Page 5 of Ruining His Smirk

I nodded to myself. “About damn time.”

My headset played an old rock playlist that had been looping for the better part of two hours. Between the music and the earmuffs built into the headset, the outside world may as well have ceased to exist.

I shut the press down and waited while the last of its momentum died away. As soon as I removed my heavy earmuffs and work safety goggles, from outside came the distant cries of skuas circling the shoreline. Bright Antarctic austral sunlightspilled across the concrete floor in a broad rectangle, glinting off steel and chrome before disappearing beneath the machines.

I cracked my neck and I peeled off my gloves. My workshop was a huge open space. Metal oil and sawdust hung in the air mixing with the sea spray smell from the ocean outside. A far cry from the arid soil of Texas where I had grown up.

Cutting stations lined the wall to my left, blades locked into their guides. The bigger machines took up the center of the floor, housings thick and industrial under the shop lights. My tool wall waited at the far end, chisels and clamps and hand planes hung in rows by size, curls of wood scattered across the concrete below them. This was my comfort zone, my workplace, my kingdom.

“…Earth to Garrett?”

I blinked.

Dexter was grinning at me with his little computer balanced on his knees, perched atop a stack of overturned shipping crates near the open doors, the summer light outlining his hair. He’d apparently been there long enough to make himself comfortable.

“Hellooo…is civilization back online?”

I snorted. “How long have you been sitting there?”

He touched his cheek and sighed dramatically. “I’ve aged visibly.”

“I don’t see any new wrinkles.”

“I’m twenty-three. Give it another year.”

I hung the headset on its hook and crossed to the sink to wash the grease from my hands. “I’m thirty-two, where does that leave me?”

“I thought you didn’t care about such mortal things?” He puffed out his chest, dropped his voice an octave, and started doing an exaggerated impression of me. “I am da man. The real man. Real men—”

I threw a rag at him. He ducked and laughed. I loved seeing him laugh so freely. It wasn’t always like that. Dexter was myyounger brother. He was a genius but also naive in some ways. It had been rough growing up on a Texas ranch. He never fit in until he arrived here.

I dried my hands on a towel and walked over to the coffee station. “You look extra happy this morning. New message from your pen pal?”

His grin widened. “Maybe.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I poured coffee for me and hot chocolate for him. He had lots of food sensitivities. Didn’t like coffee. Honestly he didn’t need caffeine. Science and his pen pal powered him enough. He was like an energizer bunny.

Dexter started bouncing one knee. “I’ve actually been waiting for you to finish.”

“That good, huh?”

Dexter had been receiving these messages for just about a year now, ever since the continent-wide celebration. Last year, some fiftieth-anniversary science celebration had brought all the research stations on the continent together. So many nationalities, so many interesting people. That’s where I had met Nate.

I sighed.

It had been a week since I’d handed that note off to our station Doctor Daniel Park to give it to Nate. Daniel had later confirmed that he had indeed passed it on to Nate. There had been no reply. I told myself I hadn’t expected one. Told myself that the second the thought showed up, before it could sit there and turn into anything else.

I’d already spent the better part of last year asking around every station on this continent, casual as I could make it, whether anybody had crossed paths with a whale researcher named Nate Braddock.

Nobody had. Not one soul. I’d started wondering if he’d packed up and left Antarctica altogether, gone back to whatever life waited for him on the other side.

Then the penguin distress call had come through last week, and there was his voice on the radio, clear as anything. It took me some time, but I finally pieced it together.

Nate hadn’t been on land this whole time. He’d been out on a ship. That was why nobody at any station had a trace of him. People passed through the research stations all the time, but every one of them was land based. Nate never had been.

“Uh oh, signal lost. Again.”

I blinked. Shit. “Sorry.” I muttered and handed him his hot cocoa.