Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
SHILOH
It’s a warm morning, and I’m already sweating.
Too many layers. Tugging on the neckline of my hoodie, I pull into my usual parking spot.
I’m annoyed, and I slept like shit. Roy’s car isn’t here, which annoys me even more.
I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those days where everything annoys me, no matter how unjustified that feeling is.
I sit and wait in my truck until Nils pulls up beside me, the low growl of the engine sounding overly loud in the quiet morning.
Sighing, I abandon my vigil and climb from the vehicle.
Nils meets me on the other side, a questioning look on his face.
He stays silent. Nils has never been one to stick his beak where it doesn’t belong.
“Oliver’s not here?” he asks when we reach the boat and find it dark, rocking slightly with the motion of the water.
I check my watch. I usually get to the harbor early, but given my sleepless night, I’d gotten here even sooner. He’s not late yet; we’re just early. I glance at my sternman.
“We’re early.”
He nods and climbs down into the boat. Very, very rarely does Nils show up earlier than Oliver.
He’s punctual, but to him, that means arriving two minutes before the agreed-upon time.
Oliver and I operate closer to fifteen minutes early is on time.
Nils being here soothes some of the feathers that were ruffled by Ewan and Roy, and have remained ruffled all night and into the morning.
I wonder if something is wrong. The last time Nils showed up before Oliver, it was because his truck was out of commission and he walked, miscalculating the amount of time he’d need to do so.
“Everything okay?” I ask him. He glances over from where he’s pulling on his oilers. He looks surprised by the question, and I’m already wishing I hadn’t asked it. It’s none of my business.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he explains.
“A lot of that going around last night,” I agree, mumbling the words under my breath. Nils huffs a laugh.
We settle in to work after that, two tired, antisocial lobster fishermen waiting for their probably well-slept, chatty coworker.
Ten minutes later, Oliver arrives. We hear him before we see him, Nils glancing up and toward the end of the dock when the breeze carries a hum to us.
Oliver truly is incapable of being quiet.
“What the heck?” he asks once he gets to the boat, dropping his cooler down and looking between me and Nils incredulously. My mood brightens slightly.
“You’re late,” I joke, which earns me another soft puff of air from Nils that means he found me funny. Oliver narrows his eyes at me.
“About time you lazy sods showed up on time,” he grumbles, hopping on board and passing over the cooler to Nils, who had immediately walked to help him.
I consider dragging things out a little bit to wait for Roy, who still hasn’t shown up.
I was hoping to speak to him this morning.
Counting on it, really. Roy and I were never ones to argue or fight.
In fact, there were a few occasions when I thought a spat with him would be nice.
Never once did it happen, though, so even after two years of being together, I don’t have any idea how to handle this situation.
Two years of easygoing hadn’t prepared me for the fight last night, nor for how to deal with it this morning.
Truthfully, nothing in my life has been adequate preparation for the fight last night.
My grandfather once told me never go to bed angry, only for my mother to turn around and tell me that was bullshit advice.
“Go to bed angry,” she advised, shaking her head and sending a look toward my dad that I didn’t understand as a boy. “The problems that seemed large might look a little different after a good night of rest.”
Which is all well and good, I suppose, if one did get a good night of rest. Unfortunately, my sleepless night has only made me more annoyed, more angry, and, funnily enough, less hurt.
My first thought this morning hadn’t been one of reconciliation with Roy or Ewan; it had been fuck them.
How dare Roy make the last two years out to be nothing, and how dare Ewan come back and prove that they were.
“Ready?” Nils asks, bringing my gaze away from the opposite side of the pier, where Roy’s boat is docked.
He hasn’t arrived, and if he wasn’t the sort of person to treat a work schedule with the same disregard as he treats everything else, I might wonder if he were avoiding me.
As it is, I doubt he cares enough to put in the effort needed for avoidance. He’s likely just late.
“Yeah,” I agree on a sigh. “I’m ready.”
It’s a fine day on the water, with Oliver’s good mood lifting my own.
