Zeke
Zeke
“You sure about this?” Jeremy says.
Weirdly, he’s the one person I wanted with me today. There’s just something so solid about Jeremy. Solid and reliably irritating: he spent the entire journey here telling me what I had better not say on camera, all of which will now definitely end up coming out of my mouth.
“Sure about seeing Lexi, you mean, or going on TV?” I ask, adjusting my hair in the greenroom mirror.
We’ve been given a few minutes on our own. I was desperate for the hovering makeup artists and production assistants to leave. But now there’s no distraction from the pit in my stomach.
“Actually, I meant the outfit,” Jeremy says, clapping a hand on my shoulder.
“Did you just make a joke, Jeremy?” I ask, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
He smiles. I smile back. This is all new and kind of nice.
“The outfit is very trendy, I’m sure,” Jeremy says. He’s only thirty-two. The way he talks, you’d think he was sixty.
I do like the outfit. It’s a fairly traditional suit, in navy blue, but oversized, the trousers too long. I’m wearing three silver necklaces over a white tee underneath the jacket, the three necklaces I wore on the night Lexi and I met. The ones that came with us on the houseboat.
“Five minutes!” someone says, poking their head around the door.
People keep doing this—leaning around things to talk to me, as if they can’t afford the time to come all the way over. This whole place makes me edgy. I’m waiting to be caught out saying something stupid. I can’t even believe I’ve agreed to this. It’s like the opposite of our time alone at sea: here, the whole world will be watching me. I’ve never felt less comfortable.
“So I don’t get to see her first?” I say to the head that’s already trying to disappear behind the door again.
“Sorry, no!” she says with a sympathetic grimace. “No time!”
“Hmm,” Jeremy says, unimpressed, as she ducks away.
“You smell bullshit?”
“You could put it like that, yes.”
I do, too. I glance toward the clock.
“I’m going to see if I can find her,” I say, heading for the door and out into the maze of corridors beyond.
“Oh, excuse me, Zeke!” someone calls immediately.
I sidestep down a different route. There’re just endless white doors. It reminds me of the rig. Dread rises in my chest.
“Zeke, hi,” someone else says, touching my elbow. “We just need you to step back into the greenroom while we wait for go-time? It won’t be long now.”
“I just need a minute,” I say, still walking, leaving their trailing hand behind.
More doors, all closed, all unmarked.
“Where’s Lexi’s dressing room?” I ask the person tailing me.
“Oh, sorry, I can’t—”
“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to start opening random doors,” I say, taking a left. Am I going in a circle here?
“She’s not in her dressing room anymore,” the person says. “She’s…”
I see her. I’ve stepped into the edge of the studio—I can see the hosts sitting on their strange fake sofa with their cups of tea and their cozy rug, and I can see the shadowy audience curving away from me, and I can see Lexi. The rest fades instantly.
She’s on the other side of the studio, in the wings. She hasn’t spotted me yet—she’s looking out into the audience. She drops her hands to her stomach, smoothing down the fabric of her jumpsuit.
Seeing her reminds me of the moment on the houseboat when it began to rain after all those endless thirsty hours. I’ve been starving for her, and here she is, looking more beautiful than ever. Her hair is loose and wild, brightened to a new shade of blond, and her wide eyes are lined with thick lashes so that they pop even brighter. I’ve never seen her all made up like this, and she looks different, but she somehow still looks exactly like the Lexi from the boat, too. My Lexi.
For a second I think about running to her, even as the hosts of Morning Cuppa burst into laughter over some news piece about dating apps. I could just storm right in front of them. Reach for her, tell her I promise I never knew about Mae, tell her I’m so sorry and I know I’ve hurt her, and if I could go back in time and fix it, I would, I’d be there for every step of the last four years and three months of that girl’s life, but—
There’s a warning hand on my shoulder. Two large security guards in black, with various things hanging off them that, on inspection, are walkie-talkies, but still give off the vague air of potentially being guns.
“You’re on in two minutes, Zeke, just hold back!” whispers someone new at my other elbow.
Lexi’s seen me now. Her eyes widen slightly. She looks…I don’t know. It’s harder to read her than it should be. We’re too far apart. We’ve so rarely stood at a distance like this, and never with all this noise around us, all these people…
“You OK?” says the stranger at my side. She’s got headphones half on, one ear in, one ear out, and her smile is too bright. “All good?”
I keep looking at Lexi. I try to tell her without saying it. I love you . I’m sorry. I love you so much.
“Now, we’ve been talking this morning about how tough it can be to date in the modern world,” says Delana, co-host of Morning Cuppa .
She’s in a pink dress and slippers—wearing slippers is a Morning Cuppa thing. I think there’re some waiting on the stage for me and Lexi. I stare at the tape marking the edges of the fake living room.
“So let’s talk about one of the strangest tales of recent times: the adventure dubbed ‘the twelve-night stand’ by the tabloids. The story of Lexi and Zeke, who had a one-night stand that just didn’t end! They spent twelve nights together on the houseboat they went back to after meeting for a drink at the pub and being swept out to sea. Talk about unusual, right? I mean, that’s one way to really get to know a guy!”
“Right?” Yusuf says, laughing. “It’s unconventional, for sure, but can a bonding experience like this really lead to true love? Should we all be jumping aboard with our crushes, and seeing if we can sail away into the sunset?”
Lexi and I haven’t stopped looking at each other. This scene happening between us, it all looks so small. These people don’t get it. They weren’t there. They think it was a bonding experience . They think the boat made us what we are. But we did that, and we found each other in spite of being lost out there, and suddenly I can’t fucking stand it, how they’re making this feel like a gimmick when it was the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me.
