Page 33 of The Spirit of Love
“You sure you don’t have a boyfriend over there?”
“Let me think,” I say. “Oh, yeah! Thereisa guy I forgot about. You should be really jealous. He carves fireplaces and does one-handed pull-ups…at the same time!”
“Wouldn’t be that hard,” Sam mumbles.
I laugh. “There’s no way I could be like this with you if I had a boyfriend.”
Sam lets out his breath, and I’m charmed by his obvious relief.
“I’m not seeing anyone either,” he says.
“Sure you don’t have a steady stream of desperate housewives sailing out from Beverly Hills?”
“Land ho!” Sam laughs but then grows serious. “It feels like a long time since I’ve met someone I like as much as you.”
“It feels like a long time for me, too,” I admit.
“Like maybe ever?” he says, holding my gaze, waiting.
“Are you asking about me, or telling me about you?”
“Both.”
I swallow. I could say it, and maybe it is true, but something holds me back. “Two days isn’t long enough,” I whisper instead.
And then, right on cue, the gleaming white Catalina ferry comes into view.
The last time I was on that boat, I was a different person, embarking on a different trip. I don’t know how to go home and be the same old me.
Yet tomorrow is a bright new day. I’ve got nothing but good things to look forward to, starting at nine a.m. I know that once the ferry hits thirty-two knots, that once the Port of Long Beach wraps its arms around the boat, I’ll be back in the show biz mindset, back in creative mode.
But for now, I’ve still got the taste of a gorgeous man on my lips. Parts of me are sore that haven’t been for ages. I get to be here, with him, a little longer.
“Tell me about those sunset whales,” I say.
“Have you ever heard them sing?” he says.
“I think once, on PBS.”
“You should come back. In a few months, they’ll be all along this coastline. You can see them first thing in the morning. Sometimes I think I can feel their vibrations through my paddles.”
“What do you think they sing about?”
“One says,I am here, and another says,Understood—I am over here. And finally, one of them works up the courage to say,Want to be together?”
“Do you think they ever fight?”
“Orcas bite each other’s tongues,” Sam says.
“It’s not a bad way to shut someone up.”
Sam looks at me with his deep brown eyes. There’s a long, peaceful pause. “Hey, Fenny?”
I look up at him. “Yes?”
“Anytime you want to do this, exactly this, again? I’m down.”
“Yeah? Great.” I grin. “Or you could come visit me. Anytime. I think you’d like Venice. It’d be fun to show you around.”
