Lexi
Lexi
It’s windier. Wavier. Worse. With every hour that passes, my adrenaline ratchets up, and so does the weather. It’s raining now, thick, hard, ceaseless rain that eats its way into the houseboat, sliding through that crack. It’s almost dark, but I can still see that there’s white on the water, a fine spray like spittle from an angry mouth.
Things are bad.
“Lexi,” Zeke says after a while, as I shrug on a jumper, the chill from outside creeping into my bones. “You need to eat something.”
I want to brush him off—there’s no time , I have to secure the bathroom cabinet, I have to bail out the shower base again—but then I look at him, and I realize he’s scared.
“Of course,” I say, sagging back, steadying myself against the wood burner. My nausea is manageable at the moment, as I’ve taken some out-of-date seasickness tablets from the rig, but I have not missed the feeling of the world lurching beneath me.
“Here.” He hands me something on a plate.
I look up at him. “No. No .”
“I think the time’s come,” he says.
“The last digestive? The last digestive ?” My voice rises. “You’re giving me the last digestive right now? Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
His eyes widen slightly as I slam the plate back down on the countertop. It immediately slides off and I have to catch it again.
“No!” I snap. “We do not eat the last digestive! There is always the last digestive . Do you understand?”
An object shifts inside our kitchen cupboards and we both instinctively duck.
“I…sort of understand?” Zeke says, reaching for my hip. “But I think maybe…we need sugar…and there’s a biscuit going spare…so…”
I bat him off.
“If you eat this biscuit,” I say grimly, “I will kill you myself. Now get back to staying alive.”
“Can I tell you something?” Zeke says, his voice a little hoarse.
He’s taking a breather, standing against the kitchen counter, one foot braced on the floor, the other against the door of the fridge. The boat rocks beneath us and moisture gathers on the ceiling in slow, sinister drips. It’s more than just the crack now—the rain is getting through in so many places I’ve lost count.
“Yep,” I say, running a cloth down the side of the leakiest window, braced on the sofa cushions. Things have become increasingly frantic—Zeke and I are mostly communicating in bursts.
“Go,” I prompt him, glancing up. “Now’s good.”
“I love you,” he says. “Sorry. I had hoped to do a big buildup and everything, you know, wait for the perfect moment. I was going to tell you once we’d got you home to Mae, but…now I’m wondering if we might be short on time, so I figured, I’d better just let you know.”
I am crouched on the tatty sofa, my greasy hair scraped up into a bun, wearing a striped jumper ransacked from the rig—it sags from my collarbones, stretched by open-sea winds and overwear. I am afraid, and tired; I am simply living, doing, being. Right now I’d say I’m my rawest, truest self.
I look at Zeke. His hair is thickened by salt and dirt, his beard framing his jaw, his eyes a soft, hopeful shade of amber. The waves are reaching hungrily to our windows, but for a moment, I don’t even care.
“I love you so fucking much,” I tell him, my voice catching.
The boat rocks violently, and I have to grab for the back of the sofa to keep from falling. For a fleeting moment, I think of the romance I wanted when I was a little girl with a pillowcase on her head like a veil, dreaming of her wedding day—the fairy-tale ending. And I think of the romance I’ve had: dirty, gritty, bare, laced through with danger and wildness. If we’re going to die on this houseboat, I’ll die knowing I lived a love story far better than any I could have dreamed up.
“Come here,” Zeke says, so softly I almost miss the words over the rain and the rattling cupboards.
I climb down unsteadily from the sofa. He takes two steps to meet me halfway, and he gathers me up and kisses me, as hungry and desperate as the wind beating against our windows. The boat tilts backward and we lose balance, stumbling, but when my back hits the wall we just keep kissing, his arms braced around me.
We strip down fast, our hands frantic. I’m shaking with panic and desire. There is a lastness to this, a sense of ending. Everything is heightened. This need I have for him has a new depth to it, and if I had to name it, I’d call it grief .
“I’m so sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so sorry if we die because I thought it was brave to get back on this boat instead of staying on the rig.”
He pulls me down to the floor. “I love you,” he says again, as we tug off our trousers, cold hands finding warm skin. His voice is hoarse and dry. “Don’t you dare even think about dying.”
We don’t wait. I’m slick and shaking with want even as the fear courses through me. I feel sure that if anything will kill me right now, it’s not having Zeke.
As he reaches a hand between us, the boat tips so far that I think we’re gone. We’re rammed against the bathroom wall, every inch of us touching, and in that endless second where the boat waits to plunge into the sea or to right itself, Zeke presses into me, his eyes full of fierceness, as if he’s denying it all, as if he’s saying, There’s just us, nothing else .
I cling to him. I’m feeling everything: his hard body, the terror of balancing on the precipice, the sharp thud of my heart against his chest. I don’t know how long the moment is—two seconds, ten—but I have never felt this alive before. It’s as if I’ve woken up and found my whole life was a lazy dream, and in reality, this is living, this quick flame-bright thing.
When the boat tips back, it carries us with it. We slam into the kitchen cabinets, my elbow cracking on the edge of a cupboard door even though I can feel Zeke turning into the impact to try to soften it for me. We don’t part, not even for an instant. I’m crying, crying out. Behind us I hear something break, perhaps the glass of a window. I don’t care. I have him, his body enveloping mine, mine enveloping his. We’re part of the boat now, our bare skin pressed to her straining, creaking boards.
“Hold on for me,” Zeke breathes roughly into my ear. He’s still moving, still sending that heat coursing through me as the waves beat hard at our sides. “Just keep holding on, Lexi. Keep holding on.”