Part One Who: Rita and Al Where: Sailing around on Blue Louise, Rita's sailboat. When: Sunday, May 24, 1980 What: Al comes sailing with her, and it gets le awkward. Rating: PG? Low. Status: Completed log!
Rita stared out over the water, squinting into the sun as the wind whipped through her hair. She'd gotten everything ready, even packed some food, and though conditions were perfect and she had nothing left to prepare, it was still a few moments before ten. She would wait until then, just in case Al decided to come. (Rita refused to admit to herself she hoped that he would.)
Blue Louise looked just as Rita remembered, though it had taken some sweet talking to convince the marina manager to keep her spot for another year without payment up front. Rita was running out of the money she had inherited--her father had been notorious for his work, but not all that well paid--and her reporter's salary wasn't enough to keep her apartment as well as this house, dock, and boat. All the same, she couldn't imagine giving any of it up, and she knew she'd just have to figure something else out. Standing on the bow of Blue Louise, Rita was too excited at that moment to worry about it. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed sailing, how much she'd missed coming home. It had been far too long, though later she'd have to remember to take flowers to her parents' graves a few blocks away in the local cemetary. They'd loved it here, and of course they'd been buried together, if years and years apart.
Coming back was always so bittersweet. She sighed a little and pushed her big hair back, pulling it up into a ponytail as she waited. She didn't dare look around for Al, and instead she just looked out over the marina and watched the waves break. It was a perfect day for sailing.
Al had a rather long internal battle after their brief conversation the night before. In perfect truth, he had no reason to go. Nothing that had anything to with anything even remotely relevant. In fact, he probably should stay (he told himself several times). After all, the mess with Dorcas (and brain, which he'd disposed of several hours before actually falling asleep, despite his best efforts) he should be more available than out on a boat. And it was Sunday. It was his only day off all week, and he should have been spending it with his family (which, about fifty percent of the time, turned into an argument; a fact he conveniently denied this morning). And who was Rita? Really. If he was being absolutely honest with himself, he didn't know any more. And when he'd thought he did, he'd been sixteen, and who the hell knows what they're doing at sixteen fucking years old? So there was no reason. None at all. He could roll back over, adjust the pillow and sleep for another two or three hours before he had to get up and go to his parent's for lunch.
He could. But he didn't. For no reason other than he wanted to. It was a bad reason, he knew. Not even a reason, really. You couldn't just run around doing whatever you wanted. But for one day.... just today... he would indulge himself a little bit. Besides. She'd always said that she'd show him one day. Yes, he still remembered. He remembered quite a lot.
So after all that, Al finally rolled out of bed at something like 9:37. He showered quickly and dressed as comfortably as possible. Jeans. T-shirt. Jumper, just in case. And with that, he patted his pockets for all his necessities: Wand, wallet, Ministry badge (he never really did leave that at home). Good. He scribbled an owl to his mum to tell her he'd be gone for the day (she would worry otherwise) and then apparated to Rita's dock in Dartmouth. It was a minute before ten. Talk about cutting it close.
It didn't take much to spot her. His eyes used to be quite good at that, after all. Al approached quietly, stopping just a few inches behind and to the side of her. When he spoke, he was gazing upward at the sky. "S'nice," he said simply. Or what started out as simple anyway. "S'not pissing down, anyway. S'always a good thing."
Rita turned then, genuinely surprised, but there was a smile on her face not a second or two later. He'd come. She let the smile drop, with great effort, and put a more casual expression on her face, not quite sure why his presence made her feel so happy.
"Sailing in the rain isn't too bad either, but today is rather a perfect day for it, isn't it? It's supposed to be nice the next few days, actually," she said, watching him as she spoke. She was dressed similarly to Al; casual corduroys, a plain tank top, and a looser shirt over top, with a jacket on board just in case it got chilly. It was a far cry from her more recent trends of fashionable, bright, almost strange clothes, and shocking red lipstick. She hadn't consciously taken steps towards how she used to look, back in school, but that was the overall effect. Plus, of course, she was much fresher faced than the last time he'd seen her.
Stepping easily off the dock and onto the boat, Rita began to untie them and get ready. "Well, are you coming or not? Don't just stand there talking about the weather. Christ."
