Page 37 of Stay Toxic

“Because I said so,” Artur answered for me. “That’s easier to cast, easier to catch stuff on. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

Nastya muttered something under her breath that had me laughing, and I snipped off the excess line with a pair of nail clippers and deposited them into my pocket.

I casted the line, and the movement made a wave of homesickness rush through me.

I missed being in the mountains.

I missed even more going out and fly-fishing, spending time in nature, and ultimately being unknown to the world.

Here, everyone knew me. There were no mountains or wildlife. No rivers that were overflowing with fish.

There the rivers were crystal clear and so freakin’ pretty.

Here they were the color of mud, and you couldn’t even see your line in the water, let alone the fish.

“This is gonna be fun, I can tell.” Nastya glared at Artur.

Artur, Lev, Alexi, Daniil, Bogdan, and Ivan had been in my life for years now. But Artur was the newest.

But ever since Artur had showed up, he and Nastya hadn’t gotten along all that well.

But more in a way that siblings would bicker than in a romantic way—at least from what I saw and experienced when I was around them.

Nastya depressed the button on the pole and threw her line out. It went all of six feet in front of her.

“Now what?” Nastya asked.

“Now reel it in.” I shrugged.

“Slowly. You can reel it all the way in, slow. Or you can give it a little jerk, and it’ll look like a dying fish,” Artur suggested. “Whatever you feel like doing. But you’re gonna have to get it farther near the bank. You’re not going to catch shit in deeper water. Bass are gonna be lookin’ for that sun and warmer water.”

I threw my own bait out.

Over and over and over again.

I’d learned the art of patience when I was a youngster learning how to fly fish. But this? You couldn’t even see the damn fish you were trying to catch.

“Why does your eye look black?” Nastya asked after a while.

I shot a grin at her, knowing that I’d never hear the end of it if I told her exactly how it happened.

Yet, I found myself telling her the truth anyway.

“I was pulling my sleeves up this morning as I waited to leave, and my hand slipped on the sleeve, and I accidentally punched myself in the face,” I answered honestly.

Nastya blinked for a few seconds before she said, “I feel like you might’ve had it coming for some time now.”

“I did,” I snorted. “You have to cast the bait out there to catch anything.”

“Whatever,” she grumbled. “Your annoying face deserved that bruise.”

A flash of blonde hair caught my eye, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking toward the boat a few feet down the shore from me.

Brecken.

God, she was beautiful.

She was standing on the nose of her boat. She was wearing so many jackets that she looked like the marshmallow man inThe Ghostbustersmovie from the eighties.

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