1. Nick #2
“Oh hell yeah. Rented out this place in The Bahamas for a month—I’ll have to show you pictures of everything I caught. Bonefish, grouper, mahi, you name it.”
I’m starting to actually get interested before he goes on.
“And then I hit it off with this chick who was in Nassau for her friend’s bachelorette party and holy shit. She did this thing, with her tongue—” Jorgensen demonstrates. Graphically. “—I’ll never be the same. I’m a changed man. I think I’m in love.”
Seth snorts. “How many times have you called her since you got back?”
“I lost count of how many beaches we fucked on,” Jorgensen prattles, ignoring the question. “I swear, I’m still finding sand.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be a problem if you ever took a real shower,” my senior deckhand, Zach Perry, calls out. He finishes topping off the fuel and comes over to pull me into a one-armed hug.
“Teondra didn’t mind my musk.”
“How much were the girls drinking at this bachelorette party again?”
Jorgensen’s proud smirk slides right off his baby-faced cheeks.
As their boss, I do my best to stay out of crew antics. But every once in a while, it’s a struggle not to crack a smile.
Seth tilts his head, redirecting his amusement at Zach. “Alright, Perry. We got way more detail about Jorg’s sandy crevices than anybody asked for. Now I wanna know what that is.”
I bend forward, following Seth’s line of sight to the most impressive hickey I’ve ever seen on a grown man, peeking over the collar of Perry’s jacket.
Perry gives an awfully self-satisfied shrug. “Hey, I’m a married man. I don’t kiss and tell…”
Right, and wrong. He does have a wife, whom he talks about constantly. They do quite a bit of kissing though, and he talks about that constantly, too. Which is how I know he’s not done talking.
“…but her Subaru’s roomy in the back. It’s gonna be a long month for both of us. Can you blame me?”
“A longer month for you than her, I’m sure.” Jorgensen snickers.
My eyes accidentally find their way back to Seth’s, my breath stalling as his smile lines appear once more.
Yeah. It’s gonna be a really long month.
“What about you, Cap’?” Seth elbows me. “How was your break?”
“Uneventful.”
I’m not trying to throw him off my case. I genuinely didn’t do anything interesting. I read a few books, invented a few projects around the cabin. And whenever I started missing the water too much, I’d take my twenty-eight-footer out for the weekend or pull on my waders and go fishing.
“Spend a lot of time with Amber?” he prods.
“On and off.”
There’s a careful balance when it comes to Amber. If I tell him I spent all break with her, he’ll pry into our relationship. If I tell him I didn’t see her at all, he’ll wonder what went wrong.
I can’t have either of those things happening. Because Amber’s not real.
“Jesus Christ.” Seth sighs. “You’re terrible at this.”
“I don’t know what you want from me here.”
“Anything. You’ve been seeing this woman for two years, Lundvall. Are we ever gonna meet her?”
Perry purses his lips, jiving with Seth’s point. We’ve all met his wife, Erin, and Orlov’s girlfriend, Anna, after all. At the end of every season, I set aside a dinner party’s portion of our haul and invite the guys and their families over to thank them for their hard work.
I clear my throat. “Probably not. It isn’t serious. We’re not exclusive or anything.”
Seth doesn’t look convinced. “She’s the only woman I’ve ever heard you talk about. That seems pretty serious to me.”
“I’m off the grid as much as you are.” Ridiculous. I sound ridiculous defending my imaginary fuck-buddy. “There’s not much to say. Just some casual stress relief during the off-season. I don’t see you volunteering any details about your sex life.”
And please don’t start now. I might keel over if I have to hear about the merry adventures of your dick.
“Maybe that’s why I’m trying to live vicariously through you guys.”
It’s the second-worst thing he could’ve said. The only thing worse than thinking about Seth having sex is thinking about Seth not having as much sex as he wants. Seth being pent-up. Touch-starved. Horny.
