Page 13 of Without a Clue

Neena’s text is simple.

SOS.

Her name is also the one on the banner as it rings.

“How long have you been on board?” Nash whispers.

“Thirty minutes.”

“Is that a new record?”

“Hardly,” I say, then pick up the call. “Hi, Neena. Where are you?”

And as I commence working her through the twists and turns that would get her to the top deck, Nash makes small talk with the women who have been perched on the pool chairs, listening in.

Then he does something that stops me mid-sentence.

He takes off his hat.

Hooks it on his knee as one drops a hat on a hook by the door, one boot resting on the bottom rung of my stool.

And for a blink of an eye, he is rolling his shoulders and shaking out the glinting blond-brown locks of his shaggy (in a very nice way) hair, and I see as he rubs the back of his suntanned neck a look in his composure of one who is bone-weary. Of one who has just returned from a distant war to the squishy armchair of his living room, the one he’d dreamed of through all those cold and scary nights far abroad.

He’s listening to one of the women drone on, nodding. Contented.

That’s what he looks like.

Bone-weary but contented.

Like this is just where he wants to be.

Too.

A warmth blossoms in my chest and I quell it.

I listen as Neena somehow gets herself onto the wrong elevator and ends up in some underwater dining room. All the while, I’m remarkably aware of Nash’s knee so casually touching mine.

How long have we been friends now?

Coming up on four years? And yet it feels like a lifetime.

Nash catches me looking at his knee and we lock eyes momentarily.

He clears his throat and pulls his knee back to his chair side.

I swallow my pride, forcing myself not to take it personally.

Silly, really. We are professionals.

“Oh, I see some coattails,” Neena says. “I’m going to grab on and not let go until he takes me up. Yoo-hoo!”

The line goes dead.

Moments after I break off, Nash picks up his beer and, after some polite niceties, the crowd of women drifts away, leaving us alone again.

He swivels my way.

“So,” I say, “where was it to this time?”