19. Nick
Nick
My parents weren’t the only ones keeping up with the weather. News of the storm made its way down the Kenai Peninsula as people waited to hear which ships had been affected, which of their friends and family members were lost at sea or still awaiting aid.
Seth’s folks had seen the Suoja among the capsized vessels, and his mother bawled her eyes out the moment she got his call.
“Thank you for bringing my son home,” she told me, after insisting that Seth put me on the line.
“There’s nothing to thank me for.”
I’m equal parts relieved and guilty that they don’t blame me for what happened. It’s been a struggle not to blame myself.
I do know that I don’t deserve her thanks. I’d do anything for her son. I would’ve gone down with the ship if it would’ve bought him a better chance of getting out of there alive.
Though the thought of sharing a life with him sure makes me glad I didn’t.
After a detour from the Anchorage airport to the hospital to check in on Perry, Seth’s sister comes by to pick us up. She hugs Seth tight, then pulls me in like she’s already decided I’m her brother, too.
“Nice to meet you, Nick. My brother never shuts up about you.”
“What the hell, Audrey? That’s not true.”
“It’s completely true, believe me,” she says as we all climb into her SUV. Seth, shotgun, and me beside a crumb-dusted car seat. “It’s all ‘Nick this’ ‘Nick that’ whenever he gets back from a fishing trip. I don’t think he’s even paying attention to what you’re catching out there.”
“Oh, really?” I smile. “And here I thought he was a pretty solid first mate.”
“I think he’s just trying to impress you.” She drops her voice to Seth’s register. “‘You don’t understand, Audrey. He’s so nice and sooo hot. I’m completely fucked here. Why can’t he like men?’”
“That’s it,” Seth says. “I’m telling Jared about your secret bookshelf.”
Audrey shoots him a glare. “You wouldn’t.”
“Maybe he’ll like it. Maybe it’ll give him some… ideas.”
“He doesn’t need to get any ideas. We’re still potty training his last idea.”
My laugh fogs up the cold window as we make our way out of the city, Seth and Audrey sniping back and forth in a way that resurrects some of the youth buried beneath the ancient feeling in my bones.
Eventually they exchange a look in the front seat that I translate to mean, “I missed you,” even though it’s wordless, and followed by a smirk that makes me finally see the resemblance between them.
Audrey spends the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour drive asking me about myself. Questions, I realize, I haven’t had to answer in a long time. You don’t talk about basics when everyone you know, you’ve known all your life.
It’s weird talking about the Suoja as a memory of the past when my work has always been the center of my life. But maybe this season had already changed me before the storm did.
My center has shifted. It’s a lot closer. It’s catching my eye in the rearview mirror. Silently checking in on me as I tell Audrey about the days when I used to work for my father. Reaching over the back of the seat to brush fingers with me, just because.
I’ll always love the water. It’ll never lose its wonder. But I didn’t wish for more days of fishing when I thought I was going to die. I wished I’d had more days with Seth.
“I hope you’re both hungry,” Audrey says when we pull into the driveway of the Otter Trail Lodge. “I’m pretty sure Mom thinks that the cure for a near-death experience is brisket and potatoes five ways.”
“She might be onto something there,” Seth says.
After living off of hospital and vending machine food for the past two days, I’m inclined to agree.
“There’s three different pies too, because she didn’t know Nick’s favorite.”
“Pumpkin,” Seth says. I can’t for the life of me recall when I would’ve mentioned that, but it doesn’t surprise me that he’s right.
“Good. That one made the lineup.”
We grab our bags and head toward the front entrance. Seth’s parents and the kids all meet us outside before we have the chance to knock the snow off our boots.
“Hey everyone, this is Nick.” Seth places a hand on my back and ushers me forward. A burly man with a thick, graying beard comes over to clasp my hand, his other arm occupied by a toddler who’s somehow sleeping through all the commotion. “Nick, this is my dad, Frank. And the youngest, Rosie.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say. Or at least, I try to say, before the woman next to Frank grabs me and wrangles me into a hug that feels ten times stronger than her slender build would suggest.
She pulls back, holding me at arm’s length and assessing me head to toe. Whatever she gleans must be acceptable. Because she smiles—brown eyes crinkling and a big, white flash of teeth—and hugs me again. “It’s nice to meet you, Nick. You can call me Irene.”
Audrey’s spiel in the car seemed oddly specific, if overexaggerated, but something in the way Irene looks at me makes my heart kick up all over again.
He really did talk about me a lot. Didn’t he?
