The Darkest Joy

by Marata Eros

  She devours them.

  I reach the end of the steps as her hands float and stab the notes, the dynamics spot-on.

  This is no amateur player, I think.

  In fact . . . I know it.

  What the hell is a girl with this kind of skill doing as a deckhand?

  The last notes echo into the stillness of the room and a deep breath escapes her. I see her slim shoulders rise and fall.

  Naturally.

  In relaxation.

  I realize I’ve never seen Brooke relax and almost feel bad that I’m going to bust that awesomeness up.

  Almost.

  I hope I’m not pissing up a rope here. I’m taking a gamble that she’s going to go with what I want.

  “Brooke,” I say softly.

  She whips around, a sliver of sun slanting across her face, making her soft lavender eyes seem to glow in her face.

  I swallow. Fuck, she makes me nervous. Excited. “Remember what I said?” My eyes search hers, gauging her reaction.

  Brooke nods, her eyes a touch wide, her hand to her chest. My eyes move to the softness of her mouth, crimson in the illusion the sun makes of her face.

  “That I won’t have to worry?” she asks with a hint of a smile in her eyes, in her voice.

  I nod, all the smooth words I’m going to blow her away with jammed in my craw like sideways toothpicks.

  Shit. What the hell is wrong with me?

  I stand there in front of her like a dumbass and she slips off the bench, moving toward me. Some trick of the light washes her with gold and a small noise between a growl and a moan breaks free and suddenly Brooke’s in front of me.

  Jesus, she’s so perfect, I think before I fall.

  Into her. Her arms come around my neck and my hands automatically are on her ass, picking her up. Intellect grinds to a halt as I look around for somewhere and Brooke pulls my mouth to hers.

  She wipes my mind like an eraser. The beat of Brooke is against me and it’s the only rhythm I hear. As I deepen the kiss my hands stray to frame her face; delicate—like an eggshell, beautiful.

  She’s just the living artwork I like.

  My fingers splay over smooth cheeks like silk under the brush of my calloused touch, her mouth parting for mine as I slip the tip of my tongue between her lips, breaking the seal of both our mouths. Somehow, my hand finds the back of her neck. Waist-length dark hair is fisted in my hand as I tighten my hold on her hair and neck, bringing Brooke closer, and she gives a soft moan of pleasure and I know I’ve gone too far. My body tells me.

  My mind tries to interfere. How did I go from hiring Brooke, to saving her . . . to devouring her lips like a starving man . . . in the middle of a basement music room? Her presence has stolen my professionalism as surely as a weight on the end of one of my hooks. I let my hands fall reluctantly from her and back away, giving us both breathing room.

  Brooke watches my brooding retreat then raises her hand to put it on the lips I’ve just mauled.

  I’d do it again if she let me, if I let myself. In a nanosecond.

  We stare.

  I back farther away.

  Then she finally speaks. “That was . . .”

  “Wrong?” I admit with a question in my voice.

  Brooke shakes her head slowly. “No,” she clarifies in a soft voice. She looks at me again. “I’m just surprised . . .”

  My eyes scan her face, flushed a light pink, her lips fuller and plump from having been kissed by me and God help me, I want to continue my bout of unprofessionalism and do it again. Instead, I move toward the steep stairs I just came down, making that small distance a barrier between us.

  I watch Brooke notice the purposeful distance and she looks so isolated standing there, the sunlight backlighting her with the huge old square grand as a backdrop. I hold my hand out and she looks at it, finally stepping forward. Then she takes it and I tow her upstairs.

  Without a solid plan for the first time in my life.

  EIGHT

  Brooke

  Chance walks me down the gangplank, hands covering my eyes, and I’m laughing . . . and trying not to think about that stolen kiss in the hidden music room.

  But I do.

  With my eyes closed and the scent of the sea and Chance inextricably mixed, it’s all I can think about.

