[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
Chapter Fifteen - We’re On a Boat


The next morning, I took Ethan out on a boat.

Ethan kept his eyes glued to the ocean as I talked to the guy at the counter at the marina about renting a boat. Just as promised, the splendor of the ocean was much better in the morning, with the sun reflecting off it like a million diamonds stretching into forever. He kept muttering “wow, wow” over and over.

I rented a Espirit 3775 cabin cruiser at the marina, a boat model I recognized because one of my friends in Key West owned one back in the late 90’s. It was an old boat, but good enough for a day trip out to the water and familiar enough that I would be comfortable driving it. It’d been awhile since I’d driven a Whaler, but once the key was in the ignition I knew I’d be fine. We donned our rented life vests before getting on board, standing on the dock next to our cooler of drinks and snacks. I showed Ethan how to put the vest on and tighten the straps so it wouldn’t fly off should he fall into the water.

“How easy is it to fall into the water, exactly?” he asked nervously tugging the straps as tight as he could.

“It’s like wearing a seatbelt in a car,” I said, “You don’t do it because you think you’ll get in an accident on the way to the store, you do it because you could.” Ethan nervously helped me carry the stuff we’d brought along for the excursion onto the boat.

Lauren had opted out of going on the boating trip, choosing instead to stay home and read. When I’d frowned in disappointment, she’d promised to make it up to me that night and I’d felt a little better, but I was still a little nervous because this was one of the first times it would be just Ethan and me. What if I said the wrong thing and upset him or hurt his feelings or something?

On the boat, we stowed the food down below in the little living quarters, which Ethan stared around at with wide eyes, “You’d never think there was a whole room under here,” he commented, “It’s like being in a hotel.”

“Kinda,” I agreed, “The beds are harder, though.”

He crawled onto one to test it out. “It’s not bad,” he said with a shrug.

We headed back up to the deck and I showed him how to check the gauges to make sure we had plenty of gasoline and oil and we opened the ventilation on the engine and started her up. Ethan watched the dials move on the control panel and breathed excitedly as the boat pulled away from the dock a moment later and I pulled it about to head out of the marina.

“What’s those things in the water for?” he asked, pointing at the buoys that bobbled in the wind.

“Those are buoys,” I said, “They’re like traffic lights or street paint, so you know which way to go and stuff ‘til you’re out of the marina. Three R’s… Red Right Return,” I said, “Meaning the red should be on your right on your way in from the sea, so they gotta be on the left on the way out. Basically they’re like the double solid yellow lines on the street.” I steered the boat away from the marina, Ethan moving between watching the panel and the land getting further behind us. When we were out of the marina, I turned on the navigation systems, flicking switches and turning knobs across the dash. “This stuff tells us where we’re going and how to get back,” I said, waving my hand at the navigation.

“It looks confusing,” he said.

“It’s not once you know what all that does,” I replied.

“How long have you been boating?” Ethan asked.

“All my life,” I answered, “Different size boats of course, but all my life. My family would take vacations on boats. I’ve owned boats. I could drive a boat before I could drive a car. Honestly, I probably do better boating than I do driving,” I laughed.

“Wow,” Ethan watched my hands on the wheel.

“You wanna try?” I asked.

He shook his head no.

“Aw c’mon, you’ll enjoy it. It’s easier than it looks.”

“I don’t have a driver’s license,” he said.

I laughed, “It’s not like a car. Get over here.” I moved so he could get to the wheel and he took a hold on it.

“Which way am I going?” he asked.

“Which way do you want to go?”

“I dunno. Where are we going?”

“Where do you want to go?”

Ethan shrugged.

“The beauty of boating is it doesn’t really matter where we go,” I said. I looked around. “Here, let’s come about and go down by that lighthouse down there,” I pointed. It was the same lighthouse we could see from the bedroom window. Ethan clutched the wheel and I reached over his shoulder to help him turn it slowly ‘round until we were facing the open ocean, the lighthouse like the end zone.

“It’s so big,” Ethan said.

“The boat?”

“The ocean,” he said. “I can’t get over it. It’s just so big.”