“And these guys”—Seth crouches, scooping his older niece and nephew into his arms—“are Kylie and Bobby.”
The kids instantly shout back at him.
“Riley!”
“Robbie!”
“Really? Are you sure?” Seth feigns ignorance while the kids laugh and squeal in outrage, climbing all over him until he grabs them and hoists them both onto his back. “I guess it has been a long time. Shit, you guys are heavy now. It’s like slingin’ around a couple halibut.”
Audrey glares. “Language.”
“Halibut’s not a bad word,” Seth says.
“Don’t talk like your uncle,” Audrey tells the kids.
“I won’t,” Riley says vehemently. “I always remember people’s names.”
“Oh yeah? What’s his name?” Seth spins around enough times that I wonder if the kids are seeing two of me by the time he stops. Robbie’s cheeks are red and... smeared with chocolate? Or dirt? And one of Riley’s pigtails is flopping halfway over her face.
“You just said it. Nick.” She grabs two fistfuls of Seth’s shirt and pulls herself up, staring at me in that overly perceptive, unapologetically obvious way of children. “Are you Uncle Seth’s boyfriend?”
“I am,” I say after a moment’s hesitation.
Of all the ways we’ve confessed what we mean to each other, the word “boyfriend” shouldn’t have an effect. But it’s a word no one’s ever spoken about me before, and there’s something so real about having a title to Seth, just like everyone else here. Everyone he loves.
Mother, father, sister, niece, nephew. Boyfriend.
The fact that this moment was thirty-four years in the making for me is wholly insignificant to Riley though.
“Cool,” she says. “I have two boyfriends and a girlfriend.”
“Oh really?” Seth shoots a smirk at Audrey.
Audrey waves flippantly. “Her best friends at preschool.”
“Well, I bet your dad will think that’s really cool, too, when he gets home.” Seth bounces the kids into a more comfortable position on his back. He catches my eye when he straightens, giving me a knowing wink. “Come on, boyfriend. I’ll show you to our room.”
I can see why this place is booked out every summer. Not only is Irene one hell of a cook, but the lodge is also beautifully updated. Even Seth’s room is cozy, though it’s smaller than the guest suites and walks out into the laundry area instead of a waterfront balcony.
A king-size bed takes up most of the floor space, made up with a patchwork quilt in shades of cream, rust, and red. And what area the bed doesn’t take up is covered by a plush, beaver-pelt rug.
Dark teal walls bring the night sky indoors, broken up by exposed beams and a collage of artwork above his desk. An oil painting of a grizzly bear, a salmon carved out of cedar, an Indigenous-style painting of an orca on a piece of stretched hide.
In one corner, a lived-in leather armchair faces the window where you can see the base of the mountains rising up over the sparsely-lit town. In the opposite corner, there’s a cast iron wood stove with a rack of logs someone took the care to replenish before he got back.
I arrange a few inside, digging around until I find a lighter and poker so I can get a fire started while Seth’s in the shower.
He gave me an unspoken invitation to join him, but as much as I wanted to, I should keep my hands to myself. Give him time to recover. And a burrowing concern at the back of my mind wonders how long he’ll have before the water grows cold.
The flames are beginning to lick over the tops of the wood pile by the time he comes out.
“We can get you something to wear when the stores open.” Seth walks over to his closet, tossing some clothes onto the bed. “Help yourself to whatever you want though. My stuff should fit you. Might be a little cropped and tight in the ass, but you won’t hear me complaining.”
He turns around, tossing a wink over his shoulder and dropping the towel tied around his waist.
I don’t know why it surprises me to see him naked. It’s not like we have anything left to be modest about, but there’s something indulgent about looking at him when there’s no rush. When our time belongs only to us.
I could spend the rest of the night appreciating the toned lines of his body.
The trail of brown hair that splits the V of his hips, leading from his navel to his groin, where his cock hangs thick and heavy between his legs.
The fishing scars—some I was there to witness, but most I wish I knew the stories behind. His fading tan lines from the summer.
Three weeks of growth has his hair reaching his chin, curled strands tangling with his short beard. And his eyes are so warm, so inviting. The same color as the logs beginning to glow in the wood stove, and just as radiant.
I should focus on those eyes. Nothing else.
But the eye contact is dangerous too. Seth can say a lot of damn things without saying a word.
I clear my throat. “Where do you keep your towels?”
“Cabinet across from the sink. Have to shut the door to get in.” As if he could tell what I was thinking earlier, he adds, “Water heater here is badass. You won’t run out—take as long as you need.”
Which, if I continue staring at him, is going to be a long time.