The Naked Fisherman by Jewel E. Ann

Chapter Ten

I showeredwhen I really wanted a bath.

I skipped Bible study because I just needed to sulk.

I stayed up way too late, making a gazillion trips to the top of the stairs to press my ear to the door, listening for any sign of Fisher.

By one in the morning, I gave up and went to bed, a little irritated that he either wasn’t coming home at all or was out so late … on a work night. People who were not morning people needed to get to bed earlier. My grandparents went to bed at eight every night, and they were always a bucket full of smiles in the morning.

Thursday morning, I woke to a text from Fisher.

You’re working in the office with Hailey today. Hopefully you can drive yourself. If not, call me.

What did that mean? Did he not come home the previous night? Was he out too late? Hung over? At her place? Naked in her bed?

NO!

I really needed to get control of my thoughts. I should have gone to Bible study instead of going out of my mind eavesdropping on Fisher when he wasn’t home.

“Good morning. How’s the hand?” Hailey asked as I set my backpack next to her desk. “You can sit at Bossman’s desk. I have a bunch of invoices for you to sort through today. Just set his shit in a pile on the floor.”

“My hand is fine. Thanks.” I gathered the papers and blueprints on his desk and set them on the floor in the corner. “Have you seen him this morning?” I asked.

“Not yet. I assumed you two would be riding together.”

“He had a date last night.” I poured myself a cup of coffee. “I don’t think he came home.”

“Oh …” She lifted her eyebrows and grinned. “Go, Fisher, go.”

No. Why did she say that? Maybe because she had sexual fantasies about other men, not her boss. I envied her. It’s not like I wanted to pine for Fisher like a pathetic teenager.

Teenager.

Oh my gosh … it wasn’t until the word popped into my brain that I realized I had let the whole “adult” thing go to my head. Sure. Eighteen was legally adulthood, but I was eighteen which meant I was a still a teenager.

That seemed so wrong, to be a teenaged adult. Like an oxymoron.

Fisher got laid by a real woman. A non-teenaged adult woman. What was I thinking? And why couldn’t I stop?

“Yay, Fisher,” I said, lacking all enthusiasm just like the fake smile I tossed in Hailey’s direction as I carried my coffee to Fisher’s desk.

“I wonder if it was the orthodontist? Meghan or … Keegan? I can’t remember, but if it’s Jason’s friend from high school, then it’s the orthodontist.”

An orthodontist. How was I supposed to compete with that? Highly educated, self-sufficient, real adult orthodontist. Or … teenaged adult who cried because she scraped her knees and got a little nail prick?

“Think you can hold things down for thirty minutes while I run a quick errand?”

My head snapped up at Hailey, and I nodded quickly. “Um … sure.”

“Cool. So here are the invoices. Just sort them by distributer then alphabetize them. They’ve all been scanned and saved on the computer, but Fisher likes hardcopy backups to everything.”

“Got it.”

“Can I get you anything while I’m out? A bagel? Better coffee?”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

Twenty minutes into sorting invoices, the office door opened and Bossman sauntered inside carrying a to-go cup of coffee. “That’s my desk.”

“How was your date?” I kept sorting, refusing to look at him.

No need to see his messy hair, unfairly sexy body in dark jeans, boots, and a black tee with his construction logo on the back. I didn’t care about his square jaw and sinful smile.

Nope.

I had stuff to sort.

“Fine. Where’s Hailey? Where’s my stuff?”

“On the floor.” My hands kept sorting papers, but I stopped focusing on any sort of alphabetical order.

“Hailey or my stuff?”

I didn’t want to grin, but I did. “Your stuff.”

“And Hailey?” He squeezed behind me, pushing his desk chair (and me) forward an inch or so.

“Errands.”

“What errands?” He hunched down and thumbed through the stack of papers I’d set on the floor.

“I didn’t ask. How was the concert?” I was pretty proud of myself for slipping that in like it was no big deal.

