Sunday
The shimmer of light reflecting off the early morning’s calm waters was almost blinding. I’d ensured Jamey had on his child-sized sunglasses, still comically large for his face but they got the job done and slathered him in an ungodly amount of sunscreen despite his protests. Although his skin was slightly tanned already, the kid still burned bright pink like a peach.
Nathan had come by before the sun had even risen, declaring it the perfect day for going out into the bays. He’d done the hard work for me—setting up the Land Rover with the trailer hitch, getting the boat loaded and the wires hooked up, packing snacks and fishing supplies. Meanwhile, I’d staggered around the house in my boxers, getting Jamey up and ready in my half-asleep haze, still drunk off of Sophie from Friday night. I’d walked her home after we finished, her legs shaking and hair a mess. I’d let her wear my Harvard hoodie home since she seemed to like it so much, and fuck, she’d looked so good walking up the steps on her front porch with nothing underneath. It was all I’d been able to think about for the last twenty-four hours, save for her not telling her parents about Jamey.
We’d driven the thirty minutes down to Quincy to my favorite launching spot, idled the boat through the no-wake zones of Quincy Bay and the Boston Harbor Islands, and out into the Massachusetts Bay. Despite the countless warnings I gave him every time we went out on my boat, I still found myself having to keep one hand on Jamey’s lifejacket to keep him from flinging himself overboard, accidentally or not.
“What’s that, Uncle Nathan?” A little tug from Jamey as he tried to step forward toward my oldest friend, and I nearly had a heart attack. As much as I loved taking him out, it was a constant battle for relaxation.
“Shrimp.” Nathan held up his line, the gray, pallid corpse of a shrimp thrust through his hook. He grinned as Jamey’s eyes lit up. “They’re good bait, Jim-Jam. If your dad bought you a rod like I keep telling him to, I could teach you how to thread one.”
Their nicknames for each other had always hit a soft spot in me. Ever since he could talk, Jamey called him Uncle Nathan, and Nathan had called him some variation of his name. James, Jimmy, Jim-Jam, Jammy. It was as absurd as it was adorable.
“Daddy?”
“What’s up, bud?” I asked, reaching for the anchor and dragging him with me.
“I wanna learn Uncle Nathan’s thing.” He tugged on my shorts, pulling them down just a hair as I lowered the line into the water, foot by foot until it thudded against the bottom. I hated anchoring my boat, it wasn’t what it was made for. It was meant to go fast, to crest the waves with ease, to speed past the buoys and slower boats.
But Nathan wanted to fish. He always wanted to fish.
“I’ll get you a fishing rod, then.”
“Oh, so when he asks for it, you’ll buy one?” Nathan quipped, a laugh behind his tone. He cast his line, sending it farther than I thought it would go, and as it sunk the little floater rose to the surface.
“Well, he’s my son,” I chuckled. “I’m not going to buy him something he might not want just ‘cause you think it’s a good idea, Nate.”
“So frugal with your money.”
“I just don’t see a point in spending it like crazy.”
“Nah, just on your cars and house, huh?” Nathan laughed. He pulled Jamey into his lap, the rod between both of their legs. “Keep an eye on the floater for me, Jim-Jam.”
“The what?” He asked.
“The floater. The white and red thing on the surface, there.” Nathan pointed with one hand. “Tell me if it goes under the water.”
“Okie dokie.”
Nathan’s eyes turned to me then, his hands on either side of Jamey’s legs, keeping them in place. I still felt on edge, though. “So how’s it going with the whole, uh… ?”
“The fake?” I motioned with my hand as if I were putting a ring on my third finger. Nathan nodded. “Yeah, it’s alright. We went to meet her family the other night. They’re really nice, I think we sold it to them actually.”
“And are you still…” Nathan scratched his chin as he thought of a way to disguise his question so Jamey wouldn’t understand, but ultimately ended up just covering his ears. “You still thinking about her?”
I sucked my teeth, glancing out at the horizon so I wouldn’t have to meet his gaze. “Bit more than that, now.”
Nathan’s eyes went wide, his hands still firmly on either side of Jamey’s head. He lowered his voice just in case. “Don’t tell me you’ve slept with her.”
“Twice.”
Fuck, he mouthed. “Why don’t you seem happy about that?”
“I am,” I sighed, my back straightening as I watched Jamey’s legs kick against the painted white side of my boat. “It’s just… when we had dinner with her family, she didn’t tell them about Jamey. I had to bring him along because my parents were still out of town, and she didn’t warn them. We showed up and it was so awkward, man. They looked at him like he was an alien before they managed to pull themselves together.”
Nathan’s hands left Jamey’s ears, one wrapping around his tiny abdomen and the other taking its place next to his leg, keeping him from squirming out of his lap and into the ocean. “I wouldn’t overthink it, she probably just forgot. Or maybe she was nervous about how they’d react.”
“She should have at least warned me, then.”
“You don’t know what was going through her head. Her parents are mega religious, right? Maybe that played into it. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Huds, but if it’s bothering you this much then you should ask her about it. Talk to her.”
“It’s probably not even worth that.” I pushed the hair from my face, tilting back to get a good blast of sun. Nathan was right when he’d shown up this morning, it was the perfect day to be out on the boat.
“If you like her, it is.”
“I don’t even know if I like her, Nate.” It wasn’t a lie exactly. I knew she wasn’t good for me, and I was far too attracted to her for my own good, but that didn’t necessarily mean I liked her. That didn’t mean that I was falling for her. I motioned for Nathan to cover Jamey’s ears again, and he did. “Just because the sex is fucking phenomenal and she’s amazing doesn’t mean I have feelings for her. We can mess around and still be casual.”
“In all honesty, I’ve met your flings in the past, heard you talk about them, complain about them… this doesn’t feel like the same thing. This is, fuck, you’re going to hate this when I say it, but you seem more into this girl than you were with Becks when you first met her.”
I winced at the sound of my ex-wife’s name, the way it felt entering my ear and the way it crawled down my back like a snake. “I did hate that. You’re right.”
I could have told him that Sophie was coming in for her next appointment tomorrow. I could have told him how excited I was to see her after not having seen her for forty-eight hours, but I didn’t. It was caught somewhere inside of me, desperate not to see the light of day, hiding beneath the surface. Maybe I could keep it down there. Maybe I could hide it away forever.
I should have told him, though.
“Uncle Nathan, it’s moving!”