I even catch Nils, who is known for going a full day on the boat without speaking a word, smiling and chatting several times.
This only seems to spur Oliver on, and he attaches himself to Nils like a barnacle, working closely together and keeping up a steady stream of talk.
Lunch is the only time he seems to slow down, which means it’s also the first time all day that I find myself thinking of Ewan.
It’s easy out here to pretend he’s not around.
The population on the Drifter is three, with no room left to spare for Ewan or Roy or anyone else.
But at home? In the kitchen, where I can no longer sit without thinking about the person who’d sat there a week ago?
There is simply no pretending away the fact that Ewan Fate is back in town, and I have no idea what I’m meant to do.
It feels like I can’t move through the town without looking over my shoulder, can’t step into a shop or hike one of the trails without wondering if I’ll run into him.
My penchant for going home and staying there at the end of the day has gotten exponentially and somewhat embarrassingly worse this past week.
I’m hiding from him, whether I mean to or not.
He has, in many ways, driven me underground.
And honestly, after the circus yesterday evening, I’m pretty much planning on continuing that behavior until he leaves again.
Because that’s the real problem with him coming back.
Coming home. It’s not his home any longer, not in any sort of permanent way, that is.
I want so badly to spend time with him and to learn what his life looks like now, but even stronger is the fear of what’s going to happen when he inevitably leaves again.
The last time Ewan Fate left town, I lost a best friend and gained a broken heart; I got five of the loneliest years of my life and two that were just close enough to good to make me wonder what was missing.
It didn’t help that I suspected I knew exactly what was missing and was well aware of the fact that it was something I could never have.
I don’t want to do it again. I can’t.
“Shiloh?” Nils’ voice snaps me out of my reverie. I meet his eye.
“Sorry, what?”
“You good, boss?” Oliver asks, one eye squinted shut as he looks my way with the sun blinding him from behind me.
“Yeah. Sorry, Oli. Distracted. What did you say?”
“I met that new guy the other day, Ewan? Nils went to school with him.” Oliver smiles over at Nils, who either doesn’t notice or pretends not to see. After a moment, Oliver looks back at me and continues. “You guys were friends?”
“Yeah, we were friends,” I agree.
Oliver, whose family straddled the county lines of Siren’s Point, didn’t attend our school system.
I’d never met the man until the day he showed up looking for a job.
Nils, on the other hand, was a grade above me and Ewan, although we had very little to do with him.
I don’t imagine Nils has many fond memories of school.
Not like me, with my every recollection shiny with love and joy and Ewan.
If I’d been less of a selfish teenage boy, I might have made more of an effort with Nils, might have heard the talk and stood up for him, instead of leaving him to fend for himself.
But I didn’t, and Ewan didn’t either. We saw nothing but each other.
“That’s cool. I’m not friends with anyone from high school any longer,” Oliver comments, pouring some trail mix into his hand before tipping it into his mouth. “Are you guys all going to get together?”
I glance at Nils. Oliver is apparently under the impression the three of us were close friends, while the unfortunate truth is that Nils didn’t have any close friends. At least not any that I knew of. He stays silent, calmly eating his lunch and avoiding Oliver’s curious gaze.
“Maybe,” I reply noncommittally. I don’t think my sad excuse for an imagination could come up with anything worse than some sort of high school reunion.
“Maybe not,” Nils corrects. Oliver looks between us, chewing.
“Well, that’s nice he’s back in town for a bit. I guess he’s an artist. I looked up some of his stuff last night—it’s really good. He’s talented.”
I nod. He is. Even more so now that he’s been making a career of it.
Nothing will ever beat that first piece he put up for sale, though.
Not for me. Not when I can look at it and see the cove, the little cave we spent so much time in together, and the shine of the sea.
I doubt anyone else but me and him could look at that painting and see Naiad Cove, and maybe that’s not even what the piece is meant to be.
It feels like it is, though. Every time I look at it, it feels like home and safety and the smell of the sun on warm skin painted into the canvas in shades of gray and green.
Maybe one day, I’ll be brave enough to ask Ewan about it.