Chapter 24
chapter
twenty-four
It’s possible I exaggerated my experience canoeing. Once I’m on the water, paddle in hand, I suddenly remember that I hated our canoe trips and preferred cleaning up goat crap.
I am prodigiously uncoordinated on water.
“Paddle forward right,” Eitan commands from the back.
His voice strains with exertion, having to compensate for my many mispaddles.
Some people have issues with right and left, and apparently I have the same block when it comes to paddling forward and backward.
We’ve spent half the time paddling in opposite directions, cancelling each other out and sending our canoe spinning down the river in the world’s slowest cyclone.
“Just—how about you do nothing, and I paddle,” Eitan begs.
“If you insist!” I rest my paddle on my lap and lean back onto the middle bench, covering my eyes with a hand.
“And she doesn’t put up a fight.” Eitan laughs.
“Keep us in the shade, please,” I request. “You don’t stay this pale on accident.”
“But of course, m’lady.” Despite the sarcasm, he pushes us toward the shaded bank to drift next to the exposed tree roots and wildly overgrown foliage.
“Magnificent, darling,” I say in a British high tea accent. I think I’d do well in a palanquin.
“The least you could do is make conversation,” Eitan grunts.
Maybe I should go back to paddling.
What is the least sexy subject I can pontificate on? “Shall I recite The Aeneid? ‘I sing of arms and a man.’”
“Or you could just tell me about your dating life.” Eitan’s words slip out. Rushed. Like even he didn’t expect them.
The canoe is quiet for a second.
My current dating life consists of one feverish kiss in an alley that will haunt me for the rest of my days. “Not much to share,” I say slowly. I should have known Virgil was too sexy to start with. Maybe I should discuss the cultural history of the mop.
“Then tell me about Grant.” Eitan veers subjects quickly. “What happened there?”
My hands are fuzzy and my heart speeds up.
It’s embarrassing telling this story to a stranger, let alone someone else who doesn’t see me as long-term-partner material.
This is exactly why it’s dangerous being trapped in a canoe with someone you’ve kissed.
They should put warning labels on these things.
“It’s a tale as old as time,” I say, keeping my tone as light as possible. “Girl meets boy, they fall in love, everything goes perfect—they even plan to move in together—then girl is diagnosed with cancer. Girl recovers, but relationship never does.”
“That doesn’t sound like a tale I’m familiar with.”
I squirm. “We just fell out of love. Who can blame him, really. It’s hard to stay in love with a walking corpse.”
Even I fell out of love with myself.
Eitan scoffs. “That’s bullshit and you know it. It’s not a burden to take care of someone you love.”
I snort, pointedly. The conversation is approaching quicksand. “Coming from someone who describes himself as ‘not a relationship guy,’ that doesn’t mean much.”
Eitan sets down his paddle with a hollow thud. “That’s not—I didn’t—” He takes one fuming breath. “That’s not why I said what I said that night.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I rush to dismiss this entire moment. “I got the message, and I’m okay with it.”
“I haven’t been able to imagine being in a relationship for years. But—” His voice sputters out. Restarts. “I haven’t met anyone who makes me feel like this. I—I’m flying blind.”
The words are what I wanted to hear for two weeks, but they’re sturdy as sandcastles. When I actually gave Eitan the chance to act on them, when I asked for more, he had nothing to give me.
I shake my head, looking up at the turquoise blue sky.
“You’re confusing some fucked up sense of duty you feel toward me with romantic feelings.
Don’t worry—give it a few weeks—it will pass.
” I pick my oar back up. “You can’t be attracted to someone you pity.
It doesn’t count.” I begin paddling, my movements haphazard and nonsensical.
“Ruby—stop paddling—”
“You should have taken the canoe with Skip. You and him could have talked about water sports for hours.”
“I don’t think water sports means what you think it does—”
“The point is, you’ve had this hero complex since we met. I mean, you wanted to be my coach for godsakes. And you need to know that I’m fine. I can take care of myself.” I paddle furiously, wanting to escape this conversation, and we begin spinning.
Sometimes I feel like Roadrunner, always aimed in the wrong direction.
Eitan paddles hard, trying to counteract my strokes and stop our whorl. “Just—wait,” he huffs. “That’s not how it is. Your perspective is—” Eitan grunts under the exertion. “Warped.”
A word pops into my mind. Capsize. That’s a thing that can happen to boats, right?
“Trust me,” I say, my own words beginning to sound exerted. We’re spinning faster. “I’m sparing you.”
“I know what you’re doing,” Eitan says, his voice rough like a knife on a whetstone.