Al's hand automatically travelled up to the back of his neck when she spoke, completely habitual, as always. "Yeah, s'pose we'll see then," he almost muttered, casting a wary eye on the sky. England's weather was never something he would ever call predictable. Not unless you predicted rain, and then you were cheating, because, well. Duh. But when it was relatively moderate like this out, he was immediately suspicious. It was like the whole damn planet was trying to play tricks on them. Just when you were getting used to the fucking rain.
He turned his more immediate attention to her, eyes flicking absently over her before shifting to the boat. Yes, he'd noticed, at least to some degree. Or more, he'd just noticed that she was clothed like not-a-slapper, so. That was something. He thought she was quite a bit more attractive not completely piss drunk. She'd certainly grown up. At her request though, he suddenly looked more nervous, massaging his neck and mussing his hair as he stepped to the edge of the boat. Merlin, he was going to fall into the water before they were even moving. He could feel it. Fucking brilliant. "Um... yeah," he muttered nervously, letting out a deep breath. Awkwardly, he stretched his leg over the space between the boat and the dock.
All right, so that was easy enough. He had one foot on the dock and one on the boat, and Merlin fuck, the boat was moving under his foot, clearly trying to push him into the water or something. Vaguely, he wondered if Hurling Hexes applied to aquatic transportation as well as brooms. Fuck.
In any case, he managed to hop on the boat, barely biting back a small yelp of panic as he instinctively moved closer to Rita. She looked like she knew what she was doing.
Rita watched him get on, and couldn't help but laugh at him. He looked completely uncomfortable, and she guided him to a spot out of the way and sat him down, eyes twinkling with amusement at his obvious discomfort. She watched him for a second, and then turned and picked her route out of the marina.
"There are only a few things you need to know, for the sake of safety," Rita said, as she started taking them out. She shot a bright smile at him and, clearly in her element, said, "The basics: the front is the bow, the back is the stern, that's starboard, and this is port. That piece there is called the boom. It moves. Quite a lot actually, depending on where I want the mainsail to be, so if I yell boom, take a look around you. You may have to hit the deck. I'll try to warn you before I go shifting things around, though." Rita cleared them of surrounding boats, secured the boom, then moved to seat herself next to Al, one hand on the helm to steer them while the wind did it's job taking them out towards the Channel. "Through the hatch is the bedroom and kitchen. There's a bit of food there, if you want."
She took a deep breath of salty sea air and tilted her face up to the sun. "There's only one rule on Blue Louise; no lies. My father made it up. This is Blue Louise, the Boat of Truth."
Al shot a defensive look at her, although there was a certain amount of relief that he couldn't quite hide as he sat down, feeling a little better to not actually be standing any more. He was supremely uncomfortable here. It should have been bloody fucking hilarious that he could fly a damn broom in his sleep but wide awake, he was gripping onto his seat for dear life. Merlin, what if there was a hole somewhere, or... there were probably things in the water, what if they were attacked? Or... all right, so maybe he was getting a little ridiculous, but it was hard to stay totally rational when thrown into something so completely new and why didn't people just swim? Or fly? What was so damn great about boats anyway?
He was, however, quite attentive as she pointed out which was which and what was where and hopefully he wouldn't get knocked in the face with that. Although he supposed it wouldn't be any worse than a bludger. He glanced toward the kitchen and then back at her. "Uhh.. think I'll... stay sitting just now," he said a little nervously, eyes shooting across the open water again. Okay, really, he didn't know how much he liked this. "I can handle not lying. I was always really bad at it," he half-snickered, shifting a little in his seat.
"Yeah, I remember," Rita said, turning her bright, curious eyes on him. "How come you came here today, Al?"
She wanted to know. Did he really think she couldn't take care of herself, which she would consider insulting, or was there another reason? Was he, perhaps, curious about his old high school sweetheart as an adult, as she was? Did he pity her, or did he want to get to know her again? They were both very plausible, but both completely different things, of course. She wanted to know, and her probing eyes were on him now, waiting for a response.
He quirked a brow at her. "Because I wanted to," he answered simply. "I don't know, I just.. Wasn't like I had anything better to do and the last time I saw you, you were sort of about to pass out on me, so.. I don't know. Guess I was just curious." He shrugged and eyed the water as they were carried across it. "Although I fail to see what you find so brilliant about this." His discomfort was visible.
