Page 56 of Slanting Towards the Sea

FIFTY-TWO

WITH THE END OF September nearing, Marina creates a WhatsApp group for the four of us.

“it will be simpler to share info about the trip this way,” she writes.

She dubs the group The Square after I told her that Asier jokingly calls the three of us The Triangle.

She and Asier exchange a smattering of texts about the weather forecast, what clothes, props, food, and drinks we should bring, all peppered with a hefty dose of Captain Jack Sparrow gifs.

I interject with an occasional remark, not wanting to make my reservations about the trip obvious, but Vlaho’s complete silence feels like a statement.

It’s a scary prospect, this open channel of communication between the four of us, and the fact that soon we’ll be sequestered together in a space as confined as a sailboat.

Every day, I expect either Vlaho or Marina to notify us that the trip is off.

But the days pass, and it doesn’t happen.

I imagine being inside their home and wonder what Vlaho is thinking, how he’s bearing our secret, being so close to her all the time.

He is not a liar or a cheat. He has the purest of souls.

Even across town, I can feel this eating away at him, a relentless dog gnawing on a bone.

In a moment of panic, I almost back out myself.

After picking Asier up at the airport and helping him get settled in a rental apartment in the old town, I come home and open the group text to type, “guys, i’m not feeling well.

i think i’m coming down with something. could we postpone?

” Which of course we can’t. The weather won’t hold forever, and Asier is here only for the long weekend.

My finger hovers over the send button, but then I can’t go through with it.

Because I need it to happen.

It has been six weeks since that night. Things are weirdly settling, and I don’t want them to settle.

If the only way to figure out what’s next is to put the four of us in close proximity, so be it.

Turn the heat up and let the water boil.

Let the whole thing blow up if it must, even if it takes me out with it.

The day of the trip is one of those beautiful, mellow late-September days, the weather so still that the horizon resembles a painting.

When Asier and I arrive at the sailboat, Marina is already there, transferring coolers and a case of beer from the pier onto the aft deck.

The engine is puttering quietly, letting out a thin tendril of exhaust fumes and seawater.

“Let’s go, lovebirds. This trip won’t take itself,” Marina yells like the true sailor she is.

She ushers us in over the wooden plank connecting the aft deck to the pier, hugging Asier, then me.

For a moment, I’m overcome with the need to apologize, to beg for her forgiveness.

The urge is so powerful, my whole skin pricks with it.

She’s been such a good friend to me. She’s trying so hard to make it work for the four of us.

“Can I help with that?” Asier points to the case of beer Marina is lifting up.

“Could you get it down into the cabin? They’re still cold.”

“Let’s keep ’em that way then.” Asier takes the case from her.

Marina hops down into the cabin to show him the way, and I’m left alone on the aft deck.

I glance around. There’s not a hint of a breeze.

The sky is open and high above, spacious, the sea so calm it could be made of oil.

One could easily mistake it for the height of summer, except the colors are less saturated, like fruit past its prime, and there’s no feverish pitch of cicadas coming from the trees in Vruljica Park, just across the street.

The mating season cost them their lives.

I don’t see Vlaho anywhere. For a moment I think he came up with a last-minute excuse not to come, but then there he is, carrying a bag of snorkeling equipment from the car.

In the slanted light of the morning sun, he looks almost haggard.

He puts the bags down, his T-shirt damp with sweat.

There’s a pulling in at his chest when he straightens up, like he can’t quite make his shoulders stand back.

He gives me a “hey” and a smile, but neither is fully inhabited.

It makes me uneasy. His face has never been unreadable to me before.

“It doesn’t look like we’ll do much sailing, but it’ll be a beautiful day,” Marina says, coming up from the cabin.

As Vlaho passes me, he presses his palm against the small of my back. Not hard, but with purpose. The touch lingers long after it’s gone.

The sea is a silvery mirror stretching between the islands, and the boat cuts through it, leaving a wake that ripples behind it like outstretched, foamy arms. We sail to Kornati National Park, an archipelago of rocky islands that more resemble the surface of the moon than Earth, bare as they are, dappled only with patches of low, sun-scorched grass.

