Bruno Inever told anybody about the meteorites. I never tell anybody anything, really. I like it that way. It’s not that I dislike people; it’s just that when it comes down to it, people are out for themselves. I count myself lucky that I learned about that early on. But this beautiful castaway in a party dress with her mascara-smudged eyes is different from everyone else, and she’s making me wish I had people skills. Even just one or two. Because I like being around her, and I want to ke ep that going. I like that she’s so expressive—I always know what I’m getting with her. I love how she always goes big. I love her quirky way of viewing the world, and her loyalty, and the fact that she doesn’t care about material things. And now she wants grilled cheese and ginger ale with a straw in bed, and I want badly to give it to her. I can’t imagine we have any such thing on board, but I’ve got a good chef. “Come.” I take her hand. “We’re back to the one-word canine-type commands again?” “Come on, then.” I pull her out of the workshop and across the way toward my stateroom, trying not to focus on the feeling of my skin on hers. I may not have relationship skills, but what kind of man ravishes a woman who just lost her family? Or at least the illusion she had one? Not this one. “Are you finally going to walk me over the gang plank?” “That doesn’t sound very cozy,” I say. “We’re doing my cozy vision? The bed, the grilled cheese, the reality show and all that? You know the maritime weather r eport isn’t a reality show, right?” I turn, walking backwards, enjoying the way her eyes sparkle in the moonlight. I’ll bundle her up and feed her the meal she wants and sle ep in the chair if I have to. I push open the door and let her wander in ahead of me. “This is your room?” “Yes. My quarters.” She turns and gives me a sly look. “You soooo want to get me in bed. You can’t resist me.” But it doesn’t have the vibrancy of her usual jokiness. “We’re getting you a grilled cheese,” I say, pulling out my phone to text the chef. “Oh no, wait—Phillip really worked hard on our anniversary meal.” “It won’t go to waste. I’m sure the crew will be thrilled to eat it.” She thinks about this a moment. “I have to admit, they probably will be. Especially Fernando.” Of course she knows the names of my crew. I don’t even know the names of my crew. I lead her into the large walk-in closet and pull a robe off of the hook. “It’s not your pajamas, but it’s flannel. It’s cozy.” “I can’t imagine you wearing this.” I stroll back out into my quarters, leaving her to test out the robe, and grab my phone. Me: Change of plans, we are going to have grilled cheese sandwiches in bed. Is there any way you can locate or create ginger ale? Ideally in a can with a straw? Chef: Of course. I’ll do a ginger concentrate with a touch of sweetener and finish it with sparkling water. Do you want it sharp or mild?
Me: Whatever you need to do to make it taste like a commercial brand. Chef: The can might be a problem. Me: Whatever you can do. Suddenly, she’s there, but she’s not in my robe. She’s dug up a flannel shirt, black and gray, a favorite from when I was studying watchmaking in Switzerland. She’s rolled up the sleeves enough to hit just above her wrists; the top two buttons are open, half of her wavy hair is still underneath the collar and she’s washed her face. My thumb stops on the phone. My eyes travel down her long legs to the thick black socks she’s dug up somehow. It’s all wrong on her and so fucking hot. “Is this okay? You said I could take anything I need and the robe was just miles and miles of fluffy cloth. It was too much.” I have to clear my throat before I can speak. “It’s fine. Great.” More than fine. I want her to ke ep it on. To eat in it. To sle ep in it. To walk the streets of Manhattan in it. To have it on her always unless I myself unwrap her and devour her like a gorgeous, wrong confection. “I can’t imagine you wearing this, either.” “I wore it when I was apprenticing as a watchmaker in Switzerland.” “You literally studied watchmaking in Switzerland?” “In Le Locle. It’s one of the main centers of watchmaking. A gloomy little place where generations of watchmakers train each other in cold workshops tucked into the mountains.” “Wow.” She makes herself at home in my bed. I turn my face away from her before my face does anything else. “I’ve ordered us grilled cheeses and ginger ale.” “You have ginger ale on the yacht?” “We will soon.” She narrows her eyes. “You can’t make ginger ale.” “Of course you can make it.” I sit on the edge of the bed. “It’s not something that grows in the wild. There are not ponds where you can scoop it up.” She presses her finger into my chest. “You are a smart-ass.” My gaze lowers to the pale “V” of skin above the last buttoned button. “And thank you,” she says. I nod, fighting not to think about what she’s wearing under there. I should put her back in her room, but Kelsey likes to be with people. She takes comfort from people, one of the really mystifying things about her. She looks around my stateroom, gaze roving from the spartan oak bureau to the long low dresser which holds only a lamp to the bedside table which holds a book. “Now, the entertainment.” I take out my phone. “What is the reality show you want to watch?” “We don’t have to watch some stupid show.” “We do have to watch some stupid show,” I say. There’s a twinkle in her eye. “Fine. It’s called Small-Town Bake Sale Wars?” I text Sadie the name of the show. “We’re watching it on your phone?” “You think that I would have us watch your show on my phone?” I follow Sadie’s instruction to find the remote in a drawer of the console. I push a few buttons, and a screen slides up from the footboard. Kelsey’s eyes go wide. “Batman!” “It really doesn’t take much to please you, does it?” I say. “Apparently not!” she says. We start the show. A theme song plays over footage of everyday-looking people stirring things in bowls and pulling trays out of ovens. A knock. I open the door. The blonde crew member comes in and sets the food tray on the sideboard. “Two grilled cheeses—aged cheddar and Gruyère on sourdough. Chef Phillip made the ginger ale to
