2. He lets me tease him
TWO
HE LETS ME TEASE HIM
WITNESS
Shark Daddy’s lollipop tastes like sour apple. I wonder if it matches his personality. Is he sour like the candy, which can taste perfectly sweet too, or is he just sour and nasty, like Fis and his crew, who the Shark offed, then dumped into the sea.
During the time I spent on the yacht, I’ve learned I can be a siren if I want to. I also learned to use my feminine wiles to see if a man could be manipulated. I open my mouth and use my tongue to slide the lollipop to the edge of my lips. He follows the movement of my tongue, but not in a way that tells me he’s attracted to me. I get the feeling he’s studying me as if I’m a frog he’s dissecting in science class.
“Good riddance,” I say, testing his resolve to spare my life, since he ordered me to lie about seeing what he did.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he says, confirming that neither of us said or heard anything. We’re like the three monkeys that see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. Okay, I can play that game.
I take the lollipop out of my mouth and smile while tapping his plush bottom lip with the candy. “You want it back?”
He shakes his head and reaches into his pocket for another one, this one with a pink wrapper.
“Oooo, what’s that one taste like?”
The man shrugs. “Maybe bubble gum.”
“Can I have it?”
He unwraps the lollipop and offers it to me. I don’t take it with my hand, but lean in and wrap my lips around the candy while batting my eyelashes, teasing him again.
He watches my mouth, but his eyes aren’t hooded, and he’s not giving off any creeper vibes. I’m an expert in creeper men. I seem to attract those by the dozens.
“I like this one better,” I slur around the lollipop.
He closes his fingers over the one I took first. “Then I’ll have the sour apple back.”
I try to push it past his lips, but he takes the candy from me and then puts it into his mouth, only to crush it with his teeth.
This man can’t be teased. He’s totally uninterested in me, probably because I’m almost seven months pregnant. His lack of interest makes me feel more at ease around him.
Hands on his hips, he steps back and casts a faraway gaze over the open sea.
“You thinking about what you’ll do with me?” I cross my arms over my chest. “Don’t think too hard now, lest your brain starts reasoning out all the ways you could push me off the boat and make it look like I slipped and fell. Now that you spared my life and told me I haven’t seen nothing of what you did, you can’t take it back, ’cause now I got all this hope blossoming, and it’ll just be sad as fuck if you shit all over my very hopeful party. You hungry?”
Shark (that’s what I’ll call him) regards me with a head tilt. “Are you mental?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a therapist. All I know is it’s June, and I’ve been stuck on this boat sailing with Fis and them for months now. You know a therapist? You think I’m mental? Want to cure me?” I chuckle. “Good luck.”
“It’s not a boat.”
“Huh?”
“You called the vessel a boat. It’s a yacht.”
That’s all he got from my sob story? It’s a yacht and not a boat? I don’t ask him if he’s the mental one, mainly because I know men who are, and he’s not one of them. Even if he was, he makes me feel comfortable. I don’t give a shit if he offed ten more crews like Fis’s gang. This man did me a favor. “Let me feed you,” I tell him. “If you’re hungry. You hungry?”
He hooks a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the chemical spillage on the deck. “I’m still working.”
“You need a hand?” I ask him again.
He shakes his head.
“Okay, well, while you work, I’ll make pancakes. That’s all that stuck from when my mama tried to prepare me for college. You know, when I’d live on my own.” I linger for some reason, wondering if he’ll ask me about my mama or college or Nashville or growing up in a small Tennessee town. He doesn’t.
It’s refreshing how uninterested he is in me. I’d even call it normal for two strangers who met on another person’s yacht out in the middle of the sea. I’d say it’s normal but for the fact that Shark gets back to scrubbing blood and brains off the deck.
“Later, then,” I mumble, then descend the steps, making sure I hold on to the railing in case any of the guys feels like pushing me down. I pause mid-stairway, my grip on the rail so tight, my knuckles turn white.
Oh wait… There are no more guys. No more bullying. No more pranks or having to dress in whatever Fis wanted me to wear during the weekends. Just no more. Slowly, I relax my grip but keep holding the railing as I descend the stairs.
I emerge into the living room, with its white leather couch, love seat, and two chairs that surround a black glass table littered with guns, credit cards, knives, and the white powder they started snorting a few months back when I started showing and it became obvious the bump in my belly wasn’t from gaining weight.
I remember hearing Fis telling one of his men “to get over it” when the guy mentioned he didn’t sign up for “this,” while pointing at my belly. But by then, it was too late.
By the time Fis figured out the only thing that would calm his restless and increasingly violent crew was news that my handover was scheduled in two weeks, they were already hooked on the powder.
I think he was lying. While I hid in the crawl spaces of the yacht, I overheard him speaking on the phone with someone. I’m pretty sure something fell through with the handover because right after the phone call, Fis summoned me and told me how I was a burden and how he’d doubled his fee for keeping me safe.
