“I can’t imagineyoumarried, let alone tome.”
“Nice.” He sounds genuinely affronted.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant…” I dig deep for what might’ve been behind my reflexive response. “Okay. So if you saw Harry Styles renting a canoe with his…tax attorney, your first thought wouldn’t beLook at that happy couple, right? It would be more like,What series of weather catastrophes placed these two strangers in aPlanes, Trains and Automobilesscenario?”
“You think you’re my John Candy?” He’s somehow managing to increase his frenetic pace.
Out of breath, I guffaw, paddling furiously. “No, in this example, I’m definitely Steve Martin in both demeanor and appearance. Can you stop rowing like that? I can barely keep up.”
He slows his strokes but not their intensity. What is his van workout regimen?
“It’s not about attractiveness,” I explain. “I know I’m attractive, but you and I are in different categories of people. You’re a musician—”
He snort-laughs. “Not a successful one.”
“People are drawn to you, Powell. You’re the most fascinating man in the room and I’m the woman who takes her glasses off in a nineties movie.”
His paddle drags. “You don’t wear glasses.”
“It’s an archetype!”
“You’re not…” The back of his hair sweeps across his neck with his head shake. “You have zero self-knowledge. It honestly astounds me.”
I puff out my chest. “You findmeastounding?”
“I find you annoying. Your whole ‘thing.’ ” He laughs. “What did you call my thing? A floppy-haired Benjamin Button? Well, I’m over your whole ‘I’m so ordinary’ thing. It’s tired. You’re beautiful and funny as hell, and you’re the only person I’d ever want to spend the night with during a series of travel catastrophes.”
I nearly drop my oar. We’ve discussed each other’s appearance before, but always in a jokey, distant way that’s so cloaked in other insults, it becomes impossible to unearth the original compliment at the center. And after last night, every word between us is new territory.
“It was areverseBenjamin Button. Your thing. And now that I’m hearing it again, you’re right, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.” The sentence oozes out of my mouth like avoidant sludge. I pride myself on being someone who can stand confidently in a compliment. In a world where women are conditioned to make themselves small, agreeing that you’re worthy of another’s recognition is a muscle I’ve had to strengthen.
But after years of my only showing glimpses of myself, Ethan is one of the few people who sees all of me. The good and the bad. His words can penetrate, and I’m defenseless against it.
I suppress the impulse to further deflect, and let the rest of his nice words soak into my cheeks like sunshine. It helps that he’s still looking ahead for the campsite marked on Ted’s map.
We row for what seems like the length of a Scorsese movie. Every so often, I’m derailed by hovering swarms of gnats that always seem to be at face level and require immediate swatting, which sends the canoe sideways. When we eventuallymake it to the other side of the lake, we shove the paddles into the canoe and fling the thing over our heads, completely in sync.
Without warning, Ethan lifts the boat out of my hands and leans it against a tree.
I make a surprised throat noise and he turns to face me. His face brightens at something—the wind in the trees, or maybe the smell of petrichor in the air? The sky behind him perfectly matches his eyes. It’s a gray blue stippled with swirling clouds that are turning over weather I can’t predict. “Speaking of travel catastrophes, quick detour?”
He points past me. His face is all smiley wrinkles, dimples, and pure childlike glee.
“I only have you to myself for another quarter mile,” he declares. “How about we make the most of it?”
My stomach flips.
“What did you have in mind?” My voice is embarrassingly breathy.What is happening right now?
He drops his hand to sprint in the direction of a clump of teenagers gathering at the edge of a gray stone cliff.
Absolutely not.
I sprint after him. “You’re out of your mind if you think—”
“You need to get out of your head, Beekman,” he calls back, refusing to break his stride.
“I willcrackmy head. That’s what happens to people who plummet into rocky lakes.”
