“That’s a little hypocritical, don’t you think?”
Apparently, Hazard did not think so, which he communicated at length while he opened his backpack, took out a beach tent, and set it up. He was communicating this thought so clearly and with such colorful language that a young father shepherded two little kids away from them.
“What else do you have in there?” Somers asked. “Is that like Hermione’s magical bag? Is there a whole cabin in there?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hazard said. “Water, Tylenol, aloe. Take off the shirt so I can look at you.”
“I think it’s a crime you haven’t read those books,” Somers said, sitting between Hazard’s legs, grateful for the shade and for the cool wave that spread across him as Hazard applied aloe and lidocaine. “You’d really like them.”
“They’re novels, John.”
Somers just smiled and let his head fall back against his husband’s shoulder.
“Thank you for taking care of me when I stupidly think I’m going to be fine,” Somers said.
“Thank you for letting me ramble on about mollusks for twenty-five minutes,” Hazard whispered. Then he pinched Somers.
“Ow, Jesus, Ree!”
“And don’t ever pretend you think something is an oak tree just to get me talking.”
IV
OCTOBER 29
TUESDAY
12:51 PM
THE PALM-THATCHED HUT was pleasantly cool—at least, cool enough, between the shade and the cold drinks. Hazard was enjoying a Corona. He was enjoying having a husband, and watching the waves with his husband, and being on vacation with his husband. He wondered if Somers knew about Dune and Frank Herbert and the study of sand.
“Come on,” Hazard said, setting down the bottle and some cash. “I’ve got an idea.”
“No, I think you were right the first time,” Somer said. “We should just lie low today: hotel, watch the ocean, drink, relax.”
“Yes, but I’ve got an idea about that.”
“I overdid it yesterday; I should have listened to you and taken it easy.”
“John, I’ve got an idea,” Hazard said, grabbing his husband’s hand and tugging him back to the hotel. Somers got a few last desperate sips of his drink—he’d ordered another painkiller—before Hazard dragged him from the bar.
Half an hour later, Hazard was on the deck of a small boat, listening to a young black woman named Ana explain how it operated.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Somers called from the pier.
Hazard shot him a look.
“You’ll be fine,” Ana said; she had a little music in her speech. “As long as you follow the safety precautions I’m telling you, you’ll be perfectly safe. And you’ll have a radio. And you’re not going out of sight of the island.”
“He’s never driven a boat, though.” Somers made a face. “Sailed a boat? Captained a boat?”
“Captained sounds right,” Hazard said.
“He’s never sailed a boat,” Somers sad.
“Do you see any sails?” Hazard said.
Ana had watched all of this in silence.
“We’ll be fine,” Hazard prompted her.
“Yes,” she said slowly, watching him and then Somers. “You’ll be fine.”
When she’d finished her explanation and left, Hazard loaded the cooler onto the boat, and then he adjusted the sunshade. He stood with his hands on his hips. Somers was still on the pier.
“Please?” Hazard said quietly. “We won’t go far, and I made sure you’ll have plenty of shade so you’ll be comfortable. I got the hotel restaurant to pack food and drinks for us. We’ll just go around the island and enjoy how beautiful it is. We’ll see parts of it we wouldn’t see just sitting in the bar.”
After a moment, Somers held out a hand and let Hazard help him onto the boat.
“You are impossible to say no to when you’re being sweet,” he said. Something must have crossed Hazard’s face because Somers laughed and said, “And do not try to take advantage of it.”
At first, Hazard went slowly; the controls were simple enough, and Ana had advised him on the general traffic patterns out of the dock and around the island. He went slowly, though, because he was still testing the responsiveness of the craft, judging how it moved. Somers was right, of course, that Hazard had zero experience with boats. Hazard knew Somers loved the water, though, and he knew Somers would be disappointed—and angry at himself—if they lost a day of their honeymoon because he had refused to wear sunscreen. Which Hazard had tried to get him to do. Which Hazard was very carefully not reminding his new husband of. In any case, renting a boat seemed like the perfect solution.
When they were clear of the marina, Hazard slowly began to open up the boat, going faster, enjoying how they zipped across the water. Somers watched him from under the shade, drinking a Corona and grinning every time he looked over at Hazard. Out from land, Hazard could see the variegated blues of the ocean: deep, dark patches that bordered on black, and then the shallower sections that were crystalline, aquamarine. They saw schools of fish. They saw people on the white sand beaches. They made wide loops around Tortola’s sister islands: Guana, Great Camanoe, Beef Island.
They found a quiet cove, and Somers suggested they stop. Hazard killed the engine, and they bobbed on the water in a patch of shade cast by a high rock wall. Somers broke out food and drinks, and Hazard ate some sort of variation on a Cuban sandwich and drank one Corona before switching back to water. When he’d finished eating, he cannonballed off the boat; the last thing he heard before he crashed into the water was Somers laughing. He had barely broken the surface when he heard a splash, and Somers came up next to him, sputtering.
“Just for a minute,” Somers said before Hazard could put him back on the boat.
It wasn’t really swimming; they mostly floated in the cool water, enjoying the sound of the palm leaves rustling in the breeze, the ripple of water against their bodies, the sun hatching the surface of the cove in a million broken lines. A rooster came out of the
