Undertow

by Natusch, Amber Lynn

  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.

  I made my way to the garage to find what few power tools my father owned and returned to the room, laying them out neatly with the rest of my provisions. Eyeing the assortment on the floor, I smiled internally, thinking that my dad would be so pleased to come home and find my fixed-up room and mended bed. Maybe even he would see the metaphor
there.

  It was no easy task, but after a couple more hours, I had the bed bolted and bracketed back together. It was Frankenstein-esque, but once made, you could barely see the scars that the fight had left behind. I was tired, but uncertain as to its stability, so I opted to make some dinner and rest on the couch instead. The bed may have been fixed, but I didn't think it needed to be tested right away.

  I put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta I'd purchased and set the sauce to low so it could warm slowly. Stirring it brought a mild sense of deja vu that was most unwelcome. I had spent the day doing my best not to think about either Damon or Decker, both men leading to questions I didn't have answers to and situations I didn't feel like addressing at that moment. The police had told my father that I would need to go down to make a statement soon, but I just wasn't ready. As for Decker, I was torn. While my mind told me that I was headed down a path of destruction, my heart told me that maybe things weren't so cut and dried, so black and white. I was so used to facts and absolutes, doing my best not to allow my actions to be driven by my gut or emotions. Trying to rationalize my feelings for him despite my better judgment was a war that seemed to have no end in sight. Avoiding it altogether was far easier.

  Or at least it was until the subject of that battle showed up on my doorstep.

  The ringing doorbell made me jump, and I scolded myself as I made my way to the front entrance, unsure as to whom I would find standing there when I opened the door. When I swung it open to find Decker looking every bit as appealing as he always did, I felt the tides start to turn in my heart's favor.

  “I didn't have your phone number,” he said plainly, his deep brown eyes as intense as ever.

  “Well, I'm not sure I actually know where my phone is, so I guess that wouldn’t matter anyway,” I replied, trying to remind myself of everything I had realized in the truck the night before.

  “I wanted to see you . . . ”

  “And here I am,” I replied awkwardly.

  “Can I come in?” he asked, looking past me slightly into the house. “I think you're burning something on the stove.”

  “Crap,” I muttered as I turned to run to the kitchen, my sauce burning to the bottom of the pot. “Yes. Come on in.” I looked over my shoulder as I frantically stirred the pot to see him already striding into the room to join me.

  “You looked a little frazzled last night when you turned down my help in escorting your father to the car, ” he said, pulling out a chair from the table behind me. “ Is everything okay?”

  “I'm fine. I was just tired.”

  “I've seen you tired before, Aesa. That wasn't what I saw.”

  “Maybe it was the stress of everything getting to me,” I said with a shrug, still unwilling to stop what I was doing and address him face to face. “Last night was a bit of a debacle.”

  “I was there, remember? I know how things played out,” he reminded me calmly. “You were fine when we got back to the bar, but something changed as the night went on. I want you to tell me what that something is.”

  “That something is nothing. You're reading into things,” I lied without hesitation. “Like I said, I was tired. Beyond that, my dad was drunk and I wanted to get him out of there and home to bed.”

  “Without my help.”

  “You were having a good time. There was no reason to disrupt that.”

  He was silent for a minute, not responding to my explanation right away. Instead, he waited before providing one of his own.

  “I embarrass you, don't I?” he asked with no hint of emotion in his words at all. It was a simple question to him that only required a yes or no answer. I was so jarred by both his question and the lack of emotion attached to it that I wheeled around to face him, needing visual confirmation that he was as unfazed by his own words as he'd sounded.

  “Why on earth would you ask me that?”

  “Listen, I'm not trying to make you mad, Aesa. I just wanted to know if that's how you felt. If you do, it's fine. I just want to know now.”

  “Seriously, Decker. I don't even know how to answer that other than to state the obvious that, no, I'm not embarrassed by you. At all.” My voice sounded harsh, almost angry as my frustration with his question bled through.

  “Good.” It was his only response as he sat calmly in the chair, studying my reactions to him.

  “Do you care to expand on that question at all, or do I just get to be left utterly baffled, trying to sort it out on my own? Is that why you wanted to come and see me? To ask me that? I made out with you in front of half the skippers in the fleet, Decker. How embarrassed could I possibly be?”