“I said fine.”

“No. You said your date was fine. I asked about the concert.”

“It was fine too.”

“You’re such a guy.” I rolled my eyes and sneaked a quick peek at him over my shoulder.

“Well, yes, last I checked, I was a guy.” Pulling out a manila folder, he stood.

“Hailey thought your date was an orthodontist.”

“She thought right.”

I felt six inches tall sitting in his desk chair while discussing his date … that date who had him all night.

“How was Bible study? Did you go out for ice cream?”

“It was fine.” I covered my face with one hand and sighed. “It was … well, I didn’t go.”

Fisher chuckled and rested his butt on the edge of his desk, opening the folder. “Did you just try to lie? Are you incapable of lying?”

“No. Trust me. I can lie just fine. I just don’t like to do it.”

“Then why lie about last night. Why try to lie about it?”

“Because I don’t want you to think that I didn’t go because of my hand. I just didn’t feel like it. That’s all.”

“Hey, you don’t owe me an explanation.”

I continued alphabetizing invoices while he remained leaning against the desk, close to me. So close I could smell his woodsy soap mixing with the coffee he set on the desk next to him. “So … you must have been up early this morning. Since you uh … texted me to drive myself. Were you meeting with the plumber?”

“No.”

No? NO?

That was it. One word. No additional details. No explanation as to why he asked me to drive myself to work.

“You never sent me the photos from our trip into the mountains.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Without taking his attention away from the contents of the folder, he slipped his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it before handing it to me. “Go for it.”

I had Fisher’s phone. It felt oddly personal like I had his whole world in the palm of my hand.

Contacts.

Text messages.

Photos.

Apps—which could tell me a lot about a person.

I behaved despite my mind whirling with a million possibilities. Opening his photos app, I quickly found the ones he took of me and us because they were the most recent. My gaze flitted from his phone screen to him several times to see if he was paying any attention to me.

He wasn’t.

I airdropped the photos to my phone, then I may have accidentally swiped up a few times to get a quick glimpse of other photos he’d taken. Most were from job sites.

“Did you get them?”

I jumped and fumbled his phone, trying to hand it back to him. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Sure.” He stood and tossed the folder back onto the pile on the floor. “Well, I’m out of here. I’ll catch you later.”

It killed me, as in physical pain clawing at my chest, to not say more to him.

Where was he?

Did he sleep with her?

If so, why?

Was it his MO to sleep with women on first dates?

Was he planning on seeing her—having sex with her—again?

So many crazy, irrational, and completely inappropriate questions chased each other in my head. But all I could do was smile like a sane person, like the adult teenager I was, even if a streak of insanity buzzed just beneath the surface.

* * *

Over the next week,Fisher tortured me by mowing the lawn without a shirt, eyeing me way too long in all the wrong places, and dropping slightly crude remarks at every chance. Then he’d buy me coffee and treat me like an equal for two seconds before the torture started all over again. I looked forward to every morning, even if all we did was banter and sling questionably appropriate comments at each other. (He was such a bad influence). And I liked the evenings when I’d take a walk only to return to him washing something in the driveway or watering plants—sans a shirt.

The wandering eyes.

The cocky smiles.

The slow wetting and rubbing of his lips together.

It felt like a game of cat and mouse, but I wasn’t always sure who was the cat and who was the mouse.

The evenings I didn’t like were the ones when he was gone … the nights I assumed he was with the orthodontist. Every cell in my eighteen-year-old brain hyper-focused on my new crush in bed with another woman. Despite its extreme irrationality, it sucked.

And it sucked the most at my first party. Well, my first adult party at Hailey’s house on Friday night. There must have been fifty people there, and she called it a small gathering. A lot of the guys from work showed up, some with wives, girlfriends, and even a few with boyfriends. That made me a little uneasy, and I hated that it made me uneasy. Fisher’s words replayed in my head. Now you can fucking think for yourself.

