“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde
The wind had kicked up by the time we left the breakwater and the clouds began to look a bit persuasive. “I don’t think we’ll be able to stay out for long,” I called to Anna, who was standing at the bow, riding the deck as though it were a surfboard.
“Take us out to that buoy and around it, just so we can race the waves,” she called, pointing to a red and white blob a few hundred meters away.
The wind whipped her hair around her head like Medusa’s snakes, and I pushed the throttle forward until we’d found the speed that allowed us to ride across the edges of the waves instead of over them.
“Look!” she called, pointing to a pair of geese flying off the port side of the boat that seemed to be riding the same wind we were. The birds dipped and dove and seemed almost to tumble with each other in the wind, and above them I could see the formation of the rest of the flock.
Anna watched the pair with rapt attention, and the joy on her face each time a goose shifted on the currents was utterly exquisite to see. She looked back at me with wonder shining bright in her eyes. “They’re having so much fun!”
As we neared the buoy marker, the pair of geese caught an upward draft and used it to rejoin their flock, settling into formation as the V continued its flight up the coast. Anna came back into the cockpit and looped her arms around my waist, snuggling in to warm herself against my body.
“Do you know that geese never leave a goose behind?” she said. “If one is injured, two will fly with it to support it until it either dies or rejoins the flock.”
“And those two just came down to ride the air currents and play,” I said.
“Being playful is important – vital even,” she said. “You get old if you don’t play.”
I held her with one arm and steered the boat with the other, rounding the buoy and heading back in to the safety of the harbor. Anna’s heart beat steadily against my ribcage, and then she slid her cold hands up my back, under my sweater.
“So it’s going to be like that, is it?” I growled happily.
She looked up into my face with a failed attempt at innocent eyes. “Like what?”
“You’ll go out and play in the rain, and then come home expecting me to warm you up?”
She grinned. “Yep, pretty much like that. Except when you come out to stomp in puddles with me.”
I kissed the tip of her very cold nose. “It’s been a long time since I’ve stomped in puddles.”
She quirked her head and looked at me. “Why?”
I looked over the top of her head at the white-capped wind waves and thought about the conversation I’d had with Reza a few days before. I’d lain awake most of that night considering what I now realized was true, and I searched for the words to explain something that had only ever been a memory from which I flinched.
“I’ve told you that I was seven and Reza was three when my parents decided it was time to leave Iran?” I looked down to find her watching me intently, and I smiled to lessen the serious expression my words had put there.
“My job was to watch him when we were out of the house, as he had a particular tendency at that age to follow any dog that wandered by. A car was coming to take us to the airport, and my parents were bringing the big suitcases they’d packed full of our family’s valuables out to the street. They had given us a new bouncy ball and set of jacks with which to amuse ourselves while they went in and out of the house, so we sat in the entry hall by the open door and played.”
Anna’s eyes were focused on my face as my words began to clog in my throat. “A puppy wandered up to see what the commotion was, and Reza ran outside to say hello to it. I remember thinking that my parents would stop him and I could just keep playing with the jacks, but they didn’t see Reza or the dog, and when Reza ran up to the dog he startled it.”
“Oh no,” Anna whispered.
My gaze landed on nothing but the past as I continued. “The puppy ran away from Reza straight into the street, where it was hit by the car that had come to take us to the airport.”
Anna gasped softly, and the pressure of her hands on my skin brought me back to the present, where I stood in the biting wind, on a cold and choppy lake, with this remarkable woman in my arms.
I kissed her lips softly and then backed the throttle off as we neared the jetty. “I remember first knowing that I’d failed at my job, and then getting so angry at Reza for not following the rules,” I continued quietly. “He, of course, was devastated, inconsolable, which was my fault too. But he was also three, and very likely has no memory of the same things I still see when I close my eyes.” The images of blood and fur had colored all my worst nightmares, but it had been years since I’d dreamed I’d been able to save the dog.
I shook myself from the memory. “The other day, Reza said something that really resonated with me. At seven years old, I made a decision that the dog’s death was my fault. I had chosen to play jacks instead of enforcing the rules. Never mind that my parents were right there, or that any animal startled by an intent three-year-old was going to run. And never mind that I was just a kid playing a game while his parents planned their escape from a government that had killed their friends.”
I kissed her again, lingering this time in the scent of her. “Somewhere along the way I forgot that a child had made the rules by which I was living,” I said softly to her lips.
I reluctantly left her mouth in order to steer the boat into the harbor, and then Anna helped me dock it, tie off, and put the cushions away. The clouds had become somewhat menacing, and the wind was blowing sea spray onto the deck, so we closed ourselves belowdecks and shut the hatch behind us.
Anna was shivering when she finally stopped moving long enough to notice the cold, and her skin was red from the wind. “Come,” I said, holding my arms open, “let me warm you.” She went into my arms with a sigh and nestled her face into my chest. “Put your hands under my sweater if they’re cold,” I said, wanting the connection with her, even at the cost of my body heat.
“Actually, it’s my feet that are cold,” she murmured.
“All right, then, under the covers with you,” I said.
She looked up at me through narrowed eyes, “Not alone, I hope.”
I laughed. “Is that an invitation or a command?”
“Which will work better?” she asked with feigned innocence.
The grin on my face echoed the one in my heart. “Anna Collins, I’m going to say this out loud now, so there’s no question about timing or intent. I am in love with you. Totally, completely, without question, in love, and I think I have been since the day we spent here, on this boat. And though I said I couldn’t bear to lose you up on your garden roof, I’ve realized that if you aren’t you, I’ve lost you already. So you be you, I’ll write new rules that are me, and together we can figure out us.”
She stepped back, frowned at me, and then kicked off her boots and unbuttoned her jeans. “You better strip down, buddy, because the last one naked in that bed has to be on top.”
“Has to be?” I grinned, kicking off my shoes and pulling off my sweater.
“It’s freaking cold in here,” she complained, as she pulled off her T-shirt, kicked off her underwear, and prepared to leap onto my bed.
I grabbed her around the waist and she shrieked. “Too cold!”
I kissed her. “Tell me I didn’t freak you out just now.”
She stared at me. “Are you kidding? Those are the biggest turn-on words I’ve ever heard. They are like the sun, shining so brightly they’re hard to look at, and like the ocean, so vast and deep they make me afraid. They’re the words of fluffy bunnies and corgi puppies, of the smell of fresh bread and babies’ heads, the taste of chocolate mousse and movie theater popcorn. They’re every new idea, every possibility, everything hopeful and true. They’re bucket-fillers, not bucket-dippers, and what you just said to me is exactly the way I feel about you. Times a thousand.”
She wriggled out of my arms and flung herself on my bed, then burrowed under the covers while I finished undressing. She poked her head out and looked serious. “Tell me you restocked Brazen and the Beast.”
I grinned at her. “Really? You think we’re going to need—”
“YES!”
I slid beneath the covers and pulled Anna’s naked body to me. “We are going to have soooo much fun,” she whispered into my mouth. And then she kissed me, and I forgot about rules and history and the cold, and all I could be was with her.