Page 37 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Get in, winner,” the voice calls from behind me the next morning at the Port of Long Beach. “We’re going to Catalina!”

“Olivia?!” I say, stunned to find my friend and her new husband waving from the bow of a silver yacht whose hull is painted with the words The Midlife Crisis in turquoise letters. The small yacht is docked one slip over from the public ferry I was about to board.

“Ahoy!” Olivia waves brightly from across the dock. She and Jake are both dressed in white pants, white polos, matching white captain’s hats, and giant rhinestone-bedazzled sunglasses. No one’s ever accused them of avoiding a couple’s costume.

“What are you doing here?” I call, disentangling myself from the hiking sticks, sleeping mats, and carabinered cutlery jutting out from the giant backpacks my fellow ferry passengers are carrying. At last I break free from the crowd and jog toward my friends and their yacht.

When I texted Olivia and Masha a screenshot of my ferry ticket to Catalina for this morning, all I’d needed was your basic double exclamation mark reaction. Instead:

Masha: Hmm, impulsive…

Olivia: You haven’t even told us how the shoot went!

Olivia: Are you out celebrating?

Olivia: With Jude?

Olivia: Wait—are you seeing Sam this weekend?

Masha: What brought this on, babe? You okay?

I hadn’t thought I was seeking my ride-or-dies’ approval to go see Sam.

More that I was location-sharing in advance should anything weird happen to me this weekend.

But my friends’ underwhelming response had me setting my phone to Do Not Disturb for the rest of the night.

It made me realize that when I’d first come back from Two Harbors, my friends asked about Sam all the time.

But neither Mash nor Liv has so much as referenced him, even as the butt of a sex joke, since…

Since the night of Olivia’s wedding. Since the night they both met Jude. Ever since then, they’ve been asking me about work. And Jude.

I didn’t want to talk about Jude last night, not after he left me alone with a bowl of quinoa pancake batter.

I didn’t want to burden honeymoon-bound Olivia and pregnant-exhausted Masha with my dumbass bullshit.

And I certainly hadn’t wanted one of my friends to make me connect the emotional dots between my dumpster-fire evening with Jude and my impulse to see Sam.

But Olivia must have intuited there was something wrong, and—true to her friend brand—she sprang into action. Decadent, yacht-shaped action.

“I thought you two were going to Big Sur this weekend,” I call to them across the dock.

The last I heard, Liv and Jake were off on a three-day mini-moon at the Post Ranch Inn this weekend, meant to tide them over until Jake could take a couple weeks off from The Jake Night Show at Christmas for a proper honeymoon in Kyoto.

“Change of plans,” Jake calls, holding their terrier, Gram Parsons, who is wearing a blue doggie life jacket.

“There was a mudslide on the PCH!” Olivia says. “Our hotel is closed until they can clear the road!”

“Oh no!” I say.

“We’re not mad about it,” Jake says, in his famously casual way. “We’ve always wanted to check out Two Harbors. So when Liv mentioned you were headed here this weekend, I figured out how to redirect our mini-moon. Because I am a genius.”

“Yeah, he’s a regular Ada Lovelace,” Olivia says, wrapping an arm around Jake. “It was utterly my idea.”

“Collectively, we thought maybe you could use a ride,” Jake tells me with a smile.

“Aka moral support,” Olivia says. “Aka lube. I’ve got warming varieties, cooling varieties, and I think strawberry, which I cannot actually in good faith recommend.”

“Seriously?” I say, glancing back at the crowded terminal. “I mean, I know you never joke about lube.”

“Because it’s a godsend.”

“But you really got this whole yacht to take me out to Two Harbors?”

Olivia winks.

No shade at the Catalina Express, but this news is an actual godsend.

I’ve never needed a pep talk so much. I’m not even sure what I’m going to do when I get to the island.

Because what I can’t stop thinking about isn’t running into Sam’s arms. It’s kissing Jude in my kitchen last night.

And what he said when he walked out my door.

That what happened between us felt way bigger than a kiss.

Am I going to Catalina because I want to see the man I had mind-bending sex with a month ago? Or am I following Jude’s decidedly less fun advice to “figure out what’s going on” with Sam?

“You remember Captain Dan from our wedding,” Jake says as a white-bearded man steps out from the yacht’s bridge. “You can thank him for the lift, actually. We’re lucky he was able to secure The Midlife Crisis on short notice.”

