Page 28 of The Ripple Effect

“We won’t need helmets until tomorrow. Brent, how about you rack those back up.” McHuge says it kindly, but a miserable flush climbs Willow’s cheeks. Brent rejoins the circle, hands empty, and nudges her toward the locker.

I sidle up to Willow, smiling through my fury. “I’ll take it,” I whisper. “Don’t miss the demo.” Looking relieved, she hands itover. I silently will her to join the circle between Lori and Mitch, but she slips in beside Brent, putting her hand into the crook of his elbow.

I think the demonstration she needs is how to leave her awful husband, who’s sandbagged her twice and we’re not even on the water yet. Brent strikes me as no different from a lot of men who like to treat women like we don’t need autonomy or respect. No different from my father, who thought my mom should give him everything, including the decision to abandon her daughter. His daughter.

But it’s not helpful to wish Willow would tell Brent where he can shove that helmet.It’s better to be kind than right, my inner McHuge advises, impatience coming through in his imaginary tone. That, and it’s better for the guests to feel smart, give us five stars on Tripadvisor, and refer their friends. That’s what’ll keep the Love Boat alive.

“Time to get zipped and clipped! Any time we’re in the red zone—meaning whitewater and areas where it’s possible to slip, trip, or drift into whitewater—we keep our helmets buckled and life jackets secured. As I said, no helmets today, so my…” McHuge coughs to cover his hesitation. “My lovely fiancée will put you together with a life jacket and paddle. Choose who’s sitting in the bow, or the front, and who’s in the stern. The stern paddler has more power to steer. The bow paddler’s momentum makes the steering strokes effective, and they watch for obstacles ahead. Suit up, friends.”

Tomorrow, McHuge and I will be in separate boats, but today we’re demonstrating the tandem positions. After taking care of the guests, he hefts a tandem into the water and holds the stern so I can get into the bow. Babe gallops past, leaping into the bow with a shower of water and mud and wet dog smell.

“Out, Babe,” McHuge says, pointing at the shore. “Next time, buddy.”

Babe gives me a sour look. She squints at the shallow water, then jumps out and slopes off toward camp, ears down, belly dripping. McHuge launches us, then jumps in the stern like a bobsledder. I have to kneel in the puddle Babe left behind.

“Which side do you want?” I dip my paddle right and left.

“I’m easy.”

“Stern picks,” I say, still irritable about Brent.

“You can choose.”

This feels like a test where every response teaches him something about me. Maybe Iwantthe camaraderie Sloane had with him, but that’s not an instinct I can trust. He and I are nothing alike. At best, we’re opposite sides of the same coin, looking away from each other for a damn good reason.

“I’d rather you chose, McHuge.”

I feel his silent sigh. “Left, then.”

He takes a stroke, the boat leaping with a surge that tugs in my belly. He’s good at following my lead, synchronizing his rhythm to mine so closely the splashes blend into a single heartbeat.

I wish I could watch him paddle and feel it at the same time. When we scouted the local rapids, his body was one with his boat and the water in an almost mythical way. He’s a fish—still until the moment he flicks his tail and disappears, mercury scales swirling into silver water.

“Circle up, everyone!” McHuge has to shout to reach Mitch and Lori, who are goofing around halfway to the middle of the channel. At this volume his voice has the commanding reverb of a Harley, and feels just as fascinating and dangerous.

Wait,fascinating?I put some snap into my softening spine.Knock that shit off, Byrd, I tell myself. We’ll teach steering strokes for an hour, play in a baby current upstream, then drift back to camp. I’m not going to accidentally fall in love with him in one afternoon. Or ever.

It takes some time to circle everyone up, given that we have to go get Brent and Willow, who are spinning hopelessly. Trevor and Petra are concentrating so hard they don’t even look up when I call their names. In close quarters, the guests bump into each other with every wave, looking like rainbow molecules in canoes that match their tent colors.

“We’re going to do a little warm-up,” McHuge announces. “Everyone has to singallthe words and doallthe actions, or I lose my place in the song and start again. You put your paddle in, you take your paddle out…”

He leads them through a canoeing version of the hokey pokey involving a lot of silly facial expressions and splashing. Sloane and Dereck nail all the moves like good little triple threats; Lori sings with maximum gusto despite not remembering any words. Everyone else looks like they want to die.

“There,” McHuge says. “Now you don’t have to worry about looking stupid, because we’ve already looked sillier than you ever will when you’re paddling.”

I dip my paddle in the water, hoping that’s true.

I’m the last one to take my seat for the debrief, my hair still sending cold drops down the back of my spare fleece. McHuge must’ve changed in the breezeway—the covered clotheslines where we hang wet gear at night so it’ll be slightly less wet by morning—because he’s mostly dry, too.

He wasn’t happy when we pulled up on the beach, bedraggled and defeated, although I’m not sure how I know that. Hisdispleasure is a ghost, there in my peripheral vision, gone when I look directly at it.

Jasvinder comes around with steaming tin mugs of tea. Their waft of bergamot and honey reminds me of McHuge’s clothes, which were already in the tent when I moved my gear in this morning. I curl my hands gratefully around a mug, soaking up the warmth.

McHuge rubs his hands together and glances around. He doesn’t have to be loud to make everyone look his way, it turns out.

“Welcome to Circle, everyone. We’re here to share with each other, learn from each other, and support each other. I’m a positive psychologist, which means I’m interested in the study of happiness and mental health. So let’s start by talking about what went well today.”

Mitch raises her hand. “It was great to be back on the water together.” Understatement of the century. Lori and Mitch are light-years ahead of the others. The invisible strings that connect their movements speak to the depth and breadth of their life together. It’s going to be tricky to keep them challenged while the newbies build skills.