Crossing

I thought, ‘this is wrong,’ but I followed her anyway. I was heading to Danielle’s, for fuck’s sake, but here I was, making a left down to the wharf and onto the ferry. Where was it going? No idea. Did I have a ticket? Well, no.
“They’re the ones with lightning,” I said from the seat behind. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been long off a pillow.
“Yep,” she said, staring through the window of fresh droplets, out to the storm following us.
“Fry us where we sit.”

I was remembering a story some guy told me about finding a body hit by lightning, fried in the driver’s seat of a Dodge pickup. He said the skin had melted into the seat. A decent wave smacked us high and sideways. I felt the beer in my gut do the same.
“We’ll outrun it,” she said tapping a smoke on the window ledge. “It’s you I’m not so sure about.”

She suddenly stood, shimmied sideways out of the seat, and headed down the gangway. The ferry was really lurching now, but she felt no need to steady herself on the seats as she passed, like the horizon was hard wired into her or something.
She slid open the iron door and was gone. I could just see her through the glass, up there on the deck in that feral southerly, her hair, dress, coat, everything mixed up in a spinning mess.
I wanted to follow, tell her be careful, warn her of rogue waves, save her, but thought better of it.
Some storms are no place for strangers.

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