Chapter Seven
“So, let me get this straight—you’re going to work at a summer camp with a shit ton of little kids—for the rest of the summer?
” Gannett asks, amusement clearly written all over his face, as he bands up the last of our haul.
Obviously, he’s been working out here on the water too long, because he doesn’t even bother trying to find another set of protective gloves to keep from getting pinched by a claw.
He just handed me his and carried on raw-dog.
Something tells me my sister-in-law, Sarah, would be a little upset if he lost the tips of a few of his fingers out here, but I’m not his mommy. Fuck around and find out is a love language my younger brother, four years my junior, is fluent in. Just ask our actual mother.
“Problem with that?” I quiz him. “Not like I’m the one dealing with the rugrats, just their aftermath.”
Gannett snorts. “Your old ass couldn’t handle any more rugrats. Not after that hellion you raised.”
He has no idea I’d always hoped for more. Maybe not as many as are all slated to be at the camp, but I’d always wanted two or three kids. Miranda was content with one, however. Either that, or she was just done trying with me.
I toss my banded lobster in the live-well and narrow my eyes at my brother. “Not like you were any better at his age. Hell, you might have even been worse. Besides, you try being a single parent, and tell me how well you’d do, asshole.”
He chuckles at that. “Nah, hell no. I know I’m in for it with just my girls.
I couldn’t do it alone. Once Tati and Terra are out of diapers, I’ll be too busy sitting on my front porch, shotgun on my lap, batting off teenage boys like yours left and right.
The old lady’s gonna have to stick around to make sure supper’s on the table every night and the house is kept up. ”
I roll my eyes. I’d never tell Gan this, but his traditionalist way of thinking could land him being handed divorce papers, just like I once had been.
Miranda couldn’t stand being seen as my ‘old lady’ as many wives around here, regardless of their age, are referred to as.
I can’t see Sarah sticking around just to be likened to a fifties ‘happy housewife’, as Miranda had once been looked at as, despite her having her own highly respected career and being a young mother.
Lord knows he’d never listen to me if I warned him, anyway. Despite it being the perfect ‘I told you so’ scenario, he’ll just have to fuck around and find out for himself. And Christ, wouldn’t it be funny to watch Gan shit a brick trying to raise twin toddlers on his own?
He’s silent for a bit as he bands up a couple more lobsters, then he ponders, “Isn’t that camp run by a couple of queers?”
Queers. I instantly stiffen at the word—or rather, the tone he just took when saying it. I fumble and drop the lobster I was banding. He must take note of that, judging by the way his eyebrow quirks up at me.
“Where’d you hear that?” I ask, sidestepping the dig.
“Guys were yakkin’ about it at Portside last night.
You know ole’ drama-obsessed Gordy, he likes stirring the pot at his own watering hole for the hell of it.
Dad was bitchin’ about how he’d finally got you to start working the family business, and now you’re runnin’ off to go spend the summer with a bunch of—”
“Could you not?” I grunt at him, effectively cutting him off before he can finish that statement for fear I might end up getting so pissed off I introduce my knuckles to his beak in an unfriendly way.
“What?” he asks, genuinely curious, like he can’t see the harm in the condescending tone and the derogatory language he used to refer to Brooks and Kai.
I rather like Brooks, and I find myself inexplicably magnetized to him. And I also may not have the best impression of Kai, but it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with his sexual orientation. It’s his shit-disturbing attitude. It’s the underhanded shit he says that cuts Brooks down.
“I told Dad that you were probably just going to make sure they don’t turn Colt gay too or someth—”
“Enough!” I growl, cutting him off again.
“I’m going because I…” I trail off, because why did I agree to go work for Brooks?
That, I truly don’t have an answer to, other than it being a gut feeling.
“The camp is a grief camp; they help kids who have suffered through immense loss, not turn them gay. I’m there because I saw Brooks needed help, and I am in a position to help him. That’s all.”
He snorts. “Alright, defensive. Sounds like someone’s got a cru-ush,” he teases.
“Alright, you need to stop,” I grit out.
“Seriously? You’re getting all worked up, like I give a fuck. You know me, dude. As long as they ain’t tryin’ to hit on me, I don’t give a shit.”
Coulda fooled me.
Sounds like he gives a dump truck full of shit.
As does everyone else in this town. They all give a shit about everyone’s business.
They all make their business known, too.
Ternbay is a place where there’s a strong community of front-porch sitters, who just fucking love their gossip.
Thankfully, I haven’t been a part of the rumor mill for nearly two decades.
Probably because I’ve spent my life practically in hiding.
It’s a community—not unlike many others all over this state—with such a limited world view, that they’ve shit on everything from the natural food market that those ‘new age hippies’ opened in town a few years back, to the fact that within the last decade the old textile mill down on the ocean got developed into luxury loft apartments, so all those dreaded flatlanders could move into town—mucking up the place.
Oh, and when someone hung a rainbow flag on their porch one year, right next to where a “Proud Parent of a US Soldier” flag also hung—you would have thought they’d committed a felony.
It’s not just homophobic, it’s anything progressive phobic, really. Any form of family that isn’t the typical white picket fence American standard is looked at with a hell of a lot of scrutiny.
Not knowing how truly Gannett means that ‘I don’t give a shit’ comment, I resort back to a response more befitting of us—brotherly banter. “Trust me, I don’t think you have to worry about them hitting on your ugly mug.”
He flings an elastic at me, and it lands, striking me in the forehead. “Piss off, big brother. I’m more of a catch than you are.”
