2. 2
“Pull it in!” Victor laughed as Brandon yanked back on the pole. “That’s it, son. Keep the tip up.”
“I’m trying!”
“Well, try harder.”
“Very helpful!”
I laughed as Brandon fought with the rod, leaning backward as though whatever was on the other end might drag him straight into the lake.
Victor stood beside him, grinning as he reached for the net.
For all of Brandon’s dramatic effort, the fish that finally broke the surface wasn’t exactly a monster.
It flashed silver-green in the sunlight, thrashing at the end of the line while Brandon whooped like he’d landed a shark.
“There you go!” Victor called.
Brandon beamed as he reeled it closer, and Victor leaned over the side with the net. He scooped the trout out of the water and brought it onto the boat, where it immediately began flopping across the deck.
“Jesus!” Brandon jumped back.
“What?” I laughed. “Afraid it’s going to get you?”
“Shut up.”
Victor laughed too. “Careful. They go for the throat.”
“See? Dad gets it.”
Something about hearing him say it made me pause. Dad. Not my father, which was how Brandon usually referred to Victor when he was angry. Not him. Just Dad, tossed out without thought while he stood in the sun grinning over a fish that probably wasn’t even big enough to keep.
Victor either didn’t notice or was smart enough not to make anything of it.
He crouched over the trout, gripping it carefully behind the head while he worked the hook loose with a pair of needle-nose pliers.
A moment later, he lifted it over the side and lowered it gently into the lake.
The fish disappeared in a flash of silver, its tail slapping the surface hard enough to splash water across my bare legs.
I squealed and jumped back.
Brandon laughed. “It got you!”
“Apparently they do go for the throat.”
“Ankles first,” Victor said as he stood and wiped his wet hands on his shorts. “That’s how they bring you down.”
I laughed with them, and for a few seconds the three of us standing there together felt almost absurdly normal. We’d been on the lake for more than an hour, and nothing terrible had happened.
When Brandon first suggested going out on the boat, I’d almost found an excuse to stay behind.
The thought of spending several hours trapped in a small space with Victor had made my stomach tighten, but staying at the cabin alone somehow felt worse.
It would have been obvious I was avoiding him, and I didn’t want Brandon wondering why.
So I'd gone upstairs to change and immediately rejected the bikini I'd packed.
I'd actually picked it up before imagining myself wearing it in front of Victor, and that had been enough.
I shoved it back into my bag and chose denim shorts and a tank top instead.
It wasn't exactly modest, but at least I didn't feel like I was deliberately putting myself on display.
Not that Victor seemed interested in looking.
That should have made everything easier, and mostly it did.
He had barely spoken to me since we'd left the dock.
He wasn't rude and didn't ignore me completely.
He'd asked if I wanted water when he opened the cooler, warned me when the boat rocked as Brandon moved from one side to the other, and once pointed out a heron circling above the trees on the far shore.
But that was it. No lingering looks or suggestive comments, nothing that acknowledged what had happened between us that morning. Instead, Victor focused almost entirely on his son.
He showed Brandon how deep they were fishing and explained why he'd picked this part of the lake.
Brandon made fun of him for having three different tackle boxes when most of the lures looked exactly the same, which led to a surprisingly passionate defense from Victor about spoons and spinners that I understood absolutely none of.
From there they drifted into college, Brandon's job, and some restaurant near campus that Brandon insisted had the best wings in the state.
Anything except the past.
The longer I listened, the more I realized Victor was doing it deliberately.
He wasn't asking Brandon to forgive him or trying to explain what had happened with his mother.
He wasn't defending himself or pushing for some grand reconciliation.
He was simply talking to his son, and Brandon was letting him.
I sat near the front of the boat with my face turned toward the sun and watched the two of them argue over whether Brandon had lost a fish because of bad luck or because he had no idea what he was doing. For the first time since we'd arrived, Brandon didn't look angry.