That was hard for me. All my beliefs seemed to be interwoven with scripture, parental lectures, or sermons.

“Hey, you came.” Jason playfully elbowed me before taking a swig of beer as we stood on the deck overlooking the backyard cluttered with people, yard games, kegs, and loud music.

“Hey, yeah. Good to see you again.”

He wore cleaner jeans and a crisp white tee hugging his monstrous chest and arms covered in tattoos. “How’s the hand?”

I laughed a little, holding up my hand with the tiny Band-aid. “Fine. Clumsy me.”

“Drink?” He held his beer bottle toward me.

More shared germs? Did I want to swap saliva with Jason?

“Bossman!” Hailey hollered from the backyard.

I glanced over the railing to Fisher … and his date. Hailey handed both of them red plastic cups of beer. Dr. Smile was a petite blonde with normal sized arms and legs—and of course perfect teeth. Mine were fairly perfect, but a few lower teeth had shifted after I stopped wearing my retainer. And she was at least a solid C-cup.

“Where did you get the bottled beer?” I asked Jason, feeling out of sorts with my emotions. I shouldn’t have hopped on the back of Fisher’s bike. That trip to the mountains messed with me.

“I brought my own beer. Don’t care much for keg piss.”

Staring at the amber bottle in his hand, I battled wrong and right in my head. Then I gave Fisher and his date another quick glance. She slid her hand around his waist.

“Maybe just a sip.” I took the bottle from Jason’s hand and brought it to my lips taking a whiff. It smelled like beer. I had no idea if beers had different aromas like wine. Taking a hesitant sip, I let the slow mingling of carbonation and alcohol coat my mouth. It didn’t burn like I’d imagined. Maybe that was just hard liquor. It didn’t exactly taste great either.

“Let’s head down,” Jason said as he nodded toward the stairs.

I held the bottle out to him.

“Keep it. I’ll get another from my cooler.”

“I don’t need it.”

He chuckled, descending the stairs. “Nobody does, but it’s a party, Reese.”

My grip on the bottleneck tightened as I followed him down the stairs. Most of the other women were wearing nicer sun dresses or sexy shorts and cute sandals. I wore shorts that nearly hit my knees and a T-shirt that I was pretty sure was a unisex shirt with a big smiley face on it.

Minimal makeup.

No nail polish.

And my hair looked like I’d done nothing more than comb it and let it air dry after a shower … because that’s what I did.

Straight brown hair doing nothing special. No body. No highlights. No funky pink streaks. Could I have been more basic?

“Yo, Bossman,” Jason said.

Fisher and his date turned around. He smiled at Jason, but his smile faded a fraction when he saw me standing a few feet back, clutching a beer bottle to my chest. “Having…” he eyed the bottle for a little too long before lifting his gaze to mine “…a good time?” That look, it was too parental.

Too challenging.

Too condescending.

Long-armed, tiny-boobed, fake-adult Reese.

Lifting the bottle to my lips, I nodded. “I believe I am.”

Fisher shifted his focus from me to Jason. “Did you give her the beer?”

Jason shrugged. “Maybe.”

Fisher nodded slowly. “She’s eighteen, which means she’s officially your responsibility.”

No he didn’t. He didn’t just call me out like a child.

Jason turned and gave me a sad smile. “Sorry. I’m not in the mood to babysit tonight.” He plucked the bottle of beer from my hand.

I was so embarrassed; I wanted to kill Fisher. Then I wanted to cry because it sucked being an adult, only not really a full adult. Jason disappeared, leaving me with an empty hand in front of Satan’s awful son and his girlfriend.

“Reese, this is Teagan. Teagan, this is Reese. She and her mom rent out my basement.”

I didn’t rent squat. But it was so generous of him to make me look grown up in front of her after calling out my age and apparent need for a babysitter.

“Nice to meet you.” She smiled instead of offering to shake my hand, probably because one of her hands held a beer and the other was still around Fisher’s waist.

