Page 61 of Fate, Interrupted

“The journey from faith to better was dicey.”

She’s sitting across from me with her legs angled to one side, the hem of her shorts riding up enough that I catch myself tracking the line of her thigh more than I’m tracking the oars. The boat rocks slightly with every pull and her legs shift with it, unconsciously, and I think about reaching out with my foot and hooking it under the hem just to see what she’d do.

I don’t do that.

I do think about it for several strokes longer than I should.

The wolf has been fixated on her bare legs in a rowboat since the moment she sat down, a fixation I am actively not entertaining, except that I am, in the inconvenient way that has been happening since the bookshop. I can feel the heat radiating off her skin from here—not imagination, not exaggeration, an actual fact of proximity and a body that runs warmer than mine has any business running. I focus on the oars.

It does not entirely work.

We move out across the water, away from the dock and the rental shack and the sound of the road, until the lake is the only thing around us. The light shimmers on the surface, the occasional sound of a bird somewhere in the trees along the shore, the soft rush of the oars through the water. The city feels very far away from here. The warehouse, the presses, the map with its pins, my father’s window looking out over the dock…all of it recedes. So distant we might as well be in another world.

Norah opens the basket. She pulls things out with the careful attention she brings to everything, taking in each item with the interest of someone reading a text rather than unpacking a meal. The sandwiches, the fruit, the lemonade. She sets each thing aside with a small, approving nod.

Then her hand finds the book.

She lifts it out and turns it over, reading the cover. Then she looks up at me, amused and curious in equal measure.

“You packed poetry,” she says.

The back of my neck is warm. “It was on the shelf.”

“It was on your shelf.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You said the shelf,” she says, “which implies a shelf in general, as if it could have been any shelf. But you’re busted because your name is inside the cover and there are passages you’ve highlighted.”

She is flipping through the pages like a kid with a pop-up book.

“You’re assuming it wasn’t a pre-owned book when I bought it.”

“I’m fact-finding and calling you out on it at the same time,” she says. She stops at a dog-eared page and skims it, her attention moving between the words.

“You’re secretly sentimental,” she says.

“That’s a dangerous accusation.”

“I have evidence.” She holds up the book slightly.

“You have a book.”

“A poetry book,” she says. “In Spanish. That you bought. For a class, no doubt.” She tilts her head. “But which poet do you actually read? The answer is the one you actually go back to.”

The question doesn’t give me room to deflect without it being obvious that I’m deflecting.

“Neruda, then,” I say.

She goes still for a moment. The amusement drops into warmth, into seriousness.

“The Walt Whitman of the South, he’s been called. Read me something.”

“I’m rowing.”

“You can do both.”

“I can’t do both.”