Undertow (17 page)

“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. He'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?

My overly analytical mind started adding up the facts, and the odds did not look favorable.

19

“I need to go check on the boat, Aesa,” my father called from the kitchen as I stood before the shattered mirror in the bathroom, still unable to shake the uneasiness I felt from the night before. “I'm going to be gone all day. Are you sure you don't want to come with me? Run some errands in town?”

“No, thank you,” I yelled back through the closed bathroom door. “I've got some things I need to do today, and I could really use a rest, if it's all the same to you. I don't think I've had a day to lie around and watch crappy TV for years. I think I might try that.”

“Okay,” he replied with slight hesitation. “Your rental Jeep is in the garage if you need to go and get anything. I'll call you when I'm on my way home, but don't wait up for me or worry about making dinner. I'll take care of that myself.” Again, I could hear the barely audible pause in his voice and actions before he finally collected his keys and made his way to the front door, closing it gently behind him.

“I love you too, Dad,” I whispered to myself, flicking the bathroom light off and unlocking the door to head down the hall. I couldn't help but feel that was why he hesitated before leaving. He wanted to have a moment of sorts, but he didn't have the motivation that impending death or intoxication could give a man. Oddly, the thought made me smile. We still had a long way to go, but he had shown me that he wasn't just an older version of the man I had escaped that fateful day nine years ago. He had changed—and I was changing too.

With that thought in mind, I approached the door to my childhood room. The one that remained closed, blocking in the memories of my final moments in that house nine years prior. With a sigh, I turned the knob and entered, assessing both the chaos and how long I thought it would take me to bring it to some level of order. Maybe then the door to that chapter of my life wouldn't have to remain eternally closed.

I needed provisions to clean it up and made my way to the kitchen to see if any of them were available or if I was going to have to make my own way into town to pick them up. Rummaging through the barren pantry let me know that I was in for a little drive, whether I liked it or not. Having already showered and cleaned up for the day, I took only a few minutes to change out of my lounging clothes into the only clean clothes I could find in the guest room I had taken over.

With jeans and a tee nestled tightly against my skin, I threw on my favorite “old man” wool button-down sweater. It reminded me of the ones my grandfather used to wear on the rare occasions that I saw him. It brought back some of the brighter childhood memories I had, and I loved to wear it whenever the weather allowed.

I grabbed a scarf and slipped it around my neck as I shoved my feet into my massive winter boots and made my way outside to the car, twirling my keys on my finger as I walked. The grocery store in town was likely to have the bulk of what I needed; the rest would be found at the hardware store, assuming that it was possible to fix the bed that my father had destroyed.

After a short drive, I was strolling through the aisles of the market, picking up supplies for my clean-up effort, as well as some food staples. I was tired of looking at dust-covered shelves in the kitchen where food should have been. As I stared at a wall of pasta, a voice called out from behind me, startling me slightly.

“Aesa, glad to see that you're not nearly as hungover as I am today,” Robbie said, coming to stand beside me.

“Yeah. You were in rough shape when you left.”

“About that,” he started, embarrassment tainting his normally playful expression. “I owe you an apology. I wasn't trying to be a dick . . . really, I wasn't. It's just that—” He cut himself off, looking down at the floor as if hoping that the words he needed were written on the cracked tile below his feet.

“Robbie,” I replied softly. “What happened . . . it was a lot for all of us to take in. I'm sure you were just stressed. It's okay.”

“It's not okay, Ice. I was supposed to keep you safe and I failed you.” His sad gaze met mine, and suddenly his reaction the previous evening made far more sense. His anger was misplaced entirely. He wasn't pissed off at Decker or me; he was pissed off at himself.

“What could you have done, Robbie? I was reaching for you, and I slipped. How is that something you could have prevented?”

“I don't know, Aesa, but if something had happened to you—”

“Well, here's the awesome part: nothing did. I'm totally fine. I'm a big girl, Rob. I knew the risks of being on that boat just as well as the rest of you. I need you to let this go, okay? I can't have you moping around for the next few days, beating yourself up about something you couldn't have done a damn thing about, unless you had go-go-gadget arms and chose not to use them.”

The tiniest curl at the corner of his mouth let me know that I was getting somewhere.

“Well, I guess you'll never know now, will you?” he joked, a smile of satisfaction taking over his face. Then he pulled me into a hug, squeezing me a little too tight. For all his light-hearted exterior, Robbie was a serious man and extremely loyal. He truly thought he'd let me down that night, and, without my forgiveness, he would have never forgiven himself.

“So, Dad went to check on the boat today. How bad do you think the bill for that is going to be?” I asked, grabbing a few boxes of spaghetti off the shelf to place in my cart.

He made a high and tight whistling sound indicating his thoughts on the matter.

“It's not going to be good. You might not want to be home when he gets back. And with that thought, what are you doing tonight? A bunch of us are going back down to Jimmy's for dinner and beers. You in?”

“Uh, no. No, I had plenty of tavern time last night with a rather boisterous and rowdy crowd. You missed the fight and everything. It was really quite a show to take in.”

“I heard something about that,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “That fucker has another beat-down headed his way.”

“Robbie, please. Let it go. It's done. I'm sorry I brought it up.”

“Well, you can make it up to me when you buy the first round tonight.”

“Really. I can't. What about tomorrow night? Can we do it then?”

He made a dramatically thoughtful face for a moment before agreeing to my terms.

“Deal. Hey, I gotta run now. I promised your dad that I would get some stuff done for him today. He's not sure when we're going to head back out, but he wants to be ready. Want me to pick you up tomorrow?”

“No, that's okay. I don't plan on drinking much, so I'll be good to drive.”

“Just checking,” he said with a shrug. “Get ready for some fun! I'll see you then.”

He turned and walked away, looking back to give me a wink. I laughed and rolled my eyes at the gesture. Robbie hadn't changed in my absence at all. He was still the class clown I remembered him being when I was in school. He was a great guy, and I was truly thankful that my father had someone like that on his crew to groom and eventually take over the boat when the time came. He was the son my dad had never had.

With a smile on my face, I finished up my shopping quickly then went to the hardware store to pick up some brackets and various other implements I thought would be necessary to repair the broken bed frame. When I arrived home, I had a quick snack and collected all my supplies, walking down the hallway with full arms to my bedroom, where I quickly and methodically organized all that I had purchased on the floor. Leaving the materials there, I went about the task of cleaning the hurricane-like décor that I had left. Two hours and one full construction-strength garbage bag later, I was ready to tackle the cracked frame.