4. Seth
Seth
It’s all hands on deck this morning. We’ve got a long day ahead of us, bringing in the traps that have been soaking so we can adjust course and reset all hundred and seventy of them.
After a quick poke around the live well to make sure tank conditions are fair, I meet the guys outside to check that the ice has been knocked down and the deck has been cleared.
As winter creeps closer, work transitions into something of a film noir.
Everything is overexposed. Colors are washed out—save for king-crab-red and Grundens-orange—and harsh floodlights create an extreme contrast. Highlights gleam like fresh snow, and the steel cages and heavy-duty winches cast severe shadows on the deck.
Even if you’re completely drained of energy, the blinding brightness of the LEDs is sure to snap you out of it long enough to chug a Red Bull and keep cranking.
Perry, Orlov, and Jorgensen are suited up and ready to go. We’ve all got matching bags under our eyes, but run-of-the-mill exhaustion isn’t enough to dampen spirits when there’s a major payday crawling around beneath our feet.
“Alright, I’m gonna have Perry on the hauler, Orlov on the block,” I say. “Sorry not sorry, Jorg. You’re back on bait duty.”
Zach ruffles Konrad’s grown-out hair. “Smell ya later, squid-o.”
“You sure will. I’ve got a date with your bunk during my next break. Gonna have a nice long nap. Roll around in my dirty bibs. Clear out my snorkel.”
Orlov makes a sound adjacent to a laugh. “Idiot.”
Jorg doesn’t hear that part though. He’s already fishing out a fresh box of bait, whistling something to himself that’ll end up turning into a full-blown belt within the hour. “Eye of the Tiger”? Maybe?
What the kid’s got in resilience, he lacks in musicality.
“Coming up on the first buoy. Everyone ready?” Nick’s voice crackles through the crew radio.
I grab the gaff and mash the talk button as Perry and Orlov get into position. “Copy, Captain. All hands ready.”
Nick slots the boat alongside our line, the current drifting us into just the right spot. I hook the rope and feed it into the hauler. The mechanism grinds to life, whirring as it raises the massive trap, fighting the resistance of the water.
On a normal day, it’s loud. Between the engine and the hauler, I go through a rough patch with my vocal cords around days two to four every season.
I’m sure I’ll be deaf by fifty. But for now, I can hear well enough that something is off with the sound.
A weird judder, wavering until the pot clears the surface.
“Fuck yeah, it’s a party!” Perry whoops as they bring in our haul. The trap is bursting with king crab. Big ones, by the look of it.
“Measure and sort. I need to take a look at something real quick,” I tell them before radioing in to Nick again. “Captain, Captain, Rit.”
“Go ahead, Rit.”
“Pot hauler’s acting up, I need a minute to check it out. Can we circle back around?”
“Copy. Let me know when you’re ready.”
I get to work opening up the reservoir tank while the guys hoot and holler in the background, shouting out, “Another one! Aye, another one!” Spiny chitin shells knock against the coated metal of the deck as they sort our catch into a pile of keepers and a pile of females and shorts.
“Twenty-three legal males,” I update Nick when they finish, a big-ass grin on my face as I wrestle with the latch on the equipment locker. “Think we might’ve found ourselves a hot spot, Cap’.”
“Perfect. How’s the hauler coming along?”
“Hydraulic fluid looks low. Topping her off now, give me two minutes.”
“Copy.”
A few more buoys in, the hauler’s back to running smoothly and we’ve struck up a groove. I gaff and set the line, manage the crew on the mechanics, and oversee the count. Seventeen legal males in the second pot, eighteen in the third, and thirty-five in the fourth.
We are cooking today.
I recognize all the ways commercial fishing is a shit gig, but days like this remind me why I love it.
I love the sting of the icy air, the blistering wind and briny mist. I love the sound of the waves slapping against the hull of the boat, and the balancing game of working through the tumult.
I love the porpoises that stop by to play in the Suoja’s wake.
The flocks of gulls and fulmars, begging for scraps like a pack of small dogs.
I love the thrill of the hunt, the freedom of the open ocean, the camaraderie.
Barking at the guys to get back to work, but laughing on the inside when they get this damn excited.
Konrad is giving the crabs stupid, shitty little French accents, and Zach is tossing the shorts at him in retaliation.
Pyotr clearly thinks they’re both knuckleheads—and he’s right—but even he’s got some extra pep in his step now.
