Eliza
“Not a fan of golf polos, huh?”
It’s the first thing Grayson says as we stand in the skiff, watching the tour from hell pile into their expensive cars. I’m shocked they stooped so low as to sit in a small, helicopter-less boat.
“I don’t care what people choose to wear,” I tell him. “Just not a fan of the attitudes.”
I’ve come across plenty like them. Growing up, my parents’ social circle didn’t exactly consist of the kindest souls. Just successful and wealthy ones—the sort that bridge you to better opportunities and promotions.
It’s a minor miracle my parents never adopted that disposition. Maybe it’s because they come from the types of families many of their “friends” would look down on, or maybe, despite their high expectations and detachment toward me, there’s some gentleness hiding in their hearts.
If so, it’s in some mysterious, elusive place I can no longer find.
Grayson nods toward the idling vehicles. “That kind of attitude doesn’t come from a happy life. I’d bet our friends there are miserable. You’ve got to be, if someone’s forcing you to wear a paisley-print windbreaker.”
“Doesn’t mean they need to share that misery with you.”
Grayson quirks his head at me. “You worried about my feelings?”
“I’m worried they’ll make you more insufferable than you already are.”
He chuckles, the sound rumbly and resonant. “Careful. Keep saying stuff like that, and you’ll make me blush.”
Yeah, right. Oysters will grow fins before the man’s self-assurance crumbles enough for him to blush.
The guests’ cars bumble out of the lot, and Grayson wordlessly begins loosening the lines from the dock.
“What are you doing?”
He shoves the boat away from the cleats and takes his post behind the wheel, starting up the engine. “Got to go check on something,” he says over his shoulder.
I blink. “You know I’m still here, right?”
“Boston, you talk too much for anyone to forget your presence.”
I hope he can feel my glare through the back of his head. “Where are you taking me?”
“Over to the new intertidal system,” he answers, as if that terminology is common knowledge.
“How long will we be there for?”
“Not long.”
Boat time might be a precious commodity to me, but his deliberately obtuse approach is quickly getting old. “You realize this is basically kidnapping.”
He glances over his shoulder, his expression dry as a desert. “No way in hell I’d kidnap you. I’m not a masochist.” He turns back, pressing the throttle forward. Shouting over the engine, he asks, “Can’t you just go with things?”
No.
Especially with someone who probably wants to strand me on a remote island.
My silence must give away my answer, because Grayson offers a real explanation. “We’ll be back at the dock in thirty minutes. It’s a new farming system I’m testing out, and I made a repair two days ago that I need to check in on. Think of it as a tour extension.”
The warm breeze coasts across my face as I silently digest that, despite his nonchalant wording, Grayson is helping me for the second time in a single afternoon. Completely unprovoked. He isn’t exactly going out of his way, but he’s not leaving me out, either.
He’s being…thoughtful.
Though he seems determined not to make a big deal out of it. So I shouldn’t, either. After all, it’s just an inkling of decency.
He slows the skiff to a crawl as we approach a shallow sand bank tucked close to shore. Sitting on it are three long rows made of short posts, with oyster baskets suspended between them. The bottoms of the baskets are barely submerged.
Grayson cuts the engine, and the machine whirs as he lifts the propeller from the water.
Momentum carries the skiff forward, until the water’s so shallow I can make out the white shells scattered on the dark, muddy bottom.
The hull gently scrapes the sand, and Grayson hops out, drawing us to a stop.
The water only reaches halfway up his rubber boots as he walks to the hull, pulls out an anchor, and tosses it several yards away.
“The boat doesn’t get stuck here?” I ask as he situates the anchor’s line around a cleat.
“Tide’s coming up,” he explains. “And I can shove us off easily enough.” With that, he makes his way over to a post halfway down one of the lines.
He seems completely intent on leaving me in the skiff, like a child in a shopping cart at a grocery store, allowed to look at all the yummy snacks but not touch.
Okay, buddy.
I take off my sandals, roll my jeans to my knees, secure my phone in my back pocket, and gingerly scoot over the boat’s side.
Grayson must hear the tiny splash of my landing, because he pivots. The disgruntled groove between his brows is so deep I can see it from here.
“Get back on the skiff.”
In lieu of a response, I wade toward him. Soft mud oozes between my toes, cool water lapping around my calves, little shell fragments pressing into my feet, just shy of painful.
“There are crabs hiding in the mud,” he threatens.
