Page 93 of If I Go Down with This Ship

Did Louise come here when I was gone?Did she worryfor me, wonder where I went?Did she feel a fraction of what I feel now?

I pull the jacket close around me and breathe it in.His sugary tobacco scent still there, as strong as ever, almost as if he’s just slipped it from his shoulders and onto mine.My blood stains the lining, but I don’t care.

I don’t care.

My legs shudder beneath me as I curl onto my couch, my phone in my hand, the coat pulled tight around my shoulders.Sir hops up, walking in a circle before plopping down beside me and sniffing the coat, as if he too recognizes the smell.Everything seems to settle around me, silence stretching.I used to be afraid of the ocean, of all the things lurking in the dark water, but now I miss it.I miss the creaks of the ship, the soft lapping of water against the hull, the cries of seagulls as they swooped overhead.

I miss it all.I don’t belong here anymore.And though I believed I didn’t belong there, either, I know now that I fit at Silas’s side better than anywhere else in the world.

A strange sound rips out of me, and before I know it, I’m crying.I rock back and forth, clutching the phone to my chest, and I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much in my life, because there is one place I want to be in the world, and it’s in the arms of the man I love who’s long gone in the depths of the ocean off the harbor of Nassau.

It’s impossible, this.How am I supposed to move on?How am I supposed to breathe?I run a hand down my face, and then I thumb through the videos and pictures before pulling up the one of us on the beach.

Sir perks up, intrigued by the moving figures on the screen, and I angle it down so he can see it better.

“See, bud?Do you recognize him?”I whisper.

Silas lies in the sand, shirt off, pants unlaced above his hips.Sand spills over him, packed around his thighs and arms, impressions of my fingers in the sand.The sun is shining down on him as he squints up at the camera—at me.The water laps against his feet, inching farther and farther up his legs and taking the sand with it.

“What are you doing?”he asks.

Something in me breaks at the sound of his voice.

I laugh on the other end of the camera.“Noooo, don’t move!”I straddle him by the hips, and the camera zooms out.I stick the phone in the sand, and it frames him and me at an angle, my hands sliding into his hair, his hands cupping my face.

And we look so in love.

On-screen, I bend forward until our foreheads are pressed together and our noses are brushing, and then we’re kissing and laughing, and a lightness fills my chest as I rewatch the video once, twice, a third time, wishing I could be there.

Wishing things hadn’t panned out the way they did.

I plug my phone in before the battery dies, and I play the video on loop, the sounds of our laughter filling my flat.I play it until I stop crying, and when I stop crying, I search my flat, sit down on the couch, flip open my laptop, and stare at the screen.

Whenever it feels like my world is falling apart, there’s always been one thing that holds me together—my writing.And I’m on deadline, after all.The book seems so small now, just a minuscule thing in light of all that’s happened, but I need to get it out of me, need to purge myself of this story.

“What do you think?”I ask, glancing down at Sir.He blinks slowly, green eyes locked on me.

Flipping through the journal, scanning the warped pages, I realize that I never needed it to begin with.It’s all seared into my memories.I couldn’t forget those six weeks even if I wanted to.I set the journal aside and stare at the screen.

My hands shake as I open a new document.The cursor blinks in time with my pulse, and I contemplate exiting before I’ve even begun.

But I type one word.

And another.

And soon they fall from my fingertips like dominoes, and I can’t stop.I have to blink away the tears and let the sound of our laughter lift me to the next chapter and the next, until a story so unbelievable but true fills the pages.

Our story.I have written our story.I don’t know how else to heal, and I don’t know what else to do, but this is the only way I can imagine moving forward, and it’s putting fingers to keys, and allowing Silas to live on for an eternity.

Just as he was always meant to.

Silas will always be my friend, my lover, but above all, my captain.He guided me when I was lost, and now that he’s gone, I have no course to find my way back to myself.Except for this, for our story, the one I can’t bring myself to say aloud.

And I sit here in the dark in my sad little flat until our story is written, until I have no more words left in me and the manuscript is bursting.And when the pages are filled and it ends, I send them off to my editor, close my laptop, and weep, holding Sir close.

Nothing else can be done.

31A Plunderful Life