Andrew

I’M TRYING TO FORCE MYSELF TO HAVE fun but I’d rather be spending my time with Jamie. Rocky Horror is right: I need to talk this all out with him. Not the sex stuff; that’s obviously on an indefinite hold until we work out our issues. But talking to him before the social wasn’t so bad.

“Why don’t you stop being a little bitch and ask your man to dance?” Rocky Horror plops down on the picnic bench next to me with a glass of hooch. The smell turns my stomach. They don’t call it hooch, but it’s absolutely hooch. Basically the cheapest, easiest way to make alcohol: citrus, water, sugar, and yeast that they bury in the sand for five days to ferment.

I look over at Jamie, who’s talking to Daphne. “He’s doing his goodbyes, in case he doesn’t see people before Sunday. Probably pawning me off on grub duty with Daph while he’s away.”

“Grub duty?” Rocky Horror waves away the flies that have already gathered around us because of the hooch.

Daphne is an Islamorada local. She spent her winters here even before the bug, and the greenhouse behind her little bungalow is one of the few places in the Keys—maybe even the world—still growing tomatoes. This past year has been a nightmare for her with the bugs. Apparently every time she picks off a cluster of grub eggs, there’s at least one more she misses. Jamie helps her on Saturday and Sunday mornings—when he isn’t doing boat stuff—in exchange for some tomatoes. I explain all this to Rocky Horror, who nods.

“Well,” he says, “I have it on good authority that when this song ends, there’s a slow one coming up.”

The band is actually good tonight. No singer, which I sometimes think makes it better. The only electricity is being used for the string lights hanging from the big tent’s ceiling, so the band is just two acoustic guitars, a mandolin, an upright bass, and a viola. The five musicians have clearly been practicing together, because their acoustic-bluegrassy version of either Sia or Ed Sheeran almost sounds professional.

When I don’t move, Rocky Horror adds, “I have it on good authority because I paid them to make the next song a slow one, so get up and ask Jamie to dance or you owe me fifty bucks.”

I sigh and get up, making it halfway to Jamie before I turn around and walk back to Rocky Horror. “Fifty bucks? In what currency?”

He wipes the citrus hooch from his beard and flicks his hand at me. “It’s a figure of speech. I just asked them to do it—what are they gonna do, say, ‘No, we have too much artistic integrity to play slow music’?” He blows a raspberry and turns his attention to Amy and Cara.

I laugh and, sure enough, as the fast song ends and everyone claps, a slow one begins. I walk up to Daphne and Jamie, and Daph smiles wider when she sees me.

“Would you mind if I stole you for a dance?” I ask.

Jamie smiles and his cheeks flush. “Yeah, sure.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.” I hold out my hand to Daphne, who lets out, legit, the best laugh I have ever heard from a human being in my life. Then she smacks it away and says, “You couldn’t handle it.”

“Wow! And I thought we were friends!” She holds her hands out to my face and I bend down to kiss her cheek as she kisses mine. Then she lets me take Jamie’s hand and lead him to the dance floor.

But from there he leads me. He pulls me close and holds my hand out as we sway on the tiny dance floor surrounded by picnic tables.

“I don’t want to ruin the moment,” Jamie says, and I already know what he’s going to ask. “But where is this coming from all of a sudden?”

“Here’s the deal. I’m a proud person and I really hate apologizing, so save this in your mind grapes for a rainy day because it doesn’t happen frequently: I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.”

He feigns surprise. “He admits it.” Then he dips me, and I grab on to him tighter.

“I’m always surprised when I remember you can dance,” I tell him as he pulls me back up.

“Do I look like someone who can’t dance?”

I look up at him. His broad shoulders, his stocky frame. “Yes, honey.”

He laughs and leads me into a spin that gives me butterflies, then easily catches me and pulls me against him again. I love dancing with him. He feels confident, which makes me feel confident. We move in sync, and when he does things—like that twirl, for instance—I sense it coming and can lean into it.

The idea of him traveling without me returns and I feel awful again. Because on the one hand, I made such a big deal about him giving up and wanting to stay with me, and on the other, I do selfishly want that, but I’d never say it. Tears sting my eyes and I use it as an excuse to put my head against his shoulder.

“My mom taught me,” he says, unprompted. “It was very embarrassing at the time, and I kept telling her no, but she said, ‘Jamison, if you break your date’s toes, she’s never going to want to dance with you again.’”

I manage to blink away the tears and look up at him. “And who was this girl?”

“Lori Hauck.”

“Gesundheit.” He laughs and shakes his head. I open my mouth to ask more about Lori Hauck—totally ready with a “Lori Hauck-a-loogie” joke—when I see the admiral approach us.

“Jamison,” he says. “Can I talk to you?”

Dammit. We were doing so well there for a second. I step away from Jamie as he gives me a look that asks if I’m okay with it.

“Go ahead. It’s fine.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I nod, but after I look around at the other dancing couples, I make a beeline back to the table, where Rocky Horror is frowning over his glass of hooch. Daphne is next to him with a disappointed look on her face. I drop onto the bench across from them.

“We were so close,” Daphne says, shaking her head.

“Close how?” I ask.

“The two of you have barely talked the past two weeks, but you seemed pretty cozy just now,” Rocky Horror says.

