Adam’s boat, the Rum Runner, is a two-level cabin cruiser with the cockpit on the lower level. He and the Rum Runner have been together so long, longer than any other relationship he’s had in his life. She’s like a younger sibling that you love all of the time and are annoyed with most of the time. She has never behaved properly for him, and she will probably go to her grave giving him grief. But there’s no other boat he would rather work on, no other thing he loves in this world. Stupid, he knows. A boat. He wonders if the boat is feeling the same way he is, a fish out of water, or a fish in the wrong kind of water.

“The Rum Runner,” Lisa says. “Why?”

“I was eighteen when I bought her,” he says. “I liked rum. I thought it was cool.”

“It’s kind of cool,” she says. She reaches out and touches the side, then draws her hand back.

It’s odd being out here at night, Adam thinks as he navigates out of the marina. He’s not a stranger to night boating, but he is a stranger to this harbour and he’s distracted by the fresh water lapping at the side of the boat. It might seem crazy, but fresh water just sounds different from salt water, although once they are out in the open waters of Lake Superior, they might as well be in the ocean.

The wind has picked up, and when Lisa eventually makes her way down to the cockpit, she is shivering. “I have some jackets inside,” he says. “Hold this.” He puts her hands on the wheel and heads into the cabin. When he comes back, he tries to pass her a jacket, but she doesn’t move. She just stares at her hands on the wheel, her face tense, awestruck.

“You just left me with it,” she says.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, putting the jacket over her shoulders. “We’re in the middle of the lake. You’re not going to hit anything.”

She stares at him, eyes wide, reminding him, like a punch in the gut, of that girl in the lobby. “But what if I did hit something and destroyed your boat and we both drowned?”