Chapter 26
“You could change your mind,” Annie says.
Walker has come back inside the warehouse, and it’s taken her a few minutes to work up the courage to say it.
He leans over the workbench, intensely focused, drawing a tidy diagram of the lifeline repairs on a scrap of paper. “I’m not
going, Annie,” he says softly.
“I don’t want to go, either.” She draws a string of waves in the sawdust on the workbench.
“Then don’t,” Walker says.
She wipes her fingers on her pants, leaving flecks of sawdust behind. “But I feel like I’m supposed to.”
He’s pinned a map of the coast on the wall over the bench. Red pen lines trace theoretical courses north along the islands
into Alaska. He leans against the map, his shoulder covering an entire Arctic Archipelago.
“Did you talk to Evan out there?”
“Yes.”
“What did he tell you?”
“What I already knew,” Walker says, looking into her eyes. “That he’s a good person. That he’ll do anything for you.” He puts
his pencil down. “That he wants you to go with him.”
Annie takes this in. She knows it, too, of course. “Isn’t it the safer thing to do?”
“Safer, how?”
“Basic necessities? A place to live? Make a living?” She lists each point off on her fingers.
“You’re in the middle of living. Right now.”
“I mean the practicalities.”
“We’re almost done with Polaris, Annie.” His tone is impatient. “Look at her. You love to sail. Practicalities will figure themselves out.”
“It’s a boat, not a life.” She exhales firmly. “Look where it landed my parents.”
“You still don’t know for sure where it landed them.” He pushes himself off the wall to stand up in front of her. “It’s okay
to want what you want.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“You do know.”
She closes her eyes and feels it: rocking to sleep on a boat, in the arc of the currents. Faraway islands, rocky crags, lone
spruce and fir.
“This is your boat,” he says.
Her heart is a stone skipping over water. “But what about you?”
“I can only go with you so far.”
“Why?” Annie crosses her arms.
He lowers his voice. “I can’t stay here forever.”
“Is this because of what happened? You’ve been distant this whole week,” she says.
“I’m giving you space like you asked me to—-”
She uncrosses her arms. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I want to stay.” Walker grabs his shirt with his fist. “That’s the hardest part.”
“Then stay!”
“None of this is about me,” he says. “I shouldn’t have gotten close the way I did. I know you feel alone. I hate that.”
Annie wants to settle him, the way he settles her. She steps toward him and puts her palms on his chest, rubs them up onto his shoulder. Around his neck. She can feel every molecule of space between them. His breathing rises and falls through her fingertips.
“Don’t make this harder than it is.” Walker is crying now, too. Wiping tears away, then looking at his fingertips like he’s
confused by them.
She puts her hands on his cheeks. “That underwater world you show me.” She tilts her face up to his. “It makes everything
feel right.”
“Of course it does,” he whispers.
She presses her lips against his.
It’s only a few tentative seconds before he gathers her up in his arms, folds her against his body. Her tongue finds his;
he tastes salty.
No stopping. She pulls him by the hand, up the ladder, onto the deck of Polaris. Then down the companionway and into the berth. He is all around her, his strong hum, his hands over her arms, up her back.
She’s against the wall, her mouth on his again, as she pulls him to her.
She peels off his shirt and hers, unhooking her bra. It all needs to come off. There’s enough light to sense the outline of
him, his hot skin against her own. The scent of him, behind his ears, his neck, the sea. Rock pools, sea anemones opening
and closing.
“Closer,” she says, and pulls him to the bed and on top of her.
He kisses her ribcage, then the soft skin between her breasts.
“Yes,” she says, pushes her hips into him. In one swift motion, she unbuttons her jeans and slides them down. She wants all
of him, all at once. “Don’t stop.”
Annie closes her eyes and the visions begin: water, rushing tides, the soft inside of an oyster.
It is sweetness and throbbing. Her mind is half inside his; she’s sure of it.
Memory passes through her skin. A current drags her harder toward him.
She sees blue. The thwump-thwump-thwump is here, soft and slow.
Annie shivers head to toe. The tide comes all the way up and washes over her. She’s ready to dive,
ready for the cold shock against her face.
She loses track of where her skin ends and his begins.