My Brother Left Me With the Man He Told Me to Stay Away From, and Then Didn't Come Back novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Anclote

By the second week of August I had slept in the cottage for eight weeks.

Laz still had not taken me out on the Eleni S.

He said she was a working boat and not a place for a woman in a dress.

I said I had been born in a house with a sponge in every bathroom.

On a Saturday night he cast off from the docks at nine with no crew.

He ran her down the Anclote with the running lights dark.

He dropped the anchor in a bend of the river where the mangroves closed over the water.

The lights of the town were only a smear on the sky.

Then he cut the engine.

The silence came down all at once.

I stood at the rail in the green dress.

The deck was old planking, scrubbed pale, with coils of line and a stack of canvas folded under the wheelhouse.

The whole boat smelled of tar and salt and sun-warmed wood.

Overhead the sky was black and thick with stars.

I heard him come up behind me.

He did not touch me.

He had gotten very good at that, at standing a hand's breadth away until I said.

"Thalia," he said.

"Yes."

"Tonight I'd like to ask you for something."

I turned around.

He stood bareheaded in the starlight with his sleeves turned back, and his face was not the face he wore for the town.

"Ask," I said.

"Let me have the lead," he said.

"Once.

"Only tonight, and only if you want it.

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