The ugly jealousy felt terrible. How did I get such an extreme crush on a guy ten years older than me in a matter of weeks? It just added to all the other reasons I wasn’t a mature adult yet. I felt certain Teagan didn’t get stupid crushes on guys who were out of her league. Then again, she was a beautiful doctor with a great job, great hair, and great boobs. No guy was out of her league.

“Nice to meet you too.”

Fisher took a swig of his beer, and I wanted to knock it out of his hand.

“Well, have fun. I’m going to grab something to eat.” I wasn’t hungry. It was code for “I’m leaving.”

“You too,” Teagan said. She sounded nice. She worked with a lot of kids, giving them great smiles. Of course she was nice. He deserved her.

I sulked my way through the crowd in the house, but not rushing anything to avoid looking like I was leaving. A few people were just outside the front door vaping—and probably smoking pot too—but they ignored me when I held my phone up to my ear, pretending to talk to someone.

When I got home, I opened a bag of cheese curls and ate half the bag. Then I downloaded some new music to my phone.

Matt Maeson.

After listening to several songs, I settled on “Tribulation.” It was fitting in some ways. Tortured love.

Twenty minutes later, I knew every word.

Thirty minutes later, I ascended the stairs. And not surprisingly, he didn’t lock his side of the door. I opened it slowly, even though I knew he wasn’t home. I stole a banana and ate it. Then I opened the fridge door and frowned at all the peanut butter he had in the door. At least four jars. He must have been scared of a shortage. On the bottom shelf, there was beer. Lots of beer.

Biting my lips together for a few seconds while tapping my nails on the door, I contemplated borrowing … taking just one beer.

One beer led to two beers, and I was buzzed. And it was good. I bobbed around his house holding my phone with music blaring while looking at photos of people I imagined were his family. Then I stumbled upon his bedroom.

“Oh, Fisher …” I giggled, swaying a bit while I sauntered into his bedroom. “You make your bed like a good boy.” I laughed some more and plopped onto my tummy, burying my nose in his pillow. “You smell sooo good.” When I was convinced I’d sucked all of his scent from his pillow, I rolled to the side and right onto the floor. “Ouch …”

More laughter.

More swaying as I lumbered to my feet and continued my self-guided tour, which led me to his bathroom. “There you are … you big, beautiful tub.”

I sighed. His bathroom was ginormous. And he had a wall of switches, at least twenty switches for all kinds of lighting around the sink, the shower, his wall of wardrobe cabinets, by my feet, even under the toilet.

“Too much.” I pushed all the bottom buttons which turned off all the lights, leaving only natural moonlight coming from the big window by the tub and the two skylights. “That’s better.” I stripped, stepped into the soaker tub, and started the water, easing onto my butt with no grace. When the water reached an inch below my neck, I shut it off. “Where’s my music?” I realized I’d left my phone on the bed or maybe on the floor, but the music had stopped anyway.

Closing my eyes, I enjoyed the silence … and my buzz. The silence was interrupted with voices. I had enough sense to kind of care, but not enough sense to get out of the tub or say anything. Instead, I held still, really still … and listened.

“It’s beautiful, Fisher. You’re incredibly talented. How long did it take you to build it?”

Teagan.

“About a year. I didn’t rush anything, and I had some other jobs I was working on too.” His voice got closer.

My senses … my fight or flight? Yeah, they had the night off.

The lights turned on. All of them. There must have been a master switch. It was a little blinding at the moment. I squinted.

“Jesus … what are you …” Fisher turned his head like a real gentleman. No wonder Teagan liked him.

I liked him too.

“Oh! Reese!” Teagan jumped and turned as well. “Why is she in your tub?” she asked Fisher in a tone that made me think she wasn’t too pleased.

“You said anytime … I could use your tub anytime.” I chuckled, cupping my hands together at the surface of the water and squirting it in different directions. “You didn’t say I could drink your beer, so … oops. I’ll pay ya back.” Another giggle.

