The Darkest Joy

by Marata Eros

  I nod.

  Today I won’t die.

  I don’t know about tomorrow.

  It’s not day by day for me anymore, it’s hour by hour.

  But maybe, him saving me is the sign I need to move on. Maybe I don’t have to die to live.

  As if he knows that, he places me in the backseat of his car then tucks the blanket around me.

  Like a future butterfly in the safety of its temporary home, I lie there in a cocoon fashioned by him.

  He slides into the front seat and swings the heavy door shut with a soft click. I watch silently as he turns around, his muscular arm hanging over the seat.

  He looks at me and our gazes lock.

  “Where?”

  I tell him, my teeth chattering almost gone.

  His brow rises in surprise but he starts the engine. It roars to life, a powerful and separate presence, reverberating underneath me like the purr of a lion.

  I close my eyes. They’re so heavy.

  I’ll just rest them for a second, I think. Shame, despair, and exhaustion are a heady mix, driving consciousness away like a riptide. I feel it change course toward something that might allow the grief of my despair to lift like fog when sunlight appears even as I spiral into a discomfited slumber.

  I don’t wake when he lifts me and tenderly places me on my crappy couch. I don’t feel when he takes off my wet clothes, wrapping me in the coverlet from my bed.

  I don’t know that he stays for an hour, alternately checking my pulse and feeling the slow and gradual return of my warmth.

  My life.

  As my consciousness fades again to black, it strikes me that for the first time since everything happened, at least in this moment, I don’t feel alone.

  Chance

  My fingers drum on the steering wheel, eyes pegged on the old homesteader’s cabin at the bum-fucked-Egypt last stop of East End, torn between staying or leaving.

  I scrub my face, so tired I feel like I have sandpaper where my eyeballs should be.

  The sea doesn’t care if you save a girl that wants to die.

  How late you stay up.

  How hungover you are.

  The tide comes, the fish spawn, swim, and wait to be caught in an endless circle of the food chain.

  My clients won’t be sympathetic to anything either. Fishing waits for no man. And yet . . . I can’t bring myself to move. I glance at my phone and remember the girl I’ve picked from twenty applicants. I’m due to meet her in . . . I look at the glowing numbers on my cell.

  Six hours.

  Fuck me running.

  With one more glance at the cabin, I exhale loudly as I put the ’Cuda in gear and glide down the driveway. The ribbon of grass that bisects the center hisses like a snake as it whispers its good-bye underneath my low-riding car.

  I reluctantly pull away as I hope she won’t try to do that again.

  I swallow hard.

  Ever.

  I don’t want to admit that she’s the first real thing that’s ever shaken the careful foundation I’ve laid.

  I don’t do attachment. It’s safer that way. Attachments are for those who have never lost anything, their trust easily given. But I lost something a long time ago. And I know how to steel myself against ever feeling pain like that again.

  I belong to the sea, that’s my attachment. In that sense, I guess I am a one-woman man.

  And I’m taken.

  But as my thoughts move back to the girl from the pier, she stirs something within the careful house of cards I’ve built for myself. And I wonder if that fragile structure will hold.

  The image of her rises in my mind. It’s not pretty: the purple lips, the chalky skin, the slicked-back, waterlogged hair clinging to her like silken despair.

  But those eyes, those haunted eyes, they’re burned into my brain. Her sadness has caught me like the fish I net. I’ve hit her hook without even knowing I’m in the ocean; saving her has reeled me in inextricably.

  And I don’t even know her name.

  FIVE

  Brooke

  Something smells like ass.

  Wait . . . it’s me. I crack an eye open, breaking the crust of sleep induced by near death, the dried seawater covering me in a stiff shroud of vileness.