Whitecaps and twenty-three-knot winds aside, it’s shaping up to be one hell of a day.
Until the hauler starts acting up again.
We get to the last four pots on the line when the vibrations return, this time, accompanied by a high-pitched whine. I only get a second or two of warning before the pitch jumps. The whine turns into a squeal as the rope grinds against the pulley.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop,” I say to Perry. “Cut it off.”
I wave frantically up at the wheelhouse, signaling for Nick to turn in before we’re dragging seven-hundred pounds of uncooperative galvanized steel beneath the surface of these swells.
He maneuvers the boat toward the submerged trap. “What’s going on?”
“This whole thing’s fucked now. Maybe it wasn’t just the fluid,” I say into the radio. “I’m gonna check the hoses as soon as we get this pot up.”
“Copy. I’ll keep us on it best I can. Make it quick.”
I stare up, cringing as the rope oscillates. Loosening when the boat dips, and snapping tight when it rises. “Perry—feather the controls. See if we can get some slack on that line.”
The hauler whirrs like it’s operating, but the rope is already unseated.
No matter what we do with the controls, it won’t be enough to get the line back into the groove and pull it the rest of the way in.
If anything, the problem is getting worse.
The whole mechanism vibrates under the heavy strain.
“Alright, stop. Hold on a second.”
I climb up onto the base, putting a metric fuck-ton of trust in my thighs to keep me rooted. Another wave bashes the side of the Suoja and I get a shot of saltwater straight to the face.
I blink rapidly, waiting until the line loosens again to try and get it back on track, but the ocean is too choppy for me to adjust the friction-burned cordage without crushing my hand in the process.
Fuck. It’s wrapped around the housing now.
“Let it go, Rit,” comes through the radio. “I can see it spinning from up here. You’re gonna get hurt. Just cut the line.”
“I might be able to save it if I—”
“Cut the fucking line, Seth.”
From below, Perry shoots me an oh shit look.
Nick’s never had much of a sailor’s mouth when it comes to giving orders. Of all the times to disagree with him, this isn’t the one.
I take my knife off my belt. “Orlov. Can you hold the line tight for me here?”
I show him where to put his hands and work quickly, sawing through the rope. But even with the line steadied, the load is heavy as shit, and it’s still in motion.
I order Orlov to back off as I hack through the rest of the fibers.
The rope snaps before I can finish slicing it. A metallic ringing fills my ears.
The pot sinks.
Severed cordage whips across my palm, splitting open my glove and my skin beneath it, but cold has a numbing effect. So does adrenaline.
I don’t notice I’m bleeding until I see the red dripping onto the deck in fat splashes. Running down my wrist and disappearing beneath the sleeve of my shirt.
Then I feel it. Salt. Salt everywhere, rubbing into the gash. Stinging. Burning.
“Shit. You’re bleeding,” Perry says. He’s already signaling to the wheelhouse before I can tell him not to worry Nick about it.
This time, I don’t get a radio call. Nick turns the whole fucking boat around, quartering the waves, and steps out onto the landing. “What happened?”
“No big deal,” I shout back up at him. “Rope burn.”
He doesn’t take my word for it. He has a bird’s eye view of my blood all over the place. It’s a crime scene down here. “Perry, think you can troubleshoot the block? Looks like we’re hanging tight until we get that sorted out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jorgensen, Orlov, go ahead and take fifteen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rittenburg.” He crooks two fingers. “Up here.”
Logically, I know why he’s so stern about it. The infection risk is elevated out here, and it’s a pain in the ass to get to the hospital for anything requiring urgent medical attention. Also a pain in the ass to be down a crew member at the beginning of crab season, if it came to that.
But his tone still makes it sound like he’s seriously mad at me, and that does something to me.
I’d consider myself tough—out here, you have to be—but I hate the thought of disappointing Nick.
“It’s really nothing,” I say as I climb the ladder. “Did more damage to my glove than my skin.”
He doesn’t respond right away, just holds the door open and closes it behind us.
I sit back on the cushioned bench, cringing at the trail of blood that followed me into the bridge while he digs around for the first aid kit under the navigation station.
On the bright side, the pain provides a distraction from the view of his ass as he crouches low to the ground.
A slight distraction.
He sits beside me, urgency transformed into a more serene type of intensity as he holds his hand out. Waiting for mine to nest within it.