Rita blinked at him. He failed to see what was brilliant, hm? She reached out and took his hand, ducking under the boom and pulling him after her, intending to head to the front, to lay on the deck where they could be side by side, looking into the sky.
Despite the beautiful day, there weren't many boats out yet, and though she wasn't quite into the wholly empty wats she wanted, there was more than enough space around them now that made it okay for her not to drive the boat for a little while.
"It feels like the whole world is underneath you, doesn't it?" Rita asked him, determined to make him like it.
Al followed, if a little -- well, a lot -- cautiously, not liking standing on this boat. He nearly hit his head on the boom, but managed to follow without much trouble. He didn't like this. Solid ground or thin air he was fine with this. But not this floating monstrosity.
He laid down, biting back worries about was it really safe to just leave them to float around like this? And what if someone was coming and they didn't see and they'd be shipwrecked? Instead, he forced himself to focus on her question and tried to relax. It was a bit of a feat. "Um. Feel like I'm in a big bath tub," he answered after a beat. "But, you know without being in the water... but it's the same... same sort of feeling like when you're taking a bath and you're all like, relaxed and you close your eyes and you're just sort of... you're just half-floating."
Al fell quiet for a moment and then tilted his head to look ahead of them. "You don't think some gigantic two year old is going to scoop the whole thing up do you? We'll end up smashed on the side of the tub."
Rita laughed at his question, tilting her head to look at him, feeling more content than she had in... well, about as long as she could remember. She stretched her arms above her head, arching her back against the deck of Blue Louise for a moment, stretching her feet out over the edge and looking up at the sails. She would have to get up in a moment and steer, man the tiller and direct them out into more open waters before they could really just drift, but for now she relaxed, shifting to face Al, one hand brushing against his shoulder.
"I think until we see any giant rubber duckies, we'll be fine," she assured him. "You'll get your sea legs. Everyone does. Once you relax, you'll start enjoying it more."
Al was still quite insistent on being tense at the moment, watching the water warily. Rubber duckies. They were creepy, too. But he really ought to try, right? Well he was already here and it was no use being a complete fucking killjoy the whole time (though to be fair, he had warned her). So he willed himself to relax, squashing the ball of nerves in his stomach.
"All right, well. I'm still going to be looking out for rubber duckies," he said with a small smile, shifting enough so he could look at her. He was ignoring that she'd touched him. For now.
Rita rolled her eyes and ruffled his hair affectionately, not sure why exactly she was being so touchie with him, aside from the simple reason, of course, that she could. She got to her feet then, moving back towards the stern, adjusting the sail and turning them slightly, navigating around a long industrial dock. The wind was decent today, and she picked up the pace a little more, wanting to get out and away from the rest of the world as quickly as possible.
"You need a distraction, Al," she called cheerily. "What have you been up to the last, oh, decade? I see no wedding band. I never pegged you for a perpetual bachelor." Not like Fabian. "Divorced? Widowed?" It was, perhaps, a little callous to ask so casually, but she was a reporter. Asking was what she did.
Al tried not to watch the water so much, attempting to keep his focus inside the boat. Maybe that would make things a little easier. It wasn't enjoying the sights or the sky or anything else, but you had to take one thing at a time, and this particular hurdle was just being comfortable on this damn thing. Unconsciously, he smoothed his hair back down after she mussed it. It wasn't as if he didn't do it a million times a day himself, but it was always different when someone else did it.
He watched her go, warily eyeing the boom just in case it came flying at him. Nothing happened though and he turned his attention back to her, quirking an eyebrow. "None of the above," he answered, carefully pushing himself up and walking over to her so that he wouldn't be shouting. She was right, he needed to not think about the logistics of this thing and this was as good a topic as any. He didn't particularly mind.
"I suppose I'm single and looking, let's put it that way," he went on, sinking into the seat next to her. "I guess it's just a bit difficult when you work for the Ministry isn't it? It isn't as if I have loads of time off. Work as much as twelve hours a day almost every day. Except for Sundays, which is really just enough time to catch your breath before you do it all again." He sighed, hand in his hair for a moment before he went on. "It's a dangerous time to start a family. But I don't want to be married to my job, either."