  “You did,” he replied. “And the second you knew you had an audience, you squirmed like a Catholic girl in church with a nasty secret. You did practically everything you could to avoid me when we returned to the tavern, and you made it a point to nearly break your ankle trying to help your father out of the bar rather than accept help from me.”

  “I didn't accept help from anyone, if you recall,” I retorted, turning back to the stove to throw the pasta in the boiling water. “I wasn't trying to avoid you, Decker. I just . . . I had a lot on my mind.”

  “I know you did. That was very apparent. What I would like to know is why you're avoiding me now.”

  “What? How? How could I possibly be avoiding you when you're sitting in my kitchen?” I asked, furiously stirring the pot before me.

  “You've barely looked at me since I walked in,” he observed more astutely than I would have preferred.

  “I'm trying to make dinner.”

  “Yes, that does seem highly important compared to the subject matter we're discussing, doesn't it?”

  “Why are you picking a fight about this?” I asked, turning to face him to contradict his claim.

  “I'm not picking a fight, Aesa, merely making an observation,” he replied, his face calm, body relaxed against the kitchen chair.

  “You're way off—”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me something, Aesa. What exactly have you been telling yourself since we kissed to make you want to run away from how I know you feel?”

  I froze. It was disturbing how he could read me. It was then that I saw his angle. He never thought I was embarrassed by him at all; he just wanted to force me to admit that my mind had been weighed down by things—things that involved talking myself out of how I felt.

  “Decker, I'm not trying to run away from you. I swear I'm not.”

  “And yet you are,” he said softly as he pushed the chair back from the table, the familiar sound of the legs dragging across the linoleum ringing through the kitchen.

  I sighed. It was clear that he saw through my armored expression, knowing what lay behind it. I was battling my uncertainty and losing, even as he sat right in front of me in all his rugged beauty.

  “It's complicated . . . ”

  “Life always is, Aesa.”

  I turned away from him. His words were all too true. I didn't need him to see that reality dance across my face.

  He approached me from behind when I moved to get something from the fridge; I avoided his reach by the slimmest of margins. The kitchen seemed to be closing in around me, getting smaller by the second.

  “I'm sorry if you feel shut out, Decker. That's not my intention. I just have a lot on my plate, and I'm trying to sort it all out.”

  “So let me help you,” he replied, taking me gently by the shoulder and turning me to face him. The second I was eye to eye with him, our bodies nearly touching, it made it so much harder to have the discussion we were engrossed in with any clarity of thought.

  “It's not a 'help you' kind of thing,” I explained, the cold air of the refrigerator on my back helping me keep my head clear. “I'm leaving to go to Anchorage soon. You'll be heading back out to sea. I just don't see how it can work, regardless of how you or I feel.” I walked past him to the counter, forgetting to close the fridge door behind me. I place
d the parmesan cheese down on the counter in front of me with a little more strength than the task required, then hopped up to sit beside it, forcing myself to meet Decker's gaze again.

  “Is it just easier not to try?” he asked, his face still a study in calm as he pushed the open door shut.

  I shrugged, not knowing how to answer him. The clinical answer to his question would have been an emphatic “yes.” The real world answer seemed far more difficult to conclude.

  “I don't know. Maybe.”

  “Is that why you really left before? Because it was easier to leave your issues behind and start over than face them?”

  “That,” I said, my emotions rising, “is too complicated a situation for you to make accusations about.”

  “I'm not accusing you of anything, Aesa. I'm trying to understand how your mind works.”

  “I left before because staying was not an option, plain and simple.”

  “And it's not an option this time? Anchorage isn't that far. It's not like I live up here year round.”

  “It is an option,” I started, my mind racing with conflicting ideas of what to do. “I just don't want to take something good and ruin it, Decker.”

  “And you know that would happen?” he probed, moving toward me slowly as I sat on the counter, wanting to be anywhere but there answering his questions.

  “Of course not. Nobody could know that for sure.”

  “Then why run from an outcome you can't possibly bank on occurring?”

  He moved closer still, his hips pressed against my knees as if asking to gain entrance between them. While my heart raced and my mind raged, my body felt dissonant, caught in the crossfire of my emotions and my rational thought. I wanted to scream at him to leave and tear his clothes off at the same time, creating a frustration within me that was rapidly growing to a fever pitch. My control was fading, and I gripped the countertop hard, hoping to ground myself somehow. I needed space, a little distance from the immediacy of the situation, to make a well thought out and rational decision.