order. The straws are lemongrass. They soften in the drink after a minute or so, which is intended. And a selection of fermented pickles Phillip thought you might like alongside the cheese.” “Thank you, Annie,” Kelsey says. Annie retreats. We settle in, watching the show and eating our grilled cheese. The pickles are better than I expected. Kelsey points out the different characters to me. There’s one woman who only makes one mincemeat pie every time. People are angry at her today. “It is a little tone deaf,” she says. “The point of a bake sale is to earn money.” “But the mincemeat is her thing,” I say. “It’s diva-ish,” she says. “She’s not being a good citizen.” “But I bet that pie is incredible.” She touches her finger to my lips. I let her ke ep it there. There’s a beat of stillness where neither of us moves. She says, “I think you’re teasing me.” I take hold of her finger and kiss the tip of it. She comes to me. She sits on top of me, straddling my lap. “You so want to jump my bones right now.” I set my plate on the bedside table and put my hand against her jaw, lightly, the way a man handles a thing he’s about to care for, and I kiss her. “I do want to. I’ve wanted to all night. Even while Adrian was here.” “I don’t think I’d be into that kind of thing.” “I wanted him to leave so that I could fuck you.” My hands are in her hair, on her jaw, everywhere at once. “Mmmm,” she says in a tone of pleasant surprise. “And then when you came out of my closet wearing this thing.” Her shoulder comes out of my collar, and I put my mouth on it. I drag my lips down her throat. “Then why did we watch two episodes of bake sale?” She’s already reading my face. She does it openly, without apology, the way she does everything. “You’re trying to be decent,” she says. “You just lost your family.” “But what if I desperately needed you to take advantage of me?” She reaches down and grabs my cock. I growl and flip her under me. The buttons don’t come undone. I pull. Something pops at the third button. I don’t care. I’ll buy another flannel. The shirt opens and she’s bare under it, bare everywhere. I go still. She looks up at me and smiles. Slow. Dark. I put my mouth on her breast. Not the way I did on the veranda, with perfectly calibrated pressure and a full sequence in mind. Right now, I’m not calibrating or thinking. I’m only going. She grabs my hair, eyes wild. I go in for a kiss, then I kiss down her body, lingering over her stomach, her hip. “Like where this is going,” she whispers. Me too. I put my mouth between her legs. She arches off the bed with a gasp. She tastes like everything I can never have, and I devour her. Teeth, tongue, fingers. There’s no rhythm. There’s only the next thing my mouth wants, and the next. Her thighs close around my ears. Her fists knot in my hair. She comes fast and loud, something between a laugh and a curse; I feel her come apart against my tongue and I can’t get enough of her. I drag my tongue over her once more, twice more, and she shudders and laughs.
“Gah—stop!” she cries. “Come here.” She pulls at my hair. She’s grinning at me as I come up her body. “Wait. My overnight bag.” I go to my bathroom and rifle through the overnight bag hoping there’s another condom in there. Bingo. When I come back out, the flannel shirt is off completely. She’s naked in my bed. I cross back to her and place a hand on her thigh, sliding it up to her hip, watching her eyes. “I love touching you.” “You say that like it’s a shock.” I don’t know what to say to that. It is a shock. It’s a shock that she’s in my bed, on my boat. A shock that I don’t want her off. “Come here,” she says. “You are so beautiful.” She begins to protest and I press my fingers to her lips. “You are. Just take it.” “So come here.” I smile and run the corner of the foil package up the inside of her thigh, light as a breath. She draws up a little. “Bruno.” “Yeah?” “Just that,” she says. I draw the packet back down toward her knee, pin-soft, holding her eyes. Something is happening that I can’t name or categorize. As though looking at each other has opened some kind of channel between us—as though we’re sharing sensations, linked by it. It stuns me, that looking can be like this. And touching. I don’t know what to do with all this human interaction. I make watches. My world is sequences and tolerances and tiny mechanical certainties. She is laughter and movement and whimsy and endless enthusiasm, and she makes things better. “You’re a little slow.” She snatches the condom from my fingers and tears it open, watching me with that playful look. “How about I do it?” She rolls it on, unhurried, then lifts her eyes to mine as her knuckles drift across my stomach. I grab her hands and kiss them. Everything feels so new and uncharted. I usually wouldn’t like this. She bends forward and kisses me on the belly. “You know what I love? That you knocked Cara’s and Madison’s croquet balls so viciously