Reckless Girls(10)
“You guys met in college, right?”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, looking over at one of the shelves. “UMass. Intro to western civ. Hey, what kind of pasta should we get?”
She holds up two boxes, one of regular spaghetti, one of penne, before tossing both into the cart with a shrug. “Guess we might as well have it all.” She continues picking up boxes of farfalle, elbow macaroni, even egg noodles, and piling them all in with our cans of soup and beans.
“You guys must be really close to decide to travel together,” I say, thinking back to my own friends from college. There wasn’t a single one of them I would’ve picked to travel the world with.
Brittany nods, but she still isn’t looking at me, and I’m getting the uneasy feeling that she doesn’t really want to talk about how she and Amma began their adventure together. Which is weird, because I haven’t picked up on any tension between them, and Jesus fuck, if they get in a fight while we’re out on the boat …
By now, our cart is mostly full, and Brittany steers us to the checkout while I text Nico.
Got everything.
Awesome, is his immediate reply. Pretty much done here, too. Think we can leave this afternoon.
* * *
IT’S NOT EVEN NOON BY the time Brittany and I get back to the marina, our arms full of reusable grocery sacks. The Susannah floats in her berth, smaller than other boats nearby, but shiny and white. Her newly painted red trim is cheerful, and my heart does a little flip in my chest, the same way it had when I’d first seen Nico.
He’s standing at the bow, his hair pulled from his face with its customary bandana and his smile bright as he waves at me. “How did it go?” he calls, and I gesture back toward the car.
“All the Spam we can eat,” I promise, and his grin widens as he presses a hand to his bare chest.
“Woman after my own heart.”
“Spam?”
Amma emerges from the cabin, and even though it’s stupid, there’s something about seeing her there, in her bikini top and shorts, her expensive sunglasses taking up a third of her face, hair caught up in a messy bun, that makes something dark and animal briefly rise up in me. She looks good standing there, she looks right next to Nico, both of them exuding a comfort with their setting and their bodies that I’ve never felt. That I certainly don’t feel now in my cargo pants and Tevas, with a white button-down thrown over my tank top as extra protection from the sun.
“Can’t be a snob about Spam when you’re at sea,” Nico says, oblivious to my dark thoughts as he makes his way over to the dock, one hand on the line as he casually vaults himself off the ship. His boat shoes make a thump on the planks, and when he comes over to me, he smells like sweat and salt, plus that faint metallic tang that always clings to him when he’s been working in the marina.
“You ready for this?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Awesome,” he says again, and then he nods back to the boat. “Will you do me a favor and take those bags over to Hal’s office?”
Hal is the marina manager, an older guy with skin like leather and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. The boat sways slightly under my feet as I cross the deck and heft the bags Nico had gestured to.
One, a red duffel bag, is filled with what look to be stray parts—bits of broken metal and a couple of rusty tools.
The other, another reusable grocery sack, is a lot lighter, and when I glance inside, I frown.
“Um, these are mine?” I say, hefting the sack, and Nico turns back to me, shading his eyes.
“Babe, you don’t need that many books on one sail, come on. They were taking up too much space in the cabin.”
There are maybe a dozen paperbacks here, some newer ones, but also my mom’s old Agatha Christies, and that Thailand travel guide, nearly every page dog-eared.
I hadn’t just put them on the boat to read—they’d been part of my efforts to make the space a little homier, a little more mine.
Nico has also stuffed one of the throw pillows I bought into the bag, as well as a couple of framed photos. One is of the two of us when I first got to Hawaii, standing on the beach, our arms around each other, my freckled skin pale against his tan.
The other is of me and my mom when I graduated high school. We’re both squinting because the sun is so bright, and I remember that we had to ask my friend Mallory’s mom to take that picture for us, since we didn’t have any other family there.
It’s one of the few keepsakes I brought with me from San Diego, and it’s been sitting in my suitcase the entire time we’ve been crashing on that living room floor. I was excited to finally have a place to put it on the boat.
And now it’s been shoved into a grocery bag.
“Hal will hold onto them while we’re gone,” he goes on, then gives me that patented Nico shrug. “It’s not a big deal.”
It’s not. It’ll be here when we get back. And I get that space is at a premium with four of us on the boat. Still …
Amma comes over, looking down into the bag. “Oh, it’s not that much stuff,” she says, then raises her head to call to Nico. “Besides, I actually forgot to bring a book. We can easily make room in our cabin.”
She takes the bag out of my hand with a bright smile, setting it back on the deck, and I smile back at her. “Thanks.”