7. Tess #2
Her hand stopped on the mesh. Diesel drifted through the service window from the fuel pumps, mixing with thawing ballyhoo and old bleach until the air in the room turned suddenly hostile.
She straightened and put one palm against the table.
The net stayed half inside the freezer.
For several moments, Tess stared at a smear of melted ice crawling toward the floor drain and refused to move. The heat under the roof clung to her skin. Fish oil coated the air. Reaching back into the freezer right now guaranteed she would be sick.
Five buckets. Get through five more and then sit down.
That bargain had worked yesterday.
It had worked the day before that, too.
Tess kept her hand on the table until the smell stopped demanding her full attention.
The pregnancy had begun inserting itself into her workday in small, inconvenient ambushes—certain foods, certain mornings, certain combinations of heat and fuel.
She could not stop the interruptions, but she could refuse to build her schedule around them.
A stack of carbon receipts waited beside the register.
Administrative work required less lifting.
She released the table and crossed to the counter, pulling the receipt book toward her. The top page carried three charter orders she had already marked for the morning run, and she still needed to assign bait to the next departure before the captain started complaining.
Sully’s voice came through the open window.
“Tess! Tourists are melting out here!”
She picked up the pen. “Then sell them sunscreen.”
“I’m serious. Need two flats of rigged ballyhoo up front.”
“Working on it.”
“You’ve got a charter stacked behind the fuel dock.”
Tess ran the pen down the order sheet, checked the notation beside the slip number, then glanced back at the open freezer. The abandoned net still hung over the rim, dripping onto the floor.
“Give me a minute,” she called. “I’m clearing the prep station before I send anything through that window.”
“A minute turns into five with you.”
“Then stop counting.”
A grunt came from outside, followed by the scrape of a fuel hose being pulled across concrete.
Tess set the pen down and returned to the freezer. The fish smell still carried teeth, but it no longer owned the room. She hauled the waiting net free, slid it onto the table, and shoved the lid down with her forearm.
One task.
Then the next.
The baby did not need luxury suites or a mansion with rooms nobody used. It needed rent paid, groceries covered, and money that existed because Tess had earned it herself.
She wiped her palm on the side of her shorts and returned to the counter.
Then she went back to work.
The receipt book stayed open beside Tess’s elbow while she worked through the next order.
A cluster of commercial chum buckets still blocked the aisle between the prep table and the back door, their sides filmed with condensation and bait residue.
She had been stepping around them since breakfast rather than waste the strength required to move them.
A man stepped into the doorway wearing a pair of work gloves. He was tall, sun-browned from the docks, and dressed like he had spent the morning inside an outboard engine. Two-stroke grease stained the thigh of his jeans and smeared along the hem of his shirt.
He stripped the gloves off, the Velcro rasping, then wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.
“You need through this aisle?”
Tess glanced at the buckets. “Eventually.”
“Those yours to move?”
“Unfortunately.”
The man looked from the bottom containers to the narrow strip of floor Tess had left herself. He stopped short of her work space.
“Name’s Briggs. I’m down the dock on outboard repairs.”
“Tess.”
“Figured.” He nodded toward the front counter. “Sully’s been hollering your name across the fuel pumps for weeks.”
“That’s his preferred management style.”
Briggs gave a short laugh and looked back at the buckets. “You want those shifted?”
Tess capped the pen and left it beside the receipt book. The lowest containers were the problem. Each one held enough frozen chum to make its handle bow when Sully dragged it off the delivery pallet, and the nausea earlier had killed her urge to prove something stupid.
“Depends where you’re putting them.”
“By the exit work?”
“That clears the prep station.”
Briggs reached for his gloves again, then stopped. “Hand truck’s outside if you want me to load the bottom two onto it.”
The offer came without an order attached.
No reaching past her. No grabbing the first thing in sight and rearranging the room because he had decided he knew better.
Tess braced herself against the edge of the counter. “Honestly, yes. Please.”
Briggs tugged his gloves back on. “Good. I’ve watched you stare at those things since I came in.”
“I was developing a strategy.”
“Looked like avoidance.”
“It was a very advanced strategy.”
He was still grinning as he crouched beside the first bucket. Tess stayed out of the aisle and let him work.
Briggs hooked both hands beneath the handle and lifted the container against his chest. The bucket cleared the floor effortlessly. He carried it toward the exit and set it down beside the wall without touching the bait table, freezer, or anything else Tess had arranged.
One gone.
The open strip of floor already looked twice as wide.
He came back for the second.
“You always stack them this close to the table?” he asked.
“Delivery showed up before I had room anywhere else.”
“Fair.”
He gripped the next handle and lifted. The handle bowed under the load, but the bucket stayed level as he carried it toward the first.
Tess watched him place it beside the other instead of dropping it wherever it was easiest. “Little farther right.”
Briggs shifted it.
“Perfect.”
“That all of them?”
“For today.”
He wiped sweat from his temple again. “Say the word next time the big inventory piles up. I’ve got a hand truck thirty yards down the dock.”
Tess looked at the cleared aisle.
Back in her old life, help usually arrived with ownership buried inside it.
A chauffeur meant somebody tracked the destination.
A handler carrying a bag meant Marcus had already decided where she was going.
Every favor had come with a schedule, a camera, or a reason she should be grateful enough to stop asking questions.
Briggs had moved two buckets.
That was it.
“You do this for everyone?” she asked.
“Move things?”
“Offer before taking over.”
He glanced toward the table. “It’s your station.”
Simple answer.
No performance behind it.
Tess picked up the pen again. “Good policy.”
“Cuts down on getting yelled at.”
“That too.”
Briggs tugged off his remaining glove, stuffed the pair into his back pocket, and stepped back toward the doorway. “If Sully sends another pallet in here, flag me down before you throw your back out trying to win an argument with plastic.”
“I wasn’t arguing with them.”
“You were losing pretty badly.”
Tess looked at the cleared floor, then at him. “Careful. I control the receipt book. I could charge you double for bait.”
“That sounds illegal.”
“Then behave.”
A grin crossed his face as he backed through the doorway. “Good to meet you, Tess.”
“You too, Briggs.”
He headed toward the outboard slips, leaving the doorway open behind him.
Tess returned to the counter. The freezer still needed sorting, Sully still had customers stacked near the pumps, and the room still smelled like bait and diesel.
But the aisle was clear.
For once, the favor ended exactly where the favor was supposed to end.