I chuckle now. “The fuck you are. I’ve already earned the nickname hot stuff.”
“Oh yeah? You gonna finally admit you’re ready to get back into the ‘single and ready to mingle’ scene again? This time screwin’ around with another dude?” He snorts sarcastically, waggling his eyebrows.
No chance, not with Kai, but just for posterity's sake…
“What if I did?” I fix him with a hard look. “What would you say to that, huh? Would you give me a bunch of shit?”
He rears back with a quizzical look. “Probably not, you’re my brother. But bro—you ain’t into dudes. Are you? I honestly can’t tell if you’re fuckin’ with me right now…”
I shrug, putting on a blasé affect. I should tell him. The door has already been opened, all I’d have to do is say the words...
Fucking stop it. There is nothing to say. It’s not you; it can never be you. Maybe before Miranda, if you had the balls then, but that ship has now sailed.
Gannett studies me a bit, studies so hard, that he doesn’t notice, until it’s too late, that a lobster is poised to clamp his finger in between its crusher claw.
“Fuck!” he bellows, the echo reverberates around the cove. “Fuck! Ev, get it off me!” He flails his hand around wildly, the lobster going along for a hell of a ride.
His middle finger is as purple as a rotten plum by the time I pry the crustacean off. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t broken. That had to hurt like a bastard, but I can’t help but smirk to myself as he stomps around the deck, clutching his finger to his chest, howling in pain.
Looks like little broski just fucked all the way around and found the hell out.
Serves his ass right.
“‘Nother bourbon?” Gordy grunts at me, as he slides a few pint glasses of piss-yellow cheap beer down the row to my dad, Gannett, and the rest of the old cronies.
“Sure.”
He taps the bartop and heads down to pour me another round.
I always get a feeling of sick satisfaction seeing him work the bar instead of in the MLB.
Makes me feel not so bad about having to work on the boat with my own father, since Gordy ended up having to come back to Ternbay to take over his own father’s establishment, after his dad passed.
Outwardly, Gordy and I appear to have a lot in common.
Both single dads to teenage boys. After my seasonal gig, we’ll both be stuck in Ternbay, working a family business that we have no interest in.
Both had to give up our dreams to stay behind and raise families.
Both bachelors, since Trista-Lynn divorced his ass when she realized he was never going to make it as a famous baseball player.
Both going absolutely fucking nowhere in life.
By all appearances, we should be buddies—and we used to be, a lifetime ago—but now we’re far from it.
I keep things civil with him whenever I come here though, only because I’d hate to see Wagner and Gan kicked out and not allowed back, because I smashed a beer bottle into Gordy’s shitty face for haunting me all these years.
“Ay! Taryn! Get your ass back here; we need more clean glasses!” I hear him bellow out to his son, who is out bussing tables at just a year younger than Colt.
Then he sets my drink down on the coaster in front of me.
“Fuckin’ kids,” he mutters to me. “No one knows what hard work is anymore, do they?”
Hold up—is Gordy actually trying to make conversation with me?
I nod, even though I am starting to disagree—at least when it comes to my son anyway.
The past couple days at camp, I have watched him work damn hard.
I don’t think it was just for show either.
There were a few times he didn’t know I was watching, and he’d just start barking out orders to his new coworkers the same way he does calling plays out on the football field.
With Morgan at his side, he appears to have taken a vested interest in the camp.
Inwardly, I hope that Gordy doesn’t realize that my son has been complicit in vandalizing this place for a bit now.
One would think he has to know, but then again, Gordy always has been one beer short of a six-pack.
Probably poor taste to go with that particular euphemism, actually, because I believe he truly is an alcoholic—just like his old man was.
Let’s just say the lights are on, but no one’s home, if you know what I mean.
“Christ, I had him out front of the pub, slathering on a fresh coat a paint to cover up that graffiti, and he acted like I was beatin’ him with a switch.
Fuckin’ kid doesn’t know how lucky he has it sometimes, I swear.
Kid doesn’t even know half the shit I had to go through as punishment, when I was his age. ”
“Punishment?” I ask. Then, because I want to know if he suspects Colt, I tack on, “Was Taryn the one that spray-painted the place?”
Gordy gives me a sardonic roll of his eyes. “What? Do I look dumber than a box of rocks to you? No, of course he didn’t do it.”
“Then why is it his punishment?”
“Because I know who did, and I know why he did it,” he says cryptically. “And I know my son was the one who instigated it all. It ain’t right, and Taryn needs to atone for his actions, even though he didn’t actually vandalize the place.”
“I see…” I hum, though I don’t. Not really, anyway.
“Do you now?” He narrows his eyes at me.
“Look, Gordy,” I sigh, the insinuation being clear as day. “I don’t really want to get into it here with you. I can pay you back for what Colt did, but I’m hanging on by a thread with him.”
“I don’t want your money. Like I said, Taryn fucked up. I don’t need him walking the same path I did. He needs to learn that his actions have consequences.”
I snort, tipping back the glass and downing the rest of my drink. “That’s real cute, coming from you, Masterson,” I huff.
His lips thin into a line, as he rolls them between his teeth.
He taps the bartop again, and as he walks away, he says over his shoulder, “People change, Waters. You can’t know how much people hurt just by looking at ‘em. They’re like glaciers, where only the tip of the iceberg sits above the water.
There’s so much below the surface. Sometimes, they get help and learn from their mistakes. ”