Page 45 of Harbor Me

It takes a second to understand why my bed smells like sawdust and engine grease and every one of my fantasies. Then I move and the weight of it registers, heavy across my shoulders. The collar turned up against my jaw where I've burrowed into it in my sleep.

His jacket. Aiden's jacket.

The dock.

It hits me in a rush. His voice against my ear, his fingers, the silence I was supposed to keep, the way I bit down on his shoulder because if I hadn’t, I would have screamed loud enough to wake every boat in the harbor. His hand inside me and his arm around my ribs and the words.

Oh god. The words he said while I came apart in his lap like something that had been wound too tight for too long and finally just snapped.

You fixed my yard.

I press my face into the collar and breathe him in and want to cry.

I look out the window and see that my truck is in the lot downstairs. My boots are still on. The door's locked from the inside, which means he carried me up and locked it behind him and left. I have no memory of any of it past the dock. Past the moment my entire body gave up, and I went under like a stone in warm water.

I should shower and get ready for work. Take the jacket off and fold it and bring it back and pretend I'm a functional woman with normal employer-employee boundaries. Instead, I lie here for ten more minutes with my nose in his collar, breathing him in, while the guilt piles up like unpaid invoices in the dead file cabinet in the office.

I came on his hand. On the dock where he rebuilt his life after the insurance company I worked for tried to destroy it.

I should feel terrible about that. I do feel terrible about that. What I don't feel is sorry it happened, and the gap between those two things is where I apparently live now.

I finally drag myself to the shower and stand under the water until it runs cold, which in this apartment takes roughly four minutes. I get dressed, draping the jacket over my arm before I leave. I drive to work rehearsing normal sentences the whole way.

None of them survive contact with the yard.

He's in the workshop. Didn’t look up when I pulled in. Hasn't made a move to come and talk to me. Marcus is on the east dock with a sander and Tommy's wrestling something off a trailer. They both wave good morning and neither of them looks at me any differently, so either he said nothing or they've been coached.

Aiden Cole does not coach people on social interactions and it would be out of character for him to tell them about last night anyway.

I walk out and hang the jacket on the hook by the workshop door. He sees me do it. I know because his shoulders go tight for exactly one second before he goes back to whatever he's grinding.

"Morning," I say.

"Morning."

That's it. No eye contact. That's the whole exchange. Same voice he'd use on a fuel delivery.

By noon I've accepted it meant nothing and he regrets that it ever happened. Again. Just like the kiss.

By the end of the day, I've built the whole case in my head, airtight, prosecuted and convicted. Of course he regrets it. The man has spent nearly three weeks treating me like a problem to be solved and one evening on a dock doesn't undo that. He got caught up in the quiet and the dark and the fact that I was wearing his jacket and looking at him like he put the stars up, and now he's kicking himself for it the only way Aiden Cole knows how to kick himself for anything. Silence and distance and a jaw set so hard I can see the muscle working from across the gravel.

Things continue this way for two days. Aiden barely acknowledging I exist and avoiding the office like there’s been a recent outbreak of Ebola in here.

Diesel handles the situation by trotting between the workshop and the office every twenty minutes like a furry hostage negotiator. He drops his head on my knee, sighs with his whole body, then goes and drops his head on Aiden's boot, probably sighs again before coming back. By Thursday afternoon even Tommy's noticed.

"Is Diesel okay? He keeps going back and forth like he's lost something."

"He's fine," I say. "He's a dog. They pace."

"He doesn't pace. He's the laziest animal on the eastern seaboard. Marcus said he once slept through a hull fire."

"Tommy. You came to get the part for the Prescott job. Which is paid for up front this time, because I'm good at what I do."

"Right. Yeah. The part." He takes it but doesn't leave. "You and the boss have a fight or something?"

"No."

He waits a minute until it becomes abundantly clear I won’t be expanding on that. "Oh. Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool." He finger-guns me on the way out. I genuinely love Tommy. I also want to lock the door and put my head on the desk for a while.