Merle

The night was long and I was up early because I didn’t sleep very well. I was hoping to get up early so that I could make some breakfast for Charlie as a thank you for letting me stay, but he was already up and dressed at the kitchen table when I came downstairs to start the coffee.

The coffee he had started was wafting up to my nose and it made the morning look a little better.

“Good morning Merle. You are up early. I am glad to see you up so early. If you are ready, we can get down to the boat and start making money.”

I wasn’t sure that I had heard him right. He’d made a comment before saying that he didn’t go on the boats anymore, but I could have sworn that it was what he had just said.

“You’re going down to the docks with me? I thought that you didn’t do that?”

“I usually don’t, but I don’t know, hearing your excitement about finding gold revived mine. It’s been a while since I have been excited about it, but I want to be. I want to remember why I started it to begin with. Besides, a couple of my guys have been wanting a day off, so it will be good for everyone.”

I just smiled and nodded as he handed me a cup full of coffee. It meant that me and him were going to be out there by ourselves together and I can’t say that I was too happy about it. I liked being around him. He was a nice guy, easy to talk to and really easy on the eyes, but at the end of the day he was my boss and I already harbored feelings for him that I wasn’t supposed to have. Being alone on a small boat in the ocean with him was not going to make it any easier, I knew that for sure. I was going to find more common ground and I was going to find more reasons to like everything about him. It was rather impossible not to because Charlie was a great guy.

“Oh, well that sounds like fun. When is the last time you were on a boat?”

He shrugged and told me that it had been a while. I didn’t push the question because I had a feeling that he didn’t want me to know how long it had been. It didn’t matter because no matter how long it had been, I was sure he was going to be a better back up then it was with Kevin. I couldn’t see Charlie doing any worse.

So I just went with it. I got dressed with my outer clothes and told him that I was ready whenever he was. I was going to have to prove myself today and I was worried about how it was all going to work out.

We didn’t talk a lot on the way to the shoreline. I was still thinking about Charlie in his towel and the hard lines that I had seen before. It was a hard image to stop thinking about and the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that I was going to not be able to stop myself from being attracted to him. He was a man that was gorgeous and he was so well made that any woman would want him.  I was not an exception, even though a man that was my boss was the last person that I should be attracted to.

When we got to the docks, I was a little nervous, but I knew that it would all go away when I hit the water. I was always full of anxiety in the beginning, but the soothing water would strip that away in no time. The fact that Charlie was the one that was going to be there up top and in my ear was just another reason to feel strange about it all.

“You were quiet for the trip. Are you starting to get worried?”

I turned to him and told him that I was fine. I wasn’t going to admit that my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. He would think that it was the dive that worried me or made me this way, but in fact it was him. I still wondered why he didn’t kiss me yesterday. It had been a perfect moment and I can’t believe that he hadn’t. I wanted him to and instead of thinking about the dive and the gold; all I could think about was the man’s full lips and what they would have felt like on mine.

“No, I’m just tired I guess. I didn’t get that much sleep last night, so I guess that it was because of that. You aren’t the well of vibrant conversation this morning either. Figured you were the type that wasn’t too much of a morning person.”

“Yeah, I guess I wasn’t much in a mood to talk this morning. You are going to be down in the water and I am going to be on the boat. I don’t miss the quiet all day.”

I liked the quiet and serenity of being under water. I never thought about how it would be for the one that was topside, but I guess I could see how it would get lonely.

“Well keep me company until I go down there. You have coms don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Yak to me while I am down there. I don’t have much more to do than suck up the bottom of the ocean anyways.”

He agreed and there was a smile that went across his face and sucker punched me for a moment. The man was bad news and my boss was becoming a liability.