by Abby Weeks
“It’s against regulations to go down to that deck during passage,” Hunter said. “If the vehicles were to move, you’d be crushed.”
Aisha nodded. She knew the kiosk wasn’t an option for him. Not for the entire night. There weren’t even any seats there. He’d have to stand in the corridor or lie on the floor, where passengers would be stepping over him if they wanted to use the washroom or visit the kiosk.
“Don’t worry about it,” Aisha said. “We’ll figure something out. Luckily you’re both gentlemen.”
She felt the familiar knots in her stomach, though. It was always something Heath did that made her feel that way. He didn’t seem to ever take her concerns seriously. She hadn’t been trying to act like a princess, she was just embarrassed to sleep so close to Hunter. Why couldn’t he acknowledge that? Why couldn’t he back her up, even just out of politeness? She knew it wasn’t his fault—there really was no other way to organize the sleeping. But she felt so unsupported by Heath and it scared her, especially now that she was traveling to this new, remote land with him.
*
Chapter 25
AISHA LEFT THE MEN IN the cabin to go up on deck. It was freezing out there, the wind off the ocean well below freezing, but she’d made it a little ritual to watch each ferry’s departure, and she wasn’t going to miss the sight of Prince Rupert’s lights receding into the darkness.
When she came back down to the cabin, the men were laughing. They’d bought a bottle of vodka from the kiosk and were passing it back and forth.
“Aisha,” Heath called out a little too loudly when she squeezed into the cabin. “Come and join us.”
Heath’s eyes were a little glazed over, the way they got when he drank, and his voice was loud and careless sounding. She looked from him to Hunter and back.
“You two look like you’re enjoying yourselves,” she said.
“Thirty hours on this boat,” Hunter said. “This is the best way to pass them.”
“Did you guys think of getting anything for dinner?”
Heath pulled up a big pack of chips and threw them to her. “Come on and join us,” he said. “There’s nothing else to do.”
Aisha sat down next to Heath. Hunter was sitting at the little table against the other wall. There was a small window at the end of the room but there was nothing to see outside but blackness.
“The sea’s a little rough, isn’t it?” Aisha said.
Hunter took a swig from the bottle and passed it to her. “This is nothing,” he said. “Believe me, it can get a lot worse. You have nothing to worry about tonight, missy.”
“I saw whales back in Port McNeill,” she said.
“Oh, you’ll see plenty more. Maybe tomorrow. They follow the boats sometimes.”
“Do we have more ferries after this one?” she said.
“One more,” Hunter said, “from Juneau to Whittier. We’ll likely see whales on that one. There’ll be more daylight sailing.”
“I’d like that,” Aisha said.
She looked from Hunter to Heath. They seemed relaxed, happy to have nothing to think about till they got off the boat. She could tell they were planning to get good and drunk. She wondered what that would be like, sharing this tiny cabin with the two of them when they were hungover in the morning. She prayed no one would throw up. That would be unbearable.
She rose the bottle to her lips and took a swig of the liquor. It burned her throat on its way down.
“Boy,” she gasped, “what is this stuff?”
Heath and Hunter laughed. Aisha’s eyes watered. She breathed through her teeth and could feel the alcohol on her breath.
“The natives make it,” Hunter said.
“Is it legal?”
“Not on land, but at sea it is, more or less.”
“More or less?”
“You’ve got to be a certain distance from the coast before the laws stop applying.”
Aisha nodded. She had a feeling that all the laws she’d grown up with were beginning to apply less and less the farther north they got. It really was a different world up here.
They passed the bottle around a few more times. Aisha took much smaller swigs. She’d learned her lesson. She was still starting to feel a little lightheaded from the alcohol though. She wanted to stop drinking, but she didn’t know how. With the cabin so small, there wasn’t much else she could do while the guys still drank.
“So, how long have you two been together?” Hunter said.
Heath looked at Aisha. “Four years, right babe?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“I plucked her right out of the high school,” Heath said proudly.
There was a time when Aisha had enjoyed Heath telling the story of how he’d swooped in and whisked her off her feet. Now she thought more and more that it made him sound creepy. She’d technically been a minor at the time, a child. He’d been twenty-four. He could have gone to jail for seducing her when she was sixteen.
Hunter didn’t seem too offended though. He smiled at Heath. “You married?” he said.
“Engaged,” Heath said. “She’s all mine though, if that’s what you mean.”
Aisha wasn’t sure what Heath meant by that. She’d been committed to him ever since they’d started going out. She supposed she was more his though, now that he’d proposed. Again she refused to think of the proposal. He didn’t even have the dress anymore. He’d brought it back to the store. He’d been too cheap to buy it. How would he ever know if she was thin enough to fit in it?
“Nice,” Hunter said. “You’re a lucky man.”
“Cheers,” Heath said and rose the bottle to his lips before passing it to Hunter.
“You married?” Heath said.
Hunter shook his head. “I was, twice, but that was a long time ago. Now I’m more of a lone wolf.”
Aisha laughed. Men always thought of themselves as lone wolves when they got divorced.
“I have a daughter about your age,” Hunter said to Aisha.