The statement almost makes me pause. Almost. But I wouldn’t put it past Grayson to scare me with a white lie, just to get his way. His way being me out of his hair, stranded on a little boat while he does his rough-tough manly work.
When I continue my advance, he puts his hands on his hips. “You’re gonna cut your feet on a shell, and I’ll have to carry your ass back to the boat.”
“As if I’d let you.”
“It’s either that, or listen to your dramatics.”
“You’re the one being dramatic.”
He glances away, a tendon thrumming in his jaw. He rubs his forehead, like I’m the active cause of a migraine, then mutters, “Suit yourself.”
Grinning triumphantly, I trudge onward, stopping a few feet from where he fiddles with a post to observe the network of suspended baskets, thousands of oysters contained within.
The system doesn’t look like a hack-job, but it’s rugged. Utilitarian, like everything else on the farm. “Did you build this yourself?”
His attention on a post beside him, Grayson answers, “With my team.” He grunts as he jerks something into place. “My buddy Jay who owns a farm up in the bay helped out.”
“They don’t make ready-made systems?”
“Some parts are proprietary, but we modify and custom-build a lot. Needs to suit our conditions and production goals.”
I’m reluctant to give Grayson any veneration, but it’s admittedly impressive—the breadth of knowledge and skill he has.
Every day makes it clearer that Grayson does more than pluck oysters from the water and zip around the pond like a grungy James Bond.
He’s part-mechanic, part-engineer, part-maintenance-man, and a billion other occupations.
Anson may be the business lead of the operation, but Grayson’s a respectable force of his own.
Though I’ll shake hands with a crab before I ever share that compliment.
“Your floating system’s obviously doing well.” I step over a basket and move closer to see what he’s doing. “Why try this one out? Expansion?”
“Not looking to expand.” He straightens, examining the attachment point he was tinkering with. “Just seeing if we can improve our product. Offer a little variety.”
“You don’t want to expand? Go big?”
“Absolutely not.”
This surprises me. Anson brought me on board to help grow the Gold’s name, value, and awareness. But I figured he and Grayson also want to increase production. Distribute nationally.
“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“Quality over quantity,” he says simply.
I think he might stop there. Make me beg for more information, just to be difficult.
But he keeps going, his tone earnest. “And even if we could maintain quality with higher production, getting bigger, relying on automations, expanding the team—it takes the personal touch out of it. Feels wrong. Unnatural.” He shakes his head.
“I’d end up stuck in an office all day, drowning in paperwork, separated from the actual work out here.
And I didn’t get into this business to sit in front of a computer under fluorescent lights while machines and people I don’t know put our oysters into the world. ”
I consider him, this man who continues to draw outside the neat little box I first drew him into. He’s like an onion you’d leave at the grocery store. Stinky and rotting at first glance, but each layer proving more redeemable and edible the further you peel it.
Wait, am I calling Grayson edible?
No, you’re calling him an onion.
A rotting onion.
“There are many bosses who enjoy that separation,” I say, shaking myself loose from that doomed train of thought. “Not doing the actual work, but reaping all the benefits.”
“I’ll sell this farm before I do that.”
I snort. “I wish you could have a conversation with my old manager.”
“He the reason you lost your job?” His eyes regard me with honest curiosity.
Swallowing my self-loathing, I smile bitterly. “No. I’m the reason I lost my job.”
Regret hits me the second that honesty slithers out.
It’s a harsh, shameful truth I haven’t shared with anyone.
Kitty’s phone calls are too short to get into that kind of therapy, my parents are too judgmental, and my Boston friends are, well…
yeah. But here I am, blabbering it to a man who hates me, in a moment of temporary insanity.
I expect him to smile in glee. Store away this stupid, vulnerable nugget to wield against me later like a flaming sword.
So I’m taken aback when he drawls a slow, “Yeah, no. Not buying that.”
I shouldn’t argue with him, but his knowing smirk grates on me.
“My manager sat back, let me and my team do all the work, and took credit for our final outcomes. I thought this was normal. That this was the standard dynamic at this company, and his bosses saw through his posturing and understood who really was driving our success. So I did nothing, and I let him screw me when the company made budget cuts.” I was so oblivious that I thought I was getting a promotion when HR called me in.
“Was that supposed to convince me I’m wrong?” His tone suggests there’s some serious malfunction in my brain. “Because all you did was tell me you lost your job because your boss is an asshole.”