In Too Deep by Tracey Alvarez

of trees that covered the majority of the island’s
hilly landscape. Or maybe the uniqueness came from the countless
varieties of birds that called Stewart Island home and that extra
something in the breeze was the distant stench of bird crap.
Cynicism often kept the ache of homesickness at bay when she sat on
her postage-sized deck back in the city.
    The Mollymawk powered down and the
boat slowed.
    She looked around. Oban was
nowhere in sight. “Why have we stopped here?”
    West cut the engine and brushed by
her outstretched legs. “You’ve had your fun with the camera. Now
it’s time for real work.”
    “ Real work?”
    “ The shark cage? Ben wants you to
familiarize yourself, remember? Wetsuits are in the storage locker
down below.”
    “ Ben never said anything about
going in the cage. He told you to show me how to operate
it.”
    “ Yeah, but I’m running these shark
tours for the next six weeks, not Ben. You need to experience the
shark cage before you take a tour.” He paused in the wheelhouse
doorway, his lips twitching once with sardonic humor. “It’s okay to
be a little nervous.”
    Which in West-speak translated to:
It’s okay to be a total pussy.
    Hah. She wasn’t nervous—nervous
didn’t begin to cover it. But she’d inform West of that, oh, in
about never .
    So she’d suck it up and get her
butt in the water.
    Piper puffed out her cheeks and
with a gusty exhale slid off the helm chair and headed into a cabin
to suit up again.
    Ten minutes later she stood on the
stern’s open deck, feeling exposed in a borrowed and ill-fitting
black wetsuit. West was still checking equipment next to the shark
cage poised at the boat’s edge. His chin dipped as she drew
alongside and across the top of his dark sunglasses his gaze
skimmed her length and returned to the regulator cupped in his
hands. Tugging a wrinkled bunch of neoprene out of her butt crack,
Piper grimaced.
    Sorry sweetie, without a bra cup
size in double letters West’s tongue’s not hanging out over
you.
    His words nine years ago rose like
a shipwrecked behemoth in her memory. “You’re too stubborn, too
tough, and too much one of the guys for my taste. There’s nothing
feminine about you. Sticking a party dress on doesn’t make you any
more of a woman.”
    She ruthlessly shoved the memory
aside.
    “ You’ve used a surface air supply
before?” he said.
    “ I’m familiar with it.” Familiar — huh! She’d dived in rivers, tidal estuaries,
and in her least pleasant experience, a fetid, pitch-black pond at
the back of a farm searching for a share milker who’d taken a
stroll after a hard night drinking at a mate’s stag party. Paddling
around in clear conditions with a surface air supply would be a
lark in comparison.
    “ Good. Getting the cage in the
water is the easy part. Dealing with first time divers, or divers
who’ve never been this close to a real-life shark,
isn’t.”
    In between grunted instructions
and the whine of machinery lowering the cage into the water, Piper
asked, “Has Ben ever had any close calls with inexperienced
divers?”
    “ Anyone who goes into the cage has
to be a certified diver or, if not, the dive guide takes them on a
ninety-minute theory and practical course for an extra fee. As long
as they don’t panic, there’s little risk involved.”
    “ And have people
panicked?”
    “ Once or twice. Nothing major.” He
finished securing the cage to the boat, stooping to dip his fingers
in the ocean. “Ah…just like bathwater.”
    Cords of ropey muscle in his
exposed forearms drew her gaze. West had always been strong; he’d
grown up hoisting beer crates and boxes of canned food in his dad’s
restaurant. Once his body had been so familiar she could’ve
sketched every freckle, each scar. But the hard packed muscle
further up his arms and across his chest hadn’t yet formed nine
years ago. And the span of his shoulders seemed so much wider since
the last time he’d given her a piggyback ride