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An arrangement.
Right.
That was all it was, surely. They had nowhere else to go. It wasn’t like Marianne’s crew would make peace with her and take her back. It wasn’t like Gómez would do the same with Pizarro and with the Spanish Crown.
So that is what they had. An arrangement. Simply… An arrangement. Nothing more, nothing less. She thought it would work and make sense — after all, this was technically her house now, she could do whatever she wanted with it.
It was quiet, sometimes. In the wary yet exhausted gazes shared across the living room. A place that was once warm with a fire stoked by her father, a place that once smelled of bread her mother would bake daily. But not anymore. Now it was chilly, now the salty cold from the sea seeped in through the wooden walls and bit at them both. Now the house smelled of the mist of the sea and of the dust that accumulated in the corners that Marianne was too tired to sweep.
In all honesty, that was to be expected when you’re suddenly your nemesis’s roommate.
However, was it really all that bad?
“There is a young maiden who lives on the shore. She lives on the shore all alone-oh…” was a tune she would hear some mornings. At the crack of dawn, he’d leave bed with a grumble and a complaint about his back. Then he would wear the same damn coat he’d always wear, put on his old worn leather boots, and then head out to the coast. On a high tide, the sea was about forty metres from the house’s front porch: an odd spot to build a house, in Marianne’s not-so-humble opinion. Something about building houses on the rock instead of on the sand…
If she felt like it, she would head to the kitchen, make herself some tea, and then sit out on the porch, cradling her cup in her freezing hands. The sea always brought about a certain chill at this hour — 6:50 to be precise — and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant when you had tea with you. She would sit on her mother’s old wooden rocking chair (which Gómez fixed not too long after they moved in) and she would watch as he trodded along the thick white sand towards the water, his silhouette a stark contrast against the sky painted with fascinating hues of dark blue mixed with the golden and pink-ish tints of the sunrise. With him he would carry a bucket and a fishing rod. Then, he would push a small rowboat out into the water by himself, get on, and row not too far out. Never too far out.
And he’d sing songs. She would sometimes hear them if she decided to take a walk on the shore, wet her feet in the shallow freezing water. His voice was horrible, rough and hardened after straight years of yelling orders… But there was a charm to the way he went off-key when he was focusing more on fishing than on singing the right tune. Marianne could never deny the way she stood and watched him sing.
The strangest part was that she never asked him to do this. She never told him to pull his weight — she actually half-expected them to just die out in her parents’ old house, doing nothing after so many years of living a tiring life. But old habits die hard, and Gómez was used to routine. He couldn’t simply sit around and be useless. He couldn’t accept an early end to his life like this. He may have lost his career in the New World, but he sure as hell wouldn't lose himself. So he fished to cope, and Marianne couldn’t deny that this new hobby of his was something positive. After all, he’d sell some of the fish at the market and he’d get some money back from it. Whatever kept food on the table.
These mornings were good, she decided.
Today was one of those mornings.
Today she had no tea, but she sat on the porch anyway. Half-pretending to read an old journal of hers from her younger years as a pirate, except she was more interested in Gómez’s whereabouts. From where she sat, he looked so small, sitting on his boat and reeling in fish. Before she knew it, he was already rowing back to shore, hopping off the boat, pushing it back up on the sand and tying it down to what seemed to be a dead tree that had once lived there. Then, he took his bucket and his rod and he marched back up the coast towards the house.
And Marianne stood up, opened the door for him, and followed him inside.
“Caught a big one.” He commented, taking off his boots and shrugging off his coat while Marianne took the metal bucket from him, heavy with fish. “Maybe we could have that one for lunch. Sell the rest at the market, no?”
“I’ll prepare it later, then.” She responded, placing the big fish in salt. Gómez looked pleased as he watched Marianne move around the kitchen.
“Good. And for dinner… I’ll see what I can find at the market later.”
Marianne hummed and then turned to look up at Gómez, a faint smile on her face.
“Thank you.”
“Huh?” Gómez huffed a little, putting his hands on his hips. “Why?”
“Thank you. For… Y’know. Keeping us afloat. You don’t have to.”
This earned a scoff from him. “I do have to. Unless you want to starve.”
Marianne grinned and shook her head in amusement while Gómez chuckled. It was at that moment when she looked up into his grey eyes and realised that this was no longer an arrangement.
No, after all, this was no arrangement.
Not at all.