  Chance stops and drops his hands and my mouth falls open, the sunlight blinding me momentarily as the dance of light sparkles off the water. Maybe he’s a little more premeditated than I give him credit for. It occurs to me that I don’t really know Chance. What is he? Savior, fisherman . . . or maybe, and this could be wishful thinking, a romantic. My eyes devour the sight of the boat, moving over the graceful shape as it appears to break out of the surface of the water, bobbing contentedly in the cozy slip. I’d guess it’s close to thirty feet, with Sea Hawk scrolled in tiny letters on the exterior of the cabin where teak cleats are peppered in tie-off formation and match the cabin door below. The soft glow of the highly polished wood is a contrast to the whiteness of the hull and the navy stripe that accents the perimeter. The boat is not what I expected. It’s not the austere thing I’ve conjured in my mind, but a thing the water lovingly strokes, at home atop the waves. Suddenly my trepidation about working on what seemed like an alien spaceship dissipates. For an instant, I can almost grasp why Chance looks at it with an expression of trust . . . of companionship. You’d almost have to become one with a ship you sailed. The two are not mutually exclusive.

  My gaze travels to the inside of the deck, with a cooler that stands at its center. Along the hull the name of the boat is elegantly scripted Life Is Chance, and I smile. A six-pack of Alaskan Amber sits on top and I don’t stop the smile from spreading on my face. It feels wonderful, real.

  “Gonna ply me with booze, huh?” I ask. Then add, “Sooo professional, Chance.”

  He gives the scout’s honor symbol with his fingers. “That’s me, ruiner of women,” he says, and winks.

  With a kiss like that, I’m thinking anything’s possible. “So, what exactly are we doing here?”

  “I want to do a trial run on the boat . . . show you the ropes. Y’know, before you come on.”

  I can’t help but be touched by the gesture. “Okay, that makes sense . . . and, thanks.”

  Maybe he really meant it when he said he’d try to lay off . . . or there wouldn’t be any mixing of business and pleasure. But I can’t help but wonder if all his deckhands get a picnic on the boat.

  Some of my uncertainty and ambivalence must have shown on my face. “Hey . . . Brooke,” Chance says in soft inquiry and his hands have my face again. He’s disallowing me from averting that intense gaze that rivals the color of the ocean all around us. We stare at each other. “Remember . . . trying here.”

  Then he gives a full grin, the smile reaching his eyes and lighting them from within and I take a great cleansing breath as his hands drop. I’m confused by how I feel—sad mingling with cautious happiness, nerves melting into the ease I feel around him. I don’t know the first thing about fishing, don’t know how I feel about starting a relationship with anyone. But the heart wants what it wants. Like a misguided missile it seeks a destination known only to it.

  Chance takes my hand and draws me over the side of the boat and I take a visual tour. It looks so foreboding from a distance, but really, when you pace it off, the deck is just an empty square space, sans cooler that sits in the middle. He explains where everything belongs and my eyes fall on the places he names for all the accoutrements of the vessel: interior hull pockets that house everything from small weights, to extra line, to water bottles, and finally my gaze settles on the gaff.

  “What is that?” I ask, pointing at a long implement with a barbed hook at its end.

  “That’s the fish stopper. A gaff,” Chance replies with a grin at what’s clearly an inside joke. His short index fingernail flicks the point and a drop of blood appears at his fingertip. He stands, shrugging. “Sharp.”

  “Clearly
,” I say, taking it from him. It feels too heavy to wield with any kind of finesse and Chance takes it back, easily swinging it around in a practiced swivel. I lean away slightly and he smiles anew.

  “The gaff gets the monsters into the boat,” he explains.

  It looks dangerous to me. His smile broadens into a grin at my wide-eyed expression. “Here’s your gaff,” he says, handing it to me.

  I look at the tiny, two-foot gaff and cross my arms over my chest, cradling my breasts and watch Chance try to keep up the pretense of not looking. I smile back. “So I get the girly gaff and you get the manly gaff.”

  Chance pretends to think about it for about a millisecond. “Yeah.”

  “Nice!” I say slugging him and he laughs, sidestepping me.

  “You’re so violent,” he teases with that same grin on his face. “Besides, I did hire a girl deckhand. That’s very forward thinking of me.”

  “Uh-huh,” I agree, but give him my grump face. Girls are born with that ability. Insta-grump. He steps forward and with his thumb he tries to erase the furrow between my brows and I let him, my grump turning to a smile.

