Page 92 of No One Aboard
But it would be worse to be alone.
“We weren’t meant to cross oceans. S’why people get seasick.” He hiccupped. “And drown.”
“What about boats likeSheila?” Lainey countered, patting a hand on the deck of the lobster boat.
“Ehhh. My brother woulda called this thing astinkpot.” Jerry dragged out the word, popping theTat the end extra loud. “Not lika real boat, he’d say. Defies the wind.”
Lainey let her bald, prickly head fall back. “All boats defy the water.”
“Mmm, and the sailors defy their fears. Like Steve.” Jerry hoisted his beer can in the air.
Lainey followed suit. “To Steve, then,” she said and drank.
“To all the poor bastards who tried to defy.” Jerry clattered his can against Lainey’s, then knocked it back into his mouth. There wasn’t a drop left.
“You know, I coulda been just like him,” Jerry informed the bottom of the empty container. He cranked his arm back to toss the thing into the sea, then hesitated. Something about Lainey’s gentle hand on his shoulder earlier that morning stopped him.
That hurts the fish.
He grumbled and searched the case for a fresh beer. He should have invited Madden to join them. He’d enjoy hearing her sour take on Koshida’s information bomb about the Camerons.
“Just like Steve?” Lainey prompted.
“Always looked up to him.” Jerry bent back the can’s tab. “Always admired what he did with his life. Coulda been me on the boat in the storm.”
It could have been, but it wasn’t. Jerry was the practical one. He’d traded his life for a nice, motor-powered stinkpot, not a fantasy-fueled sailboat. Look at all he had to show for choosingSheila 2.0. An empty cooler for dead fish. A lifetime of quiet moments on an uncaring sea that still scared him half to death. Jack shit, essentially.
“I’m gonna sell her,” Jerry murmured to himself.
Lainey looked his way.“Sheila?”
“No.Eileen.” That was that. He’d made up his mind at last. It was the practical thing to do after all; it always had been.
“Oh.” Lainey took a swig of her beer, grimaced at the taste. “Then what?”
“With the money?” He hadn’t thought that far. There weren’t enough things in the world, it seemed, to spend a million dollars on. “Hell if I know.” He squinted to focus. “Maybe buy a nice cat bed or something.”
Lainey laughed. “Million-dollar cat bed, huh? For a cat you haven’t even named?”
Jerry scowled at her. “I’ll fixSheilaup a bit. Lord knows she could use it.”
“I meant in your life, old man. Or what’s left of it,” Lainey teased. “So you sell the sailboat. You fix upSheila, buy all the little things you can think of. Then what? What do you do with the rest of your life?”
She’d struck a chord, but he didn’t want her to see that. He was old. Not as old as this twentysomething might think, but old enough to know he wasn’t gonna last forever. What would he do with the time he had left?
“Fish,” he answered, but for once it didn’t sit right with his gut. Though, maybe his stomach had turned because of the beer. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, a snapper and black coffee. Same thing he’d had for thirty years.
“What would you do?” he asked slowly, the sentiment foreign on his tongue. “With the money, I mean. If it was yours.”
Lainey set her beer aside and leaned back, hands behind her head. “I’d buy a boat. Leave everything behind.”
Jerry swallowed. “Like Steve.”
“Like you.” Lainey’s eyes were full of the sunset sky. “I’d bet it all. Sell my soul, whatever I gotta do, you know?”
Jerry snorted and scratched at his stomach, uneasy. “Risk joining ranks with all the poor bastards in their watery graves?”
Lainey’s fist tightened around the can. “Yes.”
