Page 36 of Screwed

“Ava, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said in warning, tossing the rest of his coffee onto the muddy ground. “Easy morning fishing breaks are not the best time to talk to him about anything that’s not an emergency.”

Ethan looked up from where he was tinkering under the open hood of the truck, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. “He’s been wound tight since yesterday. This is his way of decompressing. Trust me, he really prefers being alone right now.”

I halted mid-step. My eyes moved from the other two men back to the pier. I didn’t want to intrude on Nate’s private time. I knew how important it was, and I’d been more than protective over my own for most of my life. But I couldn’t just leave things as they were. I needed to talk to him, to apologize even if I didn’t know what for. To just see that he was truly okay. Even if, again, I couldn’t quite piece together why he wouldn’t be.

I knew Mr. Hardass ran a tight ship around here and wasn’t too happy about the idea of his crew “fraternizing” with their clients. But did that warrant the look on his face yesterday? Or the numbness in his voice when he called Deacon back to the site? I didn’t think so, and regardless of the conflict we’d been experiencing since they started working for me, I was still concerned.

If he wanted to push me off the pier, well, I’d already been there and done that. I was taking my chances.

“I won’t be long,” I said to the other two-thirds of the crew. “I just need to talk to him real quick. I’ll be out of his hair in five minutes.”

They didn’t look convinced, sharing a knowing glance. But no one tried to stop me either. I continued on my walk, folding my arms across my chest as the cool air cropped goosebumps on my skin under the jacket.

“Hey,” I said once I’d gotten close enough to be within arm’s reach and tossing distance. “So… this is how you blow off steam, huh? I guess just lazing around isn’t really your thing.”

He didn’t look at me; his attention was fixed on the submerged line. He raised a single, heavy shoulder. “It keeps my mind busy.”

I nodded, wracking my brain to think of something else to say. The guy wasn’t giving me much to work with. I shifted from one foot to the other. “You’ve been really quiet lately. Feels like I’m in the dog house.”

His eyes slanted toward me. The look in them was softer than anger. But there wasn’t any warmth I could read, not even a hint of it. “I think everyone’s just been busy recently. Real busy.”

Oof.

Okay, that was the closest I was going to get to prying an authentic reaction out of him right now, at least with this current strategy. I probably could’ve felt offended, but then again, why would I? He wasn’t wrong, even if I couldn’t quite suss out whether that was judgement or a simple dry observation on his part. So instead of pushing, I decided to switch gears.

I took another step closer, exhaling and watching as my breath curled out in little white plumes against the cold. “You almost looked like a kid again when I saw you out here. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed. You still have old man hobbies.”

There was an almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Old man hobbies?”

“Yeah. Fishing, woodworking, golf…” I trailed off.

“I never played golf.”

“You were a spiritual golfer, Nate. You wore chino shorts at seventeen.”

He paused, then spluttered. I lit up inside like a Christmas tree. The man actually laughed through his nose. I could’ve walked off this pier right now and felt accomplished enough to last me the next few months. What a feat.

“You’re ridiculous,” he murmured.

“No, you were ridiculous. Always so serious, even back then,” I said.

The unsaid words saturated the mist around us, making the air feel too thick to even breathe in. I knew why he was the way he was. It was something Jules and I had only ever spoken about once or twice in the early hours of the morning, where anything said never got brought up again. That was the clause of the conversation an exhausted brain cooks up in the presence of a friend.

I’d seen it, too, even without her having to explain the debt she felt she’d never be able to repay her older brother.

The Kavanaughs were a family whose wealth had bled into their furniture and vacation homes and cars, but never their actual relationships. It was a cold house, even on the best of days, and their parents had spent more time outside of the house than in it with their own kids. Nate was more of a surrogate father to Julia than a brother. He’d grown up faster because he had to.

Teasing him about it felt safer than waxing platitudes, though

“I can’t really throw any stones. I was pretty ridiculous too,” I said, removing my hands to cover my face. I groaned in embarrassment. “Ugh, maybe I’m just jealous. My dad went fishing every weekend and tried to teach me, but it was useless. I ended up just wrecking his fishing equipment, a total disaster of an attempt. I don’t think he’d ever been closer to wanting to disown me than that specific afternoon.”

“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” Nate asked.

I gave him a look. “I ended up launching the open tackle box and his canvas chair right into the lake.”

Nate laughed again, properly this time. Pleasure bloomed in my chest. “Okay, never mind. What the hell were you even doing?”

“Trying to follow instructions,” I huffed.