If only I won the lottery and didn’t have to worry about this damn budget. Inflation, the cost of living, is chipping away at everything good I had envisioned for this place, which I also call home. My house is half-office, half home. Although, looking at the kitchen table in front of me, it appears that the wall that divides the main office from my abode is quite blurred.
“Earth. To. Brooks,” Kai enunciates, pulling me from my reverie. I find him giving me a pointed look, all while effortlessly weaving Morgan’s second braid. “The next biggest expense?”
“Employees,” I say, then correct myself. “Enticing people to come work here for the summer. We have to stay competitive.”
As it stands, most of the employees that we have are folks looking for summer work. Each year, it becomes harder and harder to find workers. The ones we do employ are here because they work for the school system, like our nurse and kitchen workers, or because they’re college-aged kids looking for a summer paycheck. They all want that little extra something, like a sign-on bonus, to get them to choose Camp Healing Waters over the plethora of other summer camps all around Maine—ones that have been touted as being ‘more fun’ or having newer, more updated equipment and activities.
Not to mention, we don’t have a handyman on standby for all the Bentley’s that like to clog up the pipes.
Kai ties off his handiwork and pats Morgan on the shoulder. “There ya go, Mowgli. Run, scoot, go get your gear, or you’re going to be late!”
“Thanks, Uncle Kai!” She takes the stairs, two at a time, up to her room. “Wish you could stick around for the game!” she adds.
He hangs on to the banister and tilts his head upwards. “Don’t have to watch to know you’ll be kicking ass and taking names! Shoot me a text when you’re playing near the big city again!”
“Portland’s not a big city!” she retorts.
“Bigger than bumfuck Alder Notch!”
“We have a streetlight,” she huffs, running down the stairs with her bat-bag slung over one shoulder.
“It’s a blinking light at an intersection where deer like to cross the road. You’re in the woods, sweetie,” Kai teases.
We step out onto the weathered porch, and she gestures out towards the lake. “Don’t havethatin the city,” she rebuts.
“Nah.” He chuckles, ushering her to the passenger side of myrust bucket. “I only have the entire Atlantic Ocean a block away. And an Old Port district that doesn’t have a curfew of nine p.m. on a Saturday night.” He cocks a devious look at me over his shoulder.
“Thanks for bringing her glove back,” I tell him, unamused by his latest dig. “Have fun tonight.”
“You know I will.” He winks at me, before folding himself into his sleek, purple car.
And I’m sure he will, because I know I’m not the only one he brings to bed with him. Kai’s got no shortage of hotter men at the ready to buy him drinks and go back to his downtown loft with him. Why he keeps his hooks in me too, I’ll never know.
“Ready? Got everything?” I ask Morgan, spinning in my seat to back carefully out of my parking spot.
“Probably not,” she jokes.
Before he drives off, Kai pulls up beside me and his window slides down. I crank mine down, by hand. “Work-campers. Google it. Might save a few bucks with those. I know you think high schoolers can’t handle this job, but look at how good Mowgli’s doing.” On that, he takes off in a show of sprayed gravel and tire tracks.
Chapter Two
“Waters, bossman wants to see you in his office,” Derrek says, startling me while I’m elbow deep in grease from this obnoxious fuel pump repair.
Friggin’ thing has taken me about all day to fix, when it should have been simple. Never is with these diesel engines. Can’t wait for Roger to rip me a new one for the line of boats I’ve got waiting on me down at the marina.
Pretentious yacht owners need to learn how to be patient. These lobstermen need their boats in-and-out quicker, because their livelihoods depend on it. I would know, I’m the son of one. I know boat woes, and I know my way around boat motors.
“Go on, sounds serious.” He nods at the torn apart engine and winces, sucking in a breath. “I got ya covered.”
“Thanks, D-man,” I tell him, hating to put this on him. “Be back in a bit.”
He looks at me skeptically, and momentarily I wonder what that’s all about before I hear “Waters, I ain’t got all fuckin’ day!” from Roger’s dingy office in the back of the shipyard.
“Yeah?” I address the sea-salted, crusty man I call my boss, as I wipe a layer of mud-brown oil onto my already stained jeans.
He nods at his landline office phone perched on his desk. “S’for you. Make it quick, I can’t have the line tied up all afternoon.”
The man—who could easily be old enough to retire, but won’t, because he’s got nothing better to do but sit around with the old cronies and drink—still won’t get a cell phone, like everyone else born this century.
