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That was something I wasn’t expecting. Not only to see the infamous boat that steals him away from his farm life for so many weeks at a time, but to meet his first mate and his father’s friend. I really felt like I was seeing a side of Anders I had only peeked at sometimes. Back at the farm, even though it seems that Per and Anders run things as a team, Per does take the lead. He is Ander’s uncle and elder and was running the place before Anders was even old enough to help out.
But on the boat? Even in the brief moments I saw, there was no mistaking that Anders was in charge, and there was something undeniably sexy about that. Oh captain, my captain.
“Do you think you’ll do it forever?” I ask Anders. We’ve lapsed into a silence for most of the drive, so he takes a moment to snap out of his head.
“Do what?” he asks, large hands palming the steering wheel, the tattoos on his knuckles moving. The sparrow looks like it’s taking flight.
“Operate the fishing boat,” I tell him. “Be the captain.”
His dark brows furrow and he gnaws on his lip for a moment. “I’ll do what I have to.”
“That doesn’t sound very promising.”
He sighs. “I know. I know it doesn’t. But I don’t have a choice. You know the farm barely pulls in enough as it is. There’s no other way to supplement our income. I mean, look at me.”
I look at him. At his storm-blue Henley shirt that shows off every inch of his hard muscles and sets off his dark blue-grey eyes, at his thick beard, his brooding brow, at every inch of man that he is. “I’m looking,” I say quietly.
He shakes his head. “I’m not meant for anything else, Shay. It’s what I’m here to do, just like my father before me. I didn’t even graduate high school, not officially. I was expelled before that could happen. There was no college for me. There was just…nothing. I was so lost. So fucking lost. And the boat, the boat was the only thing that gave me anything to stand on.”
“And does it now?”
“Yes,” he says, a determined slant to his mouth. “It gives me…”
“Purpose?”
“No. Not purpose. Just…a means to an end, I guess.”
“But you don’t love it…”
He gives me a quick, resigned smile. “You’re not supposed to love your job, Shay. It’s just a bonus if you do. It’s hard work, but it brings in the money. It’s something I can do, and that alone is a good feeling.”
“But don’t you feel like you’re having to take on your father’s legacy?”
He starts to knead the wheel, nodding slowly as he brings his eyes back to the road, a hardness in them. “Yeah. I do. More so because he died at sea. Sometimes…I wonder how my life would have turned out if he was still alive. Not just in that I wouldn’t have so much guilt and anger over how our relationship was when he…when I lost him. But I wonder about my own life. What I would have done with it. I took on my father’s life, I never had much chance to make one of my own.”
We both fall silent after that, and I turn my attention back to the steel grey ocean, the way the sun glints off it like light off a blade. It reminds me of his eyes.
“You know, our lives might be different,” I say to him after a moment. “But I know exactly how you feel. But instead of having shoes to fill, I have nothing at all. No purpose. I’m just aimless. Never had anyone in my family to guide me toward anything, even shitty prospects. My father’s tech company in Mumbai is booming, but he never took any interest in me, never cared to try and pass the torch my way. You’d think that he’d view Hannah and I as future protégés, but paid us no attention. My mom said it was because he always wanted boys, and I have no doubt that’s true, and it definitely made Hannah buckle down and work harder. I knew she was working for his approval. I just don’t know if she ever got it.”
I take in a deep breath, the feelings thick like sludge, and yet it’s freeing at the same time to talk about it, like I’m clearing the cobwebs in my soul. “And obviously he didn’t care, because why did he leave us to work there? Why didn’t he bring us all there? We would have gone. We could have been raised in India instead of the US. At least we would have been raised. But instead, he left us and my mother still followed him. She followed and left us to fend for ourselves. She chose him over us. He cheated on her, you know.” I glance at Anders and see the shame on his face. “He had an affair. A mistress. So they got divorced, but even then my mom still went back to him. After all he had done to her, she still went back to him and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why.”
