Aside from the humiliation? Yeah, I was fine. Mortified, but fine.
“Oh yeah,” I said, not making any attempt to move just yet. “This is just how I get up in the mornings. Fall right out of the bed so I can only go up from there.”
Rowan snorted.
Which maybe meant he wasn’t mad about me snuggling up to him?
After another few seconds of staring up at the ceiling, I heaved myself to my feet and gathered up the bedclothes, tossing them back in the middle of the bed.
Rowan's coal-black hair was sticking up all over the place, soft and pettable and—
Nope.
No thinking along those lines. He’d made it clear within the first ten minutes that he was off-limits, and I’d pushed that more than enough this morning.
“I… can’t apologize enough,” I said. “I just… forgot.”
“No need to apologize,” Rowan said without making eye contact, staring at the twisted mass of blankets between us. “The cabin steward’s gonna think we’re getting along well.”
“You’re not mad?” I said. He was joking—joking nervously, sure, but not threatening to… complain about me, or anything. Not demanding we sleep with a line of pillows between us for the rest of the cruise, although that wasn’t the worst idea. At least that way I’d have a harder time embarrassing myself again.
“Should I be?” he asked, looking up at me with soft, sleepy blue eyes, leaning violet in the dim morning light creeping into the room.
I scratched my elbow, not sure how to handle this situation.
I never really shared a bed platonically. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember ever waking up next to someone I hadn’t slept with before now.
Well, not slept with. Had sex with. Exchanged at least a couple of bodily fluids with.
All I’d done with Rowan was drool on him a bit, judging by the wet patch on his t-shirt.
“I…”
Had no idea what to say to that.
“You miss him,” Rowan said, so softly I wasn’t sure for a second that he’d spoken. “Your ex, I mean. Clearly. Or you wouldn’t care so much what he thought and you wouldn’t have…”
Was there no limit to how goddamn understanding he was?
Why was I getting angry about him not being mad at me?
… because I was used to it. Because Craig had been just as likely to push me off him as indulge me in the mornings, and Rowan had clearly been awake for a while and just… let me keep snuggling closer to him.
Yeah, okay. I was a bigger mess than I’d thought.
Trust a soft-spoken HR manager to show me just how big a mess. By being kind to me. Kinder than I deserved.
“No,” I said, picking at the hem of the t-shirt I’d been sleeping in. “No, not… him, exactly, but… I don’t know.”
“Cuddling?” Rowan suggested.
He was right. That was what I missed.
I’d just missed it for a lot longer than five months. Craig and I had been falling apart for a long time before that. I’d asked him to marry me out of desperation, clinging to the one constant in my life.
Being a little needy made sense when I looked at it that way.
I needed a hug, and Rowan had let me have one.
How was I meant to react to that? Why was he just being nice to me?
“I don’t understand why you’re so nice to me,” I said before I’d really decided to voice the thought.
Rowan blinked. “Am I being particularly nice?” he asked.
Was he? How could I not tell anymore?
“I… you could be upset.”
“I’m not.” He ran a hand through his hair, making an even worse mess of it.
Yesterday, I’d called him adorable. This morning, he made my first impression of him look average at best. I wanted to go over and squeeze him like he was a cute baby animal.
Should I have been thinking that? He’d agreed to pretend to be my boyfriend, not to actually… be my boyfriend.
And I was pretty sure the deal was only good for one night. He’d stayed in the cabin with me last night so Craig wouldn’t see him without me, but I couldn’t just… keep him. Rowan wasn’t mine.
I didn’t deserve his kindness or his help, but I was grateful to have it.
“Well. Good,” I said, chewing on my lower lip while I tried to think of something to say.
I needed air. The chance to clear my head. Five minutes away from Rowan’s sleepy eyes and sleep-relaxed face and easy acceptance of me treating him like a favorite teddy bear.
A favorite teddy bear I’d been planning on sleepy morning sex with until I remembered that he wasn’t actually a hookup.