Asier’s excitement has a childlike quality to it, his gaze running over the horizon with reverie.

I’m still in shock that this is his first time sailing, a man who’s circumnavigated the world hundreds of times, and lived on four different continents.

All this time I feared I was missing out on so many things, and maybe that’s true, but what’s also true is that there are a million tiny miracles right here, within the fifty-mile radius of my front door.

Asier’s elation is making him more tactile too.

He keeps reaching for me, intertwining our fingers, touching my hair when the breeze blows it over my face.

When Marina brings out a bowl of fresh fruit, he peels the green skin off a fig, bites half of it off, then feeds the rest to me, the way he used to, at the beach.

Only now, the whole display feels lascivious, and I push his hand away.

Playfully, so that he can’t see my discomfort.

If Vlaho is watching from behind the helm, I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

On our port side, we pass an island with a small cove.

A single stone-built house is snuggled in the crook of it, surrounded by a verdant olive grove that grows straight from the rocks.

Asier notices it, nudges me. “Looks like Lovorun,” he says, with too much levity.

I avert my eyes. Inside me, a wave builds up, crests.

We anchor in a breathtaking cove, the sea so lucid that the sailboat looks suspended midair. Save for the four of us, there’s not a living soul around. In this otherworldly setting, it’s easy to imagine we’re the only four people alive.

I slip off my oversized linen shirt, which leaves me only in a bikini.

I make a point of avoiding the men’s eyes, self-conscious about being half-naked with both of them so close to me, to one another.

I jump into the water and swim ashore. There, I collect turbinate monodonts from the rocks, allow them to latch onto the skin of my palm.

Back on the boat, Vlaho takes his shirt off, and stands at the top of the prow. I can feel how hard he’s trying not to look my way. He bends, then straightens into a clean line as he enters the water headfirst.

Asier stands on the aft deck. Unlike Vlaho, who wears board shorts, he’s only in briefs, and even though he’s a whole head shorter than Vlaho, he looks impressive with his well-defined torso and that innate confidence that wafts off him.

Marina claps when he jumps in, then yells “Bombs away!” and drops into the sea with both her legs bent and held to her chest. I can’t help but laugh.

Maybe this is the third door I’ve been looking for, the solution for surviving today.

Marina, with her magnetic force, with her invitation to not take ourselves too seriously.

I join them in the water, and we splash each other, swim and dive and climb back on the sailboat, then launch ourselves off it again.

We chase and push each other underwater, then towel ourselves off only to jump in again, and for a moment, all is forgotten, all the hidden agendas, all the secretive yearnings, are tamed and washed away by the sea.

For lunch, Marina makes pasta. On the tiny hob in the cabin, she sautés onions in olive oil, adds a bit of garlic and basil, stirs in peeled shrimp tails, then adds the thick ?al?a sauce made from tomatoes her mother grows in their village.

It’s a whole different dish than the one I make from canned plum tomatoes I buy at the store.

It’s sweet and sticky and savory, and you can’t get enough even when you’re full.

When we’re done eating, Vlaho takes the dishes to the platform to rinse them in seawater, and the three of us remain on the aft deck seats, Marina alone on the port-side one, Asier and I snuggled together on the starboard.

The sun has moved past the zenith, and I’m sleepy, pleasantly drained by the sun and the sea, buzzed by the after-lunch beer still sweating in my hand.

“Who’s up for snorkeling?” Marina says, tireless as always. “There’s a shipwreck just outside the cove.”

“I’m game,” Asier says.

“You go.” I push him off, and burrow deeper into the seat. “I’ll watch the boat.”

Marina brings out three pairs of fins, masks, and snorkels, and I close my eyes, doze off to the sounds of their voices as they’re getting ready to leave.

There’s a loud splash when they drop from the platform into the sea.

I hear them mumble and giggle through their snorkels, the splash of their arms as they’re swimming away.

A cold hand on my thigh, and his voice. “Hey.”

I open my eyes to Vlaho.

“I thought you went with them,” I say, scooting up so he can sit.