Rita nodded as she listened, alternating between watching him and watching the water. Single and looking, was he? Not divorced, not widowed. He, like her, had apparently not found anyone significant. Rita's smile turned a little sour as she realized, with great distaste, exactly where her brain was going. There was no point entertaining such ridiculous thoughts. They weren't looking for the same things at all. He'd just finished spouting off about wanting a family, and Rita... well. Rita wanted a lot of things, but she knew what was best for herself, and it certainly wasn't shacking up and popping out children.
"Much as I might complain about it, I enjoy the twelve hour days," she said, avoiding the more difficult subject for the moment and finding common ground. Avoiding was allowed, even if lying wasn't, and he hadn't asked about her anyway. It was still the Boat of Truth. "It gives me something to focus on, something that I'm good at. Plus, journalism is a demanding career. If I didn't throw myself into it, I'd get left behind."
As she spoke, it didn't even occur to Rita she was offering Al excuses for not taking care of herself, for focussing on her job instead of her life.
Al was quiet for a moment, not even realising he was staring at the water. He didn't like going ten thousand miles an hour every day. It made him tired. He didn't like the grind and the constant stress. He as twenty-seven. He was ready to slow down a little. Of course, it was impossible to slow down in the middle of fighting a war. When his friends were getting brains sent to them, things like... well like this - like lazily just drifting across the water, with no destination in mind - it seemed entirely out of place. But he was already relaxing a bit.
So it was a long moment before he looked back at her, considering for a moment before asking his question. He wouldn't really mind if she lied. It wasn't his rule. He was just curious. "Are you happy, then?"
That was the question, wasn't it? She had insisted she was, perhaps more than once, to Al, but if she were really honest, what could she say? She liked her job. She liked her apartment. She liked her friends. She liked to party. She didn't have a bad life, not really. She didn't miss her father much anymore, which she had for years after he'd died. She'd grown up and moved on, but to what?
"We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves," Rita said then, quoting François de la Rochefoucauld, a French writer from the seventeenth century. Had she been anywhere else, perhaps, than on Blue Louise, she may have simply said yes, but she wasn't. She was here. She kept her eyes firmly ahead of her then, not looking at Al as she tensed slightly and added, "I don't really know. Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I think I don't even remember what it feels like. It just depends what kind of mood I'm in, I guess. Are you?"
Again, a long silence from Al. That was about what he'd thought. He thought that about most people, really. Content, but not happy. Going a million miles an hour because as long as you were busy, you didn't have to think about some of the unpleasant or pressing things, like the relationships you made with people, or if you were really all that healthy or if the government was making the right decisions. That was most people. It was him, too. When happiness was a mood and not a state of being.
"No," he answered finally. "I am... discontent, I suppose. Incomplete. Searching without knowing quite what I'm looking for and just hoping I'll know it when I see it. It's a bad feeling. I don't like it. You run around and go as fast as you can because we're all just running out of time, aren't we? It's just wasting away and these days, you can run out of it before you even know what happened. I don't like feeling like I'm speeding through my life instead of living it. It makes me... decidedly unhappy." He was staring at the water again, almost positive he'd said too much. But he was bad at throwing up loads of walls for himself. He wasn't a good liar. And if she hadn't wanted to know, she shouldn't have asked.
As he spoke, Rita found herself growing less uncomfortable with her admission. She tried so hard to prove to everyone, herself included, that she was happy on her own, and sometimes it got exhausting. Sometimes she didn't want to pretend that she wasn't lonely. Just as she could sometimes admit that she didn't want to be alone forever, though, she also knew she was still too scared to let anyone in, to risk coming to need someone lest they be taken away.
Though he'd done most of the talking--Rita was by no means a quiet woman, but she still did write better than she spoke--Rita felt oddly like what they were doing was more intimate than all of the meaningless sex she had rolled up into one. He was on her boat and they were just talking, but it was the first time in a while Rita felt like she could say anything without worrying about the tall, barbed fence she'd built around herself.
"You don't know what you're searching for?" she asked then, still not quite looking at him. It was hard enough for her to be open with him like this, especially considering how humiliating their last encounter had been. "Sounded to me like you want someone to start a family with."
Whatever it was he was missing in his life, Rita doubted it included a damaged ex-girlfriend dragging him out onto a sailboat on his one day off a week. He seemed like he'd grown into a better person than she had. He was well-rounded and eloquent and compassionate and he took care of drunk women who would've been just as happy to let some dirty man take her home just so she wouldn't have to be alone at night. Rita wasn't his type, not anymore.
