Chapter 12
twelve
JAKE
Near the end of August, Jake took her out on the water.
He'd arranged for a sailboat from the marina in town: nothing extravagant, a thirty-two-footer with a clean hull, a good engine and enough deck space to lie down and watch the sky. When he told Violet, she'd given him the look. The skeptical one.
"It's not a gesture," he said. "I've been wanting to get out on the water all summer. There's a guy at the marina — Rick — who takes people out on his sailboat. I booked us a day."
She studied him. He could see her sorting through his words, testing them against the old pattern: the Michelin restaurants, the chartered jets, the birthday gifts ordered by assistants. He held still and let her look.
Finally, she smiled. "Okay. But if you try to open champagne on the bow, I'm swimming home."
"Beer and sandwiches. I promise."
They went out on a Saturday morning, early, before the weekend traffic clogged the harbor.
Rick met them at the slip, a sunburned man in his sixties with a white beard and forearms like rope, who shook Jake's hand.
Rick easily guided them past the breakwater while Jake sat beside Violet and watched the harbor open up into open ocean and thought: I want to learn how to do this.
Once they were past the point, the wind picked up and the sail filled. The boat leaned into it and Violet tipped her head back, closing her eyes and made a sound — a low, satisfied hum — that went through him like a current.
They sailed south along the coast. The cliffs rose golden above them.
Dolphins appeared off the starboard side, running with the boat for a quarter mile before peeling away.
Violet sat on the foredeck with her legs stretched in front of her and her face turned toward the sun.
Jake watched her from the helm and thought about all the years he'd spent acquiring things — houses, cars, companies, the accumulated weight of ambition — and how none of it had ever made him as happy as the sight of his wife on the deck of a borrowed boat with the wind in her hair.
They dropped anchor in a cove, a sheltered arc of turquoise water with no other boats in sight. Rick lowered the dinghy, tossed his fishing gear in and climbed down after it.
"I'll be back at four," he said, pulling the outboard cord. "Radio if you need me."
Then he motored around the headland and was gone, the buzz of the engine fading until the only noise was the water against the hull and the halyards clinking in the breeze.
They were alone. Completely alone, for the first time in weeks without a cottage wall or a sea grass border between them, with nothing around them except ocean, sky and privacy you can only find miles from shore.
They ate sandwiches, drank cold beer and talked about everything and nothing: the new story Violet was starting to outline, the conversation Jake had with Marty about a permanent COO appointment, Ellen's plan to host a Labor Day barbecue, whether Murphy would tolerate another holiday bandana.
Violet lay on her back on the deck and looked up at the sky. "I could stay here forever."
"On the boat?"
"In this day. Right here. I could loop this day and live in it."
Jake lay down beside her. The boat rocked gently beneath them, the halyards clinking against the mast, the water lapping the hull. He turned his head and looked at her profile: the straight line of her nose, her lips slightly parted, her eyes half-closed against the sun.
"I love you," he said.
She turned to look at him. "I know."
"I don't say it enough."
"You've been saying it. All summer. Not with words." She reached over and touched his jaw. "You've been saying it with risotto and morning walks and bad eggs.”
"My eggs are improving."
He grinned. She grinned back. And then the grinning stopped because she was touching his face, looking at him with those hazel eyes. The boat was rocking and they were alone on the water with nothing around them except ocean, sky and the heat of the afternoon sun.
He kissed her. Slow at first, tasting salt and beer on her lips, his hand finding the warm skin at the small of her back where her shirt had ridden up.
She made that sound again — the hum — and it vibrated against his mouth and his restraint, the restraint he'd been maintaining for weeks, began to fray.
"Vi," he said against her lips.
"Mm."
"I want?—"
"I know what you want." She pulled back and looked at him. Her eyes were bright. "Stop holding back."
He stared at her. "What?"
"You've been careful with me for weeks. And I love you for it. But I don't need you to be careful right now." She ran her thumb along his lower lip. "I need you to want me the way I can see you wanting me every time you think I'm not looking."
Something broke open inside him. Weeks of restraint, of measured touches, even when they made love, of stopping himself from pulling her closer and harder and deeper because he was terrified of reverting to the man who took.
She was telling him to let go. She was giving him permission to want her fully, and the permission itself was an act of trust so enormous it made his eyes sting.
Jake kissed her. The kiss was deep, hungry and thorough, his hands in her hair, his body pressing her down against the warm deck. The sound she made beneath him — a gasp that became a moan that became his name — destroyed whatever was left of his composure.
He pulled her shirt over her head. She pulled his off.
The sun was hot on their skin and the boat rocked beneath them.
