Reid followed carrying two bins of parts.
“You replaced the heat-shrink?” I asked.
“Yesterday.”
“Blade fuses?”
“Yesterday.”
“Terminal strips?”
He looked at me.
I smiled. “I like to verify that your standards haven’t slipped.”
“You like watching me carry heavy objects.”
“That too.”
We loaded the bins into the van. I went through my equipment: meters, probes, insulated tools, battery tester, work lights, spare cable, terminals, connectors, waterproof tablet case.
Reid stood beside me, silent.
He wasn’t interfering. He was simply checking the list in his own head.
When I first began working for him, that attention made me uneasy.
Not because he was unreasonable. Reid demanded good work, but he never asked an employee to do anything he would not do himself. What unsettled me was how intensely I noticed him noticing me.
The measured fall of his boots on concrete.
The rough depth of his voice in a cramped engine room.
The flex of his forearm when he lifted a battery free of its brackets.
I had returned to the Oregon coast at twenty-seven with no savings, very little pride, and everything I owned packed into plastic storage bins.
Greyhaven had been home once. By then, my family had moved inland, and coming back felt dangerously close to admitting failure.
I had spent four years in Denver installing electrical systems in custom motor coaches for wealthy people who wanted heated marble floors and satellite televisions in vehicles larger than my first apartment.
The pay was respectable.
The hours were brutal.
The culture was worse.
The men I worked with considered cruelty a form of fellowship. I learned to laugh at things that made me sick because not laughing drew attention.
Then someone found out I was gay.
A joke appeared on my locker. Then another. A slur was carved through the paint on my truck.
Management advised me to develop a thicker skin.
I resigned before the end of the month.
Callahan Marine Works was advertising for a certified marine electrician with integrated navigation experience. I had the qualifications and enough desperation to apply even though returning to Greyhaven felt like moving backward through my own life.