"Well that's the trick isn't it. I think it's different. I mean... yeah, I want to find that girl and I want to have a family with her, I think it's... a chapter in the book, so to speak, yeah? Like... oh hell, I dunno," he sighed, hand mussing in his hair. "I guess it's just like I'm looking for some great big meaning or purpose. Dunno. Maybe it's just plain old happiness. How to get there. And I know... a lot of the things I want, I really do, which I suppose my mum would say is half the battle. I dunno. I guess that's the whole problem is just not knowing. Like not knowing where or who or why. Or even if the things I want will actually make me happy. It's frustrating."
He frowned, brow knitting together slightly as his eyes dropped to a spot more immediately between his feet. "I guess that's most people though isn't it. There's no bloody road map, you just sort of have to feel around and hope you're doing something right along the way."
Rita smirked a little as he rambled. Back in school, back when they'd been together, sometimes she'd just lay with him and listen to him talk. He talked so much, she hadn't even bothered to listen to the words, sometimes, instead just hearing the sound of his voice, or the flow of it as it came out of his mouth, or the feel of it against her ear if she had her head pillowed on his chest. It was endearing to see that aging hadn't made him any more economical with his speech.
"There's no such thing as right, Al," she said then. "There's good and bad, moral and immoral, whatever, certainly. But there's no right or wrong way to live your life. I mean, unless you're being destructive, I suppose."
Destructive. What constituted a destructive way of living? She was slowly destroying her liver, she was sure. She seemed to spend far too many days drunk, and subsequently far too many days hungover. She slept around. Those certainly weren't productive behaviours, but hell, she wasn't the worst off girl in the whole wide world or anything. Rita figured there was no point feeling sorry for herself. Self-pity was the most useless emotion anyway, and she never indulged in it.
Instead, she shook her head a little, smiling as she added, "Maybe you're overcomplicating everything. Maybe you think that you're supposed to be on this quest to find... something. To find whatever mystical thing is supposed to complete you. But it doesn't always have to be that hard. Maybe you just need to get laid."
And there was the Rita he'd met on the weekend, the one who didn't care about much at all, the one who had thrown herself at him willy nilly, the one she was most of the time. Sailing and talking about happiness and sharing her innermost thoughts and feelings, that was just her pretending she and Al were still close, really. It meant nothing.
A frown touched Al's lips and he gave her his best you have got to be shitting me look. All that, and her solution was that he needed to get laid. It was a jarring awakening. For a moment he had let himself remember those days in school. Days like this, after exams maybe, when there was almost nothing to do but relax. But that single sentence rather rudely wrenched the whole scene away from him and he sighed. Of course. Everyone changed. It still surprised him just how radically.
Just what the hell had he been thinking, coming out here, then? Curiosity, that was the reason he'd given her. Well, he rather considered his curiosity pretty fucking well sated, and what followed was a prickly silence. He wasn't that bloke. He had never been that bloke and while he'd had a small handful of meaningless one-night stands, it was never without saying so. He was damn honest. And he wasn't just looking for a damn shag.
The shift in the atmosphere between them was palpable, and while part of Rita--most of her, really--wanted to push on, test his limits, push him away out onto the other side of her wall by, perhaps, offering to bed him or suggesting that sex was the reason behind the invitation to join her after all. But there was a smaller part of her that was emboldened by the salty mist of the Channel, the same part that had missed sailing and that remembered how easy it had been to be vulnerable to Al in the past, that part won out.
"Sorry, defence mechanism," she said robotically, voice clipped. It wasn't something that was easy for her to admit. Exposing her defences made her vulnerable to attack, or perhaps just to understanding. Sometimes those things felt like one and the same. "It's easier to be that way. It's... safer, I guess. I'm not used to being around people who disapprove. Even Doris has accepted it by now."
Her stomach suddenly tied itself into knots and she stopped talking. This time she had given away too much, and she didn't even have the excuse of copious amounts of alcohol.
It seemed that Al never knew quite what to say right away. Which he generally thought of as a good thing, really. It gave him time to think and consider and then make a choice. It was of course, more difficult when he was struggling with a characteristically short temper, but he did manage to hold his tongue before just snapping at her. Because the girl he'd run into at the Leaky the other night and this one, right here, they were the same person. They were both Rita Skeeter. Al was just having a very difficult time figuring out exactly which one she wanted to be.
