We’re moored at Jamestown Bay, sitting in the saloon just past dawn, sipping coffee, and pretending it’s not the holidays. We spent Thanksgiving riding out a nasty storm, and only celebrated it with an exhausted meal after some twenty hours on deck. Now, it’s Christmas Eve, and none of the three of us seem inclined to bring up that fact.

Jonny has no family that I know of, his parents both having passed years back, and if he has siblings he’s never mentioned them. Cousins, maybe, but a lifetime at sea means he probably won’t be calling them up to wish them a merry Christmas. Martinique sent out a postcard with a care package of expensive coffee grown and roasted here on this remote island, and some other odds and ends, but that was it.

I’m debating what to do.

Part of me demands I call Ava, just for Christmas, and part of me says I should keep my distance.

I’m waffling.

The morning passes in a somewhat awkward silence, all of us absorbed in our own thoughts. Jonny is uncharacteristically taciturn, spending his time alternating between carving a block of wood into a small sparrow, and staring out over the vista of the city spread out before us; Jamestown is built in a crevice between mountains, extending in a long, narrow strip up and away from the water’s edge.

Marta, well…she’s an enigma, as ever. She has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of magazines, and flipping through the pages seems to be her favorite pastime, although I’ve never been sure if she actually reads anything. I think she just uses it as an excuse to…I don’t know. Watch me? Watch whoever is around? Something to do with her hands and part of her mind while ruminating on whatever it is that goes on in her head, possibly.

That’s what she’s doing now, and I feel her gaze as always. She watches me frequently, though not obviously. I just…feel her gaze. I can’t ever parse her thoughts, her intentions, but I just feel her watching me.

Eventually, she rises from her customary place in the corner of the couch in the saloon, and heads down below deck; I hear a door close.

Jonny eyes me. “Call her, amigo.”

I flinch at his words. “What?”

He laughs. “You might as well have your thoughts written on your face, bro. I can read you like a book. You’re thinking about calling Ava. Thinking maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should.”

“Jesus, Jonny. Are you telepathic?”

He nods. “Yeah, ’course I am. Didn’t you know that already? Come on, now.” He grins, waves me off. “Nah, you’re just obvious, and you forget how well I know you.”

“And you think I should call her?”

He holds up the partial carving, a head, beak, eyes, and part of a breast of a sparrow, examines it. “Yeah, you need to call her. Wish her a merry Christmas. Tell her you’re alive.”

I blow out a breath. “If this goes bad, I’m blaming you.”

He just chuckles. “Fine by me.”

I dig out the sat phone and the calling card from the drawer beside the wheel. Enter all the requisite numbers and then replace the card in the drawer and take the phone forward to sit in the sun. It rings half a dozen times, crackling and spitting static.

And then the ringing stops, replaced by a brief silence. “Hello? Christian?” Ava’s voice, soft, quiet, sleepy—6 a.m. here, which means it’s…shit, it’s two in the morning in Florida.

“Hi. Sorry to wake you. Forgot about the time difference.”

“Mmm. ’S fine. Where are you?”

“Jamestown, St. Helena.”

“And that’s where? South Pacific?”

“Wrong ocean, babe. South Atlantic. Off the coast of Africa, about twelve hundred miles west of the border between Namibia and Angola.”

“I see.”

God, the silence between us is awkward and thick and tense and painful. “I just…I wanted to call you and wish you a merry Christmas.”

“Oh. Ah, thanks. And merry Christmas to you.” More silence, and then her voice again. “So…what are you doing for the holiday?”

“We’re just going to spend today in port and then we’ll probably head out tomorrow and spend the actual day itself making for the continent.”

“We?” Her voice isn’t suspicious, exactly, more just…curious. Which almost hurts more.

“Oh, um, Jonny. I know I’ve mentioned him before.”

“Yeah, you sailed with him for quite a while.” She lets out a breath. “Just you and Jonny then?”

I hesitate. “Um, no actually. We brought an extra hand on board for the crossing back in Barbados.”

“What’s his name?”

I hate how this will feel, how it will sound, even though there’s no reason for it to. “Um, her name is Martinique. Marta.”

A long, long silence. “Oh. I see. A woman.”

“Just for the crossing. It’s good to have at least three people for a major crossing.”

“Young and beautiful, probably?”

I can’t deny the truth of that, but I don’t have to acknowledge it either. “Ava, she’s a deckhand. An experienced sailor to help make the crossing, nothing more.”

“Right.”

“Ava.”

“What?” She sounds defensive, and then sighs again and starts over, resigned, now. “I’ve got no reason to be this way. We’re not together anymore, I guess, huh? You can have anyone aboard your boat you want. You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“That’s not what I meant, Ava. We may not…physically be in the same space right now, and things may be a bit…unsure, I suppose you could say, but…we’re not—not together. Not like you meant.”

“Then what are we?”

I groan. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I’m trying to figure that out. Us. Me. You. Everything.” I rub my face with my free hand. “Jesus, this is exactly what I didn’t want. I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas and—and hear your voice. I miss you.”

“We’re not there, Chris. You can’t say you miss me. You left, remember?”

“Goddammit.” Against all my best efforts, my heart squeezes and my throat clogs with heat and my eyes burn. “Fine. Whatever, then. I’ll call you—I don’t know. After I round the cape, maybe. I plan to stop in Port Elizabeth for a while before continuing east.”

“Chris, I’m sorry. I’m just…angry. Hurt. Confused. Things are really hard for me right now, and I don’t know how to feel about anything.”

