The Ferry We Missed
They'd been back from Sicily for three days, and they were still arguing about it, gently now, the way you argue about something already lost.
“If you hadn't insisted on the coastal road,” Elena said, “we'd have made the ferry.”
“If I hadn't insisted on the coastal road, you'd never have seen Cefalù,” Dev said. “You said it yourself. Best afternoon of the trip.”
“The afternoon, sure. Not the four hours after, when we missed the boat and slept in a car park.”
“Nobody could've planned for the strike.”
“If you were the type to check these things, we'd never have been standing on that dock at midnight. You always say you'll check, and then—”
“Okay. If I'd checked, we'd have known about the strike, and we'd have left a day earlier, and we'd have spent that extra day where, exactly? At home. Doing laundry.”
Elena didn't answer straight away. Outside, it had started to rain.
“The itinerary was perfect on paper,” she said finally.
“The itinerary was fiction. Every good trip we've ever had, we threw it away by day two.”
“I'm not blaming you.”
“You're a bit blaming me.”
She laughed, despite herself. “A bit.”
“Look,” Dev said. “If everything had gone to plan, we'd have three nice photos and nothing to say. Instead we've got the car park, and the old man who gave us his cousin's number, and you crying by a vending machine.”
“I wasn't crying by the vending machine.”
“You were a little bit crying by the vending machine.”
“If we ever tell people about Sicily,” she said, “it won't be the ferry we talk about.”
“No,” he said. “It won't.”