"It's distracting, you mean," he said softly, sounding a bit calmer now. At least he didn't look on the edge of being completely pissed with her. "That's right, isn't it? I mean, yeah, it's fun but... you're not just in it for fun." He considered her for a moment before realising he'd asked a question. "You don't have to answer that," he added quickly, casting his eyes back to the water. "I wasn't really asking you anything."
Not just in what for fun? What did he mean? Perhaps he was trying to suggest she acted like that to distract herself, or others, from who she was. If they never really knew her, she could keep them at a distance. Drinking and sleeping with whoever seemed to want to was certainly a decent distraction from, what, being lonely and too damn scared to do anything about it? It was pathetic, really, she knew that, but she felt uncomfortable talking about it. Still, she was a little mad at him, mad that he saw through her so easily. Mad at herself for letting him.
"You're pretty bloody judgemental, aren't you," she said, but it wasn't an angry accusation. Her voice was actually quite soft, thanks largely to the calming effect being on the water had on her. She could snap or sneer at him, but what was the point? Besides being the Boat of Truth, her father had always said Blue Louise was a place to escape to, a place where it was possible to leave the bad things behind. Rita had never realized it as a child, but as much as her father loved her, he had been unhappy a lot as well. He'd loved her mother, and he'd missed her terribly after his death. He had devoted his whole life to Rita, never focussing on making himself happy. Rita had learned that from him, perhaps, but unlike him, she had chosen her career to be her crutch, perhaps, and the rest was just distractions, like Al said. "Maybe those are the times when I feel like I'm happy. Who are you to frown at that?"
Of course, that wasn't the case. Those were usually the events that very closely followed her more melancholy thoughts of how, perhaps, she didn't even remember what it felt like to be happy. It was strange, but thinking dramatic thoughts like that and sitting on Blue Louise, it made Rita wonder if perhaps it wasn't that she'd forgotten how to be happy, but more that she wouldn't let herself.
"I'm not anyone," he answered with a shrug. "Just some bloke. Making an observation. I'm not judging you, by the way. Not today. And I don't believe you." Al looked at her for a moment. "I saw you. You weren't happy. That isn't what happy people look like."
Unspoken, was the fact that she had all but begged him to stay with her. He'd said he'd forget it, after all. And while he wasn't going to bring it up, it had still happened. It was still there. He'd stayed and she'd been pretty well wasted. And not happy. And she'd already said it herself, that she wasn't. Al didn't really know exactly what he was doing. He didn't know why he was here now. But he was staying. Maybe just because he'd come in the first place and it was stupid to just leave in the middle.
Rita put on a smile then, if a slightly bitter one. He didn't give himself enough credit if he thought he wasn't anyone. He was the first person in years who'd bothered to speak plainly with her, the first man who didn't take advantage of her willingness to open her legs.
"What do you want me to do, Al? Burst into tears? Throw myself at your feet and beg you to save me from my misery? I'm fine. Not everyone is happy. You said so yourself that you weren't either," she said casually, but there was something about Al that made her want to let him in. She shifted in her seat, turning to face him. "I am glad you're here, though. Don't ask me why. I couldn't answer you if I tried. I'm just glad."
Al scoffed. "No, of course not, that's fucking ridiculous." He sighed, hand in his hair for a moment. He almost snapped, insisted that no he wasn't happy, but at least he was doing something about it. But he didn't instead, glowering at the water. This was all just damn confusing. Why was he here? And why was she glad he was here?
Maybe it was just nostalgia. A simpler time. More likely, it was his damn near obsessive need to fix everything around him. It was that sort of thing that had made him want to be a hitwizard in the first place. There were loads of things he liked about his job, but nothing quite levelled with the fact that he had to try to fix things and people around him. It showed in different ways most of the time. But he had always been the shoulder to cry on, the one who listened, who got to the bottom of things. He took responsibility for the people around him and the ones that came to him for help. It was why he had spent two hours the night before trying to figure out of the brain Dorcas had received in the post was human or not. He had to give a shit. And it was fucking annoying sometimes.