“What am I doing?” I attempt to stick my paddle into the river bed and hold us in one place.
“Acting like it’s unacceptable to lean on other people.” Eitan’s breaths have become pants.
Well, when I try to lean on them, I end up falling. “I don’t need to lean on anyone. I’M FINE.” I shout convincingly.
“You sound exactly like me.” Eitan mutters from the back of the canoe. “Ruby—”
We’re paddling to nowhere, and because we’ve been facing backwards, neither of us clocked a fallen tree blockading the left half of the river. And we’re heading straight for it.
“Shit!” I squeal once I see it.
“Paddle left forward—hard,” Eitan grunts.
I scramble to follow his instructions.
“No—Ruby—left!”
I squeak and thrust my paddle to the other side of the canoe, hitting full throttle. Only…backwards. Any chance of redirection is lost, and we’re now heading into the fallen tree, sideways.
“Duck!” Eitan shouts.
I shriek like a river banshee and duck. As we pass under it, small branches and leaves slap my face, and the rough bark of the trunk is mere inches from my cheek. I’m leaning back so far and holding my breath that I don’t feel the change in balance until it’s too late.
Just as we clear the fallen tree, the canoe flips. I finally remember what capsize means.
The water is a cold shock. Something slimy snakes around my leg.
I fail to get my bearings until the life vest pulls me to the surface.
I gasp as my feet find the riverbed. The water is chest-deep, the current trying to sweep me into it.
I blink several times, clearing the river from my eyes, and shiver as the cold truly sets in.
My paddle must be halfway to Lake Huron at this point.
“Ru—by.” Eitan’s voice pipes up from downcurrent. I turn to see him, soaking wet and dripping water, biceps straining as he single handedly keeps our canoe from making a break for it. He makes his way to the riverbank, pulling the canoe with him.
I wade toward him in the shallows next to the bank, wincing, preparing myself for a lecture.
“Hop in,” Eitan says gruffly. I look at him and the canoe with the utmost skepticism. He’s holding the boat steady, expecting me to get back into that medieval torture device. I sidle up to the opposite side, and we face off across the canoe.
“I think I’ll walk,” I tell him.
“Get in the canoe, Ruby.”
Skip’s voice calls out to us, enthusiastic in his camo life vest. “Caboose squad alert! The river waits for no man. Or woman!”
Andres paddles in the front, looking dead behind the eyes.
“Why am I here!” I yell over the sound of rushing water, at Skip.
“Why are any of us here!” he responds. “Less than a mile to the new campsite! TALLY HO!”
I grumble while shivering so hard my teeth chatter. I hoist myself onto the front seat of the canoe and lay back. My head leans to the side, and I watch Eitan push himself up, Hulk style, and sling a muscular leg over the canoe to pull himself aboard.
“I lost my paddle,” I inform him.
“Yep, I figured. Probably for the best.”
“I don’t think I want to be here.”
“And yet, you smiled at me this morning.”
I turn beet red, recalling how I admired Eitan’s bedhead like a lovesick idiot. “I don’t smile!” Brilliant comeback.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Eitan says absentmindedly as he takes over the paddling for both of us. I resign myself to shivering in the fetal position while the riverbank’s canopy and the rolling clouds meander overhead.
“Wake up,” Eitan calls out. It could be anywhere between fifteen minutes and two hours later. I’m still soaking wet, so I’ll assume it’s closer to fifteen minutes.
There is a sloping bank cleared of trees ahead on the right, and Eitan steers us directly toward it until the canoe is beached. He hops out quickly, then holds a hand out for me to do the same.
When I don’t immediately take it, Eitan squats down, bringing his face eye level with mine. “Ruby,” he says.
Just the sound of him saying my name makes frustrated tears prick at the corners of my eyes.
“Eitan,” I whisper.
“I want to be someone you can lean on,” he murmurs.
He almost sounds conflicted, like he’s actively battling himself.
His hand takes mine and holds it as he stands up again.
My body follows his, magnetized. I want that too.
But how can I lean on someone who doesn’t even trust himself?
How am I supposed to open myself up to that when I’ve experienced the other side of it?
The fallout of being left. Eitan may not be selfish like Grant, but he’s made it clear that he can’t be relied on.
At the end of the day, the result is the same.
I can’t look at him. “You’re a good friend,” I tell him, avoiding the truth. I clamber out of the canoe without his help, narrowly avoiding another dunk in the river, and step onto solid ground.
The hand Eitan held out drops slowly, and fists at his side as he walks away.