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e fishing. But I’m pretty sure that my clumsiness and lack of know-how when it comes to anything remotely outdoorsy will only make him run away screaming and never talk to me again.
“There’s no better hobby on earth than fishing.” He holds out his hand to help me get up from the air mattress and I take it instinctively. He smiles and a million dirty things run through my head. He thinks fishing is the best hobby in the world? I bet I could show him a few things that would change his mind.
My feet wobble unsteadily on the dock. It’s a floating dock. Not like the kind of thing I’m used to where a pier juts out into a lake and is firmly rooted to the ground. No, this one is attached to the ground by a measly rope that Tyler used only for a few seconds so he could push us out into the middle of the pond.
If I wasn’t on a mission to impress the pants off him with my charm and wit—the literal pants, I mean—then I would most likely be kicking and screaming and begging to get off this thing. I keep picturing it flipping over and dumping us into the brown water where some kind of loch ness monster will then devour us with its big gnashing teeth.
Tyler pops the lid off a plastic container in his hand. I catch a whiff of the most disgusting smell I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. And I once tripped in a pile of dog crap while taking out the trash to an overflowing dumpster. This is worse.
“Sweet baby Jesus, what is that?” I clamp my hand over my nose, and then the other one over my mouth for good measure. He laughs, but I can tell he’s holding back his gag reflex as well. He grabs a brown piece of the crap in the container, and for all I know it really is crap, and shoves it on his fishing hook.
“It’s stink bait.” He drops his fishing pole and grabs the hook of the pole in my hand. I watch in horror as he gets another piece of the stink bait and holds it up. “It’s made of meat bits and cheese and just all kinds of gross-smelling shit.”
I wave my hand and push him away. “I don’t need to see it up close, thanks.”
He baits my hook with the stuff and gives me back my fishing pole. “The catfish go crazy for this. The worse it smells, the more they like it.”
I look at my stink-baited hook from an arm’s length away. It’s not a normal fish hook, the kind I would picture when thinking of a fish hook with my limited knowledge of fishing. Instead of being shaped like the letter J, it’s a tripod of hooks, with three extremely sharp and dangerous-looking hooks poking out like a triangle.
“What kind of hook is this?” I ask, immediately picturing the poor fish whose mouth will get massacred with this thing and deciding that this will absolutely not be my new hobby.
“It’s a treble hook. It’s the best way to catch a catfish. Those things have really tough mouths.”
“Oh, so we’re cheating?” I say with a snort. “People in the old days didn’t have all this crazy technology and they still caught fish.” He raises an eyebrow and doesn’t look like he appreciates the joke.
“If you want to reach in there with your bare hand and catch a fish, then be my guest.”
I smile politely and shut up. Why do I always do this? I can’t just enjoy the moment with a guy I like and let him be the smart, knowledgeable one. My practicality and incessant need to question everything always makes me say some totally rude thing and insult the poor guy. Why, why, why, why? I can’t apologize and I can’t back track—that never works. So I just smile politely as the floating pier sways in the breeze. The motion mixed with the scent of stink bait in the air and the nervous way my stomach flips when Tyler smiles is sure to have me spilling my lunch into the lake today. I bet the catfish would like that.
“All you have to do is hold the pole like this,” Tyler says, swinging his arms back like he’s holding a baseball bat. “Then press this button to release the hook.” In a quick, skilled motion with those gorgeous arms of his, he swings and releases the hook and it plops into the water about forty feet away. “Then what?” I ask.
He gives me a sideways smile. God, his profile is perfect. Like some kind of Greek god. “Then we wait.”
“Okay,” I say, rubbing my hands together and then flexing my fingers in a pre-game stretch. “I can do this.”
What could possibly be better than casting my fishing line and spending time waiting with Tyler for a fish to bite? It’ll probably take hours. Hours upon hours, in which we will tell each other our deepest and darkest secrets. Maybe fishing really could be my new hobby.
I hold the pole in my hands the same way Tyler did, two-handed like a baseball bat and swing, but nothing happens. Unfazed, I pull it back again. Maybe I didn’t swing it hard enough. Tyler clears his throat and when I look at him, he mimics the pressing of a button with his thumb. Oh, right. I have to press that button as I swing.
I press the button this time, and swing harder with the energy boost I get from the desire of not looking like a total idiot. The reel makes a hissing sound as the line spits out and the hook soars through the air. I hold my hand as a shield from the sun and watch the lake for signs of my hook dropping in the water next to Tyler’s.
But when the sound never comes, I squint harder and try to see some ripples in the water from where it landed.
“Okay, don’t panic,” Tyler’s strained voice says from behind me.
“It must have gone really far?” I ask, still looking for my line in the water.
“You got me,” Tyler says, his voice even more strained than a moment ago.
I turn around and fall to my knees in shock. Blood pours out of Tyler’s head, near his temple. It gushes over his eyebrow and into his left eye and it’s coming out of the side of his head where my treble fish hook has lacerated him. Oh my god, no. This isn’t happening.
“This isn’t happening,” I say aloud as my hands fumble in midair, not knowing that to do. Tyler sits remarkably still, a pained expression on his still beautiful, albeit bloody, face. “What do I do?”
“Look in my tackle box, get the pocket knife and cut the line.”
I do as he says, and gently slice through the fishing line a few inches away from his head. I only take one good look at the hook before I have to turn away. Two of the hooks are buried deep into his skin, that extra pointy thing they have making it impossible for it to fall out on its own. This is a million times worse than seeing a fish gobble it up and get stuck.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as my arms flounce at my sides and I try to keep my composure. “I can’t even apologize enough for this.”