  Somehow, it’s not as awful as the memory. I stew in my own seawater stench and the night’s memories wash over me like the ocean had just hours before. Now that the fog of alcohol has lifted and the melody of the painful tune has faded I feel . . . embarrassed. My heart gives a lurching thump in my chest, pounding with my emotion as I realize I’m not honoring my family’s memory through my death. They would want me to live . . . if not for me, at least for them. I lie there a moment longer, hot tears creating clean paths against salt water that’s dried on my face in a sticky mess. I think about going to work in the same capacity that Joey did, fishing lazy summers away in Alaska and how that choice has been robbed from him forever. Now I have the chance to do it . . . for him, for me. It’s a gift, not something to toss into the sea like I tried last night. I feel my old determination rise within me. It’s scary, exhilarating . . . right.

  “Ooh!” I groan, throwing my bent elbow over my eyes as bright sunlight stabs its way through the gray glass of my small cabin, spotlighting the grimy interior as I choke back a sob, remembering, my feelings of getting back on track wavering like water running over glass.

  The hot guy who witnessed my botched suicide attempt.

  My new friends, Evan and Tucker . . . I ditch in favor of despair. Everything is fucked six ways to Sunday. But I realize now, it doesn’t have to be.

  Slowly, I lower my arm from my face, the sunlight bathing me despite the dirty glass. Vaguely, I can hear the sound of the ocean, a symphony of crashing waves, a ruthless rhythm that’s timeless and unending.

  I look around, my eyes latching onto the clock. An archaic windup thing with the name Ben inscribed on its face I’d found in a nightstand drawer in my bedroom and commandeered to the living room. Its loud ticking jars the quietness. My cell is safely stowed in the drawer, though the low-power beep is like a beacon of alert that it’s about ready to die.

  There’s one right thing I can do: I can phone my new friend and let him know I’m okay. I sit up, the blood rushing to my head, blanking my vision momentarily. I sit there, trying to regain my balance. I haven’t eaten in . . . I can’t remember. It was a dumbass move to drink last night, considering. And to let everything get to me. I mean . . . I can’t listen to a song without it becoming a trigger?

  Apparently not. My eyes trip over my damp clothes on the floor.

  They damn me on the spot.

  Oh Jesus, I think, he’s seen me without clothes. The nameless hottie cum rescuer has seen . . . shit, everything.

  More blood rushes to my head and I fight the urge to put it between my legs, my palms dampening.

  I offer myself a lame consolation: I bet I’ll never see him again, internally promising myself to avoid the Salty Dawg at all costs.

  That’s it, I determine. Easy.

  But I should know, nothing ever is.

  Easy.

  I make the call, like the walk of shame . . . it’s the call of shame. Never mind me, Evan, I speak inside my head, I’m trying to drown my sorrows.

  No, not with booze. With the sea.

  Out loud I say, “Hey, hi,” my cell light beeping low battery in warning.

  “Brooke!” Evan says. “Shit, girl, you gave me and Tucker the slip and we didn’t know what happened!”

  There’s an awkward pause in the open line. I yearn to fill it just as I yearn to hang up.

  I swallow. “Yeah . . . I, ah . . . had too much to drink and couldn’t drive the bus home . . .”

  “Don’t you have the deckhand job starting today?”

  I nod, realize he can’t see me, and say, “Yeah.”

  “I’ll rustle ya up!” he says cheerfully.

  “Okay,” I say in a small voice, feeling like a colossal asshole.r />
  I’m never telling Lacey, I think randomly. Correction, I’m never telling anyone. My mortification is too acute, too private. I’ve already shared it with a stranger and even that’s too much. I tread lightly with my emotions, as my body betrays me with a near panic attack. It knows I almost died even if my intellect’s in acute denial.

  “Is that okay? Hellllooo . . .”

  I’d lost the thread of the conversation. “Yes, please . . . I’m sorry . . . I just caught a ride with whoever . . .”

  A man who saved me, who knows how little I value life—my life.

  “That’s not cool, Brooke . . . I would’ve taken ya home.”

  “I know, I’m sorry.”

  He gives a soft chuckle. “Don’t let it happen again,” he says in a tone of stern warning.

  “I won’t,” I promise, meaning it. Evan doesn’t know how much.

  “Be there soon,” he says and the line goes dead as I say good-bye.

  I look down at my phone and see another call from Clearwater; they’re piling up. Shit, doesn’t he have a murderer to catch?

