Resurrection Bay

Sunday finally reared its head, and the late August morning was wet and foggy. Not an ideal time to take a boat ride. But the newly married couple and their entire wedding party descended upon the Kenai Fjords cruise company and departed from Resurrection Bay.

Other than a few families, the Wilson’s and their wedding attendees filled the entire boat. I had bartended for their wedding the night before and was still exhausted from the mother of the bride’s incessant gossiping; about the groom’s mother taking over all the details of the wedding planning; how she’d chosen the catering company, but the bride was vegan and specifically requested a vegan option and hadn’t received it. I nodded empathetically throughout the night, only interjecting once, to my chagrin, that no catering company outside of Anchorage really offered anything remotely vegan – basically everything out here was made with either bison, or reindeer. When the mother-of-the-bride had given me a withering glare, I knew that I should simply smile and walk away.

The wedding had been a rowdy bunch. I’d discovered that early in the night as many drunk groomsmen and their friends tried to twirl me around as I brought trays of drinks around the tent. I recognized the bridesmaids, who were standing in their own clique at the front of the boat. They were the first to arrive to the docks this morning and boarded the boat, staking out what they deemed the best seats. I knew they’d be the first to get sick if any had even the slightest hangover this morning. Judging from the looks on their faces, and the amount of alcohol I’d personally witnessed them drink the night before, that was assured. When the bride and groom stepped into the galley, the whole boat lifted up their coffee mugs and tumblers with their wedding-party cozies and yelled and clapped and shouted for a kiss. Great, I thought, another booze cruise kind of day.

Behind the galley, putting away the snacks and cans of soda from the mornings’ delivery, I watched the newlyweds make their rounds to people they’d only departed from about six hours earlier. Could they truly be so excited to see each other again? Hadn’t they all just spent the entire day together – rather, the entire week together?

I watched the bride and groom as they went from one set of parents, to the other. The mother-of-the-bride could be seen glaring and whispering to her friends, while her daughter and son-in-law chatted up his mother; I knew it was only a matter of time before one the mothers was telling me, once again, that the other was doing something wrong, or stepping on the other’s toes in some way. What was it about working behind a counter that made people want to open up to absolute strangers?

The lead crew member for my shift – and boss, Jessica – walked by with her micro-managing clipboard and stopped at the galley bar top. I picked up the pace of what I was doing, trying desperately not to look like I wasn’t trying hard enough by Jessica’s standards.

“Oh, Emilie?” I looked up from the box of snacks to see the freckled, round face that stared at me in the bright neon-green Crew Member’s rain jacket. “Can you make sure to unpack all the beer into the cooler today? I ordered extra because we’re completely booked. Okay? Great, thanks!” Her sing-songy voice, which never hit a note pleasurable for anyone’s ears, carried off after her.

“Sure thing.” I mildly yelled, but she and her clipboard were already heading to the upper deck to meet with the captain to go over the day’s schedule.

I’d been working the boat tour scene for two summers now and living in the small tourist town of Seward, Alaska. I’d learned enough from the local native peoples, the Quetekcak, that there was a strong tribal connection to Resurrection Bay. Seward was like any other sea town in Alaska, but it had felt different to me somehow when I came to visit. It made me want to stay. It was beautiful, of course, all of Alaska was, or what I’d seen of it so far anyway. The summer months were always the busiest, with fishermen and tourists coming into town between May and September. Most people from the lower 48 would move up to Seward for tourist season and then return back to their normal lives. For me, this was my new normal.

I watched the wedding party pile into the galley of the boat which was the biggest part that was actually indoors. The rain was starting to come down at a slant, and anyone standing outside was getting thoroughly drenched. If I hadn’t met these people the previous night, based on their lack of rain gear and layers, I would have put my money on them being from out of town and not used to the drastically changing weather of an Alaskan summer. Luckily, yesterday had been a balmy seventy-five degrees and partially cloudy – the perfect weather for a wedding. Or so I’d heard about a dozen times from the mother-of-the-bride. Apparently it couldn’t be too sunny, or the wedding photos wouldn’t look right; it couldn’t be too hot, or the girls’ makeup would start to run, but if it was too cold, everyone could get too cold. God forbid if it had rained yesterday, I thought to myself amusingly.

I crouched down below the galley counter to start stocking the beer in the cooler. Laughing to myself at the image of all these people trying to get pictures of the landscape through the windows which were quickly fogging up and covered in rain drops. At least there were some things I could always count on. Tourists being clueless; and the fact that I’d be sold out of beer before the boat made it back into the harbor. Jessica would be only too happy to chastise me at the end of the day for selling out of the beer too quickly. Her type-A personality wouldn’t stand for people to be dissatisfied with anything relating back to her job, but it was typical with these kinds of crowds. A wedding party guaranteed higher sales.

“Something funny down there?” His voice, which I could only describe as brusk and low, with a hint of laughter behind it as well, startled me out of my own imagination. I stood up from behind the counter to look at the most piercing blue eyes I’d ever seen. They looked like the ice-cold glacier water we had just set out upon. In contrast, his mop of messy brown hair and a thick, short beard, made them all the more mesmerizing.

