“Aye, aye.”
I quickly made my way over to the bar, knowing that it was somewhat obstructed from our table's view. The tension I felt eased with every step I took. Jimmy's warm smile greeted me as I placed the empties up on the bar and told him to fill them up with whatever he felt like. Once his back was turned, I sighed heavily, dropping my head down to my arms. I had narrowly avoided an epically uncomfortable situation, and I was exhausted by it. I was going to be lucky to make it through the night.
Would it really have been the end of the world if they knew that Decker might have had deeper reasons for risking his life for mine? Nobody would have been mad. Nobody would have argued over it. So why was I so adamant about keeping whatever was or wasn't going on with us a secret? I rubbed the back of my neck as I tried to solve that mystery.
“I could get that for you,” a male voice said from directly behind me. I snapped up in fear at the sound. His arms caged me in, resting on either side of me against the bar. “I'm glad to see you alive.”
“Jimmy,” I called out, my voice tight but louder than I intended. “You still got that shotgun behind the counter?”
I didn’t even have to wait for his response. Seconds later, Damon was pinned to the floor, Decker's hand wrapped so tightly around his throat that his knuckles were turning white.
“I thought I made myself very clear, Damon,” he growled, pulling his unoccupied arm up, his hand balled into a fist. I couldn't even yell stop before it crashed down into Damon's face, causing his eye to swell almost instantaneously. Decker hit him repeatedly while Damon struggled to get away until one of the brothers grabbed Decker's arm to halt the beating he'd planned to continue laying down on Damon's face. But he still had his throat in his hand.
A ruckus broke out, men shouting and grabbing at Decker and Damon, everyone trying to figure out what the hell happened. If I'd thought I'd been uncomfortable before, I was about to be mortified.
“He just jumped me!” Damon exclaimed.
“You lying fuck,” Decker snarled, pulling hard against the numerous men that were holding him back. My father stepped in between his two crewmen, demanding answers. And he would get them one way or another.
“Someone is going to tell me what's going on with you two right now or neither of you will have jobs with me. Understood?”
Damon stood defiant, hellbent on maintaining his innocence. Decker just looked at me as if asking what I wanted him to say. Somehow I knew that if I'd shook my head no, he wouldn't have said a word about what happened that night in the kitchen, throwing himself under the bus for me once again.
“Dad,” I said softly, touching his arm to get his attention. “I wanted to tell you about this the night it happened, but you were so stressed out with the storm. I didn't want to push the issue.”
“Then you will tell me now,” he said sternly, his attention still directed to the two men being restrained.
I took a deep breath, not wanting to tell him at all, let alone in the middle of a crowded, so-silent-you-could-hear-a-pin-drop bar. But I wasn't letting Damon get away with it. I hoped that he was still on parole and his offense would be enough to put him behind bars. He belonged there, for a long time.
“I was making dinner that night by myself, before I came up to sit with you,” I started, fidgeting under the scrutiny of those around us. “Anyway, I was cooking, and Damon came in. He said some things . . . insinuated plans he had, and then he picked up the knife I'd been using . . . ”
Before I could continue, my dad snatched Damon up by the throat, much like Decker had done only moments earlier, only he chose to slam him down onto the bar at a horribly uncomfortable angle. The others crowded in around him, Justin and Jeremy flanking my father, just itching to get in on the action. They'd always gone to battle for me as a kid. Some things never changed.
“If you laid one hand on her, I will kill you. I'll do it right here. No one will say a word. You would come onto my boat and threaten one of my own? I'll end you. Your body will never be found, do you understand?”
Damon gurgled slightly as he turned purple, fully incapable of actually answering my father's questions.
“Cops will be here in a second,” Jimmy called out from behind the bar, his shotgun in hand. “Someone want to take the garbage out to meet them?”
But my father would not let go of Damon. His eyes were practically incinerating the flesh off of his face, fueled by sheer hatred and rage. He was not going to let him go so easily.
“Dad,” I whispered, grabbing the arm he was using to choke Damon. “Dad, he's not worth it. He's going back to jail once I file a report. Decker saw the whole thing. He stopped Damon from doing anything that night. You would have been proud.”
He peeled his eyes away from Damon's face long enough to pin them on me.
“I'm fine. Just let him go. Let it go,” I continued.
With some encouragement from the others, both verbal and physical, he let go of Damon, who slid to the floor, gasping for breath. The brothers were all too happy to drag him outside to wait for the cops. I never saw them do it, but I was pretty sure they were administering a little justice of their own while no one was looking.
The skippers helped usher my dad back to the table, leaving me alone to lean against the bar, breathing like I'd just run ten miles. Decker stood right in front of me.
“You all right?” he asked, leaning in to help stabilize me. I pulled away from him with a start.
“I gotta get out of here,” I wheezed, pushing past him and running to the exit. I blasted past the cops while they shoved Damon into the back of their cruiser, past the boys as they called out after me, and down the dock into the darkness. My face stung as the wind whipped off the water, carrying a punishing moisture in its gusts. Without a coat on, I felt like it was blowing right through me, penetrating the holes in my defenses.
