Page 41 of Ship Happens

“I’m not, I’m just . . .” Owen shakes his head. “How am I supposed to run my own shop when one little thing sends me into a spiral?”

“It’ll be okay. It’s not like you can do anything on this trip anyway. Just enjoy your time here, give the plan some thought. Ravi will be waiting for you when we get back.”

He forces a smile, wishing it was as simple as forgetting the things that scare him the most. Their friends find them again, and they spend the rest of the night out on the ship, finding a bar that’s playing a Sharks game that Jacob, Kevin, and Abigail want to watch. And Owen stews for hours, unable to get the conversation with Kaitlyn out of his mind.

Does he still want this? Does he still want to be responsible for a whole building, an entire team of artists? Is this still a dream of his?

Or is he just doing all of this to prove a point to Jacob?

Across the bar his eyes meet Jacob’s.

He can’t help but fixate on Jacob’s dimples, on the beauty mark right under his eye, on the slight gap between his two front teeth that he’d once been so self-conscious about, until Owen told Jacob that it was one of his favorite things about him.

Then again, everything about Jacob is Owen’s favorite.

“You’ve been talking about the shop for years,” Jacob had said to him. “You could always just come with me, maybe save up some money, open it when we come back to the Bay.”

“If we come back to the Bay,” Owen amended. Jacob had told him himself—this research could take years. “Who’s to say you won’t just take another job, drag me somewhere else? And then another place, and then another.”

“Would it be that hard?” Jacob asked. “We’d get to be together.”

“No, I—” Owen stopped himself, hating how his words were being twisted. He’d never told Jacob that the way he spoke about the shop was the very same way his parents used to poke at Owen’s love of drawing as a teenager. Not the same words, certainly, but said with that same inflection. Like he didn’t believe that Owen would ever do it.

And maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe it was always too much to hope for, to want.

A deep loneliness begins to settle in Owen’s stomach, a dread that he hasn’t felt since his college days, when he first started to entertain the thought that maybe higher education wasn’t the right path for him. Back then, he’d felt a little more secure, at least. His parents hadn’t disowned him yet for wasting their hard-earned money and connections just to enter his adult life with a high school diploma and “no real-life skills.”

For a few days, he had convinced himself that things might be okay.

And for months after, Owen wondered what his life might be like if he just . . . ceased to exist. He never wanted to take his own life, never formulated a plan or even imagined how he’d go about it.

He just . . . he wanted to not be in his own body. At least for a little bit. With none of the pain from his arthritis, none of the cruel words uttered by his parents echoing in his memory.

For a moment, Owen just wanted to not be himself.

Not be anyone.

Back in bed at the end of the night, Owen turns onto his side, curling into himself, hoping that he doesn’t wake Kevin as he stares out the window. It’s so dark that he can’t see anything, not even the line of the horizon that he knows is there, dividing the sky from the sea.

It’s just an endless black ocean that he’s been left to float on.

With no land in sight.

Chapter Eight

One of the Worst Massages in Human History

Kevin drags out this long, heavy snore, and Owen decides that it’s time to get out of bed. Not wake up, no—he’s been awake for a few hours now, staring up at the blinking red light of the smoke detector on the ceiling.

With the sun beginning to rise, Owen finally climbs out of bed, giving Kevin room to sprawl out on his stomach when he goes to brush his teeth and wash his face. Out in the main area of the suite, he scoops instant coffee into a mug and turns on the electric kettle, letting the water heat up as he steps out onto the chilly balcony.

It’s a small space, with barely enough room for the two chairs and a table that Owen moves out of the way so that he can stretch his body out, bracing himself against the railing as he counts the squats that he does. He’d been a lot more active as a preteen, but only because his parents demanded it of him, forced him into softball and soccer, right up through middle school. At least he had enjoyed playing.

Then the pain had started, a heat that settled into Owen’s wrists and ankles, growing worse and worse until it hurt to even get out of bed, the pain settling over his body like a constant weight being pressed against him. The older he got, the more the pain radiated through his body, making it impossible to even pay attention in class. Of course his parents hadn’t believed him, despite the very physical evidence of the flare-ups, the way his joints would swell, the skin broken and rashy.

He was “too young” to be in so much pain and must have been making up excuses to get out of things that he didn’t want to do. Owen just needed to grow up. At one point, they were almost convinced he was somehow doing it to himself, like maybe Owen was purposefully taking too hot showers.

“Life is hard for everyone,” his father had said once. “You think my back doesn’t hurt every day?”