“Uh, just thanking the universe for giving us such a beautiful day for a cruise.” I tried to think quick on my feet, and that was the best I could do. But he smiled. I felt slightly sick. Was that because of my lame attempt at humor, this beautiful man acknowledging my existence, or the fact that I was still slightly sea-sick, and we were leaving the bay on eight-foot waves?

“Well, that’s Seward for you.” He said, continuing the conversation easily. “How long do you think it’ll take one of them to venture out there without a rain jacket on?”

“Oh, I’d give it a solid five minutes. If not to run to the bathrooms to throw up, which are located outside.” He smiled again, this time showing a dazzling set of teeth. Surely, I couldn’t be this amusing. But something about him made me want to keep talking to him.

I opened my mouth to say something else but at that very moment, the captain came on the intercom to introduce himself, the crew, and explained that the weather would be a bit tricky today, and the best place to sit if you were seasick, would be at the back of the bottom level – the galley. I turned away from the beautiful man’s gaze to break down one of the now empty boxes of beer that I’d just shelved. He stood so casually, leaning against the bar top; he even smelled amazing. Oh my god, Emilie, stop smelling the man!

Crouching back down beneath the counter, I stocked the rest of the beer. I was basically ready to “open,” but I’d have to wait to actually start serving anyone. When I stood up from my crouch, knees cracking, I was surprised to see he was still standing there, clearly watching me as I worked. He was resting his arms so carelessly on the bar top, as if it was completely normal for him to be there. I felt acutely aware of how awkward I was under his intense gaze, so I tried to ignore it and kept working. I was pretty good at blending in, at being invisible. Nearly thirty years old, having had only two serious boyfriends in my life, what I was not used to, was being the center of a man’s attention.

“Sorry,” I said awkwardly, trying to guess at what he wanted, “we’re not open for another few minutes until we get onto the open waters. I can get you some water or coffee if you need something.”

“That’s fine by me. I’ll take a coffee.” He turned away then, to address the tall, brunette woman coming up to him. “Oh, good morning,” he said to her casually.

She called him Jonah as she approached and rivaled him in beauty. She came up and hugged him, wrapping her arms around his tanned neck, and squeezing him as close to her as was humanly possible. She was tall and slender, with impossibly high cheekbones. She had this dewy-fresh look to her face that made it look like waking up and being that beautiful was effortless. At five foot and nearly two inches, I mentally looked at my own short, curvy body in comparison. I caught myself wondering if she was the type of woman this guy – Jonah – looked for. She was the polar opposite of myself.

She started asking him why he’d left the wedding early yesterday, which is when I realized I was standing there like an idiot, listening to their conversation. I turned and got him a cup and went to the coffee, trying not to eavesdrop. I didn’t remember seeing him at the wedding the night before, but then again, I had been a bit busy and had purposefully tried not to be noticed. My job, literally, was to blend in, simply serve the drinks.

This woman clearly hadn’t gone unnoticed. She probably couldn’t if she tried. I rolled my eyes at myself when I realized I was judging her before knowing her. I turned to set the now scorching cup of coffee on the bar top when I saw her putting her hand around his bicep and squeezing. I rolled my eyes again, retracting my earlier feelings of guilt at judging her.

“Sure, yeah, I’ll find you out there.” Jonah turned back to my bar top and away from the woman who was now walking back to a few other girls I recognized as the bridesmaids where they stood, no doubt talking about whatever she’d tried to promise Jonah into. His reaction was less than bubbly. He rolled his eyes, mimicking my earlier feelings about her, and grabbed the cup of coffee, putting five dollars on the bar top in its place.

“Oh, the coffee is complimentary.” I said, pushing the five-dollar bill back towards him. He placed his hand on top of mine, pushing it back towards me. I immediately felt the warmth of his hand go right through me, also noticing how much bigger it was than mine. He locked his stellar blue eyes with mine again.

“Keep it.” He said.

It was one of those moments where any douchey kind of guy would have winked or made a joking comment about how I could “treat myself” to something nice, but he did neither of those things. He gave me a soft smile that pulled up the corners of his eyes. I didn’t find the words to say thank you, but the warmth that rose to my cheeks spoke for me. I put the five-dollar bill in the tip jar.

I watched him walk away and over to a group of some of the groomsmen and wedding guests that I’d seen last night. I was sure I hadn’t seen him at the wedding the night before, but now I wondered if he’d seen me. I blushed again at the thought of someone like him noticing me and realized quickly that probably wasn’t the case.

The bartending company I worked for, Shake & Stir Cocktails, was the only bartending service within a hundred-mile radius. It had been a plated dinner for the Wilson’s wedding, with specialty cocktails that the bride and groom had come up with, along with champagne toasts. I had probably walked the half-acre property more than a dozen times last night, serving and refilling people’s drinks. Surely, I’d delivered at least one drink to him if he’d been there that long.

