Page 38 of Nutcracker with Benefits
And then, through the phone, I hear a buzzing noise.
“Clara, I have to go,” Uncle D says regretfully. “But real quick, we’re going to be in Singapore next Tuesday. Where will you be?”
“Um…” I mentally flip through my schedule. “Ningaloo Reef, on the west coast of Australia.”
“Send me details, maybe I can see you. Love you.”
I laugh, but Uncle D is already gone. Sure, why not just a hop skip and a jump across three thousand kilometers to see me? Never mind the fact that I’ll be on a boat.
Shaking my head, I message Uncle D with the details while I’m thinking about it. And then my thumb wanders of its own accord to Instagram. I check Nash’s account—not his public one, but his private one, the one that was my very first follower all those years ago. He doesn’t post his face, obviously, but usually, I can get a clue about what he’s been up to lately.
Tonight, though, no dice. He hasn’t posted anything since I last saw him. I scroll his feed, and it’s like a montage of daily life in New York—new food, friends, and places. I don’t recognize any of them.
I switch apps and look at my photos from our day together. I haven’t posted anything yet, but flipping through them now, after my fight with Nash, I see things I didn’t see before, like the street signs in Arabic by the spice market and the faces of the people around us at the Sri Lankan restaurant.
It’s been four days. Not that long in the grand scheme of things. I’m barely over my jet lag from the flight here.
Going four days without talking isn’t unusual for us. So why do I feel so lonely? Is it because I’ve just seen my family and had the warm and fuzzies over spending the holidays with everyone? Or is it something deeper…something that feels suspiciously like a Nash-shaped hole in my heart.
I shake my head and put my phone away. I’m on a yacht in Sydney Harbour. I’m working. I need to get out of this funk and move on. Nash is in New York; his life is in New York. And I am everywhere but there.
“Do you hear that?” Nancy, one of the other guests. asks a week later. She’s seated next to me at the lunch table on the yacht Galatea. We’re between dives and pretty much stuffing our faces with as much food as we can during our break. Doing three dives a day is exhausting, but it’s peak turtle season in Ningaloo Reef, and we all want to see as much as possible. And, of course, that means absolutely pigging out on the locally caught seafood and wild game the chef is serving.
“Is that our boat?” someone else asks.
It’s a faint hum, which could be the sound of the electric engines underneath us but doesn’t feel quite right.
“Yeah, nah, it sounds like a plane,” one of the Aussie guys down the table says. I’ve grown used to these cute Aussie-isms like “yeah, nah” and “nah, yeah,” which might be, like drop bears, designed to confuse tourists. We all crane our necks, looking at the sky surrounding us.
“There it is,” says Nina, one of the staff onboard.
We all point to where she’s looking, and yeah, there’s a low-flying plane. This part of Australia is remote—the state of Western Australia is pretty much desert, and the nearest town, Exmouth, is hours away. The airport, which was built more to serve the military base than the town, is even further away.
The plane grows closer and lower. Eric, the captain of the boat, leaves the table and climbs up the stairs to the pilot house. When the plane swoops close enough, the Aussie guy takes a sharp breath.
“Oh, damn. That’s an Icon A5.”
“What does that mean?” someone asks.
“It’s a really bloody fancy seaplane.”
Sure enough, I can see the floats at the base of the plane. We’re all out on deck now, watching as the plane passes overhead and then does a wide bank to circle back. This time it drops lower and lower….
“Holy shit, it’s going to land,” Nancy exclaims.
With a roar, the seaplane touches down, gracefully slowing a few hundred yards away from our boat.
And my heart starts to flutter. What if…? No, he wouldn’t. That would be crazy. There is no way Nash would travel all the way out here to see me.
“Dee, Jason.” We all crane our necks up to see Captain Eric looking down at us. “We’ve got company,” he tells the crew.
I stand with the rest of the guests and watch the seaplane aim towards the back of the boat. The closer it gets, the faster my heart beats. The noise of the prop dies, and the door to the plane opens. The pilot steps out onto the pontoons, walking nimbly as the plane slows to a perfect stop next to the boat. He throws a line to Dee, who catches it and ties off.
The seaplane pilot walks around to the passenger door and opens it. I hold my breath. A closely shaven head ducks down and climbs out of the seat.
My jaw drops. “Uncle D?”
“Hey, Sugar Plum.” He gives me a wave while making his way down the float and towards the deck of Galatea. The pilot and our crew help him step aboard the boat, and there’s a lot of murmuring behind me from the other guests.
