Wednesday's Word: STATE. An excerpt from Irish Wishes

    Welcome to #WednesdayWords where I share a snippet of a story using yesterday's word from the New York game, WORDLE. Yesterday's WORDLE was STATE. 

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He trolled past the Dublin shore, and as they moved closer to the dock, the waves kicked up and blew saltwater into Gillian’s face. The boat gained speed as Pete increased his efforts. He jiggled his eyebrows at her and grinned. Gillian laughed and took in the stunning cityscape and the eclectic mixture of modern and ancient. To their left, a fish jumped high into the air and landed with a splash that sent a spray as crystalline as diamonds into the air. Gillian itched for her camera, and wished she could capture the sky and river on her blog.

Pete, a little sunburned, looked rugged and handsome. The brisk weather had turned his cheeks pink, the wind tossed his honey-blond hair, and he glowed in the midday sun.

She looked down at the crevice where the side of the boat met the floor. An inch of water had seeped in from somewhere. Was Pete splashing as he rowed? Maybe a little, but not enough to explain the growing puddle on the boat’s floor.

Gillian searched the river for the closest place to dock. She glanced around the boat. Maybe if it’d been a proper boat there’d be compartments, nooks or crannies holding a repair kit, maybe a flare, a first aid kit, or a whistle. She slipped off her shoe and tugged on her bandage. She bit her lip and looked at the distant shore again. The boat ride had lost all pleasure.

Pete watched. “What are you doing?”

Holding the bandage in one hand, she used her other hand to try to find the source of the leak. She felt Pete’s gaze on her back.

She hoped the problem would be an innocent fraying of a seam, but where the side met the bottom, a small, clean slit let in a growing stream of water. The bandage proved useless.

Pete stopped rowing, and without the rhythmic splashing, everything was quiet and still. “Don’t stop!” Her voice verged on panic. “We need to go as fast as we can before we sink.”

“You should probably take off your clothes,” he said, lifting off his own T-shirt.

“What is it with you? I seem to be in a constant state of partial undress.” Gillian tried to sound like she was joking, but the last person that had asked her to remove her clothes had been a nurse practitioner with black chin hairs.

Despite the breeze, sweat dotted Pete’s brow and glistened on his chest. He reached for a coil of rope and tossed it aside to reveal a pair of orange life jackets. He flipped a vest at Gillian.

She felt jumpy and began to sweat.

“It’ll be easier to swim without our clothes,” Pete said.

Or underwear from Cleo’s Closet, she thought, slipping off her shirt, exposing the lime green bra with hot pink flamingos. She still couldn’t believe she’d let Flora talk her into ever setting foot in that store.

Pete quickly looked away, but his lips quirked as he slipped on the vest and tugged at the straps that barely fit around his chest. He kicked off his shoes and took off his jeans, exposing a pair of boxers that resembled Spiderman’s suit.

“A gift,” he said, catching her looking.

“From who?”

“Do you really want to have this conversation right now?”

Gillian pulled off her jeans and told herself that Pete had seen her countless times in her swimsuit...when she’d been a kid. While she put on her vest, Pete rowed as fast as he could to the shore.

The water rose above her knees and then her thighs. Soon, she was treading water. Pete swam to her right, with one arm stroking through the water while the other held the rowboat’s rope.

She’d grown immune to her throbbing ankle. The mild breeze had taken a mean turn and it whipped along the surface, splashing water in her face. She kept her mouth firmly shut to keep from swallowing the brackish water.

“We’re almost there,” Pete lied to her in a ragged voice. She admired him for towing the partially afloat boat. It couldn’t be easy.

She hoped Barney would appreciate his efforts to rescue the boat. Beside her, Pete grunted, turned, and stood up. The water reached his mid thighs. The partially submerged Spidey undies filled with air. He gave her a tired smile and reached out to pull her to her feet. She stood close to him for a moment, enjoying his warmth, but then he moved toward the shore, towing the boat behind him.

Gillian shivered and went after him. A flock of seagulls stood sentry on a crop of black rocks, and a fence with a rusty railing guarded the bank above the strip of shore.

Pete turned to look at her. His hair was wet and matted, he had dried salt in his eyebrows, and a piece of kelp was tucked behind his ear. She threw her arms around him anyway.

And he kissed her.

Her world stopped. Everything around her froze. The sights and sounds of Dublin fell away and she sank deeper and deeper into his kiss.