When I reached the end, I stood there, staring out at the darkness, fighting back my rising emotions. Eventually, I failed. As the tears I couldn't stop pushed their way free, I felt him come up behind me. He wrapped my coat around my shoulders and pulled me back against his body, not saying a word. I surrendered for the briefest of moments into Decker's strength, wishing I could conjure some of my own, but I hadn't realized just how bothered I'd been by Damon's antics that fateful night. He was truly frightening, and my mind raced with the infinite scenarios that could have taken place if Decker hadn't shown up when he did. With the chaos that had ensued right afterward, I hadn't really processed it at all. But when I heard his voice in my ear that night, my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. He would have done as he'd promised. It was only a question of when. As that reality racked through my body, so did my sobs.
“Just let it out,” Decker whispered behind me. “He's gone now. He can't hurt you.”
I crumbled under the relief of those words, turning into his chest while my body convulsed with my sobbing. He hugged me, holding me tight against him so that I didn't need to stand. As my knees buckled, he kept me from falling, just like he'd promised.
I had no idea how long we'd been standing out there, him comforting me while I cried hysterically, but once I stopped, I pulled away from him enough to see a crowd at the end of the dock watching us, my father in front of them all. A wave of panic crashed over me, uncertain of how to play the whole thing off. None of them were naïve enough to buy any story I could have told them. He'd been there for me one too many times at that point. Like it or not, they had it figured out.
“There are worse things than them knowing, Aesa,” Decker said softly, running his hand up the side of my face. His thumb traced the tracks my tears had left, wiping them clear. The sensation lulled me out of my insecurity. “The other night . . . I never really got a chance to explain myself how I wanted to. You have no idea how hard it was not to give in, maybe one of the hardest things I've ever done, but you deserve better than what that would have been, Aesa. I want to be better than that for you. So I shut you down, and I kn
ow that hurt you, but this is why,” he explained, cupping the other side of my face so it was trapped by his touch in the most glorious way. “You need to hear this before anything happens between us. I need you to be very clear on one thing. I have never felt about anyone else the way I feel about you. Something about you has burrowed into me, and I don't want to let it out. If you think you share even an ounce of that same feeling, I need to know right now. I need to know that I'm not wrong about this, that you weren't just looking for a warm body to comfort you in that motel room.”
I stared into his eyes, desperately unsure of what to say. He'd clearly thought about his feelings before that night. I, on the other hand, had been muddling my way through mine, the feelings and emotions I'd had about him so unfamiliar to me that I didn't know what to make of them.
When I didn't answer him right away, my mind a mess of facts and feelings, he leaned in closer, his warm breath tickling my nose.
“Aesa, I need to know,” he repeated softly, his expression so open and honest, I was afraid I would break him if I chose my words poorly. The truth was that I did feel how he described, like something about him was inherently a part of me. It had to be why I felt so at ease around him. Why I found myself wanting to be around him whenever I could. Maybe that was love. God knew that I hadn't experienced enough of it in my life to know, but what I did know was that being with him felt right in every way possible.
And that was something I could not lose.
“You're not wrong,” I whispered, praying for the words he needed to hear. “I feel the same. You were right to do what you did in the motel room. I'm not even sure how things got to that point. I think I was just tired of denying what I could clearly feel and I snapped. I've never felt this way either, Decker. I don't know what to do with it.”
“This,” he said, tilting my chin up toward him. “You do this.”
His lips fell on me gently, finding their way to where they felt most right. I leaned into his touch, not wanting it to end. If there had been any question in my mind about whether he and I were meant to find one another, it was laid to rest the second he kissed me.
But it was over too soon and my body protested as he pulled away from me just enough to look me in the eyes.
“I'm quite certain we still have an audience,” he observed, knowing full well that even hardened skippers were no better than gossipy old housewives. They wouldn't miss a chance to see a scandal go down. I leaned around his shoulder to confirm his suspicions and was met with a piercing stare from my father. To his credit, he hadn't stormed down the dock to drag me home like he did at the motel, though seeing me kiss the very person I spent the night with there was going to do little for his confidence in my story.
“Yep,” I replied, returning to my previous position before him. “Any suggestions?”
“No,” he said with a wide smile, taking my hand in his. Without another word, he walked me down the long wooden dock toward the bar I'd rushed out of. As we neared the mob, some of them clapped and catcalled, making an even bigger production of what had happened. I could feel my cheeks redden, and I leaned into the shelter of Decker's arm. He laughed at the gesture.
“I'm not sure this is particularly funny,” I mumbled under my breath. “My dad doesn't look too thrilled about this.”
“He's fine with it, Aesa. You need to stop worrying so much.”
“Wait a minute. What do you mean 'he's fine with it' How do you know that?”
“Because,” he said plainly, “I told him how I felt before I came after you.”
“You did what?” I asked, stopping dead in my tracks. “Are you trying to get a job on another boat intentionally?”
“He was headed out to find you, and I stopped him. I told him what I just told you. He stared at me for a moment then let me go.”
My mind tried desperately to process what he'd said. While it fought to do so, Decker pulled me along behind him back toward the crowd. My dad stood in front of them still, stoic and unreadable as ever.
