Page 15 of Finding Jack
“Sailing clothes” were some layered J. Crew-style shirts and white capris that I settled on after googling images of “sailing clothes.” It was either that, a jaunty nautical blazer and a captain’s hat, or a string bikini. So I J. Crew-ed it.
Paul smiled when I answered the door. “You look perfect.”
“Ah, thanks. I’ve always wanted to learn to sail.”
“We’re not learning. Sorry.” A touch of anxiety dimmed his smile. “I hired a guy with a boat, and he’s going to do the work. I thought it might be less stressful. I was watching YouTube tutorials to see if lessons made sense, but I kind of worried we’d spend more time being frustrated than relaxed.”
I kept any disappointment out of my expression. I liked doing hands-on stuff. It was a good outlet for me to work out stress, but I could see how it would only increase Paul’s. “That makes sense. Who wouldn’t want someone else sailing them around for hours? We’ll just lie back and enjoy it.”
An hour and a half later we were out on the water with a grizzled old dude name Andrew piloting us around the bay. He didn’t talk much, but I tried anyway.
“What kind of sailboat is this?”
“Sloop.”
“You’re kidding.”
Grizzled Andrew stared at me and blinked.
“That’s the best thing ever.” I broke into a corny nineties dance move. I didn’t trust the boat enough to stand yet, so it was mostly seated chest pumps. “Sloop, sloopy-doop, you make me want to sloop.”
“Um, what?” Paul asked. He looked embarrassed for me.
“You know that nineties song, Shoop? Salt-n-Pepa, I think?”
This time it was Paul who blinked at me.
I stopped my choreography. “You’re saying your mom never blasted this song in your house and danced like she was back in her college bar crawl days to torture you into cleaning faster?”
Blink. Blink. “My mother is a bookkeeper.”
Like that somehow explained it…? My mother was a successful real estate agent, but it didn’t stop her from Shoop-ing at my brother’s wedding like she had no dignity. I used to hate it when she did that, and the madder I got, the more she did it. But now, watching how it made Paul squirm, I understood her devilish impulse.
Grizzled Andrew said, “This is why I hate telling people what kind of sailboat this is.”
“You’re saying I’m not even the first person to make that joke?” That bothered me even more than the fact that it had fallen flat.
“I make people want to sloop at least once a month.”
“It was funnier when I said it.”
Grizzled Andrew only lifted his eyebrows.
“I don’t think he likes it,” Paul said. He kept his voice low, as if Grizzled Andrew couldn’t hear us from eight feet away.
“He loves it.” But I didn’t sing anymore. I looked out over the water instead. “This is beautiful.” I leaned against Paul as we sat in the bow. The whole bay looked as if it had been sprinkled with crystals.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” And it was. The warmth of being snuggled into Paul’s side as the chilly breeze washed over us, the perfect blue sky, the skim of the sloop over water.
Sloop. Haha. But I resisted the urge to sing again.
It was nice for about an hour. But something wasn’t right. I kept wanting to scoot away from Paul because he felt too warm despite the breeze. And I kept wanting to make sloop jokes even though no one else found them funny. And I kept wondering if this was…all?
Shouldn’t it be enough to be sailing on a postcard-worthy day? Who got fidgety on a sailboat beneath a perfect sky?
Why was I so restless?
