I Left Him at the Altar, So the Best Man Took Me Off the Island novel · Chapter 2 of 40

Chapter 2: The Only Boat

Ansel takes Gen across the fog in the Marine Patrol boat; she asks why he stood there and he answers plainly; Bryce's groomsmen wait on the town dock.

The fog came in before we cleared the island.

Ansel stood at the wheel with the throttle eased back and the radar glowing green beside his hand.

I sat on the bench behind him with a wet satin skirt around my knees and my veil gone.

Spray came over the bow every time we met a swell.

After ten minutes he reached under the console, took out a folded canvas jacket, and held it behind him without turning around.

"It's not clean," he said.

"I don't care."

It smelled of diesel and cold coffee.

I put it on over the dress and zipped it to my chin.

The island dropped out of sight, and then the sound of the chapel bell, and then there was only the engine and the gray.

"You stood there," I said.

He didn't ask what I meant.

"I stood there," Ansel said.

"You heard them through the wall, and you walked to the altar and stood next to him."

"Yes," he said.

"For how long?"

"Ten minutes, from the time I heard it to the time you came in."

He kept his eyes on the radar.

"I told myself I'd say something at the vows," he said. "Then I told myself I'd stop him at the register."

"And?"

"I had a plan to knock the table over. You came in before I did it."

I looked at the back of his neck, the burnt skin above his collar.

I had decided in the chapel that I wouldn't speak to him, and I had decided on the path that I wouldn't thank him.

Both of those had been easy to decide on land.

"Why did you follow me?" I asked.

"Because you had nowhere to go."

"There's a hundred places," I said.

"On an island with no ferry for three more hours?"

I stopped.

"That's fair," I said.

The boat rose and fell, and he corrected the wheel with the smallest turn of his wrist.

A line of spray ran down my cheek, and I wiped it away with the sleeve of his jacket.

I could see his hands on the wheel, wide and brown and capable, and the rope scar white across the right forearm.

Those were the hands that had signed the paper.

I looked away from them.

I was angry at him, and I was also looking at his hands, and I did not like that.

"Gen," he said.

I jumped.

He had never said my first name in all the time I had known him.

He'd said it quietly.

"When we get in, Bryce's friends will be on the dock," he said. "Constance will have called ahead."

He glanced back at me.

"I want to take you somewhere else."

"Where?" I asked.

"A place I know. It's not far."

"Is it your place?"

"Yes," he said.

I laughed, short and rude, and it surprised us both.

"You took the bride off the island, and now you're taking her home."

"I'm taking you somewhere dry," he said. "You're shaking."

I was, and I hadn't known.

He turned the wheel slightly and I felt the swell change under the hull.

I did not say yes.

I also did not say no, and he must have heard the difference.

The fog thinned.

At first there was only a lighter patch off the bow.

Then came the black line of the shore, and then the lights strung along the waterfront of Port Gannet.

The fish pier, the Legion hall, the old yard with its dark fence.

Ansel cut the engine to a mutter and let us drift in.

"Look at the town dock," he said.

I stood and held the rail.

The town dock was lit end to end.

Pickup trucks were parked in a long row on the wharf with their headlights pointed at the water, a dozen of them.

Men in gray wedding suits stood among them, with their jackets off and their ties loose.

Bryce's groomsmen.

There were seven of them.

They had come over on the inn's private launch while we sat in the fog, and they had beaten us here by twenty minutes.

One of them lifted a phone and shone the flashlight across the water at our boat.

"They're waiting for you," Ansel said.

"What do they want?" I asked.

"I don't know. Your signature, probably. Or you in a car."

"Bryce wouldn't."

I heard how that sounded.

He didn't say anything about it, which was kind of him.

A voice carried over the water, a big laugh, and then a shout.

"Gen! Gen, babe, come on in! Let's talk!"

It was Bryce.

He was standing on the dock with his arms spread wide, his tie hanging open and his hair neat.

Ansel put the throttle forward.

The engine rose to a growl, and the bow swung away from the town dock toward the dark east shore.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"Where the road doesn't."

I sat down hard on the bench with the jacket over my knees.

"You don't know me," I said.

"No," he said. "But the tide is going out, and we can still make the ramp."

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