out of bounds.” “That’s who that was?” “Yes, and I love that you did that. I thought you were playing a little intensely, but you were being my knight in shining armor.” I stroke her hair, happy I could do that for her. She kisses, lower, below my belly button. I half think she might take me in her mouth, but the condom would taste like latex and chemicals, and I don’t want that for her. I move onto the bed, bracing myself over her, but not yet touching her. The laughter in her eyes turns to heat as I push her legs apart and guide myself into her and press in. Her eyes drift closed and she lets out a breath, like I’ve pushed the air from her lungs. Her heat grips me—I have a hundred similes ready and not one of them is adequate. She clings to me as I thrust into her. I still. Kiss her lips. Her eyelids. “Open your eyes,” I say. She opens them and I fuck her slow and sure, watching her, letting it build. She grabs my ass, trying to speed things up. I don’t let her. I want it to
last. I want to make her feel better than anything I can put a number on. “Pull my hair,” she says. “This isn’t that kind of fuck.” “I want you to, though.” “Sorry.” She sits up and kisses my chest. “Come on,” she whispers. “Please,” she breathes. I grab her hair, wrap it around my fist, but don’t pull. “I think you’re just using me for my personality.” “No,” she says. “Not just that.” “Not just that?” I pull her hair then, lightly. “What else?” She pants, right on the edge. She likes that. I like it too—more than I have any business liking anything. The slow fuck is out the window. I slide a hand around to her ass and grip her hard. “What?” I demand. Just to demand something. “You’ll never know,” she pants. My hunger isn’t something I can reason with. Being inside her only makes it worse—makes me want more, makes every careful measurement I’ve ever run on anything feel suddenly, completely beside the point. My strokes turn relentless. “What else?” I pull her hair harder, tip her head back, drag my jaw across her throat. I let my strokes go slow and commanding. She breaks apart under me. I suck in a breath—the way she feels as she comes, pulling at me. I try to hold on. The need has other plans. I thrust into her once, twice, and then come apart inside her, holding her. My orgasm spins out longer than I expected. When it’s over, I stay. I can’t process it. Just the fact of her—inexplicably, unknowably right in the dim light of the place. I ease out and drop onto my back beside her and stare at the ceiling of the room I’ve sl ept in alone for all these years as if I’ve never seen it. “Wow,” she says. Quiet. For once, not a joke. “Wow.” She rolls her head to face me. My flannel is on the floor. Her hair is a wreck. Her eyes are shining. “Captain Clockwork,” she whispers, “went off duty.” I put my hand on her cheek. My fingers don’t know what they’re doing. For the first time in I don’t remember how long, I don’t want them to. I don’t want any of the slick polished moves I’ve done with women in my past. It’s as if I’m a different person around Kelsey. Or maybe I’m the same person without armor. Like her. She traces the line of my cheekbone, sliding a finger over my lips. When did I become somebody who let a woman touch me freely like this? When did I become somebody who let a woman onto my yacht? “What would you be doing this week if you weren’t here?” I ask. “Besides your friend’s dinner.” “Everyday things, I guess. Cleaning and hanging out. Teaching a few classes. Catch up on all the things I let slide when the show is going.” She sits up, cross-legged on the bed, gazing down at me, breasts, small and pert, nipples like rosebuds. She has a long, graceful neck. Is that a dancer thing? I want to ask. I want to know everything about her. A patch of pink on the side of her jaw must have come from my whiskers. Something like pleasure twists through me at the idea that I’ve
somehow marked her. Possessed her. Connections with people always seem like a way to be let down, but I like this. I like talking to her and fucking her and driving her enemies’ croquet balls off the field and buying things for her and feeding her. And I can’t take my eyes off that mark on her jaw. I want to touch it, but I have half a thought that it might vanish if I do that. As though it’s maybe not real. “That probably sounds boring to you,” she says. “You grew up on some fabulous estate. You went to boarding school and then moved to a yacht. You don’t even do your own laundry. Do you know how?” I catch her hand in mine. “Of course I’ve done laundry. Our superiors were very strict about that sort of thing in military school.” She looks serious suddenly. “Can I ask you a question?” “Of course.” “You could live anywhere in the world. Why live alone on a yacht?” “Haven’t we already discussed this? I can be as much of an ogre as I want.” “Plenty of people are ogres on land.” “But at sea, there’s nobody to call you out on it. You can be as big of an ogre as you want.” She searches my face. “Don’t bullshit me.” “And I like the freedom.” “That’s your generic magazine answer.” “It happens to be true.” “Freedom from what?” I gaze out the window at the endless blue of the sky and water, but I don’t tell her how the endlessness of it is the only thing that feels right to me, or how being a true fucking island is the one thing I can trust. “Freedom from everything,” I say. “But you could have freedom anywhere. Why not a farmhouse in rural Vermont or something?” “Can you drive the farmhouse away if you don’t like the weather? Or the neighbors?”