Chapter 3
The Station Chef, Theo, was at the industrial sink when we pushed through the door, sleeves rolled to the elbows, a stack of sheet pans waiting beside him.
“Right on time.” He jerked his chin toward the far end of the counter. “Pots need scrubbing. Trays need drying and stacking. Floor needs a sweep after.”
Sam pulled an apron off the hook. I grabbed the one next to his and tied it around my waist. The pots were large and heavy and they had the scorched residue of afternoon’s lunch baked into the bottom.
I ran the hot water and worked the scrubber in tight circles while Sam picked up a clean dish towel and started on the tray stack.
We stood side by side working in comfortable silence. Waypoint Station was so small that everyone needed to pitch in with volunteer duties. Kitchen, dock, plumbing, supply ship unloading — whatever the task called for.
“Remind me to pack the extra battery pack for my laptop,” I muttered to Sam.
“Okay.”
I turned the pot and worked on the far side. The scrubber caught on a rough patch and I leaned into it. Maybe he should have taken the pot. All those muscles of his would be of more use than mine. “And the drone. I almost forgot the drone last season.”
“Okay.”
The extractor fan above the range pushed warm air down across the counter. Outside the small galley window small flurries lazily floated down from the sky.
“You two.” Theo leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. “Special dinner request for the trip. What do you want?”
Sam lifted a tray and set it on the stack. “Anything is fine, Chef.”
I looked up from the pot, wiping the sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. “No. Anything is not fine.” I pointed the scrubber at Sam. “He likes pasta.”
Theo looked at Sam. Sam looked at the tray stack.
“And what about you?” Theo asked me.
I grinned. “I like what Sam likes.”
Sam rolled his eyes, picked up another tray, and didn’t join us.
“Pasta.” I nodded emphatically. “Is it not funny that pasta is the American comfort food?”
“You know it’s Italian in origin, right?” Theo asked me.
“Da. But I have Italian friends who eat less pasta in a month than my American colleagues eat in a week.”
Theo laughed and pushed off the counter. “I’m not getting into that. Pasta it is.”
I went back to the pot and turned it over and checked the bottom. It still looked scorched. “I hate this pot,” I grumbled.
“Want help?” Sam asked.
“No. It’s war now. And I’m not backing down.” I applied some more elbow grease.
“I have your back,” Sam replied in his usual flat tone.
I looked up in delight. That was a joke! Mr. Beckett had decided to grace me with one!
“Did you pack your first aid kit yet?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“Not the boat kit?”
“Not that one.”
I focused on the stubborn pot for the next five minutes straight.
“Oh! Hey! Look!” I held it up proudly.
Sam and Theo looked at me together.
“Looks brand new,” Theo gave me a thumbs up and a grin.
I glanced at Sam.
“Passable.”
“Fuck off!” I hit him with the pot but he ducked and evaded me. I went after him only to have Theo block my way.
“Go back to work,” he said sternly like I was a particularly difficult student in his classroom.
***
Friday night at Waypoint meant movie night in the R&R lounge, and movie night meant war.
That evening we heard it before we even pushed through the door — raised voices bouncing off the low ceiling, two clear factions. Sam and I shrugged off our parkas and hung them on the hooks by the entrance.
The lounge was warm from the number of bodies already packed into it, the bar pushed to one side to make room, mismatched armchairs and the long couch arranged in a rough horseshoe facing the wall screen.
This was one of the facts of life at Waypoint Station that incoming personnel were warned about in their pre-deployment paperwork.
No streaming.
We were so remotely located that bandwidth was limited — sanctioned for research only.
The lounge ran on a stockpile of DVDs. Everyone who came to the station knew to load their hard drives with movies and shows. On Friday nights the station had a vote on what went on the screen.
Tonight the fight was between Die Hard 4 and John Wick 4. Both sides had committed entirely.
I leaned into Sam’s shoulder. “Which one?”
He rubbed his jaw, considering it with the same expression he gave weather forecasts and equipment checks. “John Wick.”
I turned and walked into the group huddled by the TV screen and raised my voice. “John Wick! John Wick!”
Sam walked past me and dropped into the far end of the couch. Such petty things were beneath his highness.
The debate ran another ten minutes. Someone produced a scoring algorithm on a whiteboard — points for rewatch value, points for action-to-plot ratio, points for runtime — and the math came out in John Wick’s favor.
The Die Hard contingent relocated to the bar end of the room with their drinks, maintaining a dignified silence.
I dropped onto the couch next to Sam with a huge grin. The room settled. The bar end quieted. Someone killed the overhead lights. The screen flickered on.
Outside the R&R windows the harbor was awash in the twilight glow of the night sun of Antarctica. Inside, the only sounds were the movie and the low hum of the station doing what stations do at night — running, cycling, keeping everyone alive in the cold.
At some point in the second act I shifted.
The cushion was deep and the room was warm and the week had been long.
My head found Sam’s shoulder and came to rest there.
His arm moved. It came up and around me, settling across my back, pulling me closer into his side. He did not look away from the screen.
I did not look away from the screen either.
It was not the first time we had watched something like this together. Back in Alaska, Sam had no television of his own and most nights we had ended up in my bedroom with the small TV set propped on the dresser. Sam loved baseball and was completely unhinged about it.
I had found the sport incomprehensible and boring as hell. A man threw a ball. Another man hit it or didn’t. Everyone stood around waiting. It was so slow.
But Sam — Sam who never raised his voice, who delivered bad news and good news in the same flat register — would watch that stupid sport with his entire body. He would lean forward and argue with the screen.
I had watched Sam more than the game.
My revenge had been ice hockey. The first time I had come to know he had no idea about my dear sport, I had sat him down in front of a playoff game and delivered a full explanation of the rules — icing, offside, the trapezoid behind the net, the difference between a hooking penalty and a holding penalty.
To his credit, Sam had sat through the entire forty minutes and by the time I was done, he had every single rule memorized.
Obviously, that hadn’t helped with my growing crush on him.
On the couch in the R&R lounge, I nestled further against his warmth.
“Want to go to bed?” Sam’s low voice against my ear gave me goosebumps.
“Nah.”
“You’re falling asleep. C’mon.”
“Nah.”
I didn’t tell him that leaving would mean missing out on time with him. This was the only opportunity I had nowadays to be with him in this way.