I wince, sucking a breath through my teeth as he removes my glove and both of us get our first look at the raw laceration beneath. Pain makes up only one half of my reaction, though. The other half comes from the way his warm, callused palm enfolds my cold, aching hand.
“It’s not nothing.” His brow creases as he examines the wound. “What would you do if one of the other guys had a cut like this?”
I wouldn’t wish they’d keep bleeding so I’d have an excuse to hold their hand, that’s for sure.
“Get the first aid kit…”
I told you so, he says, but he says it with his eyebrows. Out loud, he says, “Flex your fingers.”
I curl them one by one to show him I can still move my hand. Although, between the broken skin and the surrounding rope burn, it’s starting to throb.
He watches. Intently. Almost as intently as I’m watching him. “Not too deep, at least.”
Any sense of relief dulls as soon as he rolls up the sleeves of my overshirt and undershirt, and the backs of his knuckles rake across my forearm.
He grabs the bottle of saline out of the first aid kit and meets my eyes, lifting my hand to irrigate the wound. “Feel okay?”
That, I know I wouldn’t have done with the other guys. It’d go something more like, “Stop being a bitch, Perry.” But I can’t picture Nick saying that to anyone. Maybe this is how tender he’s been with everyone who’s gotten injured on the job.
I hate the thought of that.
As soon as the wound is flushed, he rips open a packet of sterile gauze and presses it, hard, against my palm. My hand cupped between both of his while he applies pressure.
“Have to stop the bleeding,” he says faintly. Like he’s the one hurt.
I meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. I thought I was handling it right, trying to save the pot. Is there something I should’ve done differently?”
“It’s not that. It’s…” He looks down. Shakes his head. “I thought the cut was worse than it is. Forgot you were such a bleeder.”
“Hey, it’s not all me with the crabs. You know how pokey those bastards are.”
“And your blood’s made of vodka, apparently.”
“Only during the off-season.”
There it is. His nose crinkles in that trying-not-to-smile smile of his. I’d slice my other hand open and come back to tell another joke if it would keep that look on his face.
“I’m still gonna order you to take it easy the next week,” he says.
“Nobody likes an armchair-manager on deck.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t give a shit. I like you.” His thumbs twitch against my palm and wrist, his lips pressing together. “I like you healthy, not septic.”
He looks away, lifting the gauze and applying butterfly bandages with trembling fingers to bring the edges of the cut together.
And I’m trembling, too. Not because my palm is on fire, but because my heart is.
“I may bleed easy, but I’m pretty hardy. You don’t have to worry about me.”
He rubs antibiotic ointment over the wound and places another fresh pad of gauze there, carefully dressing my hand with self-adhesive wrap. “You can’t talk me out of worrying about you. All of you. It’s my job.”
I nod. Swallow. But he’s touching me and saying things like “I like you,” and I’m not operating on full brain-power. There’s something thick and tangible in the space between us, and I can taste it when I breathe in. Hotter and sweeter than the salty ocean air.
“Do you worry about everyone like this?” I murmur.
He tilts his head up for a moment, reading me. Wondering if he heard me right.
I can’t bring myself to repeat the question, and I’m sure it’s going to die unanswered when he finally responds. One word, whispered.
“No.”
He cuts off the end of the wrap, securing it in place. Still cupping my hand. I wonder if he’d be the first to move if I failed to.
He wasn’t the first one to move away in the galley, when I was sprawled over his chest, between his spread legs. He held onto me then, too. Keeping me safe.
The thought hits me like a rogue wave, and suddenly I’m bobbing around in four years’ worth of memories. Questioning whether I’ve spent all this time talking myself into reality… or out of it.
His lips are fucking inches away and I want them more than I ever have, which is a damn high bar. But what if I was right all along?
What if he worries about me more because he thinks of me as a best friend, as a brother? What if I ruin that by leaning in and closing the space between us, doing something I can’t take back?
We might’ve been able to move past what happened a week ago, but that was an accident. There is nothing accidental about the way I want to kiss him right now. No way I could possibly blame it on the sea this time.
Nick unfurls his fingers from my hand, severing the connection. His Adam’s apple bobs. “Let me know if you and Perry need help with the hydraulics.”
“Yes, sir,” I agree, heading to the door.
But as I climb down the stairs, the only what if left in my mind is what if I went for it?