He looked happy, and the warmth that spread through my chest was immediately followed by something heavier.
This was why I'd come. When Brandon asked me to spend the weekend at his father's cabin, I'd wanted exactly this.
I wanted him to stop carrying all that anger around.
I wanted him to discover that maybe he and Victor could find something underneath all the bitterness, even if it wasn't the relationship they'd had before his parents' divorce.
And somehow, impossibly, it was happening.
“Your turn.”
I looked up to find Brandon holding the fishing rod toward me. “No.”
He grinned. “Come on.”
“I am perfectly happy watching you two murder innocent worms.”
“We're using lures.”
“Even worse. You're deceiving the fish.”
Victor snorted from behind the wheel, but Brandon ignored him and pushed the rod toward me.
“Come on, Zoe. You haven't even tried.”
“I don't know how.”
“Neither does he,” Victor said.
Brandon turned toward him. “Whose side are you on?”
“The fish.”
I laughed and finally took the rod. “Fine. But when I fall overboard, you're explaining it to my mother.”
Brandon moved behind me and reached around to adjust my hands on the grip, his chest warm against my back as he repositioned my fingers. “First, stop holding it like you're trying to strangle it.”
“I've seen you fish. I'm pretty sure strangling is part of the technique.”
“Just relax.” He shifted my hand lower on the grip. “Gentle. You should know how to handle a rod by now.”
I twisted around to stare at him. “Brandon!”
His grin widened, and despite myself, I laughed. The warmth of him behind me and the stupid joke felt wonderfully familiar, until embarrassment prickled across my cheeks and I glanced toward Victor.
Victor stood behind the wheel with his attention on the water, either oblivious to what Brandon had said or deliberately pretending to be. Somehow, his indifference made me more self-conscious than if he'd laughed.
“You're an idiot,” I muttered, turning back toward the lake.
Brandon laughed and kissed the side of my head, and I couldn't help smiling as I settled back against him.
He kept his arms around me as he showed me how to work the lure through the water, telling me when to reel, when to stop, and how I was apparently moving the rod too much, then not enough, then somehow wrong in an entirely new way.
“You're enjoying this way too much.”
“I'm a natural teacher.”
“You caught one fish.”
“One more than you.”
“So far.”
“There we go. That's the spirit.”
I tried whatever adjustment he was making to my hands and shook my head. “You are the worst teacher I've ever had.”
“You're a difficult student.”
“I told you I didn't want to do this.”
“And yet you're having fun.”
I opened my mouth to argue before realizing he was right. I was having fun. I leaned back against him for a second, smiling when he kissed the side of my head, and when I glanced toward Victor, he was watching the water instead of us.
Something small twisted inside me.
It was ridiculous. Victor was doing exactly what I wanted him to do, exactly what he should be doing.
Whatever had happened in the shower had been a mistake, and apparently he understood that better than I did.
He wasn't trying to get me alone or finding excuses to touch me.
He wasn't looking at me in that way that made my stomach tighten.
He was spending time with his son. I should have been relieved, and I was.
Mostly.
The rod suddenly jerked in my hands, nearly pulling the tip toward the water.
“You got one!” Brandon shouted, immediately crowding in behind me.
“What do I do?”
“Reel! Keep the tip up.”
I cranked the handle while trying to remember everything he'd spent the last ten minutes telling me. “I am!”
“No, the tip. Keep the end of the rod up.”
“I know what a tip is, Brandon!”
Victor laughed from behind us. “Let her do it. You're going to make her lose the damn fish.”
“She doesn't know what she's doing.”
“Neither did you twenty minutes ago.”
I shot Brandon a triumphant look over my shoulder. “Thank you, Victor.”
“You're welcome, Zoe.”
Hearing my name from him caught me off guard. I glanced toward Victor automatically, but he'd already turned his attention to the water and was reaching for the net.
My fish turned out to be even smaller than Brandon's, but the second Victor scooped it onto the boat, I threw both hands into the air. “Yes!”
