the pub afloat, and she fought for me, and she took Penny in because she saw a little girl who needed help. She was my hero, and I never once saw her treat herself—always other people.
But the feel of Zeke’s fingers in my hair is so delicious, and the idea of someone wanting to do this for me—to make me feel good just for my own sake…it’s almost impossibly tempting.
“It sounds too good to be true,” I whisper.
“That,” Zeke says gently, “is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”