CH.3 - Worth Staring At
1245 Words
Anna's POV
He reaches down to help me up.
And I immediately bat his hand away.
"You think a fisherman's daughter needs rescuing?" The water's freezing and I'm shaking and I still mean every word. I'd rather sink than get hauled out of my own sea by some stranger who thinks I'm helpless.
He pulls his hand back. Doesn't argue. Just watches.
I plant both palms flat on the edge of the deck and haul myself up in one clean motion, the way I've done a thousand times since I was small, and flop onto the boards dripping and furious. The night air's worse than the water. I'm already pulling my soaked shirt over my head to wring it out before I even think about it, because that's just what you do when you go in with clothes on, and I've never once had a reason to be shy about it on my own boat.
Then I remember I'm not alone.
I look up at him. Really look.
He's young. Around my age, maybe a year up. Dark hair, wet at the edges from the spray, and a face that would be annoyingly good-looking if I weren't currently soaked because of him.
His eyes drop, just once, just for a second, before they come back up to my face.
I catch it. Of course I catch it. I catch everything. But there's no smirk behind it, none of that pleased-with-himself look the boys at school get, and whatever it was passes so fast he almost looks annoyed at himself for it. So I let it go. Pick your fights, my dad always says, and this isn't one worth having while I'm dripping and freezing on a dark dock.
Mostly he just looks at my face, like it's a question he didn't expect to be asked.
"Who are you?" I demand, wringing the shirt out hard. "Was that you howling just now? Do you have any idea how terrifying that is out here in the dark?"
"I was sleeping," he says. "You woke me up."
"On my family's boat?"
"Didn't see your name on it."
I stare at him. He stares back, completely unbothered, and that's somehow more irritating than if he'd apologized.
"Stop staring," I snap.
He smiles. It's slow and a little crooked and it does something unfair to his whole face. "You're worth staring at."
Oh, I know his type now. Boys who say things like that have a script, and I'm not about to be a line in it. I yank the wet shirt back on, cold and clinging, and stand up so I've at least got my feet under me.
"Who said you could sleep on my family's boat in the first place?"
"Nobody," he admits. "Felt like it. The water's good for thinking."
"It's my water."
"Then you should be nicer to people who appreciate it."
The worst part is he says it easy, like we're not two strangers on a dark dock with me dripping seawater and him fresh off scaring me into the harbor. Like this is a normal conversation. Like he has all the time in the world and has decided to spend some of it annoying me specifically.
"You're the one who howled," I point out. "If anyone owes anyone an apology out here, it's you."
"I didn't howl."
"I heard it. The whole harbor heard it. It came from right here."
Something crosses his face for half a second, there and gone, like I've touched the edge of something he wasn't planning to talk about. Then it smooths over and the easy look comes back.
"Must've been a dog," he says.
"That was no dog."
"Big dog."
I narrow my eyes at him. He looks back, perfectly calm, and I get the strangest feeling that he's lying and letting me know he's lying at the same time, daring me to make something of it. I've met boys who lie. They get nervous, or smug. This is neither. This is a boy who's used to people not believing him and has stopped minding.
I open my mouth and find I don't have anything for that, which never happens to me, and I hate that it's happening now in front of him. So I do the dignified thing. I grab the rail, climb off my own boat, and leave him sitting there in the dark like the weird trespasser he is.
"Goodnight," he calls after me, not even a little sorry.
I don't answer. But I feel him watching the whole way up the dock, and I walk straighter because of it, and I hate that too.
Halfway up the dock I almost look back. I don't. But I want to, and I spend the rest of the walk being annoyed about wanting to, because boys like that are exactly the kind my whole life has taught me to steer around. Loud trouble in a quiet package. A pretty face that knows it's pretty.
Still. He looked at my face more than he looked at anything else. That's not nothing. I file it away somewhere I'll pretend I didn't.
By the time I get home I'm half dry and fully done with this night. The light's on in the kitchen. I barely get the door open before they're all on me.
My mother's up first, hands flying. "Anna, why are you soaking wet?"
"I fell in. I'm fine."
"You fell in?" My father, half out of his chair. "Off the boat? In the dark?"
"I'm a swimmer, Dad. I've been falling in since before I could talk."
"Did you have fun at the party?" My mother again, already reaching for a towel, already fussing. "Did he like the gift? Leo?"
And there it is. The question I biked home cursing so I wouldn't have to answer.
I think about the box in the trash. The wrapping I folded twice. The girls fanning the air. Four months of fish money sitting on a pile of paper cups.
I put on the biggest smile I've got. "It was great. He loved it."
The lie comes out smooth. I'm good at this, keeping the hurt off my face, swallowing the thing that wants to show. I've had practice. You don't get raised the fish girl without learning how to look fine when you're not.
"I'm already over him, anyway," I add, like it's nothing. Like it's old news. "Totally over it."
My parents buy it. They always do, bless them, too kind to look for the crack in it.
But Caleb does.
He's been leaning in the doorway between our houses this whole time, the way he's done my entire life, the boy from next door who grew up half in my kitchen. Older than me, quiet, the one who taught me to bait a hook and ride a bike and throw a punch when the school decided I was a target. He hasn't said a word.
He doesn't need many.
He looks at me, just looks, with those eyes that have known my face since before I knew it myself, and I feel the smile wobble at the corner because he sees it. He always sees it.
"It's fine," I tell him, quieter, just for him. "Really."
Caleb pushes off the doorframe. He doesn't make a thing of it. He just says it, low and even, like a fact about the weather.
"Our girl can like whoever she wants."
- Writer