Brandon stared at me. “You made fun of mine!”
“Mine has personality.”
“Zoe, it's six inches long.”
“Don't body-shame my fish.”
Victor laughed so hard he nearly missed it with the net.
By the time he got the trout onto the boat, all three of us were laughing.
Brandon insisted we needed photographic evidence, so I crouched beside Victor while he held the fish and Brandon took a picture.
Victor was close enough that our shoulders almost touched, and I was acutely aware of the tiny space between us.
He handed me the fish carefully, showing me where to hold it so I wouldn't hurt it, and his fingers brushed mine for barely a second. There was nothing suggestive about the touch, nothing anyone else would have noticed, but I felt it anyway.
I hated that I felt it.
Then the trout wriggled violently in my hands. I shrieked and nearly dropped it, Brandon burst out laughing, and whatever strange tension had crept into the moment vanished as I threatened to throw the fish at him.
Victor helped me lower it into the water, and after the trout disappeared beneath the surface, I wiped my wet hands on my shorts and returned to my seat. After that, I stopped watching Victor. Or at least I tried to.
The afternoon slipped by easily. Brandon caught another fish and lost two more. I didn't catch anything else, although I claimed mine had scared all the others away. We ate sandwiches from the cooler, drank sodas, and drifted across the lake beneath a sky so blue it looked almost artificial.
Somewhere along the way, I really relaxed. The tightness I'd been carrying since the shower slowly disappeared, and every minute Victor didn't acknowledge what had happened made it easier to believe he never would.
Maybe that was all this was. A huge, terrible, unforgivable mistake, but still a mistake. Victor had wanted me, I'd let him have me, and now it was over.
Except there was a part of me that didn't like how easily he seemed to have moved on.
I hated myself for feeling it almost as much as I hated him for making me feel it.
After everything he'd done to get me into that shower, after the way he'd pursued me, he could apparently turn it off whenever he wanted.
It made me feel used.
Then I looked at Brandon sitting beside his father, listening while Victor explained something about the boat's controls. Brandon nodded and asked a question, and Victor pointed toward one of the gauges. Watching them together made my resentment feel small and selfish, and I let it go.
This was better. Of course it was better. Whatever Victor and I had done mattered less than this.
It had to.
By the time we headed back, the sun had started its slow descent toward the trees. Brandon stood beside Victor while he guided the boat toward the dock, the two of them still talking, and I sat behind them watching the cabin grow larger in the distance.
Victor eased us alongside the dock, and Brandon jumped out first, caught the line, and secured it to the cleat. I climbed onto the dock while Victor secured the other line. Brandon picked up the cooler, and I fell into step beside him as we started toward the cabin.
“Having fun?” I asked.
He looked at me, and the smile that spread across his face was almost boyish. “Yeah.” He glanced back toward Victor before looking at me again. “It's actually pretty... great.”
I slipped my hand into his. “I'm glad.”
And I meant it. The warmth that filled me was laced with shame, but for the first time all day, the shame didn't overwhelm everything else. Brandon was happy. Victor was trying. Somehow, against all odds, this weekend might actually accomplish what we'd come here for.
Behind us, Victor finished tying off the boat. He straightened and looked toward Brandon.
“Good day,” he said.
Brandon smiled. “Yeah. It was.”
Victor nodded, still looking at his son, and something inside me finally loosened. For those few hours, I'd just been a girlfriend on a boat trip. Not a liar or a traitor, not someone who had fucked her boyfriend's father less than a day after arriving at his cabin.
Just Zoe.
Maybe that was who I could be again. What happened with Victor didn't have to become something bigger or destroy Brandon or ruin whatever fragile thing was beginning to grow between him and his father. Victor seemed to understand that. He'd spent the entire afternoon proving it.
It had happened once. It was over.
And for the first time since I'd stepped into that shower, I believed it.