Lexi turns away. “I’m sorry,” I watch her say, and then she’s pushing between the gaggle of shadowy camera crew and producers.
“Now,” Delana says, blinking a little faster—someone’s talking in her ear. “We’ll be hearing from them very soon, but first, we want to hear from the audience! Would you ever live on a houseboat?”
I turn around and do the same as Lexi, shaking off the hands trying to snag at my arms.
“I’m sorry,” I tell someone, “but this is just not us.”
I find her outside on the lot, the wind blowing in her hair. She’s looking out at the traffic—it’s noisy here, though you can’t hear a single trace of road noise inside the studio. She’s braced, standing with her feet planted. I remember she stood that way even before we went to sea. Like she’s always been ready for waves underfoot.
“Hi,” she says, turning to look at me over her shoulder. “I think we just pissed a lot of people off.”
“Well, a lot of people just pissed me off.” I walk toward her. It’s as if there’s something pulling me—I couldn’t stay where I was if I tried. “So fair enough, I reckon.”
“It’s not their fault they don’t understand,” Lexi says, looking back out at the cars and lorries streaming by. “They’re only doing what people do. They just want a good story. It’s human nature.”
I come to stand beside her, then reach out to take her hand. She grasps mine, and that touch is enough to send sensation surging through me. Too many feelings to name, but I’d call the whole powerful mess of it love , I guess: it’s too much to be anything else. I just love her. That’s all there is.
“Do you know?” she whispers, turning her head to look at me for a split second before glancing back to the road.
My heart hurts. “About Mae?”
I feel her stiffen and I hold her hand tighter.
“I didn’t know she even existed , Lexi, I—”
“I know.” She turns to me properly then, but her eyes are still downcast. “Penny told me on the way here. How did you figure it out?”
“Jeremy did what he does best.”
“Be condescending?” Lexi says, then pulls a face at herself. “Sorry, sorry, not my place. I kind of forget I’ve still not even met him. I feel like I know him just from all our conversations on the boat about your family.”
I laugh. “You’re not far off. But no, I meant puzzles. He worked it out from the dates, and how you disappeared off with Penny and Mae at the marina.” I swallow, sobering. “Did you think I’d lied to you? That I’d known all along and…”
“Not really,” she whispers, then, “Maybe. Sometimes.”
“I wish you’d thought better of me.”
“But I didn’t know you, that’s what I told myself,” she says, glancing up for one pained moment. Her eyes are full of tears. “And I knew Penny inside out. At least, I thought I did. Whereas I didn’t know who you were in the real world.”
I can’t stand it any longer—I pull her in to my chest.
“You know me,” I say, as she burrows her head into me, the way she has a hundred times before. I close my arms around her. “You think this world’s more real? Look at us, we’re in a place where people sit around pretending to have breakfast together at four in the afternoon, with a whole audience watching them drink tea. The fruit on that table isn’t real. It’s polished plastic. I have so much makeup on I can’t really raise my eyebrows, Lexi.”
I feel her smile as her shoulders lift on a quick gulp for breath.
“Was there anything more real than the life we had on the water?” I ask her, pulling back slightly. “It was—it was where I was most…” I close my eyes, frustrated with myself.
“It’s OK,” she whispers into my jacket. “It’s where I was most myself. Is that what you mean?”
“Yeah. Exactly. And you cutting me out the way you did…It hurt so much because you knew me. Maybe better than anyone ever has. If you felt like you never wanted to see me again, then…”
“I know,” she says, beginning to cry. “I hurt you. I wanted to hurt you. I thought you’d hurt the only person in the world who I love the way I love you.”
I hold her so tightly I can feel her catching her breath. What I say next, it matters: I have to get it right, and I force myself to wait until the words arrange themselves the way I want them.
“If I’d known Mae was mine, she would have known every day that her dad was there for her. I would never have hurt her, and I never want to hurt her, Lexi. But I do want to know her. And I realize you may not want that. Penny may not want that. And that’s going to be complicated.”
“Complicated,” she whispers into my chest. “We’ve not really done complicated, have we?”
“I mean, I don’t think staying alive on the water was uncomplicated…”
“It was difficult,” she says, finally lifting her face to mine. “But it wasn’t complicated. We knew what we had to do.”
I tilt my head, brushing her hair back from her face. “OK,” I say, smiling down at her. “Well, we’re good at difficult.”
“We are good at difficult.”
“Reckon it’s worth giving complicated a go, too?”
“We’ve had a month off from peril and trauma,” Lexi says. “We do probably need a new challenge.”
I link my hands at the small of her back and look down into her face. She’s more relaxed now, a smile lingering in the corners of her eyes. For a split second I remember how it felt to gaze at her like this on the lifeboat deck, just moments after we were rescued. How absolutely floored I was to get to hold her in my arms when I thought I never would again. It makes me want to keep living like that, keep feeling like that—not the terror but the gratitude. The intensity of this love. I don’t want to lose it, not even for a moment.
“I love you,” I whisper. “And I don’t care how complicated things get. I’m not letting you go.”
She smiles. “It doesn’t end for us,” she whispers back. “Remember? Not ever.”
She kisses me, standing on tiptoe to bridge the space between us. I tighten my arms around her and close my eyes as she deepens the kiss, running her hands up my back like she wants me even closer. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I register the quiet click of the fire-exit door behind us, but I’m too lost in her to care.
“Oh, now, hey, would you look at that!” Yusuf says.
We break apart and turn to see him and a scuttling, bent-kneed cameraman coming toward us.
“I think we’ve walked into the middle of our happily ever after,” Yusuf says, beaming. “Isn’t that just perfect!”