I open my jaw and press a finger to my ear in an attempt to relieve the pain in my ears.
The three other women meet us where we’re standing.
“Ladies, just give me five minutes to wipe down the seats and make sure I have enough refreshments.”
They all hold up their jugs.
“No need. We brought our own,” Heidi says.
“We don’t believe in plastic bottles,” Cindy says.
“Horrible for the environment,” says the third, who I always think of as bird lady because she always wears clothing with birds on it.
“Are you going to have kids one day? If so, you want to leave them a healthy planet.” Stella, the fourth woman, touches my arm.
“Okay then, no water, but still give me five minutes to wipe down the boat from overnight.” I turn and walk toward my boat.
“We’ll help. We’re a bunch of eager beavers this morning,” Heidi says.
“Women helping women is what it’s all about.” Stella comes up beside me. “Seriously though, think about the bottled water thing.”
I nod and smile, which is my normal response with this charter.
When we board my boat, Heidi gasps and each woman takes her turn gasping before I really make sense of what I’m looking at. My boat is covered in cheap lingerie, condom wrappers, condoms, vibrators, dildos, and an open bottle of lube, a long line squeezed out on the bench. In addition to all the sex crap, there are empty alcohol bottles and red Solo cups.
I swivel around and everybody who works on the dock is laughing. Cam raises his coffee mug at me. That son of a bitch.
“Um… Chevelle.” Heidi swallows a bunch of times. “Is your boat used for other things besides fishing?”
“No. Someone must’ve done this without my knowing.”
Anger fires up inside me. I’m going to kill him.
“Well, I’m sorry, I cannot clean that up and I cannot get on that boat.” Stella shakes her head.
“Filthy sex things happened here last night,” Cindy whispers to me.
“No, it’s a prank.”
“A prank?” bird lady asks.
“Yes, there’s a competition going on. Please, ladies, give me a minute to clean this up, and we’ll be on our way.”
They shake their heads, all four of them retreating down the pier.
“We’ll reschedule, honey, you just… do you.” Then they all turn and speed walk out of the marina.
I scream and it echoes through the still morning air. “Cameron Baker!”
I stomp down my dock to his. Everyone steps out of my way, smiling and laughing.
He looks over the edge of his boat. “Can I help you?”
“Did you do that?” I stab my finger in the direction of my boat.
“Well.” He shrugs. “If memory serves, you got my biggest charter drunk the night before and told them you had an opening. So… yeah, I did. Did Heidi and the girls not like it? Sorry, I thought you’d be here early enough to clean it up.”
“You did not. You did it on purpose so I’d lose a charter and have to wear the damn fish costume.” I climb on board and poke him in the chest. “Mine was by accident.”
He stares down at my finger, and I clench my fist, moving it to my side. “It was not an accident. You knew they were my charter.”
“Not right away, I didn’t.”
“But?”
She says nothing.
“Fess up, Chevelle.”
She sighs and juts out her hip. “The one guy started talking about the boat he’d booked and how awesome it was. It was easy to figure out they were talking about yours.”
“And you sabotaged me.”
Ugh. I hate when he’s right. “Maybe. But they were ordering the majority of the shots, okay?” I shake my head and let out a sound of frustration.
“Now we’re even.”
I laugh in his face. “We’re not even. You better watch around every corner, Cameron Baker, because when I’m out for revenge, I go for the throat.”
I stomp off his boat and down the pier. “I’m sure all these items came from your personal collection, so you better come get them before I throw them all out.”
“It was a joke, Chevelle. You took away one of mine and I took away one of yours.”
I give him the finger while walking away. “Of course, Cam. No hard feelings.”
I ended up canceling on Posey because there’s no more sexual tension between Cam and me. Not after what he did.
I’ve waited four days to pull this prank because it’s been fun watching his paranoia in action. Sitting down but standing up quickly, thinking I left a tack on his seat. He peeks through every door before entering the room, and he’s always looking over his shoulder.
In truth, I probably don’t even have to do anything because the threat alone is doing the trick. But I have to hit him where it hurts, which is his charters. He has to feel my wrath there for it to be payback.
He walks down the stairs in the morning like usual, peeking around the corner before walking into the kitchen.
“Calm down, Cam.”
“What did you do?” he asks.
I was going to make him breakfast and coffee, but I thought he’d never eat or drink anything from me, so I didn’t bother. “I figured we’d walk into work together, stop at The Grind, get some coffee and a muffin.”
His eyes narrow the slightest bit. “What’s your game plan? String me up in the town square and leave paddles for kids to hit me?”
I laugh because the image is funny. “You need to relax. Maybe I’m not going to do anything. I just figured the weather is cooling down and pretty soon we won’t be able to walk to work.”
He nods slowly. “Okay.”
“Good. Let me grab my bag and we’ll leave.”
He lets Gunner out back and eyes me the entire time I’m getting everything together as though I’m going to pull out a paintball gun and shoot him in the nuts or something.
Gunner comes back in the house and we both leave, me locking the door. The entire time we walk, he’s on the side away from the road.
“I’m not going to push you in front of a car, Cam.”
“Maybe not, but I’m more comfortable on this side.”
“If you’re so worried about retaliation, why’d you do it in the first place?”
He chuckles. “Because it was payback for what you did.”
“Yeah, so maybe I’m not gonna do anything.”
“I’d feel more comfortable if you just said you weren’t.”
“But what fun would that be?” I waggle my eyebrows.
He shakes his head, and we cross the street to The Grind.
I’ve learned a lot about Cam since we’ve been living together. One is that he is a man of routine. He buys his coffee, sets it on the boat, and wipes the benches and seats free from the morning dew while his coffee cools a bit. So all I need to do is to get him on his boat and I can slip him the laxative.
We order our coffees, and he is a stickler, always wanting to pay, so I let him.
On the way to the marina, I make casual conversation. “Is your dad easing up at all? You’ve had some successful charters lately. Maybe not ones that brought in a lot of fish, but ones where people were having fun. You’re a born entertainer.”