“Whatchy’a doin?” Clark, the cook, came out of the kitchen off to the left of the galley holding a crate full of mini chip bags, and startled me out of my thoughts of last night. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been standing there watching Jonah chatting with his friends but quickly pretended I was doing the exact opposite of that. I attacked the bar top with a wet rag I’d grabbed from the sanitizer bucket.

“Nothing.” I said quickly. “Did you get everything ready for the lunch?”

“Chick’n is a’marinatin’” Clark had a thing for trying to rhyme words. It didn’t really work for him every time, but I was used to his attempts and smiled at him anyway.

“So, who was the guy you were just drooling after?” He continued, plopping the crate of chip bags down next to me on the counter. I groaned but started unloading it.

“Who? Him?” I nodded in Jonah’s general direction, not bringing my eye level up to meet his gorgeous face again, or worse, to catch him looking back at me.

“’Who? Him?’” Clark said in a mocking tone and nudged me with his elbow. “Yes! Girl, you were literally drooling after him for a solid two minutes before I cut you out of that daze!”

“No one. I don’t even know him. He’s with the wedding party, I guess. He was at the wedding last night, apparently.”

“Oh, that’s right! You were bartending last night. How’d that go? Bridezilla or mom-zilla?”

“Mother of the bride,” I said, and continuing because I knew he lived for wedding drama, “And, pretty sure one of the groomsmen came with a girlfriend but may be leaving here without one.” I gave him a side-eye which told him all he needed to know.

“Oh, pray-tell, which one?” Clark peered around the kitchen doorway to look at the crowd amassing inside the galley. I took a quick look around and found the sandy-blond haired groomsmen I’d seen fighting with his then-girlfriend the night before.

“Dark-green rain-jacket, two o’clock.” I said, clocking him.

“He’s a cutie! What happened?”

“Well, apparently, he caught his girlfriend – red-head in the purple sweater with the Starbucks tumbler – making out with the photographer last night, behind one of the bathrooms by the river.”

“Scandalous! Why am I never at these events?” Clark bemoaned. “Okay, so who was this hunk just talking to you? He seemed to be into you!”

“He was not! He was just getting a cup of coffee, and – wait, were you watching from the kitchen?” I asked him, sarcastically accusatory. I already knew the answer.

“Maybe. I need excitement in my life, babes! I’m in the kitchen, I never get to see any of the action that happens out here. So? What’s his name? Is he an out-of-towner too?” Clark grabbed the now empty crate off the counter and, rather than helping me pin each bag to the board behind the bar top for customers to see, he leaned against the counter.

“I think his name is Jonah.” I thought about how he’d made a comment about knowing Seward’s weather in the summer, “He may live here, though I’ve definitely never seen him around town. I don’t know. I literally just met him. Well, not even really. I heard someone else call him Jonah.” I looked in his general direction, but he was still engaged in conversation.

“Uh huh. Well, he sure didn’t seem as interested in talking to that ballerina.”

“Right? That’s what I thought she looked like too.”

“Em, you are missing my point. He was more interested in talking to you.”

“Yeah, no. No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t.” Clark sighed heavily, erring on the dramatic.

I stopped pinning the bags of chips and looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you wouldn’t know if an attractive, hunky man was flirting with you if he slapped you in the face with a fish!”

I sneered at him, but he just smiled back at me. Clark always showed his love through the utmost sarcasm. “Hm, you know, I think I hear Jessica and her clipboard coming inside the galley, you should run along before she catches you fraternizing on the job.”

“Oh god. Lord knows she is downright panicking about this shit-storm of a day already.”

Clark chuckled sarcastically but knowing better than to gamble with going toe to toe with Jessica and her clipboard of time management, he grabbed the now-empty crate off the bar top and headed back into the kitchen.

Clark was one of the few friends I’d made in this tiny town, my best friend really, in the last two years of living here. Clark was like me, in the sense that he worked every job in this town and took every chance to do something that he knew absolutely nothing about. He was much better at it than me, of course, and was an amazing chef. His talents weren’t nearly exercised enough making the small lunches for the tourists on this six-hour boat ride, but it was better than the convenience snacks we generally offered.

Clark moved to Seward after breaking up with his ex-boyfriend. They’d come together to Anchorage a few years ago during the summer to work the tourist circuit. When Clark had found out Brad – or maybe it was Chad – had been cheating on him, Clark told him to kick rocks. He’d stayed in Alaska, much to my delight, and Brad had returned to Portland.

I finished stocking the chips and readied the till for opening business. It was always the same on these tourist boats. It didn’t matter the time of day, or the weather. As soon as the captain came on the intercom and told the guests aboard the boat that we were open for business, they came flocking; getting wine, beer, and asking repeatedly when lunch would be served. It was only eight in the morning.

I decided to steal a glance back at Jonah who was still chatting a few feet away. He looked at me at the exact same moment. I tried to hide my blushing cheeks, pretending to fiddle with something at the register.

Carelessly, I looked back in his direction but thankfully he turned away. Though I thought I caught the slightest glimpse of a smile on his face. Maybe this wouldn’t be the worst boat ride of the season, after all.