“Is she in Alaska?”
“No, California, with her mother.”
“Nice,” Aisha said. She’d always wanted to see California.
“I haven’t seen her in three years,” Hunter said.
Aisha nodded.
“You must get lonely,” Heath said.
“I do all right.”
“Sorry,” Heath said, “I just meant, where do you go when you need a woman? They can be hard to come by.” He winked at Aisha. She looked away. She wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but she never felt comfortable when he got like this.
“Wait till you get to Alaska,” Hunter said. “It’s even more lonesome there. There must be ten men for every one woman in the state. It’s like the Wild West was a hundred years ago. All you find there are prospectors, miners, and loggers like you. It’s no place for a woman, and they seem to know it. Outside of Juneau and Anchorage and Fairbanks, you’d be hard pressed to find a woman at all who wasn’t working in the industry in some way.”
“The industry?” Heath said.
“Beg your pardon,” Hunter said to Aisha.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “The sex industry, right?”
“Well, that’s just the way it is. You’ve got oil fields, mines, hunting, wildlife—none of that is really stuff that attracts a large female population. But the men who work there, they’ve got to have their bit.”
“I see,” Aisha said.
She was beginning to wonder just what she’d gotten herself into. What kind of a place was she being brought to?
“So you visit them?” Heath said.
“The women?”
“Yes. The women?”
Hunter was a little sheepish. He looked at Aisha before answering.
“Well, everyone does. It’s just how it is. It’s not like the lower forty-eight. It’s a different world. You’ll see when you get there.”
Heath took a long swig from the bottle. He put his arm awkwardly around Aisha,
as if demonstrating his ownership of her. Aisha really didn’t like when he got like this. He’d always tended to treat her like a possession, a status symbol of sorts. He bragged a lot to other guys about how he’d picked up a high school girl. Now it seemed like they were going to a place where none of the other men had girlfriends at all. He’d be insufferable. He’d parade her around like a prize pony. She could just see it all already.
She looked at Heath. He seemed to be leering at her, like some old man staring at little girls at the swimming pool. He was giving her the creeps.
“What say we play a little game?” Heath said.
He took a deck of cards from his backpack and started shuffling it.
“Sure. Why not?” Hunter said.
“What game?” Aisha said.
She looked at her watch. It was only eight thirty. They had a lot of hours to pass before getting to Juneau. Cards were as good a way as any to get through the time. She picked up the chip pack and ate a few. She looked at Heath, but he didn’t care. She supposed she was allowed to eat chips, thankfully.
“First, I’ve got to take a piss,” Heath said.
He got up and stepped over Aisha to get out of the cabin. Aisha felt a little shy to be left alone with Hunter. He passed her the bottle and she took a generous swig.
“You nervous about the move?” Hunter said.
“To Alaska?”
He nodded.
“Should I be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to scare you.”
“Why would I be scared?” The thing was, she could think of a dozen reasons right off the top of her head, from wild animals and brutally cold winters, to being completely isolated from everyone she knew and completely reliant on Heath.
Hunter shrugged. “It’s a wild place is all. It’ll take a little getting used to. You seem innocent.”
“What’s wrong with being innocent?”
“Nothing. It’s nice, beautiful even.”
Aisha looked away. Was he flirting with her? She didn’t think so.
“But you’ll need some grit up there. You’ll need to toughen up.”
“I’ve got grit,” Aisha said. “You don’t grow up in the Washington State child services system and not learn to have grit.”
Hunter nodded. “I didn’t know that about you,” he said.
“Why would you?”
He shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t.”
Heath came back from the washroom and Aisha was relieved she didn’t have to make conversation with Hunter anymore.
“I’ve got to go too,” Hunter said.
Heath was just sitting back down next to Aisha on the bed. She had to scoot over to the wall to make room for him.
“Do you have to go too?” Heath said to her. “I want to start this game tonight if possible.”
“Hold your horses,” Hunter said. “It’ll just take me a second.”
Hunter squeezed out through the door, stepping over Heath’s legs to do so.
“You sure you don’t need to go?” Heath said to her when they were alone.
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
He looked at her, caught her eye. She could see the slightly slack expression his face always took on when he drank. She was sure he and Hunter would both snore like pigs all night long. At least they were only in this cabin for one night.
“I love you, you know?” Heath said.
She looked up at him. There was something in Aisha that always melted a little when he said that to her. She was guarded by nature. She knew that about herself. Enough had happened in her life for her to learn the importance of protecting herself, of not wearing her heart completely on her sleeve. But still, whenever he told her he loved her, her guard dropped for a minute. She was like putty in his hand. She needed it so badly, wanted to be loved so badly, that every time he told her he loved her, no matter what he did at other times, she believed him.
She’d gone through counseling provided by the state, and her counselor had warned her to be careful. He’d told her that she’d effectively been abandoned as a baby. Her record didn’t show that her parents were dead. It showed that they gave her up willingly. The counselor told her that made her extremely vulnerable. She would do more than most people in order to be loved. She needed it more. There was a void in her created by her lack of parents that needed to be filled, and often, people in her position would do virtually anything to fill that void.
