Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction (62 page)

And in that tiny moment of pure happiness, I conceded.

“I’ll be there at eight.” That was my sole reply, after I had again tucked my emotions back behind the impassive façade I normally maintained. There was no “I’m looking forward to it” or “I can’t wait.” All I gave him was confirmation of my presence at the restaurant that evening, followed by my orders for his discharge and the need for him to schedule another appointment with the surgeon.

He didn’t look fazed by my apparent disinterest.

“See you later,” he said, taking his forms from me on his way out the door. Before the door closed, he looked back over his shoulder and gave me a playful wink. As soon as he was out of earshot, I exhaled heavily.

What has Pam gotten me into?
I thought to myself.

chapter 2

Robbie

I drove home from my appointment with a smile on my face. Not in a million years would I have thought that she would have agreed to go out with me. Really, my original goal had only been to get a rise out of her—anything to crack her forced façade of professionalism. I couldn’t re
member a time when I’d seen someone try so hard to look unpleasant―not even members of my crew after they were forced to work for twenty-four hours straight without sleep. They looked positively cheerful in comparison.

So, putting my boyish charm to good u
se, I tried to shock her. In the end, the one who was shocked was me. Granted, it was her friend who actually agreed to the date, but Cristina didn’t renege on it either, and I gave her every chance to. Hell, I practically canceled it for her. But, instead of jump at the chance to escape an evening with me, she confirmed her attendance, however reserved that confirmation may have been.

And then there was that smile.

Those five seconds when her walls cracked, then crumbled, exposed the most amazing laugh I had ever heard. Maybe because it was unexpected. Maybe because it made her face light up. Or maybe because the sound was sexy as hell, but all I knew was I wanted—needed—to hear that laugh again. And, moreover, I wanted to be the cause of it.

Needless to say, I was excited by our dinner plans.

I arrived at my hotel room and crashed on the couch. I had a few hours to kill, so I flipped aimlessly through the channels, trying to find something interesting enough to distract me while time slowly passed. I never did find a show to watch, but something else detained my attention: a phone call that I was hoping to avoid.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer it. I didn’t have the information that the boat owner was after—not yet, anyway—so I let the call go to voicemail and nervously awaited the flashing green light on my cell phone that would indicate I had a message waiting for me. It took a long time for it to show up, which was a shit sign for sure. Long messages were never good.

With a deep inhalation, I pressed the button that started the message. What seemed like a minute or two later, I exhaled. I had listened intently while he spoke about delivery dates, obligations to the crew, and, finally, an ultimatum: either I was back, ready to depart on the next voyage in two weeks’ time or I was out. He wasn’t about to risk any aspect of his multi-million dollar operation by taking a chance on a kid with a bum wing. Now was my time to either heal up or ship out, which made the results of my CT scan start to weigh heavily on my mind.

I hadn’t really taken the situation that seriously before. I was following up on the injury because I was ordered to, and, in fairness, my arm was increasingly bothering me. But I had never intended to really
do
anything about it other than pop some pills and deal. That’s what fishermen did—they pushed through the pain to get the job done. If this didn’t prove to be an option, I was sunk for sure. Unless my arm healed miraculously on its own in the next two weeks, I would be out of a job that I had wanted for as long as I could remember.

With that reality sinking in, I sat on the couch and stared at the TV, waiting for my date with Cristina, which I wasn’t so certain I wanted to go on anymore.

chapter 3

Cristina

From across the street, I waited in my car outside the restaurant, looking at Robbie sitting in the window. I expected to see a look of smug satisfaction on his face, but, instead, I found a pensive tension marring his boy-next-door good looks. Maybe, by some odd twist of fate, he didn’t really want to be here either. Were we playing a game of chicken to see who would flinch first? Odd as that thought may have been, it seemed possible in a bizarre way. Robbie was clearly more than what met the eye.

Against my better judgment, I got out of my car and made my way into The Crab Shack. When the hostess led me to his table, I watched him intently as we approached. The second he saw me, his expression lightened, making him look younger instantly, his trademark smile in full force. It was hard to focus on anything else when he turned on his charm.

But I knew better than to fall for a charming guy.

“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” he said, looking to his watch. Little did he seem to know, I had been late on purpose; I wanted to make him sweat a bit to pay him back for his antics at the hospital.

“Fashionably late,” I offered in explanation as I peeled off my coat and draped it over my chair.

Our server came by only moments later and took our drink orders. Robbie ordered a draft beer. I ordered wine. Since I was already breaking my rules by going on a date in the first place, I figured I might as well throw caution to the wind entirely and have some alcohol. It was highly unlikely that Mateo would find me that particular evening. It had been a long time, and two cities ago, since he’d tracked me down.

“You look nice,” Robbie said, flashing me his grin. “It was worth the extra five minutes.”

“That wasn’t why I was late,” I clarified, taking a sip of water. “I was debating whether or not I should come in. I’ve been sitting in my car outside.”

“Interesting,” he purred, propping his elbows up on the table so he could rest his head on his hands. “What tipped the scales in my favor?”

“Curiosity,” I said curtly, offering no explanation beyond that.

“I see . . . ”

He continued to stare at me while I took yet another sip of water. I wondered if he would keep that up all night if I didn’t reply. My guess was that he would.

The waiter came back with our drinks, delicately setting them before us. I greedily snatched mine from the tabletop, needing to take the edge off, and quickly. Robbie seemed inclined to do the same, taking a long draw from the pint of beer he had ordered. Silence still hung heavily between us.

Then I cracked.

“So, this crab fishing thing,” I started, not knowing how else to break the ever-mounting awkwardness. “Is it a bunch of ruffians and scalawags smoking and drinking and fishing while sailing the seas? You know, yo-ho-ho and all that?”

