Page 27 of Weathering The Storm

“No ‘trying’ tonight either. Turn that overactive brain off. I’ve got you, Cap’.”

I turn and flash Amalie a grin, asking her how she’s doing and how’s her family. Her husband and daughter are working in the kitchen as we speak. The woman’s owned this place for the last forty years, and there’s not a fisherman who’s walked in and out of this marina she hasn’t served. Hell, she’d probably remember Nick’s dad’s order if he walked through the door.

“Can we get two baskets of dirty fries and a round of Bulleit?” I ask.

She lines up five shot glasses, pouring them while she looks to Nick. “Hit quota already?”

“If Ericsen stops in, you can tell him that,” he jokes. “We got a nice haul, but we had to come in for repairs.”

“Yeah? Glad the season’s been good to you so far. They’re saying on the radio we’re headed for historic winter weather.” She doles out the shots. “Seems like the storms get worse every year though.”

“Shittier weather, shittier catch.” Zach tips back his shot glass first. “At least the whiskey’s still good.”

“And our bartender’s as beautiful as ever,” Jorgensen adds, leaning forward on his elbows.

Amalie whacks him with a dish rag. “You could be my grandson.”

“But I’m not.” Jorg winks. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

Nick exchanges a subtle smile with me, clinking his shot glass against mine before we both send them down the hatch. I already know he’s going to reach for his wallet as soon as the glass hits the counter. When the fishing’s good, he insists on paying because he made the biggest cut. When the fishing’s shit, he says it’s to cheer everybody up.

“Nuh-uh. You know the rules.” I swat his hand away and crook two fingers at Jorgensen. “Young blood goes first.”

“Alright, but I’m gonna warn you.” Konrad throws a few uncoordinated boxing punches to the air. “I was practicing last night.”

“Your bunkmate had to help you into the shower last night. I’m not scared of you, little boy.”

Though I do find it hilarious how serious and focused he is.

I’m three years undefeated, and that’s just during my tenure with theSuoja.

Throughout our tradition of Loser Buys The Drinks, I’ve never once had to buy the crew shots. Although occasionally I’ll foot the bill out of pity. That enrages these guys more than kicking their asses anyway.

We’ve upped the scoring from 301 to 501 and tacked on legs to pad the time between drinking, but even putzing around, I can still clear the points quick enough to get everybody pretty damn buzzed, pretty damn fast.

For all his “practice”, it takes me fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to annihilate Konrad. Pyotr puts up a slightly better fight, but still only manages to stretch our best-out-of-eleven game to eight before we all go back for our third round of drinks.

Zach, the biggest lightweight of the bunch, is poking holes in the wood paneling by the time it’s his turn to face me, and it takes so long to get through four legs that we go ahead and end it there.

“What’s it called when you have a humiliation kink, but you’re the one who likes todothe humiliating? I think you have that,” Zach gripes, staggering back to the bar at my side. “I think you get off on this.”

“Lots of things get me off.”Our boss, for example.“But I’d prefera little more competition. If this is the aim our crew’s working with, it’s a good thing we’re trappin’ and not spearin’. We’d fucking starve.”

The guys laugh. Even Nick—who I thought was in a state of selective hearing loss, thanks to Konrad yapping his ear off.

He’s focused on me though.Allhis focus is on me. Not like the split-second flickers of gray-blue I’ve caught throughout the night, either.

He holds my gaze for the longest stretch since we left the boat, and the casual, surface-level humor in his eyes does nothing to hide the heat.

I might as well have said what I really meant.Lots of things get me off. I wanna do all of them with you.

Amalie already has our fourth round of shots poured when we make it back to the bar. Her eyes squint with amusement behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “Zach’s turn to buy?”

“You know it.” I pick up the shot and knock it back, the room starting to grow pleasantly fuzzy around the edges. Partly from the liquor, partly because I can feel Nick’s presence as he comes up behind me. The fibers of his sweater are soaked with his body heat and the fresh scent of his bar soap, and it makes me want to roll all over him like a sea otter in a kelp bed. “And Captain’s turn next.”

“Not this time,” Nick says, his voice gravelly and loopy from the bourbon.

“Oh, is that right? You’ve been practicing, too?”