“I normally go for a morning walk,” I lied.
What was it with me and stupid lies on this trip? Now I’d have to go for a walk every morning.
Rowan hummed, shaking out the covers and climbing back under them. “Enjoy.”
“Wanna grab breakfast when I get back?” I asked, not sure if I was being friendly or clingy.
Rowan peered at me from under the covers, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiled the shyest, sweetest smile. “I’d like that,” he said. “Thank you.”
Thank you?
“For what?”
“Treating me like a friend,” he said. “I don’t really…”
Have any, my brain supplied.
Not because he wasn’t a good friend, I thought. So far he’d been the best I’d ever had and we’d known each other less than twenty-four hours. Some friends I’d had for years wouldn’t have agreed to grab a drink with my ex to prove I’d moved on.
Rowan had barely hesitated.
“Hey, you’re the one doing me a favor. I’ve gotta figure out how to make it up to you.”
Probably let him go back to sleep without a clingy asshole wrapped around him, my brain suggested.
Unfortunately for my brain, I was thinking with other parts right now.
“I have my reasons,” Rowan said.
As much as I wanted to know what those were, he sounded sleepy enough that I didn’t want to keep him from his nap. The best repayment was being a good roommate, and I could probably handle that.
Grabbing a pair of shorts, I hopped my way into them, slipped on sandals, and headed out through the maze of corridors and elevators onto the deck. The first face full of sea air cleared my head, and I took a minute to look out over the open ocean.
Free and trapped all at once. This cruise was already weird in ways I hadn’t expected.
I’d memorized most of the layout, and my feet took me straight to the pool to catch the early-morning gym bunnies showing off while they were on vacation. Less than a day’s sailing out of New York and we’d already left the creeping tendrils of fall behind, the sun shining down and making all the pretty boys glow.
I wondered if Rowan would have liked this. It was a gay cruise, so I had to assume he was gay—or bi, pan, or whatever. Attracted to men, definitely.
But he didn’t really seem like the boy-watching type, which was a novelty for me. I’d never met anyone who seemed so… grown up. Not that he seemed old—I would have been surprised if he was more than a year or two older than me—but he was…
Different.
“Lee!”
Fuck.
Craig.
Should have dragged Rowan along with me.
“How does the new guy feel about you out here without him drooling over other men?” he asked.
“Not a jealous bone in his body, actually,” I said. If Rowan was going to be perfect, he might as well be perfect. For me, that’d have to mean someone who didn’t mind it when I flirted with other men. Or women. Or inanimate objects, if I was in the right mood.
Flirting was a part of who I was, and I didn’t think I should have to change that.
Craig, on the other hand, did. He’d never liked it and we’d gotten into more arguments over me smiling at waiters than anything else in our entire rocky history.
He hummed as
though he didn’t quite believe me. Which was fair, because I had no idea what Rowan’s actual feelings on monogamy and the limits thereof were.
“Didn’t catch a name yesterday,” Craig said. “Of the new one, I mean.”
“Rowan,” I said without hesitation. He’d promised me he’d go through with this, and I trusted him.
“Rowan,” Craig repeated. “Okay. Drinks at the Sea Otter bar, then?”
Who the hell named these bars? That wasn’t even the stupidest name on the ship.
“Sure. You said pre-dinner, right? So… six?”
“Sounds good. Can’t wait to meet him,” Craig said, patting me on the shoulder. I had to fight every instinct in my body to stop myself tensing up and shrugging him off.
“I’m sure he’ll be just as thrilled to meet you.”
By which I meant Rowan would hate Craig, and Craig would hate that Rowan really did exist. Even if we weren’t really dating.
I had no intention of letting him know that. Rowan had agreed to be my perfect boyfriend, but I was also planning on being his.
5
Rowan
I couldn’t imagine what kind of person would name a bar on a gay cruise ship Sea Otter, but the decor on the inside was surprisingly tasteful. Surprising in the sense that I’d half-expected plastic folding chairs and gotten bamboo ones instead.
