Chapter 18
Ashley
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Tri to come back with several fish, which he gutted and scaled with a quick efficiency I knew my uncles would admire.
“So, what are we eating?”
“Cod,” I answered, leaving out the specific genus and species because that wasn’t usually something people needed to understand. All they wanted to know if they could eat it and how it would taste.
We didn’t have any pepper, but while Tri fished, I’d distilled a bit of salt by boiling down sea water in the bamboo cup I’d created, and I sprinkled it on the butterflied flesh. Then I took a pear from the stash I’d gathered, split it in half, squeezed the juice over the fish, and laid thin slices on top. From there, I put the cod on top of one of the rocks and moved it close enough to the fire it would cook without scorching.
As we sat back to wait, I inspected Tri’s improvised fishing pole. He’d done an excellent job creating a rod that was just long enough, the line cobbled together from the flexible bamboo leaf stems and a string that had come off the blankets. I’d watched him make the fly, stripping fibers from the inside of the bamboo, then working them and working them until they looked like something resembling fur, which he’d attached to the string.
“How did you know how to make this?” I asked.
I seemed to startle Tri out of his thoughts because I saw him tense as his eyes snapped towards. Then he relaxed.
“Sorry?”
“The fishing pole—how did you learn to make all that?” My gesture encompassed the entirety of the creation. “You said you used to go fishing as a kid?”
“Oh, yeah.” He pushed at the rod with his foot, brow furrowed as he thought. “I used to go fishing a lot with my dad on the lake, but there were times I just wanted to be alone as a kid. So, I’d go down to the creek and figure out how to make my own. My dad was big on survival skills, too, so that comes in handy.”
“I’ll say.” I flashed him a smile. “I guess if we’re going to get stuck on an island, getting stuck with someone who knows about survival is probably the best bet.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, and I swear I saw a bashful expression cross his face. But it was too fast for me to be sure.
“You’re doing pretty well yourself.” He motioned to the bamboo implements I’d fashioned with the knife he’d found; a kind of water-carrying vessel, the cup, and two pairs of roughly fashioned chopsticks.
I shrugged. “When you’re out in the wild doing research enough, you learn a few things to make up for what you couldn’t bring. Plus, I took a cooking class in Japan once, during a stay after I’d finished my research trip. It was from a famous chef who only used ancient techniques to cook, and I saw him using bamboo for almost everything, including boiling some rice to give it flavor. He even told us how to look for bamboo shoots, but I think that’s only in the spring.” I thought for a minute. “I could go look, though.”
Raising my eyes to the sky, I tried to recall what the chef had said about finding bamboo shoots in the loamy earth in a bamboo grove. I didn’t remember much, just that you could feel around with your toes, and you had to look in a particular place, but—
Tri’s chuckle broke me out of my memories, and I tilted my head as I looked at him. “What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve just noticed you get this expression when you think. It’s—” It took him a moment to think of the word, “—cute.”
“Cute?”
He poked at one of the fish with a stick to check on it. “Yeah. You look up, your head tilts slightly, and you tap your finger on your lower lip like you’re manually trying to flip through whatever you’re thinking about.”
“I do?” No one had ever pointed that out to me before. Only one ex-boyfriend who had accused me of “overthinking.” He hadn’t lasted long.
Tri shrugged. “I have to observe things carefully for my job, and my dad raised me to do the same—always be aware of your environment. People are part of the environment.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of what the SEAL had said, but there was a small part of me that thrilled when he called me cute. I wasn’t sure anyone had ever called me cute before, at least not since I’d hit puberty. Cute wasn’t something I usually strove for, either, preferring self-possessed, bright, quick-on-her-feet, but something about the way he’s said it, something about the tilt of his head, the quirk of his mouth, and the light in his eye, made that word feel just as good as the others.
But I also didn’t want to think about what that meant too much. It was dangerous territory in which to venture.
“You mention your dad a lot—it sounds like he taught you a lot.” I risked, suddenly wanting to change the subject.
For a moment, Tri looked like he wasn’t going to answer, poking at the fish again, but this time it seemed like he was just looking for some action for his suddenly restless hands.
I took a breath to tell him to forget I’d asked when he finally answered. “My dad had a tough childhood.”
“In Russia?”
“And the US, but yeah, especially in Russia. He wanted to ensure my brothers and I knew how to survive if we had to.”