She’d asked him what it meant for her specifically, and he said she could never be certain. It just meant that she had to be careful. It wasn’t a good or a bad thing. It was just a reality, a need that would forever rest within her. It would make her loyal, caring, loving. She’d do anything for someone she loved, for someone she believed loved her, and that was a beautiful way to be, but it also made her vulnerable. If she gave that loyalty to the wrong person, she could end up being very badly hurt. She could end up accepting abuse or manipulation where other women wouldn’t allow it.
She often thought about the counselor’s words. She wondered if they applied to her relationship with Heath. He’d done things to her that she shouldn’t have accepted. She knew she should have stood up for herself more often, but then, she was also scared. Where would that get her? What would she do if he left her? How could she survive on her own? She had nothing—no money, no education, no family. She had no one she could turn to, no one she could run to for refuge, no alternative. She would be crazy to jeopardize her relationship with Heath by standing up for herself when there were other ways of dealing with his moods.
“I know you love me,” she said.
He leaned forward and put his arms around her. It was awkward on the tiny bed, but he managed to get up in front of her and put his mouth on hers. He smelled of alcohol, and he tasted stale, in need of a good sleep and a good wash, but that was to be expected on a long journey like this. She opened her mouth and let him kiss her. His tongue slid into her mouth and ran over hers.
She held him tight and forgave him for everything.
When Hunter returned, Heath was groping her chest, trying to get his hand inside her thick, woolen sweater.
“I’m sorry,” Hunter said when he opened the door. “Do you want me to come back in half an hour?”
Heath laughed. Aisha was embarrassed.
“No, no,” Heath laughed. “We were just waiting for you to come back and join us.”
Aisha bristled at Heath’s choice of words. She cleared her throat and straightened out her clothing. She knew her cheeks were red with shame.
Hunter laughed it off and reclaimed his seat across from Heath.
“So what’s this game?” he said.
Something told Aisha it was going to be a long night.
*
Chapter 26
“PICK A CARD,” HEATH SAID, holding the deck out, facedown, to Aisha.
She picked one.
“What did you get?”
She turned over the card. It was the seven of spades.
Heath held the deck out to Hunter who likewise picked a card. “Three of hearts,” he said.
“Ouch,” Heath said.
He picked a card for himself and showed it. It was the Ace of spades.
“Low card loses,” he said to Hunter.
Hunter shrugged. “Ace is high?”
“Yes, so you’ve got to take off a piece of clothing,” Heath said.
“What?” Aisha said. “Heath. Stop this.”
Heath ignored her. He was looking at Hunter. Hunter looked back at him, their eyes locked for just a second. Then Hunter pulled his thick sweater up over his head and set it next to him. “It was getting warm in here, anyhow,” he said.
“Heath,” Aisha said, “what is this? Hunter, put your sweater back on.”
“Relax, Aisha. He doesn’t mind. Do you, Hunter?”
Hunter shrugged. Of course he didn’t mind. He wasn’t the only girl in the room. Aisha suddenly felt claustrophobic in the tiny cabin. They were both sitt
ing between her and the door, their knees practically meeting in the middle. She would have to step over them both to leave. She suddenly had a terrible thought—what would happen if they didn’t let her leave?
“Another round?” Heath said.
“No thanks,” Aisha said.
Heath held the cards up to her. “Come on, baby,” he said. “It’s just a game. Calm down.”
Aisha looked out the window. It was pitch black outside, and all she could see was the reflection of the fluorescent light on the ceiling.
“Suit yourself,” Heath said. He pulled a card from the deck and put it on her lap, face up. Aisha looked at it. It was the five of clubs. She didn’t care. She wasn’t playing.
Heath held the cards out to Hunter. “I don’t know,” Hunter said, “if the lady’s not into it, I don’t see the point.”
When Heath spoke, there was a forcefulness in his voice that Aisha knew only too well. It meant there was no room for discussion. “She’s my woman, and I say what she’s into.”
Hunter looked at her. “I don’t want to get in the middle of something,” he said.
“We’re all friends here,” Heath said, “just playing a little cards to pass the time. The lady’s into it.”
“Is that so?” Hunter said to her.
Aisha couldn’t believe he was even asking her. Of course it wasn’t so. She’d just said it wasn’t so. She kept her eyes on the window. She honestly didn’t even know what would happen if she tried to stand up and leave the cabin at this point. It was disgusting.
Hunter pulled out a card. Aisha glanced at it before returning her gaze to the window. It was a number seven. She looked again at her five.
Heath then selected a card. “Damn it,” he said.
Aisha looked. She was too curious not to. It was a two.
Heath reached down to his foot and removed one of his boots. Aisha was sure she could smell his sock in the confined cabin. Heath took the cards back from each of them, Aisha’s card still untouched on her lap where he’d placed it, and shuffled.
“Okay,” Heath said and placed another card on Aisha’s lap. She still wasn’t touching it. They were wasting their time as far as she was concerned. She wasn’t playing their stupid game. It was unfair of them to force her. Her card was the queen of hearts.