He Bought My Nights in the Dark, and I Hated Him by Day novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Galley

Liv left on the seventeenth of December, on a seventy-foot cod boat out of Pier 6 with a skipper nobody had a bad word for.

I stood on the dock in the dark at five in the morning and held her duffel while she checked the lines.

Mama had not come.

She had said goodbye in the kitchen, with a lunch bag and a long stare, and then gone back to her tea.

"Cod season in the Gulf," Liv said. "Six weeks. I'll come home with money and a bad back."

"The Gulf," I said.

She looked at me.

"Don't," she said. "It's a different boat."

"Different boat, same water."

"Astie, listen," she said.

She never called me that unless she was frightened.

"Whoever he is, whatever the job is, you tell me when I get home. Everything."

"Everything," I said.

"Is he hurting you?"

I thought of a hand over my eyes and a hymn on the water.

"He's the only gentle thing I've had all year," I said.

Liv stared at me for a long time.

Then she kissed my cheek hard, grabbed her duffel and went up the gangway.

I watched the stern lights until the boat slid under the Ballard Bridge.

I had not known how badly I wanted to be held until I was standing alone on that pier.

That night I called the driver, and I did not ask him anything.

It was the second night in the cabin that was nobody's but mine.

I came down the stair at seven, two hours before the lamp, with the key in my pocket and my hair still damp.

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