“Keeping three under-five-year-olds entertained all day certainly didn’t put me in the mood to pick up a tourist, and Seward’s not exactly known for its vibrant dating scene,” he says.
I give a good-natured chuckle, but yeah. I know that feeling particularly well.
“Gotta make a trip into Anchorage,” Jorgensen supplies.
“It’s a much bigger city,” I agree numbly. Already rabidly jealous of every woman in Anchorage who will someday meet Seth and find out what it’s like to go home with him. “Anyway. Where’s Orlov?”
“Here,” comes a low, thick Russian accent.
So quiet, you’d hardly believe it belongs to a six-foot-five tank of a man.
Pyotr Orlov doesn’t smile when he comes over to shake my hand—because he never does—but this past year of working with him has taught me the difference between his happy straight face and his irritated one.
“Just finished line checks. Was waiting for them to be done talking.”
Me too, Pyotr. Me too.
“One of these days, we’ll get you to join in,” Perry says.
“Okay,” Orlov says.
It’s the same way he says “okay” whenever I tell him to do something, but in this case, he means “absolutely not”.
“We’re loaded up on ice? Bait?” I check, though I already know the answer.
“Yes, sir.” Seth effortlessly switches back into work-mode. “Provisions are stowed away. I checked the gear and tested the hydraulics and bilge pumps while you were settling paperwork. We should be ready to rumble.”
“That’s why I keep you around. Even though you call me Nicky.”
“Not for the eye candy?” he jokes.
Fuck.
My throat tightens, filling with acid. I can’t manufacture a single dig about his appearance to save my ass, so all that comes out is: “Hmph.”
Seth conducts the final walkthrough with me, standing by patiently for questions or further instruction. Although I already know everything will be taken care of. Not only to adequate completion, but up to my standards.
From day one, I’ve known Seth has it. Deeply ingrained passion for this industry. The need to take pride in everything he does.
Guess that’s what got me most. More than the charming smiles and the twinkling eyes and the cut of his body. My whole life, I think I’ll wonder what it would be like to be the person Seth takes pride in. The person he applies this level of care and attention to.
I finish off in the wheelhouse, firing up the engine to get it warmed. The first thrums of energy rumble beneath our feet, a familiar growl spitting diesel fumes into the brisk air.
No matter how many times I’ve done this, it sends a rush through my system whenever we prepare to pull out of the slip.
“All systems look good, thanks,” I tell Seth, picking up the mic to check in with the Coast Guard. “Go ahead and get the crew ready for cast off. Let’s clear out before the traffic jam starts.”
“Aye aye.” Seth salutes jokingly. “Let’s slay some kings!”
With everything in order, the dock lines are taken in. The fenders are pulled aboard and stowed away. Seth jogs between the bow and stern to update me on clearance over the radio as I pull out of the narrow docking slip.
We idle toward the marina’s exit, the winking lights of civilization shrinking behind the Suoja’s churning wake. Ahead, the world opens into a vast expanse. A void of black that will soon brighten to a million different shades of blue, green, and gray.
And down below, movement catches my eye. Seth’s clownfish-orange cap marks his position on deck as he finds work for himself.
As much as I appreciate the additional cabin space and ease of overseeing operations, sometimes I wish I was working with a house forward vessel instead of a house aft one.
Maybe then I’d be less likely to give into temptation…
or maybe I’d feel like even more of a stalker, checking the fucking cameras every couple of seconds.
I can’t afford to stare for long, but I steal a second or two, watching him check storage lockers.
His broad shoulders pull at all his layers of outerwear as he rearranges cleaning supplies.
His muscular ass and thighs fill out overalls that were otherwise mercifully loose-fitting before he started bending and crouching.
He stands and, as if he can sense my lecherous eyes all over him, looks up at the bridge. Raising three fingers in a wave and shooting me a smile that bores through my sternum and burrows into my chest.
I wave back, hoping I come across ten-percent as casual as he does before I find a point on the dark horizon and lock my eyes onto it.
A boundless view of water to remind me of the thirst I can’t quench.