AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s Monday?” I ask.
Aaron nods, his black hair blowing in the wind.
I wait for him to say more, to tell me where exactly I work and what exactly I do, but he doesn’t. Instead he sits up in the sand, taking me with him.
I squeak and wrap my legs around his waist as he stands.
I grab his shoulders and hang on as he holds my hips. Sand rains from my skin and my nightdress falls around my bare legs. The ocean air wraps around us, and at the grass line, crickets begin to sing a morning melody.
The air is morning-cool, not yet tinged with humidity and heat. The cottages are still dark and sleepy, and it’s just Aaron, me, and the rising sun.
He tugs me close and I keep my arms and legs wrapped around him. He rests his forehead to mine, looking into my eyes.
“Thank you,” he says, his voice low.
“For what?” My heart thuds in the space between us.
“For last night. Thank you for listening. Thank you for ... coming into the water after me.”
He doesn’t mean literally. I know that. I think he means that for maybe the first time he doesn’t feel as if he’s treading water alone, trying to keep his head above the waves.
“Anytime,” I tell him. “I’ll come into the water after you anytime you need.”
With that, I swear he’s going to kiss me again. My lips tingle and warm.
But then he only smiles and carries me across the sand, through the shaded, dew-covered grass, onto the wide porch, and into our home.
28
I stare resolutelyat the glassy orange eye of the snapper, its black pupil perfectly round and accusing. There’s a case of them—the snapper—all flashy red and silver scales and pink cheeks. The smell of freshly caught fish, salty and sea-rich, spices the air.
It’s 8 a.m. and the sun hangs like a bright nectarine in the sky, ripe with heat. A trickle of sweat drips down my back and not even the scant shade of the gazebo or the breeze off the sea can chase away the rising humidity.
Overhead a flurry of gulls circles, certain they’ll be feeding on entrails soon. In the shallows, at the water’s edge, dark dorsal fins—they look like sharks, but Maranda said they’re tarpon—churn the water impatiently.
I’m at the beach gazebo/makeshift fish market/my job.
Down the sandy road (and sometime runway) the crossing guard—I learned his name is Odie—lounges in the shade of the tall, glossy leaved tree, playing solitaire in the sand. He interrupted his Queen-Jack-Ten layout to hold up his stop sign and then finally give the all clear.
Across the road the shop is open. Junie waved when she dragged a heavy display of mangos and bananas onto the street in front of the store. She huffed and puffed, her pregnant belly getting in the way of the bins, until finally she managed to tug it to a spot in the shade. Jordi came out then, pushed the large bins a few inches to the right, and declared the job satisfactory. Junie shoved him back into the shop.
Charlestown is awake. Amy’s at summer-school classes for gifted students—this includes her, a six-year old named Reija with encyclopedic knowledge of all the country flags in the world, and an eleven-year old boy named Olly who wants to be a marine biologist. Amy claimed it isn’t truly for gifted students, it’s just for kids who want to learn even during the summer.
“If this island is a prison, I may as well expand my mind beyond the gates,” she said this morning as she spooned porridge into her mouth and shoved her books into a scuffed backpack.
And then she was gone, rushing out the door. And Aaron hurried from the shower to the bedroom to the kitchen, strapping Sean into his high chair and giving him porridge and mashed bananas. Then he kissed me, one last feathered touch of our lips, and he was gone.
So when Maranda knocked on my door and said, “You aren’t ready!” I let her stomp in, grab baggy jeans, a long-sleeve cotton shirt, a sun hat, and yellow rubber wellies, and thrust them at me. “Get dressed!”
She was so brisk, her white hair sticking on end, her dark brown eyes sharp and demanding in her sun-wrinkled face, that I tugged on the clothes in a hurry.
After I did she dropped Sean’s baby bag in my arms and pulled him, banana-smothered and happy, from his high chair.
“We’re late,” she said.
For what, I didn’t know. Until we arrived at the little beach across from the “airport.”
Aldon and his tall, wiry son, Chris, were hopping off their fishing boat, dragging crates of gasping or post-gasping fish onto the beach.
