2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Aileen
By ten o'clock, Lake Mercury is a completely different animal.
The mist is long gone, burned off by a sun that means business, and the water that was glass at dawn is now churned into a chop by a hundred pontoon boats hauling coolers and sunscreen and shrieking children toward the swimming coves.
Somebody's blasting country music. Somebody else is attempting to water-ski and failing spectacularly.
The whole lake smells like gasoline and coconut and, underneath it, the warm yeasty smell of pizza from the dockside place everyone keeps telling me I have to try.
"You look sunburned," Dani says when I duck into Lake Mercury Bait & Tackle to buy ice for my sample coolers. She runs the place, and in the two weeks I've been renting the little apartment above the hardware store, she's decided we're friends.
"I've been on the water since five." I set my coolers down by the ice machine. "I met one of your fishing guides this morning. Forrest?"
Dani's whole face changes. She sets down the reel she's re-spooling and leans across the counter with the focus of a heron that's spotted a minnow.
"Did you?" she says.
"My motor flooded. He fixed it." I fill the first cooler and don't look at her. "Then he ran me up to the north basin so I wouldn't bend a prop."
"He ran you up to the north basin," Dani repeats.
"That's what I said."
"Forrest." She says the name like it's evidence in a trial. "Quiet Forrest. Keeps-to-himself Forrest. Hasn't-taken-a-woman-out-on-that-boat-in-two-years Forrest ran you up to the north basin at six in the morning."
I feel my face go hot and blame the sun. "It's a big lake. He was being neighborly."
"Mm-hmm." Dani goes back to her reel, entirely too pleased. "Sure he was."
I busy myself with the ice and try not to think about the way Forrest looked in the early morning light this morning, one big hand loose on the throttle, watching me with those steady eyes like he had all the time in the world and had decided to spend it on me.
I've met plenty of good-looking men on plenty of lakes.
Men who flirt, men who show off, men who assume that because I'm out here alone in a boat I must be desperate for company.
Forrest didn't do any of that. He fixed my motor, told me the channel was shallow, and called me Doc in a voice like slow water, and then he didn't say another unnecessary word for twenty minutes while he led me safely to my site.
It was the most unsettling thing that's happened to me in years.
"You should get him to run the survey with you," Dani says.
I look up. "What?"
"You need a boat that won't strand you, and someone who knows every sunken tree and shallow bar on this lake.
That's Forrest. He guides all summer anyway—people book him out months ahead.
" She shrugs like she isn't rearranging my whole life.
"The state's paying you to survey this lake fast, right?
You'd cut your time in half with him driving. "
The infuriating thing is, she's right.
The survey contract runs through the end of August. Population counts, tagging, habitat assessment.
It's a lot of water to cover, and the crappy rental boat has already cost me more than two mornings.
I can hire local help. There's even a line in the budget for it.
I just hate needing anyone. I've built an entire career, an entire life, on being the one who shows up, does the work, and moves on to the next lake before anybody learns my coffee order.
My supervisor has also sent me the same email twice.
It’s an offer for a permanent transfer to the district biologist position based in Mercury Ridge, covering Lake Mercury and three smaller lakes year-round.
The offer has been open for two years because nobody wants to live this far from a city. I deleted it both times.
Eight years ago, I turned down a field fellowship to build a life around a man who promised forever. I unpacked every box in his house. Six months later, he decided forever was far too long, and I left with one duffel bag and a career I had to rebuild.
I've been moving ever since. Every few months, a new lake and a new temporary address. I never unpack all the way. I never rearrange my work for anyone.
Roots are for people who can afford to lose things. I stopped being that person a long time ago.
The bell over the door chimes, and two women come in out of the heat, and Dani's face lights up all over again.
"Rayna! Chrissy! Come meet Aileen, she's the fish scientist."
The dark-haired one—Rayna—has flour on her Mercury Slice T-shirt and the warmest smile I've ever seen. The other one, Chrissy, has a braid down her back and the loose, sun-brown look of someone who spends every day outside.
"Oh, you're the biologist!" Rayna says, delighted. "Forrest was talking about you at the marina this morning."
Everything in me goes still. "He was?"
"Barely," Chrissy says, grinning. "He mentioned the state's terrible rental boat and the woman who refused to let it beat her. For Forrest to talk that much about anyone—especially a woman—is a big deal, though.”
"We were both working in the same part of the lake, that’s all.”
Rayna and Chrissy exchange a glance I recognize with a sinking heart. I've seen that look before. It's the look of women who are very happy and have decided that everyone around them should be happy too, immediately, and preferably with the nearest available man.
"You should come to Thursday pizza," Rayna says. "The whole crew's there. Forrest never misses it."
"I really shouldn't. I've got early sampling and—"
"She'll come," Dani says.
"Dani."
"You have to eat, Aileen. Even scientists have to eat." She grins. "Besides. Don't you need to ask Forrest something about the survey?"
And that's how I end up standing on a sun-warmed dock two nights later with a slice of the best pizza I've ever eaten in one hand, looking across a crowded table at a quiet man who watches me over the top of his drink like I'm the only interesting thing in the room.
I'm only here for the summer.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.