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I wrap my arm around his shoulder and he looks up at me, smiling. “Thanks, Dad.”
I wink down at him. “Anything for you, buddy.”
He gives me a cheeky grin. “How about a 69 Nova for my sixteenth birthday?”
“I like your taste, but if your grades don’t improve in the next five years, you’ll be riding the bus.”
“Crap.”
Hazel is great in school. She’s a perfectionist and loves learning. Oliver, he’d rather just get by and do the bare minimum to pass. We’ll be lucky if he graduates, let alone go to college. We don’t have our hopes up on that one. It’s a good thing he has my looks because he’s fucking dumb. I know you’re not supposed to say that about your children, but I say it with love. He’s dumb.
In between waiting to board the boat, I have the not so great pleasure of overhearing Jason and Kate arguing on the phone. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Jason.”
He snorts. “Says who?”
“The dissolution of marriage certificate.”
Jason huffs out an annoyed groan. “Whatever. I’m only looking out for our boys.”
“No, you’re not. You’re looking out for you and your needs. You realize acting like this is why we’re divorced.”
Realization hits him and his shoulders hunch. I really wish he’d turn down the volume on his phone. I don’t want to know this much about their marriage.
“If you don’t back off and let me have some space, this deal where we live in the same house isn’t going to work anymore.”
Standing, he distances himself from me, something I wish he’d done when he took the call, but he didn’t. I think on some level I can relate to both Kate and Jason. Did you know they were ten years old when they fell in love? Got married at eighteen and then life happened. And kids and all that messy shit that complicates marriages. I don’t think it means they don’t love each other any less and I think it’s great that they made the decision to raise the kids together knowing it’d be best for them than having to share custody. So many times that’s not taken into consideration.
I’ll also tell you what else wasn’t taken into consideration. Me and boats. I should have thought about this before I booked a deep-sea fishing trip.
Jason bumps my shoulder with his. “You sick, man?”
I imagine my face is pure white just being on the dock. “I’m good.” So many lies.
“Have you ever been deep-sea fishing?”
I pop a piece of ginger in my mouth. I hate ginger by the way. It’s awful. “Nope.”
He laughs. Like it’s fucking funny. So I push him into the water. The boys think it’s funny but Jason, he doesn’t.
We end up boarding the boat with the kids, and Jagger doesn’t want to wear a life jacket. “I hate them,” he huffs, buckling it on. “They make me feel like I’m puffy.”
“I hate to see what he thinks when he gets the dad bod,” Jason mumbles, chuckling to himself.
The next few hours are spent with me obsessively vomiting over the side of the boat, Oliver doing the same, and then finally we fish—for about an hour, and then we’re both sick again. In between vomiting off the side of the boat and wanting the ocean to swallow me and put me out of my misery, I have a couple of moments of bonding with Oliver. I hand him a bottle of water and rip the hook out of my thumb he put there while casting.
“Do fish ever blink?” August asks his dad, staring at the dead fish next to him lying in a pool of its own blood. It’s like a massacre on the boat and quite frankly, doing nothing for my nausea. In fact, it’s making it so much worse because I don’t like the sight of blood, let alone to have it all over me and everything in sight.
The best moment, aside from when we reach shore again, comes when Oliver hooks a Bluefin tuna. “Dad, I did it!” he screams, two fishermen beside him holding him in the boat as he tries to reel it in. He can’t by himself, and one of the deck hands steps aside to let me help him. With some heavy work, and a gaff, we get the fish on board, and it flops around as the deck hands get it on ice.
Soaked in water and some blood, Oliver’s wide excited eyes find mine. “That was the coolest thing ever!” he yells, about the time Jason and Jagger are pulled overboard by a tuna.
“Overboard!” August yells, shaking his head and then he looks at me with a smile. “I knew they’d end up in the water at some point.”
“Me too.” I laugh, looking at them in the water.
Don’t worry. They’re totally fine. They get back on board, eventually, and no one is harmed. Wet and angry, but no harm done. I sit with Oliver as he tells me in every detail how he knew he had a fish on his line. I’m no longer sick to my stomach—lies—but in that moment, I’m completely aware of the fact that I need to take him to do this kind of thing more often. He’s not the aggressive preteen pushing his sister around the house or talking back to us. Out here, he’s appreciative, smiling and joking around.
He looks down at my thumb, the one he hooked that’s bleeding all over the place. “Holy crap, Dad. Are you okay?”