The Darkest Joy

by Marata Eros

  I nod, my feeling of a great day slipping away with the tide. Damn.

  “All right,” I reply slowly. “I need to get this catch up to the office. Client’s picking it up.”

  Brooke looks down at the fish dolly and then her eyes meet mine. “I’m sorry about missing work today.”

  I hear: I’m sorry I made out with you last night.

  I stand there stupidly. I’m not used to a chick rejecting me. Usually, I can kinda have who I want. I keep them at arm’s reach and my life moves on.

  I like it like that.

  I don’t like this.

  I wheel the fish with the coolers toward the grated plank. My eyes travel it and it’s steep. Terrific, tide’s low so the fucker’s sky-high.

  Brooke follows my gaze. “Do you . . . can I help?” Brooke asks, throwing out an olive branch.

  I lick suddenly dry lips. “Sure,” I say. Even to my own ears I sound like I’m going to puke.

  “ ’Kay,” she says and sidles up beside me and we push the cart up together. It’s a bitch without help but I like her beside me, even if I won’t want to hear what she says later.

  We make our way to the street, wait out the tourists and cross at the crosswalk. I look at her small hands on the bar of the dolly next to mine.

  I remember how they felt when they dug into my shoulders when we were pressing against each other like we were the last solid things in the world.

  Vividly.

  Suddenly, I’m thankful as hell for bibs. The mighty concealers of wayward hard-ons.

  We park the dolly just as Bob the barfer makes his way to the front door. I write out a receipt for his fish and direct him to the place that will pack his fish for the flight back to the Midwest.

  I’d love to be a fly on the wall for his fish tales told where there isn’t any sea. I give a small shudder at the thought of living anywhere there’s no ocean.

  Bob gives my hand a hard shake, his eyes momentarily sliding to Brooke. “He’s a keeper . . . You sure the hell don’t have to worry about your safety around Taylor here!” he says with frightening enthusiasm, and I give a low chuckle.

  Brooke offers a puzzled smile, looking from my client to me. “What?”

  I smile and tip Bob a wink. “What happens on the sea . . .”

  “Stays at sea,” Bob finishes with a wave as he walks off, a kid taking the coolers for him.

  “What’s that all about?” Brooke asks.

  I wave a hand. “Same old, same old.” I smile.

  “Another day fishing?” she asks with a smile. But I think it looks sad. I nod, my face getting serious.

  I want to kiss the expression off her face. But something’s changing and I don’t know what. I don’t want to blow it.

  It’s scary as shit when the first girl you feel something for is playing Russian roulette with your emotions. Hell, I didn’t think it was possible for me to get this kind of entanglement.

  Wrong.

  “So . . . what’s on your mind?” I ask, bracing for the blow.

  Brooke surprises me, her hand touching my forearm, wrapping around it she covers my ink, a pale stripe against the black symbols that climb up the dark skin of my arm.

  I don’t even know how it happens, but I raise hands cold from the water and cradle her face, kissing her lips so gently they barely touch. “Don’t say what I think you will, Brooke.” My voice is barely out of the range of begging.

  “Don’t,” she whispers, kissing me back.

  “I can’t stop when you’re in my hands . . .”

  She steps back and I let her. Our eyes meet and I feel like I’ve been kicked in the guts. Twice.

  My hands fall to my sides.

  “What is it . . . what? Last night?”

  She shakes her head, stray coal-black strands of hair curling around her jaw. “No . . . last night was . . .” She looks at me, really looks at me. “Beautiful.”

  I can tell she means it. Totally. I’m confused as fuck, I gotta admit.

  “Okay.” Thank God I didn’t fuck that up, hurt her . . . do the wrong thing. I scrub my face, looking at her over my hand.

  Brooke looks down at her feet. Then her eyes rise to mine, piercing me, and I reevaluate the color of that absorbing gaze. It consumes me like a violet river.

  I’m drowning.

  “I can’t . . . do this.”

  My chin comes back and my eyebrows jerk up. “What? The job?”

  Brooke puts out a palm. “No! No . . . I want the job . . .”