Lee told me his ex had picked the venue, so I already didn’t like him.
Not that I’d been planning to like him. This wasn’t my fight, but I’d chosen my side of it. Lee was my fake boyfriend, which made his ex the enemy.
“There he is,” Lee nudged me, nodding across the room.
To an actual mountain of a man. I was tall, but he must have had four or five inches on me, and even if he didn’t, he had shoulders half as wide as his height.
Lee wasn’t tiny by any means—average height, and a little broader than me across the chest—but this man dwarfed him.
An uncomfortable flash of what their sex life must have looked like made me wish I could pluck the thought right out of my brain. The last thing I wanted to do was imagine Lee having sex with the ex-boyfriend who’d clearly broken his heart.
I didn’t like to think of him heartbroken.
“Can I hold your hand?” Lee murmured in my ear, warm breath tickling the hairs at the back of my neck. Craig had spotted us and was picking his way over between chairs and tables packed with laughing, happy couples and groups—no small feat for a man his size.
“I wouldn’t ask,” he continued. “But Craig never liked me doing it in public.”
No one had ever asked to hold my hand before. No one had ever wanted to.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
Lee beamed at me and took the hand I had resting on the table, pen-callused fingers curling around mine. He worked in advertising as a graphic designer, and he’d shown me a half-full sketchbook last night of things he’d been working on. Urban sketching, he called it, but I mostly remembered rough portraits of other people’s dogs. The other half of the book was reserved for this trip.
I realized then that I’d misunderstood him, at least partly. At first, he’d seemed like the kind of person who might have worked as a bar tender in a gay club and loved it, but I could see now that he just gave off that impression because he was so enthusiastic about everything that I couldn’t imagine him not being the life of every party, always.
Also, unlike me, he understood how to take time off. Whereas I’d spent half the night working on reports.
He’d teased me mercilessly for it and made me watch a wildlife documentary instead. We’d both shed a tear watching an orphaned chimpanzee being welcomed into its new community.
I hadn’t done anything like that, with anyone, in a very long time. I didn’t have friends. At best, I had colleagues, and a sister with a family and life of her own who’d bullied me into taking this trip by insisting it was my thirtieth birthday present.
“You must be the famous Rowan,” Craig said as he approached, pulling a chair out with such force that he lifted it clear off the floor. Not that I couldn’t have lifted the chairs myself, but not by accident.
Few people made me feel small, but I was currently sitting across from one.
Holding his ex-boyfriend’s hand.
That was fine. He was probably a perfectly civilized person. I’d be okay.
All the same, I was glad I’d scanned the room for exits when we sat down.
“Famous?” I asked, glancing at Lee.
“I might’ve mentioned you,” he said. “Once or twice.”
I knew that, obviously. Famous seemed like an overstatement, though.
Lee had told me what he’d told Craig I’d be like, and thankfully the parts that’d be obvious came naturally to me. Quiet, shy, odd sense of humor.
At the time, I hadn’t understood why that made me the perfect boyfriend, but I got it now. It wasn’t perfection so much as it made me the opposite of Craig, who might have been physically incapable of being either quiet or shy. His sense of humor was still a mystery, but I was starting to expect it to either not exist or involve a lot of laughing at people being horribly injured.
That wasn’t fair. He was probably a perfectly nice man.
I’d just met Lee first, and Lee had been kind to me, and Craig had hurt him. My loyalties were set in stone.
“Heard all about you,” Craig said, shifting his weight in the too-small chair. He looked like three hundred pounds of solid muscle, and I didn’t want to argue with him.
“Then you know more than me, because I haven’t heard much about you,” I said.
… but apparently, despite not wanting to argue with him, I was determined to insult him.
Lee squeezed my fingers, and it felt worth it. Even if Craig did knock me flying across the room.