I smiled.

Not for the first or last time I wished Lauren had come along so she could see the excitement in Ethan’s eyes as we steered through the water, which was a little choppy from the wind but not bad as we were in a small cove protected by the breaker islands. I showed him how to hit the waves at a 45 degree angle instead of head-on. “It helps,” I said. “It keeps the wave breaking too hard on the ship’s nose.”

We switched seats at the lighthouse, where the water started getting rougher and needed the hand of an experienced driver. I guided the boat through some pretty rocky waves and into the next cove between the breakers, keeping the land to our right as we headed south along the coast.

Around lunch time, we stopped and let the boat rock us gently in it’s current, and I tossed a “lunch hook” out to keep us anchored while we took a break from the drive. We grabbed our food and settled on the steps going down to the galley, where we were protected from the wind, could feel the heat of the cabin rising up and still see the water and the gulls flying overhead in lazy circles while we ate the sandwiches we’d packed… and also the Doritos.

“So did you and your dad used to do this?” Ethan asked me as we ate.

I nodded, “Yeah, we did a lot of boating together. It’s basically the only thing we ever really shared.” I shrugged and chewed my sandwich thoughtfully, watching the white caps dance on the water.

“I’m glad we’re here,” Ethan said.

“Me, too,” I answered.

He paused. “What’s your dad like?”

I took a deep breath, “He’s…” I didn’t know an adjective. I shrugged, “He’s my dad.”

“Are you close?”

I shook my head.

“Why?”

I licked my lips. “I dunno. We’ve had a lot of… of disagreements, I guess, over the years. There’s a lot to it.”

Ethan thought about this for a few moments. “Me and my dad were close when I was little. I hope we get to be close again now that he’s better.” He pulled the crusts off his sandwich and put them back in the bag, which he was balancing on his knees. He was a kind of gangly kid, like you could tell he’d grown quite a bit height wise in a very short time and still had more growing to do. “He seemed a lot better.”

I swallowed back passing judgement.

“Does your dad drink?” Ethan asked, looking up at me.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry, that blows,” Ethan said.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Is that how come you aren’t close?”

“Part of it. It’s kinda complicated. My dad was always kind of distant… rough, I guess. He didn’t get along too good with my mother, but then again not many people do get along with her.”

Ethan asked, “Are you close to her?”

I shook my head.

He took a deep breath.

I looked over at him and he looked disappointed or sad or something. I knew I should say something profound right then, but I didn’t know what. So I simply said, “I used to be mad about it but it gets easier when you get older. Well, maybe not easier but you learn from it and move on.” I shrugged.

Ethan nodded. He stared down at his sandwich for a few minutes while I chewed, thinking about that. I wondered if maybe I’d said something profound after all. Maybe, I dunno. But he looked back up after a few minutes and he had this look on his face, like this desperate sort of expression. Then he looked back down. I wondered what he’d been about to say, if I’d ever know.

I stood up, “Are you thirsty?”

“Sure,” he answered.

I walked over to the cooler to get a couple drinks and while my back was turned to him, Ethan asked, “Did he ever hit you? When he was drunk?” His voice was hesitant.

I took my time pulling two cans of root beer out of the cooler, my insides feeling queasy. It was a raw question, the kind of question that you only ask if you have reason for it and the reason demanded the utmost trust in the person you were asking.

My answer demanded that, too.

I took a deep breath, staring at the cans, feeling their coldness against my palm, listening to the water rap against the outside of the boat and when I turned around and looked at Ethan I knew I trusted him with it.

“Yeah,” I answered. I shrugged, like it wasn’t the most hardest answer in the world to give. “Sometimes.”

Ethan stared up at me with wet looking eyes.

“I couldn’t ever trust him after that. Every time he’d reach for his belt you’d just -- you’d think what it was you’d done, if there was anything to piss him off that day, and usually he’d just be taking his belt off but sometimes he’d be after you.” I shrugged. “That’s why we weren’t close. Because I always felt like he was an undetonated bomb and he was going to explode at any moment. Couldn’t ever trust him.”