In the beginning, when I found out I was pregnant, the man who lured me overseas and Fis decided together that they’d move me onto the yacht to hide me from prying eyes. Meanwhile, I hoped the pregnancy was a false alarm, but with time, the baby grew, and since he’s now mine and God’s, carrying him helps me cope during hard times.
And times were hard down here under the deck. Sometimes when the crew got high and dangerously obnoxious, it got so scary, I’d hide in the engine room, hoping they’d forget about me. Most times, my wish came true, and they let me languish there.
That’s where I was when Shark Daddy showed up. Languishing in the engine room when I heard a man shouting about an intruder on the boat. A yacht. Shark said it was a yacht.
A phone rings, and I move toward the sound, wondering which of the guys left his stuff here. Then I realize they all left all their stuff here.
I’m pouring myself a glass of water when Shark descends from the deck. He’s athletic, tall, and lean, with a shaved head and even shaved arms. There are no noticeable tattoos on his body, unless they’re under his T-shirt. It’s kind of strange to look at plain skin after spending more than half a year with men with tattoos down to their knuckles.
“Is that your phone?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t own a phone.” Or anything else.
Shark follows the sound, bends, then lifts the couch with one hand.
“Hot damn, you got some serious muscle.” I curve my arm up, making my biceps flex.
“You see the phone?” He points under the furniture.
I peek under the couch. “Yup.” I get on my hands and knees and retrieve it. When I emerge, I look it over. It’s a plastic black phone that looks like a toy.
Shark extends his palm, and I hand it over.
“Looks old,” I comment. “God knows how long’s been under the couch.”
Shark doesn’t reply on the way to the kitchenette, where he puts the phone on the counter. He sits on a chair at the small bar and starts to examine the device.
I move into the kitchenette to prepare the pancakes, but he asks, “Ever see any of them use this?”
I shake my head, now noticing his slightly accented English. “They use regular phones.”
“You sure?”
I bite my lip. “I think so. Why? Is it important? I could try to remember, but I really don’t want to have to recall the time I spent here with that much detail.”
“It’s probably for the best you don’t,” he says.
“Yeah, that’s what I tell myself.”
Shark nods. “I understand.”
“Do ya?”
A nod again, and he looks up from inspecting the phone. He holds my gaze, and our individual damaged parts flash at each other. I see his, he sees mine, and while we both acknowledge the hurt in each other, we also know not to ask about it. Our damaged parts are connecting, shaking hands even, allowing us to carry on with the day as two strangers who are stuck in the middle of the sea together.
Because of those parts that others won’t see, we’re able to survive each other today. I really think God sent him to help me, and I won’t spit in the face of good fortune.
When Shark doesn’t answer me, I turn away. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me anything. I’ll be over here making pancakes. You go on and do what you do.” I gather the pancake ingredients.
“It’s a burner phone,” Shark says after a while.
I start mixing the batter. “What’s that mean? Old?”
“Yes. But a good oldie, since this here”—he points at a narrow metal antenna—“means it’s not only untraceable, but also self-destructive. There’s a trigger inside it that makes it go off.”
I pause mixing the batter. “Like it can explode?”
“Mmhm.”
“Okay, well, if it can explode, why aren’t you throwing it overboard? Unless we decided we’re back to being suicidal, in which case, I must tell you that ship sailed past us up there on the deck. You spared me, and I’ve already decided I’m having my baby.”
Shark glances at my belly before his gaze finds mine again. “Good idea.”
“Thanks. How about you? Whatcha gonna do?”
“I’ll take the phone apart,” he says slowly as if speaking to a technologically daft person. “See what makes it tick and how I can use it. Who it’s for. Who it came from. Do you know who might’ve given it to Fis?”
I turn away from him and fire up the stove. “Maybe it’s Fis’s.”
“It’s not. Hence the tracker that people in my line of work use for emergencies.”
“What’s your line of work?” As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I take it back. “Never mind. I don’t want to think about Fis. Good riddance and all.”
“Fair enough,” he says.
“What if it self-destructs?” I grab the pan and drizzle some oil on it.
“It won’t.”
“You can’t know that.” I scoop out the batter from the bowl and pour it into the pan.
“I can.”
Hand on my hip, I sass him. “You sound mighty sure about that. How can you be sure it won’t blow us to high heaven?”
“I’m not going to heaven, that’s how.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong about that and that it’s not up to him, but I say, “Ya know what I mean.”
“I’m sure because I’ve got skills.”
I flip the pancake and suggestively wag my eyebrows. “What kinda skills are we talking about?”
“The kind required for not shooting you when you ask too many questions.”
I laugh. “You’re making jokes now.”
“I’m not trying to be funny.”
“Fair enough.” I parrot his words back at him. “Just don’t get the three of us killed, Daddy.”
When he groans at me calling him Daddy again after he told me I shouldn’t, I turn back to the stove with a smile. After the months of captivity, I learned how to talk to violent men, and this man, while violent, lets me tease him. Around him, I can laugh.