7. Seth
Seth
The guys wouldn’t take no for an answer from either of us about going out on the second night.
I suspect the pressure was mainly for Nick, since he doesn’t always join in on crew nights.
Having some semblance of division between friend and boss is sensible, but I don’t think that’s his only reason, or even his main one.
I know what it’s like to be an outcast for so long, you’re more comfortable walking that lonely path than taking a chance on paving a new one.
But Nick cultivated this culture on the Suoja. He gave me the first place I’ve ever truly felt like I belong, and it makes me want to do the same for him.
I take the stairs to the bridge two at a time and knock on the door to his room. “Nicky! You ready?”
There’s some shuffling inside before the door opens, and he fills the frame, combing his fingers through his hair and pulling on a wool cap that matches the blue of his cable-knit sweater. “Did they send you to check on me?”
“I sent myself.” I take a step forward, checking the windows to make sure we’re out of view before I lean in to steal a kiss. “But now I’m kind of wishing we’d stay in.”
Nick smiles against my lips, but I can feel him shying away instead of melting into me like he did when we were completely alone.
I pull back before I push too far. At his pace, I remind myself. Zero-to-“live with me” is the speed I’m heading anyway, so it’d probably be better for both of us if I adapted to Nick’s reservation.
“Sorry,” he says.
“No apologizing. Tonight, you’re relaxing.”
The small, grateful smile he gives me is more than enough to recharge my patience.
We head down the ladder to the working deck, then hop up onto the dock, joining with the others and starting toward Amalie’s—the best pub near the harbor. Also, the only pub near the harbor. So it’s a damn good thing the owner’s awesome and the fries are fresh-cut and perfectly salted.
“Hell yeah,” Jorgensen says. “Now it’s a party!”
Nick looks wary. I get the impulse to reach for his hand, but I shove mine in my jacket pockets instead. “Seems like you partied plenty hard without us.”
“Oh that? Nah. That was pre-gaming.”
Based on the way the kid’s practically skipping down the same dock he fell off, I believe him too. I can out-endure Konrad any day of the week when it comes to roughing it at sea, but I’d send myself to the hospital if I tried to out-drink him.
Fucking twenty-one-year-olds and their hangover immunity.
“What’s the main event? A diving contest?” Zach asks.
Of course, Jorg’s crazy enough to look like he’s actually considering it.
“Do it off someone else’s slip,” Nick says. “I don’t think my liability insurance covers drunken idiocy.”
“And wear life jacket next time,” Pyotr adds. “I am not pulling you out again. You are surprisingly heavy for such a short man.”
“Thanks, Orlie.” Jorgensen wiggles his brows, not swayed in the least by the knock to his height. “I carry it all in my dick.”
Nick doesn’t contribute much to the bullshit and buffoonery as we make the brief walk across the marina parking lot, but I can see him out of the corner of my eye. Relaxing a little bit more. Smiling when he thinks no one is paying attention.
I wonder if tonight feels as different to him as it does to me. We’ve been out together before, sure, but for the first time, I’m not the sole bearer of this secret. It’s ours now.
The heat is cranked inside Amalie’s, compensating for the cold air leaching through the poorly insulated walls of the old building.
It’s like stepping inside of a hardware store, everything the same dark, weathered wood, marred by splits and scratches.
From the walls and floors, to the five booths and the blocky bar stools surrounding the counter.
The décor might as well have been found washed up on shore.
Beat-up life preservers and rusted anchors.
Frayed ropes strung from cleats mounted on the ceiling.
A few amateur paintings of ships and lighthouses collecting dust on the side walls.
And at the back, there’s a graveyard of faded posters littered with holes. A dart board at the center.
It’s never busy, but there are always a few patrons.
Acquaintances of ours, mostly other commercial fishers, who we exchange nods with on the way in.
It’s not uncommon for guys to wander in alone and end up sharing a table into the wee hours of the morning, but tonight we find a row of chairs at the bar.
Nick sits beside Zach, and I take the chair to his right on the very end.
It’s not the most spacious layout. My knee bumps into him, and my thigh brushes up against his when I sit.
It’s an accident, but I still get the pang that I’ve fucked something up when Nick reflexively scoots to the opposite edge of his chair.
With a deep breath and a bit of force, he readjusts to sit like a normal person, his brows drawing together. “Sor—”
“Hey. What did I say? No apologizing…” I wait for him to fill in the blank.