  “Let’s go,” Chance says, putting the gaffs back in their pincer brackets and moving to the back of the boat to untie a cleat. He sees me standing there. “Well, get moving, Brooke from Seattle.”

  I move to the other cleat and when the ropes are inside the deck, I push off from the dock as he’s backing out and we head out of Homer Bay.

  The bow cuts the water as it sluices on either side, the small whitecaps made by the prow like a dessert on the water, all creamy and beautiful enough to taste. I look inside the cabin where Chance has sequestered himself and think about my own cabin, my new life . . . my choices.

  That kiss.

  Heat rises to my face as I realize my unguarded thoughts are a classic paradox. It’s as though now that I’ve tasted the bounty my new life can offer me, I don’t know if I deserve it. I can’t help but feel unworthy. I try to suspend introspection and take in the scenery instead. I walk to where Chance stands, ignoring the captain’s chair with the cabin’s door no longer swinging but hooked to the outside of the cabin, his strong legs steady despite the churning sea beneath us. I move to the back of the boat and grab fishing gear that belongs in the cabin as I make my way back to the forward part of the vessel. It takes longer than what’s pretty as I stumble and grab. Finally, I get to where he stands again, his strong arms rippling with the ease of years standing just like he is now.

  Like he’s never done anything but this. It’s a thing of beauty to watch, how at home he seems on the water.

  He feels my presence over the noise of the engine, which has dulled to a sort of white noise, and says, “There’s Seldovia . . .” He straightens his arm and points off to the left . . . or, I think about what direction that is . . . maybe east.

  “What’s there?” I ask, and smell the soap he used that morning. Not as strongly as when he held me for that stolen kiss, but it’s there. The sensory memory draws me closer, bravely closer.

  I see the tension tighten his shoulders and fight the urge to touch that valley between them where the taut material of his shirt stretches across his muscular back. “It’s a place I used to go with Jake when he wanted to fish for kings off the slough bridge.”

  “You guys fish from a bridge?” I ask, my hand loosely hovering over that spot at his back I want to lay my face against. I can almost see myself doing it with a sigh as my arms slip around his waist. But I remain where I am.

  “Yeah, I don’t use bait like I do here. I use a lure and see if luck will get that salmon to choose my line.”

  “So it’s by chance?” I whisper and he turns, one hand tight on the wheel as the other slows the throttle.

  “Nothing’s by chance,” he says in a light tone, but his eyes are serious. So serious, and I cast mine down. I can’t handle what I see there.

  Expectation.

  Chance

  I watch Brooke shut down whenever I move toward anything more serious than the weather.

  That shouldn’t bother me.

  But it does. It bothers the hell out of me.

  Instead of responding, I take the throttle all the way down and set the anchor. I go through the motions, keeping the conversation going about neutral things, pointing out the hiding places for all the apparatus I have on board and Brooke’s a quick study. But even I can tell that she’s not all there with me. Her mind is distracted by something.

  “Let’s eat,” I say and pray that I got some stuff she’ll like. I don’t even try to pretend that I’d do a picnic lunch out of a cooler in the middle of the sea on a normal day. Nope. My usual deckhands get only the blow-by-blow and they pack their own grub. My former deckhands are like plants and photosynthesis, left to their own devices to figure it out, water and sunlight filling in the blanks I’ve left from my minimal explanation. I’m fine giving them the ten-second lesson and they fill in their questions on the sea. Brooke’s getting personalized instruction. I don’t get all introspective and shit. But I know it’s different from my usual modus operandi.

  Brooke glides over to the cooler and her lips twitch as she picks up the beer I got and uses the bottle opener to pop the cap.

  I watch her face fall, then grimace, then . . . she laughs. Brooke hauls out a canning jar with smoked salmon inside. “What is this?” she asks with clear distaste.

  “Ah!” I say, tapping my own jar. “It’s the candy of the sea.”

  “Okay . . . Eww. What is it really? I mean, it smells so strong.” Her brow wrinkles between those eyes I can’t stop looking into.