He probably wouldn’t. The bar was packed and there had to be consequences for assault on a cruise ship. I had no idea what they were, but I assumed they existed.
“I’ll get drinks,” Lee said, my stomach dropping as he let go of my hand and stood before I could object. I watched in horror as he walked away, leaving me alone with his ex-boyfriend—a man who could have twisted me like a pretzel with minimal effort and had good reason to, if the way he looked at Lee meant anything.
Craig might not have wanted to marry him, but I felt like I was keeping a pit bull’s favorite chew toy away from it. A pit bull who didn’t know me and didn’t like me, either.
“Great ass, right?” Craig said, nodding to Lee as he stood at the bar.
This was a test. Or a trap. It had to be.
What was I supposed to say? Lee's ass was great, objectively, and no one would have said otherwise.
“I find him very attractive,” I said.
Which made me sound like an alien trying to work out how to blend in with humans.
I felt a little like that on this cruise ship full of beautiful, sociable people who didn’t seem to be like me at all, but it would’ve been nice not to act it. Especially when I was supposed to be the perfect boyfriend, a man who’d make Craig jealous. This wasn’t the best possible start.
“You don’t like me,” he said.
Was it that obvious?
“I don’t know you,” I responded honestly. It was true—I didn’t like him—but my awkwardness came from not knowing him. I got along just fine with plenty of people I didn’t like once I understood them. “Lee calls me shy,” I added.
Not the most dignified description for a grown man, but it was accurate.
“Yeah, that’s what he said.” Craig nodded. “Funny. You’re not his usual type at all. Wouldn’t normally look twice at someone like you. No offence.”
“None taken,” I said. “I know.”
I’d come to the conclusion that Lee was so comfortable with me because I didn’t even register as a possible romantic interest outside of this lie we were telling his ex. Which was fine. We both knew where we stood.
“I’m sure you’
re charming,” Craig said without even the barest hint of sincerity. “Just hard to imagine what he sees in you. I guess he’s trying new things.”
As hard as I was trying not to let it get to me, that stung. A little. I knew I didn’t belong with Lee, I knew I was only playing the part because there were no other options, but…
“Hello, gorgeous,” Craig said, lighting up.
He wasn’t talking to Lee like that, was he?
I turned, half-expecting to see Lee coming back, just in time to watch thin man with platinum blond hair and bright green eyes practically float around the table and perch himself in Craig’s lap without a moment’s pause.
Luckily, Lee came back at the same moment, passing me a beer with a lime wedge stuffed into the top and handing one to Craig, too.
“Oh, I…” he looked at the stranger, then at me, then back at Craig. “Sorry, umm… I can go get you…”
“Oh, no.” The stranger shook his head, grinning brightly. “I’m a vegan.”
I looked at the lime wedge sticking out of my beer and wondered what part of it was non-vegan.
“Right,” Lee said. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced?”
“This is Benji,” Craig said, wrapping a possessive arm around his waist and shifting again so he could sit comfortably.
If I’d been alarmed by the size difference between him and Lee, I was afraid for Benji’s health now. He could easily have been crushed under Craig’s weight if he rolled over in bed, let alone anything else.
“Thought you were young, free, and single?” Lee asked. “You were yesterday.”
Craig smiled, his eyes glinting as he pressed a kiss to Benji’s neck.
Benji giggled.
I was still waiting for someone else to demonstrate what I was meant to do with this lime wedge. I hadn’t had a beer since I was a teenager sipping from a can and petting the household cat at a party I’d never wanted to go to in the first place.
This was a lot more stressful than I’d expected it to be.
“Yesterday I was, and today I’m a changed man,” Craig said. “We met last night. Just… clicked.”
Lee looked at me, eyes pleading, but I had no idea how to respond to this. Craig was sitting there with a giggling twink in his lap—who I was sure was a lovely human being, in his defense—and I was the world’s most awkward man trying desperately to be a good enough boyfriend for Lee to make him jealous.
Cruising Page 3