“Thirty.”
“Then I reckon there are at least twenty-five years’ of stories to tell me.”
I guess it was only fair to give her a picture of how I grew up. About as different from her experience as night was to day. If she was going to spend any time up here, then she probably should know who she was spending it with. If she was a Southern princess, then I was trash from the wrong side of town.
“I didn’t have the best childhood. My dad took off after I was born, and my mom struggled financially. Did some things she wasn’t proud of, took jobs she didn’t like. I think maybe she resented me for that. For making her feel like she had to do what she had to do to support me.”
I stopped myself. Why the hell was I telling her that? Sure, it was something I believed, but not exactly first-date material.
“It’s why my mom and I aren’t exactly close. Although I’ll say this about her, she was tough. She didn’t flinch from anything and I never spent a day hungry. Anyway, I dropped out of high school, got my GED and enlisted in the Army on my eighteenth birthday. Basically I was assigned as a roustabout on a U.S.-government controlled oil rig in the south Asian sea. After ten years I was ready for something more. Heard about Dyson hiring. The opportunity to come to Alaska seemed appealing. I took the job and have been here ever since.”
A frown tugged at her lips. “I’m sorry about your daddy. And that you’re not close with your momma.”
I shook my head. “I try not to think of the past. I send my mother money every few months and that’s helped things. She’s grateful. Enough that she’s always asking me to come visit.”
“Hmm. What’s a roustabout? Sounds like someone who’s up to no good to me, but I can’t imagine the Army spends a lot of time on that kind of training.”
I laughed. “A roustabout is basically a grunt on an oil rig. Handles all the manual work, checks the pressures on all the pumps. Does most of the repairs.”
“Is that what you are now?”
“No, I’ve been promoted to a Toolpusher. Which basically means I manage the grunts. There is another pusher on the rigs now during my down time. We manage about fifteen roustabouts each.” I pointed over my shoulder to where the guys were still eating. “Jackson is the Mud Logger. He collects and examines the geological samples. Soil and rocks. Makes sure we don’t have any seepage happening. Ark is the Completion Engineer. Although with as many rigs Dyson has going up here, he never really seems to complete anything. But he’s the brains behind where we decide to dig, how far. Finally, Cal oversees the entire operation and is responsible for making the numbers and reporting to corporate when we don’t. Cal’s been up here the longest. Obviously there are a bunch of guys back at the camp, but as the managers we sort of bonded.”
“My goodness, there is a lot I didn’t know about oil rigs. Do you work on one of those platform things in the water? Like that one that blew up? That would be scary to me knowing you’re in danger every day like that.”
“Yeah, Deepwater was tough for everyone. But they made some mistakes… Cal doesn’t let us make mistakes. To answer your question, yes, Dyson has two operations. Right now, we’re working the north shore on-land rigs, but there is also an offshore rig about a half mile from the coast that we’ll rotate crews for.”
“But you promise me you won’t blow up on me. I just got here, after all.”
“We’re not blowing up anytime soon, I can tell you that.” I glanced over at the bar. “Looks like our food’s up. I’ll be back.”
I walked to the bar and picked up our burgers, each with a large helping of fries. I picked up a salt shaker, jar of vinegar and ketchup in case she was a traditionalist. Snagged a bunch of napkins because I knew from experience how greasy Bud made them.
I set the food in front of her and thought of the effort she’d made to get here. And all I could offer her was some greasy grub. “You deserve better than this,” I muttered.
“What’s better than burgers, fries and beer? I don’t know how fancy you are, mister, but this is my kind of date. Sure, it took me gosh darn thirteen hours to get here but I made it!”
I looked at her then, with her amazing smile and that pretty dress she wore just to please me. She’d been great with the guys, totally relaxed and easy around me. A million things could have gone wrong with this crazy contest of mine, but suddenly, sitting across from Shelby, I realized it went amazingly right. “You’re pretty awesome, you know that?”
“Nah,” she said. “I’m just me. Just Shelby.”
“I’m digging Just Shelby,” I said. The truth was I was digging her a lot.
“Tell me more about how oil rigs work,” she encouraged me.
So I did. Way easier talking about work than it was my family or my past. The crazy part was she seemed really interested, too. Hanging on every word I said like I was giving away the secrets of the universe.
Caleb came over while we were on our second beer and, at Shelby’s request, another side of fries. Turned out she liked ketchup and salt and vinegar.
“So Shelby, what’s it going to be? You feel comfortable enough with Angel taking you back to your cabin or would prefer it if I came along for company?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, sir. I feel plenty comfortable with my Angel. But I have to say, y’all are such gentlemen for going out of your way to make me feel safe. I don’t know if you can imagine what that means to me. That you would do that for me.”
Cal rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Wasn’t sure how this whole dating thing was going to work out. I told Angel he was crazy, but I have to say it looks like you two had a nice night tonight.”
“We did, sir,” she said.
I laughed as Cal growled. “I’m notthatold.”