Jake kissed his way down her body. Her collarbone.
Her breasts. The soft skin of her stomach.
She was arching into him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and when he looked up at her she was watching him, her eyes half-lidded and dark.
Jake pulled her shorts down and she kicked them free.
And then her hands were at his waistband and she was pushing his shorts off his hips.
He was naked against her on the deck of a sailboat in a cove with no one around for miles.
Her legs wrapped around him. He slid inside her and they both exhaled — a shared, shuddering breath — and for a moment they just stayed there, joined, forehead to forehead, breathing each other in.
Then she moved beneath him and he moved with her.
It was raw and urgent and present, her nails on his back, his mouth on her throat, the boat rolling with their rhythm, the sun hot on his shoulders.
She was vocal in a way she hadn't been in years: sounds he'd forgotten she made, sounds he'd stopped earning, sounds he wanted to spend the rest of his life giving her reasons to make.
He watched her face. He watched her come apart beneath him with the blue sky behind her, her back arching off the deck, her hand gripping the rail, and when she pulled him down against her and whispered I love you, I love you, I love you into his ear he came so hard he lost the boundaries of his body, lost the boat beneath him, lost everything except the woman in his arms, the sound of her voice and the sunlight pouring over both of them.
They lay on the deck afterward, tangled together, breathing hard, the boat drifting slowly in the current. Her head was on his chest. His hand was in her hair. The sky was very blue, very wide and the world was very quiet.
"Summer goddess," he murmured.
She laughed against his chest. "Shut up."
"Never."
* * *
Back at the marina, Rick tied off the boat, shook Jake's hand again and told him to come back anytime.
At the beach house, while Violet showered, he went to the cottage.
The box was in the dresser drawer. A cream-colored box, not unlike the one he'd found in the closet of their penthouse, the one filled with letters Violet had written to him and never sent.
This box was smaller. Inside were letters he'd written to her over the course of the summer.
On the pale blue stationery he'd bought from the shop in town because it reminded him of hers.
He'd started writing them the week he moved into the cottage.
At first they'd been apologies — long, sprawling attempts to explain, justify and analyze what had gone wrong, letters a man writes when he's still trying to negotiate his way back into a marriage.
He'd thrown those out. They sounded like memos.
The ones he'd kept were different. They were short, most of them. A few sentences. An observation. A memory. A moment from the day that he wanted to preserve because he was afraid, genuinely afraid, that if he didn't write it down he'd lose it the way he'd lost everything else she'd ever given him.
Vi — You laughed at something Ellen said on the beach today. I watched you from the porch and I couldn't breathe. When did I stop noticing your laugh? How did I let that happen?
Vi — I cooked the risotto from page 32 of the cookbook. It was terrible. I ate all of it. Your margin note said "Jake would love this." I do love it. I love that you wrote my name in a cookbook. I love that you thought about feeding me. I'm sorry I never knew.
Vi — You read me a paragraph from one of your stories today and your hands were shaking. Your hands shake every time you show me your work. I want to be the person whose opinion steadies you instead of frightening you. I don't know if I'll ever earn that. But I'm going to try.
There were dozens of them. Weeks of mornings, evenings, walks and dinners and nights, recorded in his handwriting on blue paper.
He'd written them for himself at first, a way of paying attention, of forcing himself to notice the details he'd spent years ignoring.
But somewhere along the way they'd become something else.
An answer to the shoebox in the closet. Her letters had been written in loneliness.
His were written in devotion.
Jake carried the box across the sea grass and found Violet in the kitchen, her hair damp from the shower, making tea.
"I have something for you," he said.
"What is it?"
"Letters," he said. "I've been writing them. All summer."
He set the box on the kitchen counter, beside the cookbook. She looked at it and didn't touch it.
"You don't have to read them now," he said. "Or ever, if you don't want to. But I wanted you to have them. You wrote yours alone, in the dark, because you didn't think I'd hear you. I wrote mine because I'm finally listening, and I want you to know what I heard."
Violet’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. He stepped forward and kissed her forehead. "Goodnight, Vi."
"You're not staying?"
"Not tonight. Read them if you want. Don't if you don't. I'll be on the porch at eight."
Jake walked back to the cottage and closed the door. He sat on the edge of his bed and pressed his palms against his eyes.
He'd given her everything he had in those letters.
Just words. Handwritten on blue paper. The truest things he'd ever said, written to the woman he'd spent eight years loving and failing, in the hope that she'd read them and recognize the man he was becoming.
The man who saw his wife for the extraordinary person she was.
He didn't know if it would be enough.