GRAY SKIES AND FANCY LIES
Jordan
The ocean wind on my face cleared my head of at least 60 percent of the things I’d been stuck obsessing over for the last couple of days. Sailing with my grandpa tended to do that. He was demanding and daring, so most of the time I was distracted by the desperation of survival.
Today my thoughts were sticking with me, even through the spray of water and Grandpa shouting at us to change sails and sides of the boat.
The very last year of school ever was starting in a couple of months.
My summer working for Grandpa had started again with a bang: the yacht-racing kind of bang.
But none of that was occupying my mind at the moment.
I was consumed with the desire to break things off with the girl my parents had picked for me.
It wasn’t just a matter of Amy not being my type; I also resented her because she was forced on me.
I did like the chase.
I wasn’t exactly a hunter, but I enjoyed seeing something I wanted and going after it. Like the girl from the boat party, Lacey. I’d had a hard time letting that one go. There was something in her eyes, and the way she smiled while she made fun of me. It was like a kick in the balls that disguised itself as something I needed. Or maybe it was just the fact that she’d run off, leaving me wanting more.
Either way, the point was that I did want more.
“We’re approaching the leeward mark!” Grandpa shouted, cutting me off from my daydreaming. “Move some asses!” he barked, sounding like a giddy schoolboy racing his paper boat on a stream, not a man midrace with twenty other boats all heading for the same tiny plot of sea. This was his favorite moment.
When I was a kid, I’d asked him if we were going to crash, and he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “We all have to die sometime, kid. No point in worrying when it’s going to be. And to die sailing, what a way to go.” His eyes were crazy, like they are now, and the spray of the ocean air really exacerbated his excitement.
“Grandpa!” I shouted, pointing to the side of him.
“I saw it.” He grinned, even more alive now that a giant storm was coming toward us.
“Hope you got your shitting pants on,” Stephen shouted at me, using his new favorite line as he nudged me, breaking Grandpa’s rule on how close we were allowed to be on the boat. “Wind’s going to thirty-five knots! Yeeehaaa!”
He was Grandpa’s boy, through and through.
We broke without speaking, the entire crew rushing to our posts, ready for the turn that would feel like we were tipping, and then the final stretch: the finish line with the incoming storm chasing us down.
“Come on, boys!” Grandpa shouted from the helm. His wild eyes and crazy smile were lit. “If the ship goes down, we all go down!” His normal words for the final turns in the course. “Jibe!” He yelled it the same way every single time. And I never got tired of hearing it. While I didn’t want to die at sea, I also loved the way his passion made my spine tingle with a modicum of fear. In reality, I knew the lifeboats would be on us in a moment, and I could swim like an Olympian.
“Ready!” we screamed in the ripping wind, scrambling, going too fast for the corner that was coming.
“Jibe ho!” he blasted at us.
I started trimming the main.
“Release!”
“Boom!”
The sea sprayed in my face as the starboard side of the boat took a sip of ocean waves.
We struggled to get to the other side, tightening the sails and bringing round the boat.
It was fast and violent and not the smartest way to hit the mark, but Grandpa liked the adventure of a well-timed jibe and the risk of someone possibly dying or drowning.
The race was ours; we knew it in the final stretch.
We shouted and celebrated far before we got past the buoy.
Stephen grabbed the champagne and popped it, spraying us all before drinking from the bottle and passing it around.
Grandpa nodded at us, looking down the boat at his crew.
I once heard someone say his crew was a bunch of lunatics. My grandpa’s response was that he handpicked each and every one of us and made us the men we were.
That was the truth.
The wind was cold, even for the second to last week of May, as the rain began to pelt us.
We were soaked already, which meant we didn’t care if we got wetter.
And Grandpa had on his postrace face, which Stephen always assumed was also his postsex face. I took my chance, remembering I was the man Grandpa had made me, and sauntered back to him as casually as I could with the swells and winds knocking us about. This was my moment, when he was in the throes of ecstasy.
“Great race, kid!” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Great race.”
“It sure was.” I watched everyone drink the champagne, like it wasn’t eleven in the morning, and counted backward from ten, trying to pace myself. “Can I ask you a serious question?”
“And ruin my mood? Why would you want to do that, Jordie?” He chuckled, but there was a hint of seriousness to his tone.
“Because I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m pretty sure that Amy is the wrong choice for me as far as girlfriends go, pretend or not.”
“Oh?” He gave me some serious side-eye.
“Well, she’s not a great fit for the company. I understand Dad’s trying to tie up her family’s money in investments, but she’s the wrong path to that money.” I tried to politely imply that she had an IQ lower than a rock. “She’s, uhhh, well—” I felt like a dick saying it, but it was my lifeline. “She can barely read, Grandpa. She’s got no drive. She’s a spoiled brat with no ambition to be anything. She’s barely getting by in school, and I think her mom’s paying her teachers to pass her. She doesn’t even know what courses she’s taking. She’s not someone you could ever bring to work functions or have help you entertain clients. And God forbid she actually develops feelings for me after the deal is done and I break things off. That would be cruel.” Wrong comment. Grandpa never cared about cruelty.
