Authors: Marata Eros
Of course, then there are the Dreaded Tourists. I look around, spotting them like pink flamingoes outside the confines of their tacky yards and smile.
I’ve got to argue they have a right to be here and enjoy the uniqueness that is Alaska.
Just like I’ve a right to my avoidance.
Doesn’t everyone escape?
The bell gives a small tinkle as I slip inside, my new wool cap jammed haphazardly on my damp hair, the tail of my braid making a small dot of wetness on the back of my zip-up hoodie.
I walk forward, my eyes already on the menu. I see a cappuccino and automatically think it’s the best way to gauge a new coffeehouse. After all, that’s what I do with a restaurant: order a cheeseburger. Seems rudimentary, that simplicity.
Since I have a menu of about five things I like, it’s all uphill from here.
A bubble-gum-snapping barely teenager gives me the once-over and says, “Can I help ya?”
I smile. “Yes, I’d like a cappuccino with extra foam, one hundred eighty.”
She cocks a pierced brow, the earlobe gauge moving in subtle and expressive agreement. “Ya wanna burn your tongue off?”
Snap-pop, smack
. A wad of green disappears inside her mouth and she looks like a cow chewing its cud.
I smirk, answering, “Pretty much.”
Actually, I’m an expert food-and-hot-drink juggler. I don’t want the ass-end of my drink lukewarm.
“ ’Kay,” Bubblegum says and saunters off to make my drink while I look around the place. The roar of the coffee machine sounds, an old dude with a thin braid of gray hair makes sandwiches for the lunch crowd. I check my cell . . . gawd, it’s almost noon.
Then I check to see if Chance contacted me.
Nothing.
I grunt in dissatisfaction then feel a stab of guilt.
He’s working. Chance probably had to figure out something really stupid to cover for me.
I smile at the thought as Bubblegum hands me my scalding coffee, giving a little shake of her head at the weird summer girl.
How does she know?
She does. They all do. Homerites, as I think of them, seem to have a built-in radar for those who are from Outside. That’s anywhere but Alaska, guys.
Yeah.
I sit by the window and cross my legs, sipping expertly through the little hole at the top.
I shouldn’t have brought my cell. Its existence teases me.
I should call Clearwater.
Don’t want to.
I sip more coffee, looking at that blinking icon.
The door chimes and another patron walks through.
Tucker
.
I smile as he stands like a full eclipse in the open doorway, waving him over as I put my cell on the mosaic-topped bistro table, and forget all about staying informed with the FBI.
“Hey, Tuck, stop gaping at the girl and get your ass in here. No flies, bud,” the old guy with the gray braid and hound dog eyes instructs in a droll voice.
“Yeah, okay,” Tucker says with a grin, swinging the glass door closed.
“Hi,” he says.
He looms above me and I look up, way up. “Hey, how are ya?”
“Good,” Tucker answers and walks over to the counter. Bubblegum acts like she’s just won the lottery.
“Hi, Tuck,” she says, fluttering her fake eyelashes.
Pleeassse
, I think.
“The usual?” she asks with a wink, then sashays off when he gives a nod.
I must have given a hard eye roll, because as he walks back to the table, Tucker says, “What?”
“That girl . . .”
“Brianna?”
I nod. She has a normal name, just looks weird, somewhere between punk and hipster. “What’s with all the—” I swirl my hand in front of my face.
“Metal and shit in her face?” Tucker asks, flicking a finger on his own earlobe to include the gauge.
“Yeah.”
“We haven’t caught up with Outside.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a careful sip of my cappuccino and finding it edging toward warm. “We’ve got a bunch of dummies that have hanging lobes and holes in their faces now.”
Tucker shrugs. “She’s great at bagging salmon.”
Nice.
He sees my expression and laughs. “I’m not kidding. She can horse in thirty-pound king right off this bridge we fish at every June.”
I take a sip again and my brows pop to my hairline. “Really?” I ask. “ ‘Horse in?” I restrain myself from braying but give a little laugh at the visual.
Tucker smiles, nodding. “Yeah. It’s when you use a heavy-pound test line. It makes the fish easier to bring in, especially from that height, leverage and all.”
“Tucker,” Brianna squeals at him and he smirks at me as he rises, a mountain of guy muscle, moving like a silent storm to the counter to pick up his java.
