Rain whipped at my face, lashing my hair to stinging cheeks. Why had I ever said yes?
I clung to the hull of a once whole sailboat wishing I had just said no a mere three hours before. A simple two letter word and I wouldn’t be here.
The waves swelled, lifting me to each crest and hurling me over. A gut curdling plunge into the next trench followed by another rise, the endless repetition was out of sync enough to not be ignored. Not that I possessed the discipline of mind to disregard the salty crust on my skin, my numbing limbs, or the inevitable conclusion.
“A perfect day for sailing,” Kevin had said, turning eyes the color of moss toward the cloudless sky.
“Come on, Callie.” Jessie bounced from the dock to the sailboat and flashed me a blinding smile, plastic and fake. “We will only be gone for a few hours.” She caressed Kevin’s bicep possessively. “You aren’t scared, are you?”
The truth was yes. I dreaded the ocean. I managed bathtubs, Jacuzzis, and pools. The water had a bottom, a limit, and stayed still, relatively. The ocean was a different creature all together. Writhing, teeming, and rushing even when in the best of moods, she could be downright unreasonable and cruel at the slightest whim.
And those limitless depths. I shivered.
What had possessed me to say yes?
Shame.
I would have felt humiliation if I had admitted the truth then.
“Yes, I am scared out of my wits. I don’t want to climb aboard a shell of wood and fiberglass and venture out on the top of a bottomless, hungry maw. I don’t mind the fastest rollercoaster the highest flying airplane. But, suspended me above the murky deep in a boat and I turn into a mass of quaking blubber.”
The words seemed so easier than this. Admitting my terror now appeared wiser than dying of the thing I dreaded.
Something slipped past my foot. I shrieked and swallowed a gallon. I couldn’t help it. Involuntary reaction.
“Ahoy there!”
I kicked my feet, turning a bit away from my buoy to glance over my shoulder. A sleek yacht approached cutting the waves.
“Do you need help?”
What do you think? I thought.
“Yes, I need help.” I gained a mouthful of saltwater for my trouble, but my sputtering and thrashing got the point across.
“Coming alongside.”
A few moments later I was sitting on a heaving deck, clutching a rough fish saturated blanket. It took me three tries to tell them to search for the others. They kept pushing a water bottle at me, like I didn’t have enough of the ocean in me already.
As soon as they found Kevin and Jessi, bobbing about in their blaring orange lifejackets, I went to the other end of the yacht.
I didn’t want to see them again. I intended to never willingly set foot on a boat again. Not worth the anguish.
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