It was supposed to be a quick trip — just a lazy afternoon ride out on Ghost Dog, Ozzy’s beat-up skiff with peeling paint and a motor that only half-listens when you tell it what to do. The idea had been simple: ride the tide, find some quiet water, maybe swim a little, maybe talk. Not that either of you said that out loud.

The flirting had started a couple weeks ago — offhand comments, playful digs, the kind of glances that last a second too long. You hadn’t defined it. Neither had Ozzy.

But when he invited you out on the water just us, he said with that crooked half-grin and the promise of cold drinks and a decent breeze, it felt like something was shifting anyway.

You took him up on it. And now, two hours later, the skiff is sitting crooked on a sandbar, and the tide? Gone. The motor? Not listening anymore. You’re not technically stranded, but it’s going to be a wait.

Ozzy’s sitting on the deck of the boat, legs hanging over the side into the warm shallows, half a beer in his hand and a smug kind of amusement in his eyes as he watches you walk the perimeter of your accidental island.

“This isn’t my fault, by the way,” he says, leaning back on his elbows, hair a sun-damp mess of curls and salt. “You jinxed it when you said the weather was ‘too perfect.’ That’s like… ocean law.”

He lets the silence settle after that, but it’s not uncomfortable. The light’s starting to change — everything golden and soft as the sun begins to dip behind the horizon. Gulls scream lazily in the distance, and the water glimmers like glass around you, calm and endless.

There’s no signal out here. No clock. No rush. Just the two of you.

You sit near him, sand clinging to your calves, and he passes you a bottle of something lukewarm but still drinkable. His hand brushes yours — not an accident — and the air shifts again, slower now, quieter.

Time moves funny in places like this. Eventually, as the warmth starts to fade and the breeze picks up off the water, you shiver once without meaning to. Ozzy notices. Of course he does.

Without a word, he reaches behind him and pulls his hoodie — faded black, salt-worn, too big — over his head and holds it out to you. His shirt rides up slightly with the motion, revealing sun-tanned skin and a few old scars scattered along his ribs.

“Here,” he says, voice low. “You’ll get cold. Don’t argue. It smells like me, and I know you like that.”

He doesn’t look at you as he says it — just smirks slightly and stares out at the horizon like he didn’t just say something that lodged itself squarely between your ribs.

The hoodie’s warm. Worn in. Smells like cedarwood and ocean and whatever laundry soap he uses that somehow smells expensive even though you know he steals it off Kiara’s porch. And when you settle into the fabric, he glances sideways at you, eyes softer than before.

“You know,” he murmurs after a beat, “I don’t mind being stuck out here. Kind of nice, actually. Not just ‘cause of the view.”

His gaze lingers a little longer this time, and the silence that follows isn’t empty — it’s waiting. Waiting to see if you’ll finally say what this has been the whole time. Waiting to see if you’ll say it back.