He strides back, setting the steaming coffee on the table.
“You been anywhere but here and the Dawg yet?” he asks, taking his first sip and burning his tongue. “Shit,” he hisses.
“Ya trying to burn my tongue off, Bri?”
“Hell yes!” she says without missing a beat and gives me a significant look. Do I see some grudging respect? Nah . . . hallucinating again.
He catches the passing glance. “What’s that?”
“I get mine at one eighty.”
Tucker gives a low whistle. “Hot tongue.”
My mind instantly kicks up an image of Chance and where his tongue’s been. On me.
Inside.
An ache begins between my legs from the memory alone.
Jesus, I can feel the mother of all blushes coat my neck and climb like liquid heat to the roots of my hair.
“Whoa . . . Brooke. That’s a great reaction!” he says, rubbing his hands together with a chuckle. “Can I get lucky and think it’s for me?” Tucker asks, blatant hope underlying a question posed as a joke.
I shake my head softly. “No.”
“Damn, baby! Someone’s already got to you and here you are only two weeks in.”
I nod, the flush of heat flaring briefly.
Maybe Chance doesn’t want anyone to know?
But I know. And . . . I can’t change how I feel and I suck royally at games.
I’ve never been a player.
“Tell me it’s not Chance, Brooke.”
My eyes jerk up to his, my heartbeat thudding against the inside of my ribs.
“Ahh. . . . man,” he says and gives his face a careful scrub of frustration.
“What?” I ask, but not like I want to know.
It’s just a feeling, but judging from the look on his face, I never want to know something like what I think Tucker’s going to tell me.
“He’s a player,” he says, then self-corrects. “Don’t get me wrong, Brooke. He’ll do anything for anyone. Give the shirt off his back . . .”
Or save a drowning girl.
Wrap her in the blanket of his body with a kiss I still feel tingling on my lips.
My coffee’s grown colder and I let it die an icy death in front of me.
“Shit, you look like someone just killed your puppy.”
Yup. That’s not entirely accurate, but as metaphors go, it’ll work.
I stand and so does he. “I’m sorry, Brooke.”
I look up at him, not sure what to say.
“He’s never been serious about a damn thing but the sea. That’s what matters to Chance Taylor. He’s been with a ton of girls, but—”
“—never been serious,” I finish for him, taking a stab at guesswork, and he nods.
“I’ve known Chance his entire life and it’s the sea and the catch.”
Well, he’s sure caught me. Now . . . how do I escape the net? I don’t want to be one of his many fish.
I take off my oversize insulated glove at the wrist with my teeth, letting it drop onto the deck; the guts and bait in the bucket can sit there. I dig underneath my bright orange waterproof bibs, finding my cell in my pocket, and drag it out and search for messages.
Nothing.
Huh. I don’t take Brooke for a game player. I think I should’ve heard from her by now. I swipe a finger across my eye and try to rub it out of my head; feels like I’ve got a film of gritty sand and shit in it.
It’s called not sleeping. At all.
“Taylor,” Matt calls from behind me.
“Yeah,” I say, grabbing my sandwich out of the cooler one-handed while I juggle the cell, avoiding my stinky fish bait by a millimeter.
I turn, taking a huge bite of deli goodness, and packing it underneath my arm, I swig my water out of the bottle.
Matt swings up the condom to head height. “Is this how much of this shit you want?”
I take a critical look at the rubber, judging the gap between the bait mixture I put in there and how much room to knot the top.
Mouth full, I nod. Matt sighs and knots the top. “I hate the stink of this garbage.”
I give him a look as my charter fishing client raises his brows at the colorful language of my deckhand.
My reluctant deckhand. Matt’s made for finer things, he’s mentioned on more that one occasion.
What can be finer than riding the sea?
I wonder, taking another gulp of water.
Matt hadn’t been happy about the 3 a.m. wake-up call, but he owed me for being fucking hungover and leaving me to clean the boat up. I tear another bite from the sandwich and gulp down half my water. With the sandwich in my mouth I screw the lid on and dump the bottle into the small pocket that hangs next to the cleat.
Bob, the client, comes over, the gentle sway of his line lifting with the swell.
Calm today
, I think. Because, God knows, it’s random as hell.