Like right now. He and Rita had already been together and then apart. He had never created any illusions for himself about her. He had never expected to be more than casual acquaintences with her again after they had graduated. But if he let her back into that circle, the one he drew around everyone and everything that he was willing to fix... then he damn well knew it was a bit of a commitment. He just didn't know. And he wouldn't do it if she didn't want him to.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He had managed to put his temper back down for the moment. "I do feel less like I'm going to be sick or something. I suppose this isn't so bad."
Rita wasn't sure how Al was going to respond to that, but when he scoffed and swore and sighed, she was ready to roll her eyes and push him overboard, just for being so damn obtuse, but she knew he didn't deserve that. He was a good guy, and for whatever reason, he was trying with her. She wanted to say thank you, maybe, or tell him not to stop, even if she knew she could be bloody difficult at times, but those weren't words Rita could say. She was quiet for a moment, and as he said that this all wasn't so bad, she gave him a bit of a smile.
"I told you you'd get used to it. You know, my father used to take me out sailing all the time, and he said the most important thing you can learn from being on a boat is to respect things that are bigger than you," Rita mused, eyes on Al. "He said sailing is about learning how to make your way through things you can't control, and it was about knowing how to pull the right strings and approach waves from the right angle to stay afloat in even the scariest storms."
It was something that, perhaps, Rita had misinterpreted when she'd applied it to her life. It wasn't about building a cocoon and keeping the rest of the world out, it was about adapting, coping. No one could avoid the waves completely, and she supposed she ought to stop trying. Perhaps she needed to let the waves hit her for a while.
"Maybe you'll come out of the storm a little wet, but you'll come out of it, and eventually the sun'll come out and dry you off," Rita said, and this was spoken more to herself. Rita had always loved metaphors; though she could be blunt as hell, there was something about a good metaphor that just felt right. Sailing, it seemed, had a tendency to make her wax poetic, as she'd said in her journal to him.
"He sounds like he was a smart bloke," Al replied softly. It was the only thing he could come up with saying that wouldn't sound completely and utterly trite and ridiculous. And maybe it still was. He remembered when her dad had died. Quite vividly actually, as in the following days, she'd told him just to bugger off. They had been together most of sixth year at that point, which maybe wasn't that long in real life, but when you were sixteen, it seemed like forever. It had stung then, he remembered, and had come at a bad time. He'd lost Quidditch too, in the space of two weeks. He'd been fucking miserable.
Of course, it was a long time ago now, and Al didn't harbour any grudges against her for that. He was bad at being angry at someone for a long time. And he'd moved on. A handful of girlfriends, his job had swept in on his life. He was okay. Not happy, not even really content. But okay. He was alive. Aimed to stay that way. Even if he was still searching, life wasn't bad.
"Do you ever think that maybe the reason no one is ever happy is because of... of like, mistaken expectations? D'you know what I mean? Like everyone's standards are too bloody high? Or like maybe our brains just trick us sometimes. Dunno. Maybe everyone should just... calm down. Myself included, I guess."
"He was incredible," Rita corrected softly, because if there was one thing she was sure about, it was that her father had been amazing. As he continued talking, though, she shook her head. "No. I don't think we should lower our standards. Maybe having high standards makes it harder to be happy, but if we didn't, we'd be bored, complacent, and idle all the time. I'd rather be fucking miserable than bored stupid, you know?"
She managed a smile then, if a slightly lopsided one, as she looked up at him. "I wish you could've met my dad. I wrote home about you all the time, before he... back in sixth year. He said I could invite you up at Christmas, but I was too nervous."
Rita actually laughed a little then as she remembered her sixteen year old self. She was sure she'd reacted rather dramatically to her father's suggestion, saying she and Al weren't married, weren't even hardly serious (at that time, they'd only been dating, tentatively in that sixteen year old way, for a month or two) and inviting him to dinner with her father had seemed ludicrous. Months later, she claimed to Doris, if not her father, that she thought she loved Al, though thankfully she'd never told him. Oh, the silly notions of teenagers. Rita wasn't even sure she believed in love anymore. She thought perhaps it was a fallacy, or something people tricked themselves into believing in because it was easier than thinking life was meant to be travelled alone.
"Imagine that. Me, nervous over you," Rita teased. "Isn't it strange how sometimes that feels like forever ago, a whole separate life, and sometimes it feels like yesterday?"
"I suppose," he conceded, though he was still thinking about expectations in relation to comparisons and what people made of their lives. That was a hard question to answer. Being bored and happy or active and perpetually discontent. He supposed it probably depended on the person.