  “Me?” I ask, swallowing in a dry plow down my throat.

  She looks me dead in the face and nods. “I can’t do both. I need the job but we can’t . . . go out,” she finishes.

  “You’re fired,” I say without a forward thought and knee-jerk reacting all over the place.

  Brooke’s face falls, her lower lip trembles.

  Oh dear baby Jesus. “Brooke,” I begin.

  A slow tear struggles out of her eye and something small in me dies at seeing that tangible bit of sadness. “I was kidding.”

  I’m not. I’ll can her ass in a second if that’s the stipulation for being with me. In a second. But I don’t want her hurt. It goes against everything I convince myself I want. In the end, now that I’ve met Brooke, it seems like a lie that’s no longer true.

  I’ll never forget her near drowning, and I’ll never forget jumping in after her, saving her. Ever.

  “Okay . . . thank you, Chance.”

  I put my hands on my hips, her scent . . . her presence off limits now and it makes me ache. I’m running on no sleep, low food, and a sexual hangover I can’t shake. In a word: hell.

  “Why? I mean . . . why is it so bad that we made out?”

  Brooke looks at me. “It’s not bad . . . I just, I’m not ready.”

  I call the pink elephant out of the closet where it’s been hiding. “Is it about your suicide attempt?”

  She’s quiet and I know she thinks about lying. Brooke takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Some of it.”

  I probe her with my eyes, but my scrutiny doesn’t even make her flinch. Brooke isn’t telling me everything.

  I look at her and understand she doesn’t want to.

  Well, tough.

  “We’re going to talk about that, Brooke,” I say, meaning it.

  She meets my eyes. “I know,” she says softly. “But not now.”

  “Soon,” I say.

  Brooke flushes at my demand and I don’t back down. I care . . . Hell, I’m already half in love with her.

  “Okay,” she says.

  I smile and she smiles back tentatively.

  “Let’s go!” I say, letting her off the hook.

  Brooke’s confused. “Where?”

  I turn, grabbing my civvy clothes off the hook beside my door.

  “Bonfire, babe,” I say with a smirk.

  “Wait . . . I thought . . . we have it figured out.”

  I turn, nodding slowly. I stalk up to her and Brooke backs up against the door, palms flat against the wood.

  I search her gorgeous eyes, intimidated and inquisitive—both, a paradox. Like her.

  “I figure we’re friends,” I state, my fingertips a millimeter away from the silk of her hair. I fight not to touch her.

  She nods her head. “Yes.” Brooke squeezes her eyes shut then opens them. “I mean, I think we agree on that.”

  “We’re friends all right.”

  I step away, holding out my hand and after a few awkward seconds, Brooke takes it. “Let’s go . . . friend.” I say that last word with just the right amount of heat.

  I never give up.

  TWELVE

  Brooke

  If possible, I feel even guiltier than I did before. Chance moves expertly over the shifting sand that surrounds a towering stand of driftwood. Guys keep chucking the awkward pieces, one on top of the other, until it resembles a pyre instead of a bonfire.

  Bonfire my ass. I look around, expecting the fire departmen
t to two-wheel it around a corner and put the blazing inferno out. My eyes scan the twilight that passes for nighttime at latitude 59. Nothing but a suspended Venus can be seen, caught in gauzy clouds like cotton candy.

  Chance waves and I flutter my fingers in response. He looks away and my heart squeezes at his indifference where intimacy had ruled just twenty-four hours ago.

  It’s what you want, I remind myself.

  I feel my back pocket vibrate and sigh. I’m sure it’s that Fed Clearwater.

  I pull out my cell and break out in a grin as Lacey’s image fills the tile, her middle finger stiff with a puffed-out lip smooch. I swipe her image and thumb in one ear, I hold the cell to the other.

  “Hey stranger,” Lace says after I say hi.

  “Hey.”

  The commotion, sparks sizzling from the fire, and the crashing waves make hearing her a chore.

  I persevere, she’s the one tie from before I keep knotted. It makes something disjointed and loose inside me settle.