“You think I do?”

“Well, you brought a woman on board your boat. It’s just you and Jonny and this Marta person. And I notice you didn’t deny her being young and beautiful. And what, French, too? Out there having the time of your life. Sailing the world, like you’ve always wanted to. I remember the way you used to sit out on the beach staring at the sea. I could feel you…wishing. Longing. Like…like those old Irish tales about selkies. Like I’d captured you and stolen your sealskin to keep you prisoner away from the sea.”

“Felt like it, sometimes. The way I loved you, still love you—it was freedom and liberation and beauty and comfort and everything perfect in the world…but then if I thought about the sea, it…it did sometimes feel like a cage. Although your description of the selkie legends is more apt.”

“You’re where you belong. Just…without me.”

“How do we reconcile, this, Ava?”

“Fuck if I know, Chris. Maybe there is no reconciliation. No healing. No new chapter in the story of us. Maybe Henry dying was life writing ‘the end’ on our story.”

“I don’t believe that,” I say, spitting the words, vehement. “And I sure as hell hope you don’t.”

“I don’t know what to fucking believe, okay? I don’t know what I feel. Everything all at once, most of the time and it’s too much, and hearing your voice just makes it worse.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry, but it’s true.”

“I know what you mean, though. This isn’t us, this kind of conversation.”

“It is now, it seems.” She lets out a breath, long and slow and shaky. “One question.”

“Okay.”

“Have you fucked her?”

“No, Ava. I told you, it’s nothing like that.”

“Would you tell me if you had? Or if you do?”

“Would you?” I shoot back.

“Unless you asked specifically, probably not.”

“Well I’m asking specifically,” I say. “I didn’t think that’s what this is, the kind of separation where we see other people. That’s not what I want. It wasn’t when I left and it’s not now.”

A brief, sparking pause. “What if it’s what I want?”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it.”

“In general, or someone specific?”

She huffs a weird, harsh laugh. “How about I answer that if you answer me this: your deckhand, Martinique the sexy French girl. Have you thought about her sexually? Are you tempted?”

“She’s attractive, yes, but have I thought about her sexually? No. I keep my distance. We don’t really talk all that much. Am I tempted? It’s hard being away from you, feeling this separation, this sense of…us being broken, and I’m lonely. So…yes, in a way, but not the kind of temptation I’d ever do anything about.” I turn it back to her. “Your turn.”

“The sense of separation and us being broken and being lonely, that’s exactly where I’m at. It’s hard, and I hate it. But it feels like…like our lives have changed. Gone separate ways. You’re out there, now. You have your boat and the sea, and you know how I feel about sailing. I just…I don’t see us being together after this.”

“That’s not the answer to the question.”

“There’s no one specific. I still barely leave the house. I still drink too much. But I’m seeing a therapist, now. It’s helping, and making me start to think about the future.”

“That’s improvement. Seeing a therapist, I mean. And thinking about the future. Just not…” I trail off, unsure how to finish.

“Just do me a favor, Chris, please?”

I clear my throat, because it’s still clogged with that odd, hard heat. “Um, yeah. What’s that?”

“Never lie to me. Don’t keep anything from me. If it goes that way for you, tell me.”

“You have to promise the same thing.” I clear my throat again. “But that’s not what I’m—it’s not—can we agree that we’re not there, not yet?”

“I don’t know, Chris. I just don’t know.” She inhales, holds it, and lets it out shakily. “But we’ll be honest with each other, at the very least. I will, and you will.”

“I promise.”

“I promise too.”

Silence.

“This sucks,” I say.

“It does. It sucks really hard.” When she speaks again, her voice is tiny, achingly thin. “Why’d you have to go, Christian?”

“I was dying inside.” I realize this is one of those truths I’d just promised to give her. “I was considering suicide. Not considering, really, that’s not exactly true. More…thinking about it as a what-if.”

“Jesus, Chris. You’re just now telling me this?”

“Well, before, you weren’t exactly in a place where I could tell you anything. You weren’t even looking at me, for fuck’s sake.”

“About that, Chris, I—”

“That’s a different conversation, Ava. I don’t want to talk about that right now. Not after everything else we’ve already talked about. This was supposed to be me just wishing you a merry Christmas.”

Another tension-engorged silence.

“Okay, well…merry Christmas, happy New Year, and all that,” Ava finally says.

“You too.” I have to pause again, gather the courage to ask the next question. “Should I call you again, sometime?”

“Sure. Just…maybe not on Valentine’s Day, huh?”

“Yeah, maybe not Valentine’s Day.”

She laughs, a quiet sound, bitter but amused. “How about we make a pact that we’ll both get colossally wasted on V-day, in effigy, as it were.”

“I can agree to that,” I say, my own voice laced with amusement.

We used to get hammered on Valentine’s Day. She hated the whole idea of that day, and refused to acknowledge it as a holiday, refused to let me get her flowers, chocolates, presents, or anything, or even take her on a date. Instead, we’d order in and drink a few bottles of expensive wine together, and intentionally not have sex until after midnight when it was no longer Valentine’s Day. It had been our thing.

“Okay, well it’s two in the morning and I’m tired, and now I’m emotionally wrung out on top of that, so I’m going to let you go.” She sighs yet again. “Goodbye, Christian.”

“Talk to you again soon, Ava.”

There’s no click as she hangs up, just a different kind of silence. One possessed of a kind of finality.

Merry fucking Christmas.