  “Come on, they have salmon in Washington,” I say, feeling my brows rise. “Besides, I canned this myself.”

  Brooke’s brows rise at my admission and her nose wrinkles up in a cute way and I give a dry swallow over the small lump in my throat. She puts me on edge. Among other things.

  “Yeah . . . we do, but you guys like . . . worship seafood or something . . .” She guffaws when I bend down on both knees and begin bowing to the small canning jar, my hands slapping the fiberglass deck.

  “Oh mighty—” I crack open an eyelid and Brooke’s suitably horrified. I bend over again and again, “—salmon!” I use a good zealot voice and Brooke’s laughter turns to hiccups.

  “Please stop . . .” she says, laughing and grabbing at her ribs.

  “You shall not diss my fish.”

  The smile in her eyes says it all. “God no. I would never diss your fish.”

  We look at each other and both break out laughing again.

  “Try it,” I say, unscrewing the lid, and it makes a sharp popping sound as the vacuum seal breaks.

  “Can I have something with it?” Brooke asks with a dubious glance at the packed fish.

  “Can I have something with it . . .” I mimic in a high, feminine voice.

  “Ugh!” Brooke cries and throws the loaf of French bread at my head. It bounces off and I yell, “Bread bludgeoner!”

  I stride over to her. “Open up.”

  Brooke sighs and I say, “No, you’re not getting out of it.”

  She closes her eyes and opens her mouth. I have the fish in one hand as the boat rocks us on the deck, the sunlight warm against our skin. The smell of the sea is the perfume of this small universe. My eyes scan her face, taking in her soft pink, plump lips, and before I can think, I press my lips to her open mouth and Brooke gasps.

  “Chance,” she says against my lips.

  “Yeah?” I say softly, my mouth falling to hers again and again. Her arms circle my neck and bread crumbs slip down the back of my shirt. I break away and when Brooke gives me a small smile, it reaches her eyes, chasing out the sadness I usually see there.

  I press the salmon against her lips and her tongue slips out of that mouth I’ve just enjoyed. She sucks the finger-size piece inside her mouth and I bend down, taking the other half in my own. We chew, our lips almost touching. When the taste is gone, I press my forehead against h
ers and ask in a whisper, “Was it good?”

  I’m not really asking about the fish.

  “Oh yes,” she answers, and her face tells me it’s not about salmon. Suddenly her body against mine feels like a key sliding into a lock.

  Brooke holds the beer against her jean-clad knee, her hoodie tied around her waist. The weather on the water during an Alaskan summer is unpredictable. That’s why I tell everyone who fishes with me; wear layers.

  Her layers look better on her than on all the deckhands I’ve had before.

  I take her hoodie from around her waist and lay it on the deck where we sit quietly together, the sun warming us through the thin tees, our legs crossed. I watch Brooke eat some of the French bread (the portion that’s not all over the deck), fresh from our local bakery, half a jar of smoked salmon, and some garlic mozzarella. She suffered through my beer without complaint.

  Brooke’s eyes hold me back from more. Because I want to do more. So much more. The thick silence swells like the waves lapping outside the hull. I’ve been fooling myself, telling myself what I want to hear. That this day is about familiarizing Brooke with the boat. But really . . . it’s about familiarizing myself with her.

  I gather the leftovers and set them inside the cooler, sliding it to the stern and attaching it to the interior stainless loop. Then I hit the switch to engage the lift for the anchor so we can head back.

  Brooke doesn’t fill the silences with words that would ruin the beauty that breathes all around us, the day on a spinning axis of perfection, letting it spiral around us. The sea breeze lifts her hair as we swing into the harbor and I bear hard to the left, seeing my slip and expertly navigating the narrow passages until it reveals itself for full entry. Brooke stands from her perch inside the cabin and moves beside me.

  I could dock the boat in my sleep, but having her this close unhinges me. My knuckles turn white as I abuse the wheel in an effort to hide my obvious nervousness at her closeness. It’s much harder to pretend in this small piece of real estate.

  “Would you . . . ?” I murmur to Brooke. She’s so close I can smell the meal I fed her on her lips and I close my eyes in a long blink.