“Relaxing.” He exhales, taking his hat off and raking his fingers through his hair. “I’m trying.”
“No ‘trying’ tonight either. Turn that overactive brain off. I’ve got you, Cap’.”
I turn and flash Amalie a grin, asking her how she’s doing and how’s her family.
Her husband and daughter are working in the kitchen as we speak.
The woman’s owned this place for the last forty years, and there’s not a fisherman who’s walked in and out of this marina she hasn’t served.
Hell, she’d probably remember Nick’s dad’s order if he walked through the door.
“Can we get two baskets of dirty fries and a round of Bulleit?” I ask.
She lines up five shot glasses, pouring them while she looks to Nick. “Hit quota already?”
“If Ericsen stops in, you can tell him that,” he jokes. “We got a nice haul, but we had to come in for repairs.”
“Yeah? Glad the season’s been good to you so far. They’re saying on the radio we’re headed for historic winter weather.” She doles out the shots. “Seems like the storms get worse every year though.”
“Shittier weather, shittier catch.” Zach tips back his shot glass first. “At least the whiskey’s still good.”
“And our bartender’s as beautiful as ever,” Jorgensen adds, leaning forward on his elbows.
Amalie whacks him with a dish rag. “You could be my grandson.”
“But I’m not.” Jorg winks. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
Nick exchanges a subtle smile with me, clinking his shot glass against mine before we both send them down the hatch.
I already know he’s going to reach for his wallet as soon as the glass hits the counter.
When the fishing’s good, he insists on paying because he made the biggest cut.
When the fishing’s shit, he says it’s to cheer everybody up.
“Nuh-uh. You know the rules.” I swat his hand away and crook two fingers at Jorgensen. “Young blood goes first.”
“Alright, but I’m gonna warn you.” Konrad throws a few uncoordinated boxing punches to the air. “I was practicing last night.”
“Your bunkmate had to help you into the shower last night. I’m not scared of you, little boy.”
Though I do find it hilarious how serious and focused he is.
I’m three years undefeated, and that’s just during my tenure with the Suoja.
Throughout our tradition of Loser Buys The Drinks, I’ve never once had to buy the crew shots. Although occasionally I’ll foot the bill out of pity. That enrages these guys more than kicking their asses anyway.
We’ve upped the scoring from 301 to 501 and tacked on legs to pad the time between drinking, but even putzing around, I can still clear the points quick enough to get everybody pretty damn buzzed, pretty damn fast.
For all his “practice”, it takes me fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to annihilate Konrad. Pyotr puts up a slightly better fight, but still only manages to stretch our best-out-of-eleven game to eight before we all go back for our third round of drinks.
Zach, the biggest lightweight of the bunch, is poking holes in the wood paneling by the time it’s his turn to face me, and it takes so long to get through four legs that we go ahead and end it there.
“What’s it called when you have a humiliation kink, but you’re the one who likes to do the humiliating? I think you have that,” Zach gripes, staggering back to the bar at my side. “I think you get off on this.”
“Lots of things get me off.” Our boss, for example. “But I’d prefer a little more competition. If this is the aim our crew’s working with, it’s a good thing we’re trappin’ and not spearin’. We’d fucking starve.”
The guys laugh. Even Nick—who I thought was in a state of selective hearing loss, thanks to Konrad yapping his ear off.
He’s focused on me though. All his focus is on me. Not like the split-second flickers of gray-blue I’ve caught throughout the night, either.
He holds my gaze for the longest stretch since we left the boat, and the casual, surface-level humor in his eyes does nothing to hide the heat.
I might as well have said what I really meant. Lots of things get me off. I wanna do all of them with you.
Amalie already has our fourth round of shots poured when we make it back to the bar. Her eyes squint with amusement behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “Zach’s turn to buy?”
“You know it.” I pick up the shot and knock it back, the room starting to grow pleasantly fuzzy around the edges.
Partly from the liquor, partly because I can feel Nick’s presence as he comes up behind me.
The fibers of his sweater are soaked with his body heat and the fresh scent of his bar soap, and it makes me want to roll all over him like a sea otter in a kelp bed. “And Captain’s turn next.”
“Not this time,” Nick says, his voice gravelly and loopy from the bourbon.
“Oh, is that right? You’ve been practicing, too?”
Nick shrugs, following me back to the dartboard with the guys patting him on the back and cheering him on. “Maybe I have a strategy.”