“I see.” He bit his lip.
“Surely there’s another avenue Dad could use to bait her father. Maybe I could even help.” I realized I should have come up with an answer before I approached him. He was going to ask that.
“In all seriousness,” he said, “I normally wouldn’t give a rat’s red ass who you dated in college, but this has to be handled carefully. Your dad has made some financial mistakes in the past couple of years that cost our company a lot of money. He’s choosing to fix this by aligning Amy’s family with our company. Her father is a tricky man to convince, and for whatever reason, he’s comfortable with you dating his daughter. Refusing the relationship could ruin the business deal. That’s not how we do business here.” He gave me a side-glance, and I died a little inside. “We take one for the team, kid.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know if you do.” He sighed, clearly annoyed we were having this conversation. “A man’s daughter is his pride. He will not break bread with anyone who hurts his little girl.” He lowered his voice. “So, what I think you should actually be after is advice on how to get dumped without being viewed as the blame in her father’s eyes. How to get out of this without being the one who did it. You need her to be disinterested in you.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” I grinned, not even realizing that was what I wanted until it made absolute sense.
“In my experience, Jordan, there are three things that will get you dumped: only ever calling her after ten p.m., after you’ve had a couple of drinks and are feeling the whiskey making you frisky; only agreeing to see her when she asks you to do something, but never asking her out; and offering her tips on how she could look better instead of complimenting her when asked how she looks.” He points at me. “With women, that’s a trick question; she doesn’t want your opinion and only wants you to say beautiful. Screw that up, and she’s on her way out. Everything else, a girl with the right kind of social graces will either look past or correct for you, especially if her family is in bed with yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say you cheated. In this world, that means she can expect expensive gifts and that she’s gained the upper hand. She has the control to use against you. Or say you flirt with other women. She, in turn, throws it in your face and flirts with other men. And there’s always you working too much, but as punishment, she’ll have an affair and you’ll end up with crabs even though you haven’t strayed at all.” His last remark was a little more than I needed to know.
“Wow, you have it down to a science.”
“I do. Those three things are your only ticket.” He turned the boat slightly, heading for the marina. “And don’t mess that up, or it’s too late. When your mom married your dad, I was crushed. I had set up family playdates as a ploy to get his family money invested in some deals and to get my hands on this sweet piece of prime property they owned. I figured if our families were friendly, we could make it happen.” The tone of the story changed as he went along. “But then she got pregnant. She was twenty years old and knocked up by that—man.” He didn’t sugarcoat his feelings, even in front of me, even about my own dad. “And she has spent twenty-six years married to a turd. You kids are the only reason she stays. I’ve offered hit men, money, houses in France, but nothing works. She won’t do it. I think she stays to punish me for being a terrible father.” He shook his head, wiping some of the sea spray off his forehead with his weathered hand. “You know the moral of the story?”
“No.” I honestly was terrified of the turn the story had taken and that the moral was that he wanted me to grow the fuck up, and fast. I obviously knew the old tale, pretty much from childhood, but to have it linked to my own misery in the middle of my begging to be let off the hook suggested there wasn’t much hope for me.
“I got the land deal and the investments before she was even pregnant. She didn’t cut her losses fast enough. I thought she was smarter than that. Don’t be stupid like her. But don’t burn bridges either. All is fair in love and war, but why make enemies?” He grinned wide. “And if you want to break things off in a way your dad doesn’t hate you for, then you play it up. The moment she dumps your sorry ass, you head for drinks and avoid other women for a few weeks. Your dad will take pity on you. He’ll see you as less of a man, one who can’t keep his woman happy, but that’s the cost of a mission such as this. And Mr. Weitzman won’t care about you, since his daughter doesn’t. You’ll no longer be relative to the business deal.” He slapped me on the back. “Now go tie us off and get some hot waitresses down here with some refreshment. I intend to drink until the whiskey makes me frisky!”
“Aye, Captain.” I nodded and headed for the dock, a little grossed out and lot disheartened.
“Did I mishear, or were you easing into the death of the romance between our dad and Mr. Weitzman?” Stephen grinned like a Cheshire cat from behind some rigging.
“No, figuring out a way to bite my leg off so I can escape the trap. Your turn, Steph.” I winked and tossed the line to an older lady in a raincoat. “But good luck. There’s a story about crabs in there you don’t want to hear. Avoid that detour.”
He grimaced, and I helped dock the boat and hurried to the bar to get girls and drinks and red carpets for the man and the legend that I could never live up to.