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Nineteen

Huck

I thought this would be easier. Yeah, I’m an idiot.

I’ve pictured seeing Stella again so many times, what I would say, how she would look at me, and how I would play it cool and contrite and everything would be fine, and yet now I find myself woefully unprepared. Freaking dumfounded by my stupidity.

Wrecked.

Even though it’s been over a year, very little has changed about the way I react to being in the same space as Stella. She can still take my breath away with a single look, but now the weight of the choice I made that morning in Iceland presses on my sternum and makes it hard to breathe.

I study human nature extensively for my books and like to think that over the years, I’ve cultivated a pretty good understanding of people. And still I manage to clearly underestimate my own human ability to trick myself into thinking I’ve made peace with my decision.

Seeing Stella again is awkward and surprisingly painful. Fuck that. It’s just as painful as I worried it might be when I was honest with myself.

There were obvious signs that should have told me that this difficulty was a forgone conclusion.

Maybe I willfully ignored them. Over the last year, there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t think of her or wish things could’ve turned out differently.

But it turns out that focusing on writing a novel, perfecting it, so much so that you forget to eat, leave your apartment, see the sun, talk to anyone other than the occasional delivery person and your long-suffering friend and agent, is a very effective diversion for a heart problem.

And conjuring a character that is essentially a very close fictionalization of a woman that you could’ve fallen for…

did fall for…and spending every page with her adds to the mind-bending magic.

Now all of that distraction has faded away and Stella is not fictional.

She is very much real…living, breathing, seething, and within two feet of me, and all I can think is that I better start writing my next book soon because I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through the next four weeks in this type of proximity to her.

It makes my chest ache.

I steal a glance at her in the passenger-side mirror.

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

She seems a million miles away from me and looks a bit like an undercover cop today, with a worn baseball cap pulled low and sunglasses obscuring most of her features; I wonder if it was intentional.

A barrier so we don’t get too close. She’s smart, but I already knew that.

She hasn’t spoken to me yet and the anticipation of what she’ll say and how is a unique form of torture.

You did this to yourself.

“Hungry?” Ted asks, holding out a box of donuts, probably consolation for the fact that his aggressive driving nearly flung me across the back seat a moment ago. “Just don’t take the peanut butter and jelly, it’s Stella’s favorite—”

“Not my favorite,” she says. And there it is. That beautiful voice, full of energy, playful but firm. I’m not sure if she’s really referring to the donut flavor or if she’s reminding me of where I stand.

I think of the jam-and-cheese pizza in Iceland and resist the urge to bring it up in the context of a potential favorite donut flavor combination.

I fail at trying to hold back the memory of that red currant–flavored kiss against the bookshelf at the cabin, though.

I clear my throat. “So it’s a safe choice, then? ” I ask instead.

“No. It’s my second favorite,” she says, reaching around to remove the donut in question before I have a chance to take it.

She lifts her finger to her mouth to clean up some peanut butter glaze in a way that seems automatic, as if she has no idea what this does to me, or maybe she knows exactly the effect that this has, and yeah, again, what the actual fuck was I thinking?

We’re two minutes in and I’m already done for, fantasizing in the back seat of Ted’s truck.

I can see the headlines now: “Writer Perishes in Back Seat Before Finishing Book Two of His Blockbuster Series.” I’d probably win a prestigious posthumous award.

Best thing you ever did for your writing career, Huck , Jim would say to my headstone.

Stella wouldn’t come to the funeral, I imagine.

Or maybe she would—it would be the perfect ending given that she likely hates me after what I did.

She might want to dance on my grave. They’d put me in the ground next to Dad, so he’d have a front row seat to my downfall.

What did you expect, Henry? he’d demand for eternity. My very own personalized hell.

I pick out a standard-looking glazed donut, no one’s favorite, I surmise, and remind myself silently that I am here to work, to observe, to do research. Not to pine for the past. Not to be affected by seeing Stella lick some glaze off her fingertips.

We drive in silence for a while until a rundown marina comes into view.

I suddenly don’t know how I feel about boats.

