Cord laughed in spite of himself. “Are you still mad at her?” He passed Sasha her phone.
“Nah, we’re good.” She smiled.
“Thank God. I mean, I’m still on your side! But thank God you’re friends again.”
Sasha leaned forward and kissed him and Cord kissed her back then slipped a hand under her jacket. When she pulled away he grinned. “Do you think we’d capsize the boat if we . . .”
“If we capsize the boat that would definitely put my dad back in the hospital.” Sasha laughed. She straightened her jacket where Cord had pulled it up and then together they climbed into the dinghy, rowing past the big fiberglass cruisers, past the tiny aluminum canoes, back to the shore.
* * *
Sasha and Cord ate an early dinner with her parents, pasta and meatballs with paper towel napkins in the kitchen, not a tablescape in sight, and then went to meet her brothers at the marina. Nate had a new girlfriend with a boat, and he had apparently been living onboard with her ever since they met in a bar months earlier. Sasha parked the car in the lot, and they made their way down the boardwalk, Cord carrying a six-pack of IPAs. While Sasha’s father kept his small aluminum boat moored in the river, the marina was home to the vessels that were too big to make it past the wharf at low tide—cabin cruisers, sailboats, bowriders, and deck boats. The marina had hookups to electricity and wi-fi, and it wasn’t unusual for folks in town to take up residence at the marina when they got tired of staring at the same four walls. Sasha knew most of the boats by sight, and as they walked along she pointed out their names to Cord. There was the big, thirty-four-foot Chris-Craft that belonged to her middle school soccer coach, a floating RV with a sleeping area, a dining table, and a bathroom down below. It was named Sweet Samantha after his daughter, a girl Sasha knew had gone on to marry a Croatian kickboxer with sleeves of tattoos. There was the 1985 Tollycraft Sundeck motor yacht named Wifey that belonged to a gay couple who lived out on Marsh Road. There was the pretty little Bayliner with red and blue stripes named Fishin’ Impossible, the Axopar 37 Sun Top named Liquid Assets. Sasha’s brother Olly had often fantasized about buying a yacht and naming it the Wet Dream, but luckily he was too broke to buy even a kayak. Sasha waved hello to each boat as they passed, owners relaxing on the aft deck with red Solo cups or serving dinner on the fly bridge, and she briefly felt like they were walking through a series of living rooms.
“Where are Nate and Olly?” Cord wondered.
“He didn’t say where her slip was, but I’m sure we’ll hear them,” Sasha said dryly.
They rounded a bend in the dock and Olly’s voice boomed out over the water. “Sashimi! Umbilical Cord!”
“Yep, there they are.” Sasha rolled her eyes.
Her brothers were sprawled out on the aft deck of a sixty-foot Carver motor yacht, the name of the boat, The Searcher, stenciled on the transom, with the hailing port, Newport, RI, below. It was a huge vessel, old but gleaming white, with stairs that led up to a glassed-in deck, a flybridge and cockpit, and through the sliding-glass doors Sasha could spy a bedroom.
“Wow, nice digs,” Cord whistled.
“Shelby got it like ten years ago.” Nate stood to hug them both hello as Olly reached into the cooler to fish out a can of beer. “She bought it when she was still living in California.”
A woman appeared on the staircase, barefoot in jeans and a light-blue hoodie. “Hey! You’re here!” She was tall and skinny, maybe early forties, with her hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail. “I’m so excited to meet you!” She gave both Sasha and Cord huge, tight hugs and bumped Nate over on the cushioned bench to make room for them to sit. “How’s your dad doing today? I’ve been worried.”
“Oh, he seems like himself,” Sasha answered. “He was making my mother crazy refusing to sit still and rest. He bought four boxes of nightcrawlers to take fishing, but she won’t let him go, so now half the fridge in the kitchen is full of sea worms.” Sasha had seen guests at their house recoil in horror when they realized that the shiny white pastry boxes were filled with writhing piles of bait rather than cookies or chocolates.
“We’ll come take them off his hands, right, Nate?” Shelby grinned. “We’ve been going out fishing most mornings before work.”
“What do you do for work?” Cord asked.
“Oh, I work in app development.” Shelby waved her hand vaguely. “Hey, Sasha, congratulations on the baby! You must be so excited! And I haven’t offered you anything to eat or drink! I got these seltzers.” Shelby reached into the cooler and pulled out two White Claw spiked seltzers, one lemon and one blackberry.
“Oh.” Sasha smiled politely, “I’m not drinking while I’m pregnant. I mean, I’m sure a few drinks here and there would be fine, but I just lost the taste for alcohol.”
“These are seltzers, though.” Shelby frowned.
“They’re hard seltzers,” Sasha explained. “They’re like beers.”
“Oh, oops,” she laughed. “I’ve been drinking them all afternoon! I wondered why I was in such a good mood! I think I’ve had four.”
Sasha tried to catch Nate’s eye—his girlfriend was kind of funny—but he was just smiling and shaking his head.
“How long have you guys been seeing each other?” Cord asked Nate.
“Couple of months, I think.”
“I picked him up at the Cap Club.”
“No, I picked her up.” Nate nuzzled Shelby’s neck.
“Gross.” Olly frowned.
“You guys should come fishing with us tomorrow. Nate and I have been getting really lucky with stripers.”
“Any keepers?” Cord asked.
“A few.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped a little icon. “This is one of my projects. It’s an app where you can take a picture of your catch and it will identify the fish for you. Then you scan the length, and it tells you if it’s a keeper or if you need to throw it back.”
“Oh, I’ll download that.” Cord pulled his own phone out of his pocket, leaning over so that Shelby could help him find it in the store.
“Cord,” Olly said, “when, in Brooklyn Heights, do you plan to catch a keeper?”
“I mean, it wouldn’t be a daily thing,” Cord muttered.
“It’s okay, Cord.” Shelby laughed. “I’m always working on a million ideas. What should my next project be?”
“I actually do have an app idea,” Cord said, brightening. “I can’t stand those people who honk all the time. I want an app that tracks how much people honk, and then at the end of the day, when they are trying to fall asleep, their phone just blares a honking noise at them for the exact amount of time they honked.”
“Cord, I love you man, but who the fuck would put that on their own phone?” Nate asked.
“Okay, I have one,” Olly jumped in. “You put in the contact info for any girl you’re hooking up with and every Thursday night it automatically texts, ‘Hey beautiful, I was just thinking about you!’？”
“Yeah, I’m not making that app.” Shelby poked Olly on his shoulder.