Matt hits the switch on the electric reel and the driver kicks in, the
whiz
as it jerks the line up a soft whir in the background. I can see Matt in my periphery, tying off the condom and a partial salmon head on the hook.
As I load my lunch trash in the cooler, Bob asks, “What’s in that stuff?” and jabs a thumb toward the rubber filled with what I like to call my “special sauce.”
Clients ask a lot. It sucks telling them. Halibut are bottom
feeders. That basically means garbage guts. Sometimes my clientele would rather not know that succulent fish they like to mow on eats unsavory shit. Like my special sauce that I put in rubbers.
“Well . . .” I begin, “let’s say it’s a mix of squid, salmon entrails . . .”
Bob’s face takes on a green tinge. Hell, I haven’t even gotten to the really interesting part.
He wards me off with a hand.
I grin. “The goal is to combine the most rancid crap I can come up with, then mix it all together,” I say, tapping the blender full of the blood, guts, and rotting bits I brought from home.
I hear it before I can respond to Bob. The line zings. . . . singing as it takes a hit from a deep-sea monster.
I know what it is because it bends my hundred-pound test to the water, bowing the rod to kissing distance of the surface.
“Holy smokes!” Matt screams, lurching for the rod. Bob makes a mad scramble to his rod, the end seated in the integral stainless holder on the deck.
“Hang on,” I say in a calm voice as I stride to the stern. Taking the rod out of its holder, I jam it against my hip and reel in just until the tension is on the loose side of tight, giving a little lag.
Come on baby
, I coax silently, a fine sheen of sweat beading on my upper lip.
The slab of fish takes the line and I jerk back, setting the hook with the smoothness of a thousand before this one. It whines as it goes out and Matt says, “Taylor . . . that’s too much line . . .”
“Peanut gallery, Matt,” I say, taking the reel up, pointing its bowed end at the sky.
Matt shuts his mouth.
I fight, getting closer, then turn to Bob. “She’s all yours,” I say.
Bob staggers over to the pole, his land legs still attached. “It’s a female?” he asks as I smoothly hand off the pole, positioning his hands correctly.
I grin. Clients—so random. “Yeah, the big ones almost always are.”
“How do you know it’s big?” Bob asks, hopeful. His legs are spread wide for balance, sweat running down his forehead. He swings salt-and-pepper hair out of eyes that are a shade too wide, keeping the sweat at bay.
Matt pipes in, “It’s gotta have a mouth big enough for the bait.”
Bob’s eyes get impossibly larger. “Damn, that was almost an entire fish head.” I can see he’s doing the internal reckoning on scale and coming up . . . big.
“I used a king,” Matt says casually, then gives an excited yelp. “Holy shit in a sack!” he yells, going for the solid hickory bat latched to the interior starboard clamps.
I begin to move up as Matt shouts, “Barn door, two o’clock!”
I jerk the gaff from its clamps next to the empty hold for the bat and move to the stern with it, a hook like a person envisions Death himself carrying. I watch the white belly of the fish float to the surface through the glacial clear surface, the water parting to reveal the purity of the meat.
My heart races as I see my prize rise from the depths of the chilly sea. This is the critical moment for escape.
I bark, “Back!” and with a practiced swipe of the gaff, I nail the sharp barbed end into the meatiest part of the fish and heave it against the side.
It begins to thrash the boat.
“Matt!” I bellow.
“Here!” he yells from beside me and I trade the gaff for my gun.
“Oh, Lord,” my client says softly as I cock the hammer and aim for the head.
One bulbous eye rolls to meet mine, buggy and muddy brown.
I pull the trigger and the bullet hits true, smacking into the white flesh of the head and the eye explodes, taking a chunk of what we can’t eat with it.
I’m stoked the cheeks remain, the best part.
I throw the safety on and slam the gun into its holster in the interior pocket of the stern. Matt collects the other gaff and we work the halibut into the boat. It flops onto the deck and like a chicken with its head cut off, the tail moves.
“Stand back!” I say in a loud voice as my client, who is a handsome shade of baby-shit green, lurches to the starboard and heaves his lunch into the sea.
No time to comfort the queasy
, I think. The ’but’s trying to take out Matt’s leg with its tail.
Nothing another bullet won’t cure
, I think. However, can’t have a hole in the boat. I swipe the hickory bat from Matt and whale on the halibut, leaving the best of the filletable meat untouched.