Float Plan(27)

Keane is washed, dried, and reading a book in the shade of the boom tarp when I come out of the water. The lobsters are in the dishwashing bucket on the floor of the cockpit, scrabbling against the plastic, crawling over each other in an unsuccessful campaign to escape. Keane puts down the book.

“Hey, um—I’d like to apologize for making you do something you were clearly afraid to do,” he says. “I overstepped my bounds and forgot that I am, technically, your employee.”

I shake my head. “You were right. I need to learn. I hated you for a few minutes, but I’m over it.”

Keane grins. “So I don’t need these lobsters as a peace offering?”

“Oh, you still need them.”

We load everything into the dinghy—tent, sleeping bags, a couple of lobsters bound in aluminum foil, a bowl of chopped apples and grapes masquerading as fruit salad, and a bottle of rosé—and motor to shore, where we dig a firepit in the sand and pile it with driftwood. We wait for the lobsters, nestled among the burning branches, to roast inside their shells, and we watch the sky turn orange and red, as though it, too, is ablaze. Samana is one of the easternmost islands of the Bahamas, off the beaten path, and we are utterly alone.

“The first time I ever had lobster was with Ben.” I peel back the foil in tiny increments to keep from burning my fingers. “His mother throws an annual Fourth of July party with giant steamer pots stuffed with lobster, clams, and shrimp. To me, it was always this incredibly expensive thing my mom would order on the rarest, most fancy occasions, and the people at the party were eating it like it was nothing special.”

I pop a piece of meat into my mouth. The lobster is slick with olive oil and tangy with bits of fresh lemon—better than any I’ve ever tasted.

“See, I come to it from the opposite direction,” Keane says. “My uncle Colm was a lobsterman, so in summers, he’d bring us pail after pail of the wee bugs. I was about four or five years old when my da—at what must have been our third lobster supper of the week—cracked open a tail and said, ‘What do you reckon the poor folk are doing right now?’ And I, who had grown excessively jaded with the experience, muttered, ‘Eating bloody lobster again.’ The whole table exploded with laughter because we were all thinking it.”

I laugh.

“He gave me a right bollocking for cursing, but it’s still a running joke whenever someone wonders aloud what the poor folk are doing. Eating bloody lobster again.”

“You’ve led such an interesting life,” I say. “Mine has been so … average.”

“I don’t know about that.” He sucks the flat of his thumb between his lips to lick off the oil. “Here you are, on your own private beach, eating a crustacean who was minding his own business beneath the reef a few hours ago. Seems to me your interesting life is just starting at a different time than mine.”

“My sister called me selfish for doing this.”

“Reminds me of my eldest sister, Claire,” he says. “Her worldview is a bit myopic, not extending much beyond the Dingle Peninsula. She loves me well enough, but she’s of the opinion that sailing is not a proper profession and, apparently, there’s a misery-to-fun ratio I’m failing to honor. She views my choices through her lens and has arrived at the conclusion that I’m doing life wrong, rather than considering I have a lens of my own.”

My breath catches in my chest when I realize Keane Sullivan is the person Ben was trying to be. He planned an adventure he never intended to take, imagined a life he never intended to live. Instead he sailed out on a tide of pills and tequila. Instead I am taking this trip with the person Ben could have been. Should have been.

Everything about this is wrong.

A broken sound crawls up my throat, pushing at the back of my lips, and I stagger to my feet. “I, um—I need—I’ll be back.”

“Anna?”

I move away from the fire as quickly as the shifting sand will allow, not answering Keane. Not looking back. Closer to the water’s edge, the sand is harder, packed tight beneath my feet and I break into a run. The island is small, and the beach is not infinite, but I run until my lungs burn and the fire is distant. I collapse in the sand and howl.

In fury.

In anguish.

For the man I lost.

For the man he’ll never be.

I howl until my throat is raw and my voice is a scratch.

“I hate you.” I’ve said those words to Ben’s memory before, but this time I don’t let guilt try to snatch them back. “Fuck you for leaving me. Fuck you for dying.”

The stages of grief are not linear. They are random and unpredictable, folding back on themselves until you begin mourning all over again. I have bargained with a universe that is not listening. I have cried myself hollow. I have leaned into the belief that I can’t live without Ben Braithwaite, but kneeling here in the sand on a beach four hundred miles from home says maybe I can—and that terrifies me.





a place to land (14)





Keane is asleep when I return to our campsite. The fire is a pile of crackling embers and the remains of our lobster fest are gone. I’ve been away longer than I thought. I crawl into a tent that used to be the right size for two people, but now feels too small.

“Hey,” Keane says with a yawn. He shifts his arm to make a space for me beside his body. The rage that had almost burned itself out flares up, sparking an impulse to throw myself at him. Kiss him. Fuck him. Use him. Not to soothe a lonely little ache, but to slash at Ben’s memory. Except it didn’t work in Bimini. And it isn’t Ben who would have to deal with the fallout. Keane and I would be the ones left with the scars.