Teddy had warned me about all the unpleasantries and risks of being at sea—accidents, nausea, storms, equipment failures, sinking, sharks—when I first asked him about joining the expedition.

Perhaps their crew was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle it or I’d get in the way.

Maybe Stella had asked him to make me not want to go. He’d nearly succeeded in that.

But I have another book to write, and Jim is a very compelling man.

The truck’s barely stopped before Stella is out, heading to the back hatch, grabbing things, shouldering gear. She thrusts a giant duffel bag at me, and then spins on her heel toward the water. The French braids she’s fashioned slip to the side and the tattoo on her neck peeks out.

“Not much has changed, I see,” I say.

“Time waits for no man, and Stella waits for no one.” Ted pulls out the last of the baggage from the back and locks up the car. “Hey, Bubba,” he calls to a large man in worn overalls. “Still okay for us to leave the truck here?”

“Sure thing. Long as you leave the keys. I got a hot date this weekend.” The man has a strong Southern accent and a warm, hearty laugh. I like the melodic quality of it.

Ted tosses the keys to him. “I filled up the tank so you should be set for all your galivanting.”

“Does he really use your car while you’re gone?” I ask in a low voice. It seems like a liability, though like a lot of people from New York City, I don’t own a car, and I’m not sure of the conventions.

“Nah, he’s just messing with us. The keys are in case we get any big weather and he needs to move the truck to high ground. Bubba drives a Porsche.”

I glance back over my shoulder at Bubba.

He’s summiting one of the massive boats with an agility I hadn’t expected.

I wonder if he might make a good character in the next book.

I’d started plotting out ideas based on the loose itinerary that Teddy had shared—a sail down the Intracoastal Waterway and then to Key West, where we’ll be searching an area off the coast—but so far nothing is exactly singing to me.

“I take it that big weather means a hurricane?” I ask.

“Yup,” Ted says.

“And what’s the likelihood of that?”

He shrugs. “Depends a lot on the season. Down here we do get hit from time to time. Over at Oak Island, not far from here, the beach is almost gone from all the storm damage over the years. They do beach nourishment projects all the time, but it’s hard to keep up.”

I’d read about the disappearing Outer Banks; Rodanthe, where that one Nicholas Sparks book was set, was famous for pictures of the carcasses of abandoned beach houses slipping into the sea.

They even had to relocate the one they’d used in the movie before it nearly fell victim to the beach erosion and rising tides and was smashed to bits in the churning waves.

I don’t want to think about beaches or how things get destroyed on them. I can’t.

“And what about down where we’re diving? Planning on bad weather there?” I ask.

“Who knows, man? You want to back out? Storms roll through all the time, but our boat is well equipped to handle it. The bigger problem is that when it’s stormy at all, we can’t drag the magnetometer and we definitely can’t dive, so we better hope for good weather.

And we ought to get a move on,” Ted says.

“Stella’s probably ready to shove off already. ”

I bite back a comment about her wanting to shove me off the deck of the boat, which I couldn’t blame her for, not really, but Jim told me to attempt to be positive, and so I try.

I break into a run, and Teddy, ever the competitive pal, picks up speed to try to pull ahead.

We reach the pier at the same time, huffing.

Ted drops the gear he was carrying and raises his arms behind his head while he sucks in air.

The boat is bigger than I’d expected, with a smaller craft that looks like a step up from a Zodiac strapped down on the deck.

Across the hull, Lucky Strike is scrawled in ornate letters.

Stella’s walking the deck, checking on things with a clipboard in her hand and a clear air of confidence that would take my breath away if I had any left after the sprint to the boat.

She’s left her stuff haphazardly on the wooden planks, as if she couldn’t wait to get onboard.

I reach down to get a canvas tote and spot my book inside sitting on top of a bunch of things that appear to have been tossed in at random.

I suspect that this is her afterthought bag, containing the random objects hastily grabbed at the last minute before she left.

It’s not an honor for the book to be on top, I remind myself. But it’s there.

And that is enough to give me hope.