Page 12 of Drift: Willa & Koy
I waited for him to say something, but he was quiet.
“Koy?”
“If you want me to behave around that bastard, I need you to not spend the night in his room.”
I gaped at him. “What?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” I snapped. “Why would you even say that?”
“I just feel like I need to be really clear about what will happen.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Koy, but I don’t exactly make a habit out of climbing into bed with crew.”
“He’s not crew.”
I groaned. “You know what I mean.”
“Andyouknow whatImean,” he said, letting the weight of the words settle.
I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself. Koy and I had an unspoken understanding and so far, it had worked. We didn’t call attention to or acknowledge the fact that there was a very real, very dangerous tether forming between us. It had started the first day he stepped foot on theMarigold,and it had followed us here, to Jeval. We were partners, but we were also more than that, and this was the first time he was calling it out.
“You don’t want me to break that guy’s face? Then don’t let me find out that you’re messing around with him.”
I exhaled. “I’m not.”
“Good.”
He looked at me another moment before he finally started walking, shouldering around me to head up the dock. I waited until he disappeared before I followed.
FIVE
“Alright, let’s hear it,” I said.
Ailee lowered down to her haunches in the middle of Coen’s dimly lit quarters, looking over the tools I’d laid out on the floor. She’d mastered the names and uses of the different nogs, nails, and larger tools, but so far, she’d failed to get the irons right.
Her black, curly hair was barely contained in the scarf wrapped around her head, the frayed ends of the cloth dangling from a knot at the nape of her neck. Her hand hovered over the first iron, the name still coming to her. It was the one she usually missed. “Meaking iron.” She looked up to me for confirmation before she pointed to the next, then the next, “Sail iron, horsing iron…” She bit her lip, thinking about the last one. “Reeming iron?”
I grinned. “That’s right. So, which do you need?”
“The meaking iron,” she answered.
I nodded. “Well done.”
She picked it up, smiling wide as she went to the exposed timbers of the dismantled wall that was waiting to be reframed. She’d use the iron to scrape the old oakum from where it had once stuffed the spaces between the planks. I’d be right behind her, replacing them so that when she was finished, she could fill the cracks with new oakum.
“When do I get to go up in the masts?” she asked, glancing at me over her shoulder.
“When you learn to use the harness correctly.”
“I can’t learn if you won’t teach me.”
“There’s about a hundred other things you need to master before you go climbing up in the lines like a stowaway rat,” I said.
Even from here, I could tell she was pursing her lips. But unlike me, Ailee knew when to hold her tongue and how to be patient. From day one as my apprentice, all she’d wanted to do was climb the masts, and her light weight and small frame would make it easy for her. But I remembered clearly the first time I’d fallen from the ropes, nearly killing myself when I was her age.
I took up the next wooden plank, feeling along its edge to be sure it was straight. It wasn’t easy to get raw oak on the island and Koy had questioned the expense, but having the stores had paid off now that we had a ship like theWellworthyto repair.