He very nearly returned her smile. "Yeah, a bit," he agreed. "It's weird to think of it as a whole fucking decade ago. That seems like so much time, but relatively it's just... a blink." Al fell quiet for a moment, remembering. It had always been hard for him not to care about people. And he had cared about her, he remembered. Quite a lot at the time. Perhaps this was just... residual.
"I don't blame you, by the way. I'd be nervous if I were dating sixteen-year-old me, too. I was a fucking heathen in school. Any dad in their right mind would have kicked me out of the house and told me never to come 'round their daughters again."
"No you weren't," Rita said with a laugh, feeling relaxed again. "You were good. You were good to me. I was so into you."
As soon as the admission popped out of her mouth, she sent him a bit of an embarrassed smile, but what was the point in denying it? She had been. She'd been crazy about him. It didn't matter now. Now she wasn't the sort of girl that boys dated, she was the sort of girl that boys took home for a night, sometimes a few nights, but never anything more than that.
"I know it's been years and it probably doesn't matter anymore, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry," Rita said suddenly, and there went that slowly building sensation of comfort. Now she was all tetchy and vulnerable again. But she was on the fucking Boat of Truth, and she'd already started. Might as well continue with the honesty. It didn't seem like either of them were looking for meaningless chit chat today anyway, with the things they'd been talking about. "I shouldn't have... dismissed you. Maybe things would be different if I'd let you help me but... I didn't know how to grieve him. I guess I didn't know how anyone could possibly go through something like that with me. I was sure no one had ever been as sad as I was then. Not that it matters. Things aren't different. You're you, and I'm... the woman I've become. I just wanted you to know that I am sorry, even back then I was. I never wanted to hurt you, I just couldn't..."
She made a hand gesture meant to somehow express to him the rest of the words that she didn't really want to say. She couldn't let someone see how devastated she was, because then she wouldn't be able to pretend to be strong. She couldn't let him take care of her, because then she might need him the way she'd needed her father, and she couldn't imagine going through that again. Rita wondered if she had, would they still be together? Probably not. Who stayed with their school sweetheart anyway, really? Except the purebloods, who all seemed to marry young.
Al was surprised by the apology and it showed on his face, the way his eyebrows first shot up and then knitted together. He had long... if not forgotten, then at least gotten over it. It hadn't made a bad situation any better, but it was... it was okay. "It's fine," he said too shortly, and he quickly corrected himself. "I mean..." hand in his hair for a moment, "It's... I forgive you, I mean, as stupid as that sounds. We were just kids." He shrugged and dropped his hand. "Kids get back on their feet pretty quickly. Even if it doesn't seem like it then. It isn't as if... well, I guess we'll never know what could have happened. But I mean, there aren't loads of people that get together that long and stay together, you know? Maybe it's good that it happened when it did."
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and dropped his eyes again. It was hard not to think of the what-ifs sometimes. But Rita had long stopped being a what-if in his mind. Things were okay. She was someone else. So was he. What were the chances that they still fit together like they had?
"Maybe," she agreed, thinking back to what it had felt like to let him go. Sure, she'd pushed him away. She'd broken up with him after almost a year with little more than a 'bugger off'. She'd been pretty harsh. But it hadn't exactly been an easy time for her. "I used to wish you'd tried harder."
And where had that come from? She pulled back into herself, realizing she was letting too much show, being too honest, and her face blanked as she pulled her defences up. What a stupid thing to say. It was true, perhaps, but it wasn't the kind of thing one actually ought to say aloud. No one was supposed to admit they wanted to be saved from themselves, not at sixteen and not at nearly twenty-seven.
"Never mind. It doesn't matter now anyway," she said dismissively. "Would you like to steer?"
Al didn't answer right away, not to anything, instead clearly brooding. It was an odd confession, and he could tell she hadn't really meant to say it. Maybe it had just slipped. But it was out there now, floating in the space between them, heavy, needing to be addressed, even as she tried to brush it away.
"No," he answered finally, in response to wanting to steer. Another beat of silence from him, brow furrowed for a moment. He had a choice of course, he didn't have to say anything about it. He could just let it go. But... well, Boat of Truth or some such shit.
"I used to wish I'd tried harder, too," he said finally, softly, almost inaudible.