“Aesa,” he started, and my skin crawled instantly. We had just started to get to a better place, and I feared that my carrying on out on the dock that night was going to undo it all.
“Yes, Dad?”
“I'm sorry that I made you feel like you couldn't tell me what happened. As for this,” he continued, gesturing to Decker's hand that held mine firmly, unwilling to let me go even though I desperately wanted to squirm away from him—he would not let me fall. “You have my blessing, if it is what you want.” I thought I was going to pass out. My whole world felt like it had been turned upside down in the best way possible. It was more than I could deal with. A tear escaped my eye, despite my best efforts to hold it at bay. “However, regarding the other night, I think that is a discussion I will be re-opening before we leave. Perhaps we should have it now on the way home.”
Before I could start sweating, a ghost of a smile passed across his face.
Then he burst out laughing.
“I think we've had enough entertainment for this evening,” he told the group, his arms spread wide to shuttle them back into the bar. “Whose turn is it to buy?”
I watched as the skippers crashed upon the entrance like a wave on the shore, then disappeared inside.
“Should we join them?” Decker asked, looking down at me with no agenda. Whatever I'd said would have been fine with him.
“I say yes. I need a fucking beer.”
He too burst out in a fit of laughter, clearly startled by my unexpected and rather colorful response.
“Let's go,” he said, tugging on my hand gently. “You're freezing, and if we wait too long, the old guys will have drained the kegs dry.”
* * *
What seemed like hours later, I emerged with my drunken father hanging off of my shoulder, both of us staggering toward the car. I was sober, but his weight made it difficult for me to make my way to the truck with any measure of grace. Decker and a few of the others had offered to help me with him, but I was so tired of being the center of attention and desperate to escape my growing anxiety about being publicly outed that I hopped at the chance to have a nearly solitary moment. My father was way too drunk to be highly companionable.
When Decker and I had entered the bar, the urge to pull my hand from his was virtually uncontrollable. I felt the eyes of everyone on us, especially our clasped hands, and it made me squirm, even if they all did seem rather pleased about it. They were also pretty drunk and had enjoyed a good fight that night, so their mood was already jovial well before the show Decker and I had given them. But the high I had felt initially when Decker kissed me had declined rapidly, leaving me with doubt and confusion. Not only did I have to contend with the feelings I had for Decker, weighing them logically against the reality of our situation while no longer embroiled in some harrowing event, but I also had to process the fallout that was sure to occur with Damon. That situation promised to be a gift that kept on giving, in the most unwelcome way.
My father hadn't spoken to me directly since he addressed Decker and me outside the bar, which left me feeling even more awkward. As I loaded him into the truck, I figured that wasn't likely to change, given his level of inebriation, but I was wrong. Instead, I found myself listening to the nearly incoherent ramblings of drunk old skipper, who had far more to share with me than I would have ever bargained for.
“My little Norwegian Princess,” he started, his words slurring together slightly. “She has finally found herself a man, and a fisherman at that. You knew that was your destiny, did you not? It's in your blood, Aesa. Generations before you have dictated your path. Perhaps you weren't to be one yourself, but it's a way of life for people like us.” I looked over at him, his head leaning back against the headrest as though he could barely support its weight on his own. It lolled to the side when he felt my eyes on him, staring me down in a surprisingly intense way. “I'd always hoped that you would return home one day. I thought that maybe you and Robbie would end up together. H
e's a good man, but Decker is a fine choice too. I support you two being together wholeheartedly.”
“Christ, Dad. I'm not marrying him. We're not having this discussion now. You're drunk.”
“I'm proud of you, Aesa,” he continued, ignoring my words. “You've come back to your roots. It's all I ever wanted.”
Before I could rebut his statement, tell him that I wasn't coming back to my roots at all, I heard his light snoring echo through the cab of the truck. I sighed, his words frustrating me more than they should have. When I tried to sort out why, my gaze drifted off the side of the road to the local cemetery—the fisherman's burial grounds. My mother's headstone was erected there, even though we had no body to bury. Seeing that helped me solve the mystery regarding the unease I felt at my father's final sentiment. I didn't want to come back to my roots; I'd spent nearly a decade running from them. Returning to re-establish a relationship with my father was one thing, but resuming my life as it had been when I left for college was not an option.
Neither was becoming my mother.
My father's enlightening words outside the motel may have shed some light on my mother's less-than-saintly status, but it didn't change the fact that her marriage drove her to do many things, killing herself being the final one. She was a fisherman's daughter too, all but forced into a life that made her so depressed that she took her own. She actually suffered a slow and unrelenting death until she finally drowned that winter night. I did not want that for myself.
It surprised me even more that my father was pleased at the possibility of me having it.
My thoughts then fell on Decker and my confusion grew. If I was being honest with myself, it was undeniable what I felt for him. I'd never before felt the way I did when I was near him. But did he come with a price tag that was just too much to pay? Was he really and truly a fisherman at heart, someone who couldn't resist the call of the sea? And if so, would I be able to resist his call, knowing that the end result of a union with someone married to the water could only be unimaginable sadness and heartache?
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