“Yeah. I thought I’d go hang out on my dad’s boat for a bit. Listen to some more outside of the lines music.”
We walked to Woody’s. He peeled off to join Colt who was sitting at the open air bar two stools down from Harry and tipping a beer bottle to his lips. I caught Harry’s eye and waved. He waved back with a slight shake of his head. No mail.
I kayaked out to the boat on the silent, dark water. The moon was bright, cutting a white swath across the surface.
I climbed below deck and after turning the battery-powered turntable on, climbed into the front berth. Some nights I just wanted to sleep out here, but Mom would freak. She said the boat was so old it could sink one day and refused to worry that I might be asleep on it if that happened.
Clearly I did actually doze because I was startled awake by the sound of my phone buzzing.
Jay Bird: You okay out there?
I GLANCED AT the time. Shit. I fell asleep on the boat. Mom would kill me. It was after midnight. Weird that my mom hadn’t texted.
Jay Bird: I’m stealing a kayak.
Jazzy Bear: Why? Is this the Joseph version of going for a drunken joyride? How reckless.
Maybe sarcasm didn’t come over via text.
Jay Bird: Thank God. You’re alive.
I snorted a laugh and suddenly realized he meant stealing a kayak to come over from Woody’s to the boat. I sat upright and fished some cinnamon gum out of my bag. I waited. Then fidgeted. I should leave. Intercept him. I climbed up on deck just as Joey tied his “borrowed” kayak up next to mine and then lurched aboard.
“Jeez,” I said and grabbed his arm, laughing. “Careful. I’d say you are a little drunk.”
“Nah. Not even close. Only had three beers. Sobering up already.”
“Okay, let me just close up down there and get my stuff. I’ll kayak back with you.”
“M’kay,” he said and swayed.
I raised my eyebrows, and he put up a hand. “Just the waves,” he said. “Just the waves.”
“Right.”
I turned and went back down the stairs and poked my head in the front berth to straighten up. Joey followed me down. “Whoa,” I said. “And there’s definitely not room for both of us down here.”
“Sure there is,” he said and sat on the vinyl bench. He reached behind me and grabbed a stack of postcards.
“Give me those,” I said.
He pulled away, squinting at them. “These from your dad?”
I nodded.
“He’s been a lot of places,” he said flipping through them. He was looking at the fronts, not the words on the back.
“Yeah. He’s a photographer. He travels. So …”
“I guess he thinks about you a whole lot if he sends these to you all the time,” Joey said.
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s guilt.”
“You can’t feel guilty if you don’t care.”
I shrugged. “Anyway, I haven’t heard from him in over six months.”
Joey frowned. “How often did he send you postcards before?”
“Once a month at least. According to the date stamps. They always arrive erratically though.”
He kept flipping through. “Lebanon, Durban, London, Gibraltar, Palma, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, St. Petersburg, Jakarta, Nairobi, Cairo.” He reeled off city after city after city.
I blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
“Doha, Qatar, Kuwait City …” his pace slowed. “Kabul, Baghdad.”
He looked up at me.
“Yeah,” I answered his unspoken question.
“He started taking pictures from war zones?”
“He always did. In all those places, he was following or documenting some atrocity or some human rights violation. Or someone important who perpetrated such things. But yeah, his ‘war zones’ got … hotter.” I gulped a breath of air and swallowed. I hated talking about this stuff. Which was why I didn’t. Ever.
“Have you seen any of his work?”
“Why do you always ask the hard questions?” I asked.
“Well, have you?”
I nodded and crouched down in front of him. I heard his sharp inhale of breath and felt it stir the hair at my temple. There was no room for this. We were practically on top of each other. But I kept leaning forward until my hand reached the sliding wood panel behind his calves, sliding it open.
“It’s all down here,” I whispered. “The ones I know about, anyway.”
“Show me one.”
I reached under and pulled out the cowgirl shoe box so I could get the magazine from the top of the stack. It was a National Geographic from the nineties detailing the diamond trade in the Congo.
He was staring at the shoe box with its picture of pink sparkly cowgirl boots on it. “You had these?” he asked with a grin.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah.”
He smiled again.
I handed him the magazine and he turned to the marked section. I had no interest in seeing the pictures again. Joey’s face remained largely expressionless as he went through the pages, though his eyes flickered occasionally, and his jaw tightened once or twice. He closed it and handed it back to me.
I leaned down and put it back in its place, replacing the shoe box and closing the sliding panel.
Turning my head, my lips met Joey’s. They were just there.