Page 81 of Fate Fiction

We stood before the aluminum boat. A test in communication and coordination. “Have you ever canoed before?”

He crossed his arms and gave me a look, “what do you think?” He tossed the paddle between his hands.

“You’ll sit in the front of the canoe, all you have to do is paddle, which I trust you can handle.”

“You definitely overestimate me,” he said as he twisted it around. I considered swapping it out for a sword, he would be far more comfortable wielding that object instead.

We dragged the canoe into the water, I straddled it and told him to climb in. It bowed to one side when he planted his foot on the bottom.

“Fucking hell!” He exclaimed.

“I’m not going to let it fall over,” I said, slapping the side with a metallic thunk. “I’m holding onto it.”

He gripped onto the side and gingerly settled onto the seat. I pushed the boat further into the water and it wiggled back and forth. Evan gripped onto the sides, a look of panic flashed across his face.

“I told you, I won’t let it fall over,” I said with a chuckle. I climbed inside and tried to disturb it as little as possible. I dragged a few strong paddles through the water and pulled us further from shore.

I angled the paddle in the water and turned us around.

Evan sat in front of me and held his own paddle out in front of him awkwardly. “Now what?”

“You paddle, and I’ll steer us.” I pulled a long stroke and nudged the boat forward.

He turned and gave me a concerned look over his shoulder.

I gestured to my own paddle and started a demonstration. “So, you dip the paddle into the water and⁠—”

“I know how to paddle!” He smoothly dragged his paddle through the water. His biceps bulged beneath his t-shirt and I lost my focus.

Steering, right. That’s what I was supposed to be doing. I needed to look at the direction we were heading towards instead of the way his back muscles strained and flexed with each stroke.

After wobbling and going in a circle for a bit, we found our stride. We’d bickered like two old people who’d known one another our entire lives. Shouts of “left, no your left” echoed across the water in the first three minutes of our excursion.

Soon we were gliding across the lake, and I steered us towards the right side of camp, behind thick brush.

“It’s around this bend here,” I told Evan. “It’s tight but we’ll get in there.”

“That’s what she said,” he chuckled in reply. I splashed him with my paddle.

From shore it didn’t look like the lake angled as far back as it did. The water narrowed into a twenty foot wide passage then opened back up into what appeared to almost be a private pond, at the far end of which was a small beach.

My beach.

The place I had escaped to any time I needed to be alone and running wasn’t enough. The beach I brought Nick to early in our relationship to guarantee privacy. Now I’d be sharing this precious piece of myself with Evan. In his efforts to wring any bit of authenticity from me he hadn’t quite uncovered how important this spot was.

I guided the boat to the end of the beach and had Evan hop out to pull our canoe up onto the sand further.

The boat listed to the left as he climbed and he stumbled into the water, catching himself before dunking beneath the surface.

He stood, drenched, and glared down at the boat. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted the damn thing,” he muttered.

“Are you going to pull us in?” I teased.

With a quick tug the bottom of the canoe scraped on the sand until we were mostly ashore. I jumped out and dragged it higher onto the beach.

Grains of sand stuck to my thighs as I brushed them off, “well, here we are.”

Evan slowly spun, having taken off his wet shirt and draping it across the bow of the canoe to dry.