The boat was thirty-two feet and honest about it. Rosa, thirty-four, had borrowed it from a friend who trusted her with lines and with secrets. Elise, thirty-two, stood on the dock with a duffel and a look that said she had cleared her calendar like a person who meant to be touched.

They had been together eleven months. They did not need a boat to have sex. They needed a boat to be unreachable.

By late afternoon the harbor had gone pewter. Rosa taught Elise the names of things: cleat, sheet, the particular groan of the hull. Elise learned with her hands, which was how she learned everything. When they tied up in a quiet cove, the world reduced to wood, water, and the two of them.

“Come below,” Rosa said.

The cabin was narrow. That was the point. They undressed sitting down, knees knocking, laughing, then not laughing. Elise’s mouth found Rosa’s breast. Rosa’s hand slid between Elise’s thighs and stayed there, two fingers moving in the unhurried way that made Elise’s breath go thin.

“I want you on your back,” Elise said. “I want to taste you while the boat moves.”

Rosa lay back on the bunk. The boat rocked like a slow metronome. Elise put her mouth on her and did not rush. Rosa came with a hand over her own mouth, then took the hand away, because there was no one to hear but harbor weather. She pulled Elise up and kissed her own taste from Elise’s lips.

They used the small dual toy they had packed with the same seriousness as the first-aid kit. Fitted together in the bunk, they moved in short rolls that matched the water. Elise came first, shaking, laughing into Rosa’s neck. Rosa followed, eyes open on the low ceiling, thirty-four and briefly unlocated, which was a kind of luxury.

On deck afterward they shared a blanket and cheap wine in enamel cups. Elise’s hair tasted like salt when Rosa kissed it.

“If the weather turns,” Elise said, “we stay another night.”

“If the weather stays perfect,” Rosa said, “we stay anyway. I did not bring you here to be efficient.”

Elise smiled, thirty-two and wind-pink, and put her cold hand under Rosa’s sweater, not to start again yet, only to keep the claim.