  Then it hits me: maybe he does and that’s why he’s calling me?

  Do I want to know? To finally face that nameless blank individual who killed my entire family? The same menace who I’m assuming killed that other pianist’s family?

  I should be thinking about calling him back.

  I should be giving serious consideration to the parallels here.

  I don’t. Instead, my eyes burning, I pivot on my heel and make my way to the shower.

  The water eases my sadness down the drain, hiding the proof of it as the two mingle, draining somewhere far from the grief that bleeds from me. The seawater still clings to my skin. I reek of the ocean and have to wash twice to get rid of it.

  I clean myself up by the time Evan pulls up in a Jeep that’s so high off the ground I have to hop to get into it. Mud is caked underneath the wheel wells like he’s driven through a wall of it.

  “God, wash your car much?” I ask, immediately trying to talk about anything but last night.

  Evan jogs around the front. “I’m from Alaska, we have . . . three seconds of summer, and a ton of it is rain.” He shrugs, his blond hair almost ringlets as it bobs with him as he effortlessly swings into the cab, his hand gripping the roll bar like a monkey with a purpose.

  He turns on the motor and the engine buries us with its teeth-rattling shake. “Besides,” he nearly screams over the dull roar, “it’s great for mud-bogging.”

  Mud-bogging? “What the hell is that?” I ask, almost not wanting the answer.

  Evan gives a slow, evil grin, shifting into first gear and bouncing us out of my lumpy driveway. The long grass grabs along the sides of the car like escaped tentacles of wheat. “It’s called taking my chances with the tide.”

  My mind allows that sentence to tumble within the recesses of my skull, polishing it until it shines.

  “No way . . . you . . . go out on the ocean floor when the tide is out . . .” I ask incredulously.

  He nods, turning up the volume of the head-banger music to a crescendo that diminishes coherent speaking ability. Disarmonia shrieks in the background, with the engine running second in the race of going deaf.

  “Yup!” he says, giving a fist pump that hits the ceiling of the Jeep and I jump. “Hell, yeah, it’s a blast.”

  “Riiight,” I drawl, but laugh when I see his hurt expression. He’s so into it.

  The Jeep lurches over every curve and pothole on the tapestry of the road. “Gotta have a way to burn off steam,” Evan explains.

  “So,” I say, crossing my arms, grateful beyond words for the distraction of Evan, “this is your testosterone purge?”

  He nods again. “I think there’s hope for you, Brooke from Seattle.”

  I roll my eyes. Uh-huh.

  Then Evan looks at me, poker face firmly entrenched, the wheels of the Jeep kissing asphalt instead of dirt road as we make our way to the spit. “Don’t underestimate the stress reliever churning some mud can be.” He waggles his brows and I bark out a laugh. The first natural sound out of my mouth in almost twenty-four hours. My smile fades and he says, “What?”

  I answer with the truth, or my version by omission. “I’m just thinking how much of an ass I was last night . . . to just . . . bail on you guys.” I shrug. “Sorry.”

  I look at my hands, feeling my face heat with all that I know and don’t say.

  “Listen . . . Brooke,” Evan says and I look up from my laced fingers. His eyes meet mine, brown sugar floating in the pressed emeralds of his irises.

  “Yes?” I ask, and my breath catches at his serious tone.

  “I know we just met but, we stick together here.” Evan looks out at the sea that froths at either side of the spit, the surf pounding lone logs of driftwood, the wind beating the wharf rats’ tents into submission. “We’re pioneers,” he continues, sweeping his palm around the seascape. My eyes take in the austere frozen beauty all around us. The sea moves endlessly as the fjords rise up from its feet, coming together like two halves of a whole.

  Alaska has this feeling of otherness . . . like we’re somehow together but separate. It’s impossible to quantify, but you can almost feel like nothing outside of this place matters.

  However, last night is proof that it does. Your past follows you no matter what corner of the earth you call home.

  “Alaska gets in your blood.”

  “You mean . . . the climate or . . . ?” I ask, genuinely curious. I’ve been here days, he’s been here years.