Ethan nodded.

“How about you?” I asked, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer since the very thought of it made my stomach twist into knots so severe I felt it might turn inside out. “Did your dad ever hit you?”

“Same as you,” he replied, trying to be as equally casual about the answer as I’d tried to be. “But he’s better now,” he doubled back quickly. “Like for real. The doctor said so.”

I nodded slowly. Not really in agreement or anything, just processing my thoughts on the words.

“It’s gonna be better,” Ethan said with a deep breath, “It’s gotta be.”

The thing is that once something as sacred as all that is broken, there’s really not any going back. I knew that better than anyone. There’s a certain line that once it’s crossed there’s no going back, once someone has abused you once they kind of do it without even realizing they are. Like because they got away with it once they’re quicker to repeat it and the horror of having done it the first time no longer is a hinderance to them doing it again. Like ripping off a bandaid. It only hurts at first.

I chewed my lip, picturing Ethan going home with Otis on the 20th and discovering that the hard way, like I had when I was a kid time and time again.

“You’ll tell us though, if it’s not better?”

He looked up, “Huh?”

“After you go back to livin’ with your dad. If it’s not better than it was… you’ll tell me and Lauren? So we can help you?”

Ethan shrugged, “Sure.”

“Promise? No matter how scared you are to tell us or what you think we’ll say or what you think your dad will say or do, you’ll tell us. Promise.”

“I promise,” Ethan answered with a nod.

“Here, put my phone number in your contacts now so in case you need it I know you have it.” So I sat there and watched while Ethan put my number into his phone, the only way I could think of at the moment to protect him.




It bothered me the rest of the day, picturing Ethan going home with Otis. I hadn’t liked the guy from the very moment I laid eyes upon him and now I couldn’t stand him even worse than that. I wondered what the hell Lauren and I could do to help him. One thing was for sure, when Otis came knocking on the 20th, if there was any reason for me to think that Ethan was going to end up abused the moment he got home, then there was no way in fuck that I would let him go.

Despite my brain working overtime with all this stuff it had to think about, we had a great time exploring the coast from the water, skimming along over the waves. We saw a group of wild horses grazing and running along the marshes near the shore and we slowed to watch them go. “Lauren’s gonna be sorry she missed this,” I commented.

Ethan asked, “She likes horses?”

“She likes all the animals. She’s huge on the environment and the earth and all that. But yes, she loves horses.”

Ethan smiled. “That’s cool”

“Yeah,” I said.

Later, when we got back to the house, I found Lauren in bed with a cloth over her eyes. I sat down on the edge of the bed, “Are you okay?” I whispered.

“I have a headache,” she answered.

“I’m sorry baby,” I lifted the cloth and kissed her forehead. She felt clammy. “Are you running a temp?”

“Yeah,” she replied. She grabbed the blankets and pulled them tighter around her. “I’m freezing.”

It was pretty hot in there.

I frowned and smoothed her hair, “I’m sorry. Did you take an Advil or something? Do you want anything?”

“I have water,” she answered, waving vaguely at the table by the bed. “I just want to sleep. I’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“Just order a pizza or something.”

Downstairs, Ethan had set up Jenga and we did order the pizza for dinner and we played games ‘til it was getting pretty late and finally we agreed it was time for bed, so we picked up the games and headed upstairs.

“Thanks for taking me on the boat, Nick,” he said. “And for, you know, the talk.”

“No problem, bud,” I said.

“Night.”

“Night.”

He went down the hall to the room he’d taken and I turned back to my own room. Lauren had gone to the restroom, I’d seen the light glowing under the door on the way down the hall to the room, so I just got into bed and settled myself down into the pillows, waiting for her to come back so I could make sure she was okay before I fell asleep. Plus, I wanted to talk to her about Ethan and what I’d learned, hoping that she and I could come up with a plan for what to do on the 20th to make sure that Otis didn’t hurt him again… But when she came back, she crawled into bed and right onto my lap, straddling me and kissing me.

“I thought you had a headache?” I asked.

“Sex cures headaches,” she said.

That was reason enough for me.