Page 42 of Ruining His Smirk

He stared at me. He had brown eyes. And dark angry eyebrows that were very… commanding. And attractive. He hadn’t shaved, and dark stubble covered his jaw. I wanted to start barking like a mad dog. Maybe hump his leg.

Christ alive. Let a skua swoop down and pick me up right now. Please.

Was it my turn to speak? I’d suddenly forgotten how normal people spoke. He kept staring and I kept malfunctioning. Thenhe turned back toward the ice and I took a ragged breath like I’d been underwater.

I studied the deep waters below the ship, the fractured sea ice, and the ship’s brightly painted hull.

Okay, that had been the worst of it. I had spoken. I had made an utter arse of myself, and yet I remained standing. It could only go up from here, right?

A memory surfaced from when I had been six, and I was visiting a marine science museum with my family. I’d spotted another boy. He wore a shirt declaring that SCIENCE IS COOL in enormous letters, and I had wanted desperately to befriend him. I remembered feeling hungry for anyone who might understand the way my mind attached itself to things, intensely and without moderation. I did not merely like whales or sharks or medieval knights. I needed to know everything about them until I had inhaled every bit of knowledge, then to share it with someone. I had felt lonely because not many boys were as intense as me.

Mum had crouched beside me and followed my gaze.

“Find something you both have in common,” she had said in her gentle and encouraging voice. “Look at what he’s looking at. Choose something in that display, then ask him about it.”

I could work with that. Find something common with Landry. I peered sideways at him. Landry and I had already done this once, in a way. The holiday gathering’s ridiculous icebreaker cards had managed what neither of us had been willing to do on our own. His card had said:

The Three Musketeers. Swordsmanship. Prince Valiant comics.

That was the common thread, but commenting on those topics meant we would end up fighting about the fencing bout.

I looked up at the midnight-sun-lit sky. What else could I talk about?

Over the years, I had accumulated an entire catalogue of stories that could draw people into conversation. When I visited schools, I usually brought an assortment of stuffed marine animals while telling my stories. The Shackleton story was one of those. A story about history, adventure, and the spirit of perseverance.

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. Landry did not strike me as a man who would be easily won over by a stuffed animal. But… my other toys, perhaps. I nearly choked on my own breath. No, no, no. We were not thinking about those.

I dragged my mind firmly back toward history, survival, and respectable wooden vessels.

That should hit the mark.

He had been clearly afraid in the Zodiac at first, but in the end, he had overcome his fear. I respected courage like that.

I took another deep breath and cleared my throat. Second attempt. Here we go: “Can you believe there were men centuries ago who were brave enough to come down here in wooden ships?”

“Did you say wooden ships?”

“Yes. The ship was called Endurance. Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed her into the Weddell Sea in 1914.”

“Holy shit.” He turned his body towards me. “What were they doing all the way down here?”

“Shackleton intended to cross Antarctica.” I swept my hand across the horizon. “From the Weddell Sea here to the Ross Sea, passing through the South Pole.”

His eyebrows climbed. “How? On foot?”

“With sledges and dogs, yes. This was obviously before any satellite imagery. No GPS. No weather forecasting. Their charts were incomplete, and much of the continent was still unknown to the people attempting to cross it.”

“That’s fucking insane.”

A burst of joy made me smile brightly. He was into the story!

“What was the ship like in those days?”

“Well, the ship had a timber hull. And sails. It was powered by a steam engine. She was built for polar travel and reinforced for ice, but she was still a wooden ship.”

Landry shook his head slowly. At some point, he had stepped closer to me. “Fucking balls of steel.”

I laughed at that. I liked how he spoke. He glanced at me sharply, but the corner of his mouth had moved. Not quite a smile, but close enough to make something warm flutter beneath my ribs.