“Fisher …” Teagan’s voice wasn’t friendly like her smile, like she worked with kids all day. It was really grumpy. Did he offer his tub to her too?

“I’ll get out in a minute. When my head stops spinning.”

The door shut, and I no longer saw them, but I heard the murmuring of their voices, and it wasn’t good. A few moments later, the door opened again. It was Fisher, but he wasn’t being as much of a gentleman. No hiding his eyes.

“Reese …” he said in a slow and steady tone like I was that deer in the headlights he talked about.

“Fish-er … I like that name. At first … it was weird, like what were your parents thinking? But I like it now. A little too much. Ya know?”

“I don’t know.” He made his way to the tub, plucking my clothes from the floor one piece at a time. He sat on the edge of the tub with his back to me, holding my clothes in his hands as he drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly in a sound. My fuzzy head had trouble deciphering it. A grumble or a growl?

“Are you mad at me?”

Shaking his head, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what I am.”

“Is it the beer?”

He didn’t respond.

“The bathtub? Were you just kidding about me using it whenever I wanted to?”

No response.

“I think I need a towel.”

He nodded toward a tall stack of drawers by the sink on the opposite side of the bathroom. “Bottom drawer.”

It might have been his proximity or the shock of him and Teagan showing up so early, but my buzz was quickly wearing off. “Aren’t you going to get it for me?”

His lips twisted and he glanced over his shoulder at me. My hands moved to my breasts, and I crossed my legs as a big fat dose of reality began to register. The naked fisherman had seen me naked. Not briefly. He took his time, picking up my clothes while inching his way to the tub and my fully exposed body.

No bubbles.

No effort to cover myself.

Nothing.

“I’m not,” he said.

“Why not?” My voice shook a bit. Sobriety stole the moment.

“Because I think you need to get it yourself.”

“Are you going to leave now?”

“Nope.” His gaze slid down my body.

My hands gripped my breasts harder as I squeezed my legs together tighter.

It was so wrong. He was so wrong.

Drawing my knees to my chest, I rocked forward and stood, lifting one leg out of the tub followed by the other, inches from Fisher. On a suffocating swallow, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He had an unobstructed view of my naked backside. I didn’t have enough hands to cover everything.

“I thought you were a gentleman,” I mumbled, making the walk of shame to the stack of drawers and hunching down instead of bending over to retrieve a towel.

“Why did you think that?”

Wrapping the towel around my body, I turned toward him. “Because you looked away when you first came into the bathroom.”

“That was for Teagan. A gentleman doesn’t stare at a naked woman in front of his date.”

“So you’re a gentleman for her, but not for me?”

He narrowed his eyes a second before returning a slow nod. “That’s accurate.”

Stupid fu—fudger.

“Because of my age?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re a real butt. Did you know that?”

“I know.”

“So what’s the point of all this?” I marched toward him and snatched my clothes from his hand.

“I need you to know that when you make poor decisions, men will take advantage of you.”

“You said I could use your bathtub.”

“Not drunk.”

Hugging my clothes to my chest while keeping a firm grip on the towel, I frowned. “Well, if you’re done teaching me ridiculous lessons, then I’m going to bed.” Pivoting, I shuffled my feet to the bathroom door.

“I’m not done teaching.”

I stopped, but I didn’t look back at him.

“What now?”

“You need to bring your own towel. That one’s mine. Leave it right where you’re standing.”

“You’re a perv. How do you think Rory will react when she finds out you were being so perverted with her daughter?”

“I don’t know, but make sure you start the story with the part where you stole beer from my fridge.”

Fucker!

It felt so good to scream it in my head; I just wished my body would have cooperated and screamed it to his face. He knew I’d never tell Rory about the night’s events. So he took every opportunity to embarrass me.

“I’m filing a sexual harassment complaint against my boss on Monday.”

“You do that.” He was a steel beam, an immovable boulder. Always one step ahead of me.