  “What the hell’s all that noise?” I can tell that Lacey’s nose is out of joint because she might be missing something.

  “I’m at a bonfire,” I say, cupping my hand around my mouth.

  “You mean party?” she asks, all-knowing.

  I look around, where every hand holds a red cup like plastic poppies in bloom.

  “Yeah,” I reply.

  “Wait a sec . . .” Lacey begins.

  Here it comes, I think.

  “You’ve met somebody.”

  Yes. No. “Not really.” Jesus, we’ve so met.

  Silence. Then, “Definitely.” Excited, “Who is he? Is he hot? Wait . . . how distracting is he? Is that why you haven’t called . . . ?” She huffs this part out in an indignant half yell.

  “Lace,” I groan with a smile.

  “He’s definitely hot. And no, I’m not dating him. And yes, he’s like major distracting.”

  “Who. Is. He?” she all but yells and I pull the phone away from my ear. Her typical demand for every ounce of information rings in my ear.

  “Chance Taylor,” I whisper into the phone as my eyes sweep the group just twenty feet away. Chance is talking animatedly with Tucker as he throws his head back laughing and puts his hands about three feet apart from each other.

  Regaling with fish tales, I guess, then swing my attention back to Lacey and her shock.

  “Holy fucking crow, you’re doing boss man?” she says incredulously, and I can taste her disappointment.

  Shit.

  “Not right now,” I defend.

  More silence. “That’s not really a denial, sister.”

  Right, she caught that.

  “No, I guess not,” I say, resigned.

  Silence fills the phone. Finally, Lacey says, “ ’Kay, so you’ve got a fucked-up conundrum there . . .”

  I snort into my cell. Well put. Lacey’s always had a way with words even if she’s a little controlling.

  “So, and don’t freak out . . . pull up a piece of driftwood or something.”

  My heart begins to speed and I plant my ass in the charcoal sand, warmed by the sun of the day, the heat of the fire reaching even where I sit.

  Chance looks over at me, a small frown forming when he sees me by myself, on my cell . . . with a funny look on my face.

  Don’t come over, Chance, I beg mentally. Please come over Chance, my heart overrides my mind’s last command. I’m so screwed.

  He begins moving to where I’m sitting and Evan intercepts him. His eyes are on mine for a long moment then they shift to Evan.

  Thank God. Or not.

  Shit.

  “You there?”

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

  “So Marianne VanZyle’s family—”

  I interrupt. “I know.”

  I can hear her palatable relief on the other end. But God love her for trying to tell me.

  “Who told you?”

  “The marshal.”

  “The Indian guy?”

  I smile. “The Native American . . . Clearwater.”

  “Has he . . . Do they have any more information?”

  I look at my feet, my toes buried in the warm sand, the wool socks their only covering, the ugly boots thrown to the side and flopped over the top like they’re asleep.

  Chance is breaking away from Evan and coming my way.

  “I don’t know, I’ve been avoiding talking to him.”

  “Why, Brooke?”

  “I just . . . I want to move on, to forget. I don’t want their protection, I don’t want to know anymore.”

  “It’s gotta be a competitor,” Lacey says with conviction. “I mean, why else would someone take out two families but not the Juilliard candidates? And why the hell haven’t the Feds tagged who it is already? Duh.”

  Why indeed? I agree mentally, feeling a frown form on my face. Lacey sure connects the dots . . . Why can’t they?

  Ten feet. Chance is almost here.

  I whip my face away and say, “Listen I got to run . . .”

  “Is he coming . . . beefcake with a side of taters?” she asks, and I can hear the smirk in her voice.

  “Yes . . . I’ll call you back,” I answer, my hand cupped around the mouthpiece.

  “Uh-huh!” Lacey says with a huff. “Ta-ta for now . . . but remember, you owe me my Brookie time!”

  Gawd. “Call you tomorrow,” I say, ending the call with a swipe of my index finger over Lacey’s image. The tile disappears and the cell blackens to hibernate.