  “Everything,” Evan says softly, then putting the Jeep into neutral and setting the brake, jolting us both out of our reverie with a loud, “We’re here!”

  He kicks open the door and slides out with a practiced hop.

  I look down at the big fall from seat to ground; the pebbled asphalt looks far away from my perch on the passenger side.

  I tentatively put the tip of my All Star sneaker on the running board and then two hands clasp my waist.

  Warm.

  Vital.

  Unforgettable.

  My eyes snap up and take in the deep and arresting bluish-green ones, kissed by midnight, that stare intensely back into mine.

  I’d seen them from a distance in the Dawg.

  I’d seen them look at me with a tender concern that tightened my heart when I was soaked by the sea.

  Seeing them up close was an intimacy that clenched my guts. I instantly infuse with heat, the sensation melting to my toes, my heart trying to escape my rib cage.

  Somehow I become aware that Evan has come around behind my savior’s shoulder.

  “Hey Brooke, meet Chance . . . Chance Taylor.”

  “Hi . . . Brooke,” Chance says with a smile.

  I search his face, very aware of his big hands on my waist as he lowers me to the street.

  He’s very tall, I note, swallowing in a suddenly dry throat.

  “Here’s Boss Man,” Evan says, unwrapping a Blow Pop and shoving it into his mouth.

  Of course, I can’t even fake indifference. I stand stupidly, staring up into my savior’s eyes. I blink.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Chance drawls and I flush.

  Shit . . . fuck. He’s going to . . . what?

  “Hi,” I croak.

  His hands leave my waist. I look up into his face as Chance puts out the hand that was just on my body for me to shake.

  The guy who saved my life.

  Who I work for.

  Who’s seen me in my underwear.

  As if in a daze I put my hand in his, his larger one swallowing mine, giving a gentle squeeze.

  A tingle of pure electricity shoots between us as our skin mingles and my eyes widen as his tighten. I can tell he felt it too. But at his touch, the memory of last night crashes into me and I realize that Chance Taylor, my boss, isn’t going to want to mess with a washed-up pianist-turned-orphan with a death wish.

  “That’s the longest handshake in the
history of the universe . . . Just sayin’,” Evan comments in the background, his voice droll.

  I snatch my hand away as though it burns.

  Chance’s small smile widens to a grin. “Do you have any gear?” he asks, ignoring the big fat pink elephant romping around between us.

  Last night.

  The chemistry.

  Total awkwardness.

  My cell vibrates in my pocket and I ignore it. Maybe it’ll go away?

  Chance’s eyes dip to my pocket where my cell twitters and shakes. I feel heat rise to my face, his eyes pegged on my hip. What is wrong with me? I need to get a grip here, I’m not sixteen.

  “Yeah, it’s in the back . . .” I stammer as he smirks, turning to the Jeep.

  He jerks the small door open and pushes the seat forward, hauling out all the goodies I got for the job.

  “We start tomorrow,” he says, his back to me, and I watch the muscles in his shoulders roll underneath the thin T-shirt he wears and gulp again.

  I want to close my eyes against the view but I can’t look away; suddenly I’m mesmerized by the ornate tattoos peeking out from under his shirtsleeves, wondering about the story behind them.

  I sigh.

  He carries my gear to a small lean-to office that is one of many shanty-type buildings that line the beach, an elevated and weathered boardwalk running along the front of the shops, their façades similar. As I follow him I glance at the colorful hand-lettered signs, each one pronouncing a different trade. The tin roofs stand alongside one another in a melody of different hues. Their bright colors appear to stand in opposition to the quiet power that lays just beyond the row of small buildings.

  Evan trails behind us, his hands jammed into his pockets, a moody expression riding his face, the stick from the sucker standing at angry attention in his mouth.

  We’re outside the door as my eyes latch onto a wooden sign, the words burned into the wood: Take a Chance with Taylor. And then below in small print it reads: And Catch Some ’But! A larger sign stands above the wood sign, which reads: Deep Sea Charter.

  A bell chimes as Chance passes through with my gear and Evan stays my arm with his hand. I turn, looking up at him.