“What I want to know is when we’re going to christen the ship,” says the captain. “I know it’s a short jaunt, but you don’t fuck with the sea.”

I’m used to seeing Dan in kirtan yoga attire, standing at an altar, but this salty incarnation suits him, too. He offers me a hand from the hull and pairs it with an enigmatic look. “ You’re on a journey.”

“How many hats do you wear?” I say, accepting his firm grip, which practically catapults me onto the yacht.

“Anything ceremonial.” He lowers his bejeweled sunglasses and offers me a wink. “Somebody get her some sunglasses. And meet me on the bow in five minutes!” Then he bows before disappearing back into the cockpit.

“We also brought along these two party animals,” Olivia says, sliding bejeweled shades onto my face and nodding toward Masha and Eli, who stagger up from the companionway. They’re holding hands, and their bedazzled sunglasses are tucked into the necklines of their white oxford shirts.

“It’s acupressure, babe,” Masha is explaining to Eli.

“You have to put the band three fingers’ width up your wrist, then press on the white button when you think you’re going to puke—Fenny!

” She looks up at me and grins, tugging Eli over so they can both give me a hug.

“I’m so glad we didn’t miss you! I was worried you might have taken the earlier ferry.

Do you need anti-nausea bracelets? Motion-sickness patches? Ginger gummies?”

I shake my head. “Thanks, Mash. Liv already gave me her strawberry lube, so my trip’s guaranteed to be smooth.”

Masha closes her eyes, cradling a hand to her belly. “I think the baby inherited his daddy’s constitution.”

Eli steps close, kisses Masha’s forehead, and gives the bands on her wrists a gentle squeeze.

Looking at my four friends, I feel tears prick my eyes. I thought I was looking at a lonely, soul-searching voyage at sea. This is quite the opposite. This is the kind of loving solidarity I could really use today.

“How did you know?” I ask, dabbing my eyes dry.

“That you’d need us?” Liv fills my hand with hers and squeezes. “I mean, we’re all a little witchy here, right? Also, there’s another world where I’m pretty sure you saved my life when I needed you most, so consider this my interdimensional thank-you.”

Some friends might dismiss this as a joke or straight-up weird. But I know better. I know that in life’s most essential moments, there’s always more connecting us to the people we love than we can consciously grasp. So I hug my friend, and when she hugs me back, I know she feels this, too.

From the cockpit come two blasts of a horn, followed by Captain Dan’s voice crackling through the speakers on the deck.

“All right, sailors! Meet me on the deck!”

When we’re all assembled, Captain Dan takes a bottle of champagne from Olivia. “Has anyone ever read Gulliver’s Travels ?” he asks, meeting my eyes. “Where a storm sends a boat and its passenger into another realm?”

“Dan,” Jake says, “stay on topic.”

“Sure,” Dan says and holds the champagne aloft. He closes his eyes. “I hereby christen thee The Midlife Crisis . May you know love, laughter, and sex hereafter.” He leans over the bow and smashes the shit out of the champagne bottle.

We all cheer, Jake goes to fetch another bottle, and moments later, we’re pulling away from the marina, headed for the island of Santa Catalina—named for Saint Catherine of Alexandria, patron saint of philosophers and unmarried women and the protectress of sudden death.

I hold on to the railing, tuck my hair behind my ears in the wind, and watch the ferry recede in the distance.

At no point today have I been sure I was making the right decision to come out here.

Not when my alarm went off. Not when I packed my duffel bag with clothes I’d actually want to be seen in…

and possibly out of. Not when I locked my bungalow, or drove to the south bay, or paid for parking for two nights in advance.

I still don’t know if I should be doing this.

If Sam will even want to see me, or if seeing Sam is something I should want myself.

But I know that Jude stopped kissing me last night—at least in part—because I have unfinished business on this island.

And knowing my friends will be nearby gives me an extra and much-needed boost of strength to finish it, come what may.

Olivia links one arm through mine as Masha stands at my other side.

“Tell me you all didn’t come because you expect my showing up at Sam’s cabin to go horribly, horribly wrong?” I say to them.

“That is definitely not why we came,” Masha says, patting my hand.

“You’re never going to know until you try,” Olivia says. “The way I see it, if the reunion with Sam is as amazing as the first time, then we’re going to want to meet him. And…if it leaves something to be desired, there’s always room for you on The Midlife Crisis . We can play late-night poker!”

“I do need to make it known that I will be in bed by ten p.m. both nights,” Masha says, “but early-evening poker is very much on the table.”