  Chance stands in front of me, his back to the sun, now hanging like a bloody ball at the horizon’s edge, turning the water scarlet and black. His hands are jammed into his pockets, those fine muscles I’d admired earlier in full rippling display, the tattoo of the black snake with the rainbow of scales wrapping his left arm and disappearing underneath the short sleeve of his tight tee. I breathe out slowly, taking charge of my emotions.

  Lacey’s call has stirred up the hornet’s nest and they are buzzing inside me in an angry swarm.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I nod, noticing how his eyes look as black as the ocean, though I know they’re a seawater blue. I look down at my cell and stuff it into my back pocket.

  “Who was that?” Chance asks as he holds his hand out to me.

  I hesitate.

  “Can’t take back the pause,” he says, shrugging. “It’s no big thing.”

  “Lacey,” I say.

  He waits.

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Oh . . . from Seattle?”

  From before. “Yeah,” I say, my throat tight. I have the most powerful urge to tell Chance everything. It’s a ball of tell all caught in a lump in my throat. All of it: the murder, my missed Juilliard audition, my fear . . . my claustrophobic grief. More than anything, I want to take back what I said earlier and drown myself in what Chance offers. The call with Lacey leaves me with an aftertaste of self-doubt.

  He waits with that quiet and intense expression, his eyes darkening to a midnight blue as they search my face.

  Then my self-preservation instincts kick in. Nice to know I have some.

  I can’t be with a guy who will always put something else before me. Now more than ever, I have to come first. I can’t be second to the sea.

  “She’s just checking in on me.”

  Chance chuckles, cocking his head to the side, and the deep sky and all its colors swim around us, washing our clasped hands in a smear of pink, tangerine, and orange. “Do you always look like you’re getting a root canal when you’re talking to your friends?”

  I shake my head, slanting a smile his way. “No . . .”

  “Come on,” Chance says, his voice saying he won’t press, his eyes telling a different story.

  Eventually I’ll have to tell him everything. It’s not something I can just ignore. Somehow, it’s disrespectful on some level to dishonor my family by omission.

  He hauls me to my feet an
d we walk to the bonfire. Evan’s eyes latch on to our laced fingers and I let mine slide out of Chance’s large strong palm. He doesn’t react but Evan smirks and I suddenly feel bad. I’ve blown it. Why can’t I do anything right?

  Then Chance smiles at me, a real slow, deep grin, his expression telling me that my weirdness is something he can deal with, move past.

  If only I could.

  He picks up his guitar and perches on a driftwood log that’s far enough away that his strings won’t melt from the heat of the fire.

  Chance begins to strum a melody I know well. It’s my tryout song. Of course.

  I’m not a real believer in coincidence so I feel myself do a slow squat to another piece of driftwood and Evan walks over and sits beside me. Whatever force is pulling us together makes me come alive like the music emanating from the guitar that Chance strums. It’s part relief and part uncertainty that grief is not the only emotion I feel anymore. But throw into the mix my conviction to keep him at an arm’s length, and suddenly I feel exhausted by the emotional cocktail.

  “Hey, Brooke,” he says, his moppy hair looking orange in the dying light of the sun. I meet his eyes for a heartbeat then look away. I pull out my cell and it reads midnight.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “You got somewhere you gotta be?”

  I shake my head no, then rethink it. “Actually, it looks like I need to go. I’ll have to show up to fish tomorrow.”

  Evan cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah? You mean,” he waggles his eyebrows, “Chance’ll fish and you’ll get the bat and gun ready.”

  That gets my full attention, the soft chords of the melody pulling every string of my heart. I try to shut the music out, though it feels like Chance is playing it just for me.

  My mind conjures an image of the gaff and I have a vague recollection of a bat, stained brown. “What?” I ask, feeling a furrow of confusion knot between my brows.

  “What do you think happens when he pulls in those mammoth halibuts?”

  I haven’t thought about it and lift a shoulder; can’t even guess. However, the mention of a gun and bat does make my imagination run.

  Evan looks at Chance playing the guitar. “If they’re big enough, they’ll need to be subdued.” Chance laughs. “It’s like dear old Dad always says, ‘Nothing a good piece of hickory can’t cure.’ ”