She ran up to the office to wolf down some food before the sunset tour, waving at Travis, who was at the desk. She took her sandwich out the back door, rounding the corner just in time to see Paul Hanley step out of the outdoor shower, a pair of faded board shorts hanging from his hips. The Kayak Shack owner had to be at least forty, but he still dressed like a teenage surfer. Paul riffled his shaggy blond hair in his towel and bounded over to her.
“Tiny! Hey. Gotta question for you.” Paul was committed to the use of nicknames for all the guides, for confidentiality, he said. He’d tried to dub her Moana, because she was small and brown and fearless with a paddle, but Jack had taken her grandma’s advice and glared at him until he backed down and suggested Tiny instead.
“Can you close tonight?” Paul asked.
“I was the first one here,” Jack said. “Can Travis?”
“He said he can stay for check-in, but then . . .” Paul gave her a hopeful, wide-eyed look.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “I’ll lock up after the sunset tour.”
“You’re the best.” Paul turned away to pull a ratty T-shirt over his head. “Hey, so I met this chick, this woman, at the yacht club today. She’s in town for the weekend on that sweet seventy-footer by the fuel dock. She asked me about going fishing for marlin tonight, maybe tomorrow too. I’m gonna solo guide her.”
Translation: Paul wanted to get laid, and Jack was on her own.
After Jack got past her annoyance with herself for not asking Paul for overtime pay, she had an entertaining evening. Everyone else who worked at the Shack was male, and older, and while they were cool with her, it was nice to have a night off from being subtly treated like she didn’t know what she was doing. The Saturday sunset tour was all adults: two athletic women, an older man with thick eyebrows and a bald head, and a bachelor party of eight young men in matching Hawaiian shirts. The bachelor party rolled in late, crashing the safety talk just as Jack assured the women there were no sharks in the slough this time of year.
“Except you, Brian,” one of the young men said, slapping his buddy on the back. “You’re the shark.”
“Sharknado, baby.”
“Nah, man, more like Brian SHARK do do do do, Brian SHARK do do . . .”
Jack rubbed her temple as more of them started singing off-key. Were these idiots going to cause trouble? Paul always said this business wasn’t about seeing cute sea lions. It was about touching the wilderness, the jolt you get when you peek off the edge of your comfort zone. Jack’s job wasn’t to kill that buzz. Her job was to cultivate it. To indulge people’s desire for adventure, while assuring their complete safety. As long as no one got hurt, a little looseness was fine.
And everyone else seemed to be enjoying it. The two women were wearing indulgent smiles and swaying their hips. The bald man was clapping along. When the singing died down, Jack cleared her throat.
“Right. No sharks this time of year.” Jack gave the groom a small smile. “Except Brian, I guess. There are jellyfish, though, once we get out of the marina. Try not to fall in.”
The group went through the paddling demonstration without any more singing outbursts. At the end, the men gave everyone high fives. Jack was surprised to find herself getting into it, grinning as she attempted a complicated hand-slapping sequence with one of them. Their energy was puppyish, infectious. There was no real danger here.
Once they were on the water, though, it got wilder. One man had stuffed a bottle of tequila into his life vest, and the guys toasted every otter sighting with a swig. They tossed the bottle from kayak to kayak, razzing each other when they missed. The other guests on the tour joined in on the fun, the bald guy chuckling, the women flirting.
When the air turned cold, Jack started to reconsider her “we’re all friends here” approach. She was small, and young, and the bachelors were no longer listening to her. Neither was anyone else. At one point, Jack had to grab the bow of a woman’s kayak to keep it from tipping over when the woman leaned way out to attempt a sloppy kiss with one of the young men. So much for worrying about sharks.
By the time the second bottle of tequila came out, Jack had had enough. She turned the group around early, leading them in a long, wobbly arc past the public fishing dock. Two of the guys were so blitzed they couldn’t execute the turn and ended up drifting into the muddy drainage behind the rotted piers of the dock. Jack took three quick strokes toward them, snatched their paddles from them, and lashed their boat to hers. She did the same for the rest of the bachelor party. She towed them back, a line of troublesome ducklings following their long-suffering mother home.