Page 19 of Rowan's Renewal
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Being on a jet ski is actually a lot of fun. I cling to Aaron’s red, neoprene life jacket, pressed up against his back as he drives the machine over the water. We bounce as we go over gentle ripples in the current, and I close my eyes, enjoying the wind and water spraying around us.
The sky above us is still clear of clouds, and the water around us is a deep, dark blue. I can’t see more than a foot or two into it when we slow down, but it doesn’t scare me like I thought it might. There are other boats and jet skis out on the water, but they are so far away that the people on them look like ants.
It’s more peaceful and private than I thought it would be.
We’ve hired the jet ski for two hours, and the resort is now a speck on the horizon with how far we’ve traveled from the shore. Aaron slows down, then turns the engine off so we can take pictures of the coastline and of the straight blue line of the ocean where it meets the sky, stretching out into forever.
We rock gently as we sit and take it all in, and I’m starting to realize that this is the kind of thing I’ve been letting myself miss out on over the years. It’s a bit sad to wonder what other kinds of fun I’ve deprived myself of.
“You okay, Ro?” Aaron asks as I fall quiet, my thoughts making my stomach churn unpleasantly.
Or is that my bladder twinging?
I’m kind of paranoid about that.
“Just…I don’t know. Wondering how much I could have been doing all these years, I think,” I confess quietly, painfully aware of the fact that I’m not wearing any kind of incontinence protection right now. It’s just a pair of borrowed cotton underwear under my swim trunk shorts, which feels so strange after twenty-odd years of the disposable pants. I feel almost naked like this. Definitely exposed. Risky.
He half turns, craning his neck so he can look at me over his shoulder. His hair is wild from the wind and salty sea spray,and his cheeks are flushed from the same, and likely also from the sun. “Well, we’re going to do as much as we can this week,” he tells me decisively. “And, regardless of how the Daddy trial ends, when we get back home, we can hang out and do fun stuff together there, too. Even just as friends, if that’s what you want.”
I wish I could tell him that he can’t make these promises. Thathemight be the one to realize that I’m too much effort with very little payoff. But the words get stuck in my throat and I just nod.
“I’d like that,” I say, and it’s not a lie.
I would like that.
Too much.
He smiles. “Me too.”
We sit in silence for a few beats, and the water around us laps at the sides of the jet ski. It’s a really relaxing sound…until it isn’t.
All of a sudden, the urge to go strikes me, made more insistent by the wet lap-lap-lapping around us. I inhale sharply and try not to panic.
“What’s wrong?” Aaron asks.
Releasing my hold on the handles on the sides of his lifejackets, I grip myself over my shorts. “I’ve…I’ve gotta…”
“Do you feel comfortable going over the side?” he asks calmly, scanning the horizon, presumably for any oncoming vessels. “Or do you want to get in the water and go?”
“But then I’ll be all wet when I get back on the seat.”
He shrugs. “They’re waterproof, baby. They get wet from people doing tricks and stuff with them.”
I squirm, feeling my body begin to make the decision for me. Really disliking the sensation of dampening cotton around my crotch, however light it might be, I scramble to my feet, turn, and jump off the back of the jet ski and into the cool ocean. The water around me soon warms at the same time as the skin on my cheeks does while I tread water, trying not to think about howscary it is being out in the middle of the ocean like this with no land for miles.
“That looked like fun,” Aaron grins at me. “How’s the water?”
I paddle awkwardly over to the back of the jet ski, hampered by the life jacket which is simultaneously making me feel super buoyant in the endless ocean. “It’s a bit cool,” I answer, “and I don’t like the sticky, salty feeling on my skin.”
“You prefer swimming in pools?”
“I haven’t really swum since my teens, but…yeah.”
There’s a flicker of empathy in his dark eyes, but he nods. “I prefer pools, too.”
It doesn’t take me long to find the fold-down step at the rear of the machine, and I hoist myself back onto the seat with a little bit of effort. With how hot the sun is, I don’t feel cold, despite being drenched from head to toe. I also feel liberated in a way I can’t ever recall feeling.
