Page 37 of The Wild Beneath

“Ruth’s back on the ferry this afternoon after her transfusion. You can sleep at her place and we’ll be back in a couple days. It’ll feel like no time.”

Mara opens her mouth to speak again, but says nothing.

The party is down the channel, six kilometres southwest. Annie puts on a fresh T-shirt that she hopes doesn’t smell too much like fish and ties her hair back in a ponytail. Evan picks her up at Ruth’s jetty in a Hale Timber bowrider.

She sits in the passenger seat and he reaches across to hold her hand briefly.

An insurance commercial plays on the boat radio. She clicks the knob off and taps her feet as Evan speeds up toward full throttle. Cool wind hits her cheeks, but the seats are hot andsweaty under her legs. It’s too windy to talk, the engine revving too loud, and Evan doesn’t slow the pace until they’re well outside of Hale’s.

The waves whoosh and swirl around them. He turns to look at her, all chocolate-brown eyes and unshaven scruff and that mouth she wishes she didn’t want so badly on her own.

“You’re here,” he says, but somehow it feels like a question. He stops the engine and pulls her over toward him. “Come here.”

She sits in his lap. He puts his hands on her cheeks and pulls her to him until their noses touch.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.”

“I need to kiss you,” he says. “Can I kiss you?”

She doesn’t stop him and doesn’t want to, even though she’s angry. She needs him so badly. His lips find hers, soft and open. She wants to stop doubting whether they’re okay.

But the vision of brunette-swan-neck swims up. She shivers.

He pulls away an inch. “You’re somewhere else, aren’t you?” he asks. “I felt it this morning.”

Annie can’t hold it in. “Who’s that girl?”

“Which girl?”

“You had her over your shoulder.” She can’t meet his eyes anymore, so she looks out over the water. They bob in the eddies. “On the beach when we sailed in.”

“That’s what this is about?” His voice is louder than usual.

“I get it. We were away.”

“It’s not what you think,” he says, turning her face back toward his. “It was a stupid dare.”

“You don’t have to explain it.” She doesn’t know why she says that; she does want him to explain. The tide’s flowing in and they drift backward against the waves. The sky is a bruised violet colour in the setting sun. “I’m fine.”

“Nothing has changed, Annie,” he says. “Let’s talk about this later. They’re expecting us at the party.”

But she’s not sure nothing has changed. The distance between them isn’t the only problem. Everything seems louder since she leftAmphitrite. She returns to her seat and Evan starts the engine again. When he finally moors at the Goose Island dock, the noise has amplified: his jangle of the boat keys, the bump of the hull against the squeaky fenders, the tacky sound as her legs peel off the leather.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Evan looks concerned as she steps up and out of the boat. He steadies her hand.

“I’m okay.”

“We can go back?”

It doesn’t feel like a real offer, even though she wants it to be.

“I’m good,” she lies again. When was the last time she was this far away fromAmphitriteand her parents? Evan tries to keep hold of her hand, but she doesn’t want him to. She straightens her shirt instead, then follows him down the path to the cabin.

It’s not a cabin at all. It’s an estate: a two-storey home with gabled windows, bright white siding, and slate walkways. Buckets of ferns hang from thick-beamed awnings. The wrap-around front porch has several sitting areas, each with its own throw pillows and blankets arranged symmetrically. Music pours from the built-in speakers in the ceilings. The front doormat saysHome Sweet Home.

Inside, a dozen or so people mill around, drinks in their hands. The coffee table is laden with bowls of chips, a bottle of spray-on SPF 50, a mickey of tequila. A couple is making out at the far end of a leather sectional. A blaze roars in the fireplace off to the left and an air conditioner hums incongruously nearby. Annie is unsettled by the sounds of a fridge door opening and closing, the clatter of ice dumped into a cooler, the pop of beer cans, voices weaving into a swarm of sound.