Daphne turns to him. “I told you. Any time I have two characters in my books with a misunderstanding, I just force them to dance. Who slow dances in silence?”

“Sociopaths,” Rocky Horror says.

“Excuse you both,” I jump in. “We did not have a misunderstanding.”

There wasn’t anything to misunderstand. I said everything I needed to say to Jamie about how mad I was and why. I was annoyed that he decided to leave the boat after Hickey kicked me off. If it had just been left at that, it would have been fine. But then when I asked him to stay on the crew, he doubled down and kept telling me over and over that he didn’t care about the boat trip, he just didn’t want to be away from me.

I couldn’t understand. Henri was the entire reason we were here, building this new family with everyone we’ve met. How could he just say “I don’t care, I’ll stay here” when the entire purpose of the trip was to go up and bring her back?

Back to her daughter, Amy. Not to mention her new granddaughter and namesake, Henri-Two. Her family. And ours.

It was a sweet gesture and I appreciated that, but I told him to stop being stupid and stick with the boat. For Henri, but also for Cara. Yes, Cara and Daria are friends now, but she’s still dealing with her PTSD and gets panic attacks every once in a while. She needs more than just Daria on her side, especially with Hickey being as impatient as he is.

And, yes, this is absolutely what I lie awake at night thinking about. When Jamie and I were on the road with a shared goal, we seemed to work. But what if here, now that we’ve reached safety, we want different things? He started to talk about us staying up north after Henri gets on the boat, and going back to the cabin, just the two of us. And when we first got here, that plan made sense. We were scared that what happened in Fort Caroline—authoritarianism and bigotry—would happen here. But the Keys aren’t like that. We have a community here. A family, even. And if Fort Caroline came a-knocking at our one-road-in, one-road-out island-chain community, that family would protect us.

I don’t understand why he wants to leave that.

So, yeah, none of it was a misunderstanding. But it did get bigger than I thought it would. And Jamie being so willing to give up on our plans made it worse.

It felt like something had changed, specifically in him, and I don’t know what it is.

“If it’s not a misunderstanding,” Daphne says, “then what is it?”

I shrug. “Maybe our relationship was just a codependent thing while we were on the road. We felt like we needed each other, and now that we’re safe, things are just . . . different.”

“Then why are you the one pushing him away?” Rocky Horror asks.

“I’m not pushing him away.”

Rocky Horror and Daphne share a look that says they don’t believe me.

“I’m not! He just . . . something is different. And I don’t know what it is.” We sit in silence for a moment, and I turn to see Cara at the next table with Amy, Henri-Two, and another woman with a baby around Henri-Two’s age. I know Cara’s been listening, and judging by the look on her face, she understands what I’m talking about. She doesn’t seem confused like Daphne—or bored-slash-annoyed like Rocky Horror. She seems sad. Pitying, maybe.

“Wait,” Rocky Horror says. “I don’t know why I’m still here dealing with this. Excuse me.” He stands. “Daph, you need a refill?”

She says she’s okay, and he gives me one last exasperated look before heading back to the punch bowl.

Daphne reaches across the table to take my hand.

“Whatever’s going on between you two, I think you need to talk about it, for real, before you make any major decisions.”

I nod, but that’s easier said than done. How do I ask my boyfriend—are we even still boyfriends?—if he’s changed now that we’re living in what could be considered a functional society again? How do I not sound rude when I say I think it’s selfish to change the plan so casually and forget about the mission to get Henri?

Jamie’s voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I turn again to see him talking to Cara. She nods, her eyes wide with surprise. Amy and the other woman stop talking and turn to listen just as the band kicks into a high-tempo song and drowns out whatever he’s saying.

Amy puts a hand to her mouth in shock.

“What’s going on?” I ask Daphne as I stand.

Jamie turns to me. “We’re not leaving Sunday,” he says. “The broadcast earlier from Radio Blanca . . . the radio operator here lost touch with the outpost over there a few hours ago, and no one has answered yet.”

Daphne is by my side now. “Is everything okay?”

“They don’t know,” Jamie says. “But they’re making an announcement at the end of the social. We’re going to prepare for the storm to hit us, too. Hopefully if it does, it won’t be a full hurricane, but just to be safe, they’re moving everyone into shelters. If it does hit, it will be tomorrow afternoon or evening.”

“Where are we supposed to go?” I ask.

“There’s a school in Marathon that used to be a hurricane shelter,” Daphne says.

Jamie nods. “That’s the one we’re using. The southern Keys are going to the naval base in Key West, Key Largo is staying put and sheltering in a school up there, and from Tavernier down to us are heading to Marathon.” He turns to me. “They want the boat crew to move supplies into the school overnight. You should probably start getting the kids’ stuff together so you can all head over first thing in the morning. I’m going to grab stuff at the house first. Anything specific you want?”

So much for keeping the conversational momentum going. I shake my head, and he turns to Cara to ask if she’s ready and she nods yes. The two of them leave, but he stops and jogs back to me.

He leans down and kisses me lightly on the cheek. “See you in the morning. But if the wind and rain start, don’t wait, okay?”

“Okay.”

When he leaves I can still feel the dampness from his lips on my cheek. And it makes my heart ache.

Maybe all we needed was a catastrophe to get back to normal.

That doesn’t bode well.