The Boat Read Online Free PDF Page A

up, love,” he said. The cocooned Amelia moaned and kicked back but he jumped up, smiling and momentarily distracted from the message he’d just retrieved. “Come on, Am, rise and shine .” He slapped her ass through the covers. “Up and at ’em.” He slapped again, a muffled whump on the downy quilt. He didn’t get how she could sleep like that. She looked like a mummy.
    “Kill you,” she said; her voice muffled and still half asleep. But he knew she’d wake up now. She’d reached–as she called it–the point of no return.
    He went to the kitchen and started coffee. It had been a message left by one of his former students, Melanie Ransome from two semesters ago. She’d been yelling–screaming, really–but it had been muffled. The phone must have been in her purse. He only knew it was her because it had been her name on the caller ID.
    He stood looking at his yard from the window over the sink and listened to the coffee pot chortle behind him. She’d screamed something like “they’ve come back”…his mind wanted to insist that he’d heard “please come back” because then she could have been yelling for a dog or even a wayward boyfriend. “They’ve come back” didn’t mean anything. He shook his head, recalling her tone. It had been panicked beyond reason. He shivered.
    “I’d rather have tea.”
    He jumped and turned sharply, nearly dropping his empty cup. Amelia stood in the doorway, the comforter still wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair was a riot of honeyed curls and one side of her face was lined. Her cheeks glowed with hot pink fire.
    She sniffed and one hand emerged from the swelter of blankets to rub her nose. Despite her thirty two years, she looked about twelve.
    “Not feeling well?” he asked and bent to kiss her.
    She turned her head. “I’m getting a cold, don’t kiss me.”
    He contented himself with a kiss on her temple. Her skin was very warm. Almost hot. The flu rumors floated into his mind but he shooed them away; he’d been teaching too long to let drama-addicted students excite him.
    “You should get out of that blanket,” he said, filling the kettle. “You’re gonna give yourself a fever.”
    She collapsed into a chair at the little four-person table. “I think I already have one.” The hand emerged again, this time to rub at her eyes. “It started yesterday in my throat. My throat feels okay now, but my nose is stuffed. See?” She sniffed extra hard and he could see her nostrils close as no air was getting through.
    “Very nice,” he said, and tipped the water over the waiting tea bag. “You’re angelic, love, you know that?”
    She grinned. “Yep, I know. That’s why you love me.”
    He smiled. It was one of the reasons he loved her: her openness, her realness . At thirty-seven, he’d had plenty of casual girlfriends and even a handful of one night stands and had been pretty content with the mostly solitary direction his life seemed to be taking.
    But then Amelia had stopped him in his tracks.
    Funny, bubbly and passionate, she’d reminded him of Meg Ryan…not a bad accompaniment to his somewhat dour Tom Hanks, he’d thought, that first night they’d met. It had been at a bar, a mutual friend’s fortieth birthday celebration. He’d seen her arguing with the birthday ‘boy’ about the recent firing of a near-tenured professor. Even as she’d argued, she’d been funny, wagging her finger in his face with one hand while the other hand steadied him on his bar stool–the man was very drunk.
    Steve had pulled her away, disregarding the shocked expression on her face. “I think he was about to get violent!” he’d said over the crowd noise.
    She’d looked back at the birthday boy who sat jollily swaying. He was singing something. Auld Lang Syne? Then she’d turned back to Steve.
    “Violent, huh?” She gestured to the happily singing drunk.
    Steve’s eyes never left hers. He’d smiled and nodded. “Yes, I’m sure of it. I think I just