Sometimes, I still think about that other Lux, the one who didn’t get her world upended. The one who might be sitting in some music room right now, surrounded by little kids, teaching them scales. It’s a pretty picture, but something about it never sits right with me—I can’t even imagine being that person, not really.
“Travel,” I finally settle on because saying something like “freedom” is too cheesy to bear and “survival” is too honest, too sad.
“What’s your favorite place that you’ve been so far?” As she pushes the cart down the aisle, one wheel squeaks loudly.
“Well, I haven’t been that many places yet,” I say with a shrug, my cheeks hot. Now Brittany is going to realize just how pathetic my life is, and I’ll go from being Nico’s cool girlfriend to some loser chick tagging along while her boyfriend does the cool shit. “To be honest, I’ve mostly just read a lot of travel guides.”
I’d actually collected them for a while, a hobby I’d developed in middle school and carried on into adulthood. My bookshelf—back when I still had one of those—had been full of them, their neat white spines lined up, bold place names in bright colors. Australia. Istanbul. Romania. Thailand.
That last one had been a gift from my mom her last Christmas. It was the only one I still had.
Brittany smiles. “Yeah, that was me before.”
I glance back at her, eyebrows raised. “Before what?”
She blinks, then shakes her head a little. “Before I met Amma.”
“You guys met in college, right?”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, looking over at one of the shelves. “UMass. Intro to western civ. Hey, what kind of pasta should we get?”
She holds up two boxes, one of regular spaghetti, one of penne, before tossing both into the cart with a shrug. “Guess we might as well have it all.” She continues picking up boxes of farfalle, elbow macaroni, even egg noodles, and piling them all in with our cans of soup and beans.
“You guys must be really close to decide to travel together,” I say, thinking back to my own friends from college. There wasn’t a single one of them I would’ve picked to travel the world with.
Brittany nods, but she still isn’t looking at me, and I’m getting the uneasy feeling that she doesn’t really want to talk about how she and Amma began their adventure together. Which is weird, because I haven’t picked up on any tension between them, and Jesus fuck, if they get in a fight while we’re out on the boat …
By now, our cart is mostly full, and Brittany steers us to the checkout while I text Nico.
Got everything.
Awesome, is his immediate reply. Pretty much done here, too. Think we can leave this afternoon.
* * *
IT’S NOT EVEN NOON BY the time Brittany and I get back to the marina, our arms full of reusable grocery sacks. The Susannah floats in her berth, smaller than other boats nearby, but shiny and white. Her newly painted red trim is cheerful, and my heart does a little flip in my chest, the same way it had when I’d first seen Nico.
He’s standing at the bow, his hair pulled from his face with its customary bandana and his smile bright as he waves at me. “How did it go?” he calls, and I gesture back toward the car.
“All the Spam we can eat,” I promise, and his grin widens as he presses a hand to his bare chest.
“Woman after my own heart.”
“Spam?”
Amma emerges from the cabin, and even though it’s stupid, there’s something about seeing her there, in her bikini top and shorts, her expensive sunglasses taking up a third of her face, hair caught up in a messy bun, that makes something dark and animal briefly rise up in me. She looks good standing there, she looks right next to Nico, both of them exuding a comfort with their setting and their bodies that I’ve never felt. That I certainly don’t feel now in my cargo pants and Tevas, with a white button-down thrown over my tank top as extra protection from the sun.
“Can’t be a snob about Spam when you’re at sea,” Nico says, oblivious to my dark thoughts as he makes his way over to the dock, one hand on the line as he casually vaults himself off the ship. His boat shoes make a thump on the planks, and when he comes over to me, he smells like sweat and salt, plus that faint metallic tang that always clings to him when he’s been working in the marina.
“You ready for this?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Awesome,” he says again, and then he nods back to the boat. “Will you do me a favor and take those bags over to Hal’s office?”