“I don’t get it,” he continues, putting a hand behind his head. “All you’ve wanted is to get out on the water, and now you’re like, ‘I need to think about it’？”
I push myself up on one elbow, looking down at him. “I want to get on the water with you,” I tell him. “I don’t want some two-week-long cruise with a couple of college girls looking for a good time. Besides, don’t you think it’s weird that they met me for, like, three seconds, then were suddenly inviting me on their vacation? You, sure. They need someone who can drive a boat. But me?” I shake my head.
He frowns, and I reach down, smoothing away the wrinkles above his nose with my thumb.
I know why he doesn’t get it. I mean, he’s right: I’ve been dying to get off the island, and it’s not like I have a job holding me back now. But there’s something about the entire proposition that is making me hesitate, something that I don’t want to put into words.
Instead I ask, “Are you going to say yes even if I say no?”
Nico sighs, and I trail my hand down to his tattoo, letting my nail scrape against that elegant cursive L woven in there just for me.
“Babe,” Nico starts, and that’s when I realize that yup, he is absolutely going to say yes even if I say no.
I sit up, dragging the sheet with me even though it’s hot, my hand fumbling on the floor for the joint I’d rolled earlier. I’d planned to smoke it then, but my head had already been spinning, and then Nico’s hands had been on my waist, and I’d dropped it.
The lighter flares, briefly illuminating the nearly empty living room, and the smoke I exhale looks blue in the dim light.
I sit there, arms resting on my upraised knees, for a long moment before the silence becomes too much for Nico.
“I thought you liked them,” he finally says, plucking the joint from my hand and taking a hit before handing it back.
“I did,” I reply, still not looking at him. “I do.”
“So, come.”
“And do what?” I ask. “Serve drinks?”
Scoffing, he lies back. “They weren’t like that.”
“But they could be,” I say, imagining how much that would suck. How much I’d liked feeling like the old me tonight, joking and drinking—the Cool Girlfriend, not the girl serving beers or towels.
I want to hold onto the version of me that’s just another carefree twentysomething. The me I pretended to be when I first met Nico, and lost sight of the moment I landed on Maui and our plan got sidetracked.
Sometimes it bothers me that I’m the one always thinking about our future, about what it will take for us to have a more comfortable lifestyle, while Nico seems perfectly happy fixing boats and taking out the occasional charter. It’s like we got to Hawaii and became different versions of the people we were in San Diego.
I shake my head, wanting to dispel that thought. It’s been forever since I’ve smoked, and it’s clearly fucking with my head.
“We should focus on repairing the Susannah and heading out,” I remind him. “Having our own adventure instead of tagging along on someone else’s.”
He takes the joint back, sucking hard, and I recognize the stubborn set of his jaw.
“The pay is too good to pass up, Lux,” he says, shaking his head. “What they’re willing to pay me for a couple of weeks of work could get us out of here the day I come back.”
I blink at him. “Seriously?”
Nico nods. “Seriously. Fifty grand, Lux. To sail them out to some atoll, let them get their Blue Lagoon on, and come back.”
Fuck.
I slide back under the sheets, my foot brushing his shin.
He’s right—he can’t pass that up. We can’t pass that up. We need a new engine, and the holes in the hull repaired. Plus, we haven’t restocked any rations since Nico’s sail from California. That money will go a long way.
It’s money he could’ve had months ago with one phone call to his dad, a voice in my head whispers.
Nico’s never been specific about just how rich his family is, but I looked them up not long after we met—dug around the law firm’s website, some Facebook profiles of cousins, even his sister’s Instagram.
They’re Fuck-You Money rich. Houses in California, in Vail, in Florida rich. Fancy apartment in New York rich. And they probably have millions more in the stock market.
Nico once told me that he walked away from his family because of all the expectations: that he’d go to law school, and that he’d eventually be a partner in his dad’s firm. He hated the idea that he was just, as he put it, “a cog in the machine.” I guess I can appreciate that—there’s even a part of me that thinks it’s noble, to resist falling into a life that your parents have just created for you—but there are also times when it’s frustrating as fuck.