Float Plan(58)

Inside is a pair of earrings with raw, unpolished stones set in sterling silver.

“They’re rough diamonds,” he says. “Conflict free. I saw them in a shop window in Old Town and they were just … you.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Like I said.”

I laugh as I kiss him. “Could you be less smooth once in a while?”

“I love you,” he blurts out. “And I know I should have kept that to myself a bit longer, but it’s the truth and I am feeling particularly un-smooth at the moment.”

“I … don’t know how to respond to that.”

“Not exactly what I’d hoped you’d say, but—”

“No, I mean … I’m scared. Ready to love you, but also not. I still think about Ben sometimes and I don’t know how to stop doing that. And maybe this will blow up in our faces but … I want to try.” My shoulders sag. “That was the least romantic declaration ever.”

Keane nods a little. “I wouldn’t put it on a greeting card.”

“I love you too.” The words come out on the back of a breath and the beginning of a smile. I didn’t mean to say them out loud, but here they are. “I don’t want you to be a rebound thing, Keane Sullivan. I want you to be the real thing.”

He holds my face lightly, tenderly, and kisses me. “Count on it.”



* * *



The next morning we take a series of buses to Fort-de-France, where we rent a car. As we head back south, Keane won’t tell me where we’re going, only that there is something he wants me to see. At the top of a bluff overlooking the ocean, near the town of Le Diamant, he brings me to a cluster of twenty concrete statues arranged in the shape of a triangle.

“In 1830, after slavery had been abolished in the islands,” Keane says, “a trader ship was bringing a secret cargo of slaves to Martinique. The ship was improperly anchored in the harbor and crashed into Diamond Rock”—he points to a lone rock jutting out of the sea—“drowning forty slaves, shackled together and chained to the hold.”

There is a defeated stoop to the shoulders of the statues, their brows carved heavy with sadness and their mouths turned down. They stand in a grassy field above the vast blue of the ocean, frozen in mourning, their sorrow eternal, and tears fill my eyes.

“The statues were arranged to symbolize the triangular trade route from West Africa to the Caribbean to the American colonies,” Keane says. “And they point a hundred and ten degrees toward the Gulf of Guinea. Toward home.”

I’m crying in earnest now.

“We build memorials to honor the memory of those we’ve lost, and to remember the tragedy of humans treating other humans as property,” he says. “I’ve been considering what you said about not knowing how to stop thinking about Ben and—well, I’d never ask that. You’ve already built a place for him in your heart, but if you’ve got a bit of room to spare…”

My face is wet, tears clinging to my lips, when I kiss him and whisper, “There is so much room for you.”

Back at Les Anses d’Arlet, we spend the afternoon sitting at a plastic table under a party tent, drinking Lorraines and listening to reggae. The locals do not speak English and Keane’s attempts at high school–level French make them laugh, but we get by. Queenie allows a group of children to bury her in the sand. When they’ve finished, she gets up and shakes sand everywhere, making them laugh and scream.

“This boat needs a name,” I say when we’re back aboard the Alberg that evening. “What about … Braveheart?”

Keane crinkles his nose. “As in William Wallace? ‘They’ll never take our freedom’? That’s a bit … Scottish. Of course, it’s your boat. Far be it from me to tell you what to do.”

“Yeah, you’ve never done that before.”

He laughs. “Whatever you choose will be perfect.”

“As long as it’s not Braveheart?”

“Exactly.”

I shift, straddling his lap to face him, kissing his mouth as I telegraph the message with my hips that I want him. “Doesn’t need to have a name right now.”

“No.” This time his laugh has a sexy, wicked edge and his lips are against my neck when he says, “No, it does not.”

There are other boats in the harbor, but the boom tarp is low enough that we don’t bother going down into the cabin. Keane rolls on a condom and I take off my bikini bottoms. No foreplay. No sweet words. Just need against need, fast, hard, and gasping. And when it’s over, I press soft kisses all over his face and whisper with each one that I love him.

The difference between Keane and Ben, I am realizing, is Keane belongs to me in a way Ben never did. Ben loved me, but he always had an exit strategy. Keane is mine for as long as I want him. I can feel it in everything he says, everything he does.





tiny fissures (28)





Our time in Martinique feels endless as we spend days exploring every part of the island.

We pack the tent and drive up to Presqu’?le Caravelle, a peninsula on the east side of the island with a wild coastline and an abundance of surfer beaches. We search for the dive shack where Keane met Felix and Agda, but find only the abandoned husk, reclaimed by nature, the rafters inhabited by swifts. We camp on the beach for the night and spend the next day learning—or relearning, in Keane’s case—how to surf.