He stopped mid-motion, his glass halfway to his mouth. He looked utterly stupefied by my assessment.

“We’re not pirates, for fuck’s sake,” he replied, taking another large swig of his beer. “We aren’t plundering and pillaging. We’re not looking for lost treasure. And, I can assure you, Johnny Depp is nowhere to be found on deck.”

I felt an urge to laugh growing. He’d taken my question seriously, but, then again, why wouldn’t he have? He didn’t know me—didn’t know if I was being genuine or not. For all he knew, I was some idiot girl who thought that
Pirates of the Caribbean
was a documentary on a seafarer’s life.

I tried to maintain my controlled expression, but eventually it gave way. The tiny amount of pain I saw in his puppy dog eyes did me in―I had gotten to him. The church-giggles soon escaped me, and I fought har
d to keep them to a publicly acceptable level.

When he realized what I had done, he threw his napkin at me, nearly starting a small fire when it ricocheted off my face to land on the candle below. After a frantic splash of water from his water glass to extinguish it and excessive apologizing to the manager to not be thrown out, we laughed. Hard and loud. I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt, my face cramped, and I nearly peed my pants. Robbie’s face turned a bright red, and he didn’t breathe for what seemed like an eternity. Then tears ran down his face when he inhaled so deeply that he sounded like someone emerging from water after they’d been under too long.

“This is either the best first date ever or a total train wreck,” he wheezed, still trying to catch his breath. With the cuff of his sleeve, he wiped the tears away that had run down his cheeks during our collective outburst. There was something endearing about him when he did it, like he wasn’t afraid to really be who he was, even though he didn’t know me. There was no pretense, just him.

“Okay, so now that we’ve established that I have a rather dry sense of humor and you have a total lack of firefighting skills, can we go back to the crab fishing thing?” He looked at me dubiously. “In all seriousness, is that what you always wanted to do, or did it just kind of happen?”

“In all seriousness,” he mocked, his impish smile returning, “I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid.”

“How did you ever get exposed to the career in the first place? It just seems like one of those professions that only few people know about, unless you grew up in a crab fishing town.”

“My dad was a crabber. I guess I just looked up to him.”

“Did you ever go out with him? To sea, I mean?”

“I was too young then.” I watched as his playful nature faltered for a moment, only to return a second later. “He left my mom and me before I could really learn anything from him, but . . . I still wanted to go. The day after I graduated from high school I was down at the docks looking for a gig as a greenhorn. A friend’s father brought me on, and that boat is where I stayed,” he said reflectively, appearing to relive the memories briefly. His playful demeanor slipped away again, and a sadness emerged momentarily in its wake.

“So, you’re still on his boat, but captain now? Did he retire?” I asked, finding myself quite taken with his story already.

“No. I’m running a different vessel.”

“Oh. Is that common? To jump around from ship to ship?”

“Yes, but that’s not why I left. I would have stayed, if I could have,” he replied, dropping his gaze to the flameless candle in the center of the table. “I wasn’t given that option.”

I could tell that there was subtext to what he was saying, but I didn’t want to pry. Lord knows that I could appreciate the need for pr
ivacy―for secrets. I had enough of them to last several lifetimes.

When I remained silent, he eventually lifted his eyes to meet my gaze.

“Crabbing is a hard and dangerous life, Cristina. Accidents happen. Ships sink. People die. That’s the lay of land for life at sea and the price we have to be willing to pay to play there. And I have known many fishermen who have paid with their lives.”

Anyone who knew how to recognize pain could have observed his. He was haunted by things he had seen and experienced in his time on the Bering Sea. His normally playful eyes now showed the ghosts that hid within him.

I had demons within me, too.

“Want to talk about something else?” I asked, desperate to change the subject and lighten the mood.

“Totally,” he agreed, reaching for his beer. “Something fun, or, better yet, something embarrassing!” His mischievous grin returned as he stared at me across the table. “You have to have some good stories from working in a hospital . . . spill. Did you ever puke on a patient with a really gnarly injury? Accidentally fondle one when you tried to maneuver him on the table? C’mon, Cris, I know you’ve got the goods.”

“Well, there was the guy that shit his pants while on the table. He was insanely drunk and obnoxious, and he wouldn’t stop hitting on me. He thought he had me going . . . until he was going. Once he realized that had happened, he shut up pretty quick. Though the sedative he was given might have helped with that, too.”

Robbie roared with laughter.

“Shit his pants? That’s awesome!”

“Yes, well, it wasn’t so awesome to be in a room with. I felt bad for the nurses who had to come and clean him up.”

Just as he was about to ask another question, the waiter came by to take our order, saving us from an in depth discussion of feces. It wasn’t really appropriate material for a first date or dinner conversation, anyway.

We ended up ordering the same entree, though not intentionally, and both put in another drink order. In hindsight, it might not have been the best idea, but, for once in as long as I could remember, I was having fun. It seemed so natural to be with Robbie that I didn’t really think about what I was doing; I just asked for another glass of wine. The gesture seemed so harmless, and yet it could have easily proven to be anything but. I didn’t have the luxury of losing control or dulling my senses. Those senses had kept me alive and safe for a long, long time, a fact that I needed to remember. Quickly.

“Okay, so you got to ask me about what I do. I think it’s only fair that I ask the same question of you. Why radiology? What’s the allure? Is it the fame? The fortune?” he joked, egging me on with childlike enthusiasm.

“Hardly,” I quipped, taking a sip from my second glass of wine. “It just sort of happened. I wanted a job that I could travel with if I wanted to move. I also wanted a career that would allow me to be around people.”