by May Archer
I squinted in confusion. “My paramour. You mean Gerry?”
“Who else? Apparently his headboard is still—” He frowned and waved a hand in the air. “—whatever the hell it is, from the last time you came a’knocking. At least now I understand what happened the other night when you ran away.”
I had no fucking clue what he was talking about. “I didn’t run away. Jesus. And FYI, Gerry and I fucked around once. Once! And I don’t talk about it.”
Mason’s face flushed red, and he stalked around to the far side of his desk. “Of course! Because not talking about it means it didn’t happen, right? Poor Gerry. Did you freak out when he got an erection?”
“Poor Gerry, my ass!” My gaze narrowed. “And I didn’t freak out, Loafers. I didn’t freak out or run away.” If I kept saying it, maybe I’d start believing it. “I was pissed off, okay? And I saw no reason for us to continue our conversation. It was getting late. You were obviously tired.”
“Tired.” Mason made air quotes. “The sun was barely setting, and you scurried out the door like I was physically attacking you—”
“Scurried,” I scoffed. “No.”
“—and you’ve avoided me all week. And I still don’t understand why you were so annoyed!” Mason threw both hands in the air, then wrapped them both around the back of his neck, looking sad and defeated. “Just… go away, Fenn.”
“Go away? Bullshit!” I countered, conveniently forgetting that I’d intended to do just that. “I just saved your ass—and I mean that literally—and that was after hauling your fucking suitcase all the way over here and up a flight of stairs! I’ve hauled caches of rock that weighed less, FYI. The least you could do is thank me.”
“Thanks,” Mason said coldly. “Should I tip you, too?”
There was literally nothing he could have said that would have pissed me off more, and the look in his eyes said he knew it, which had the perverse effect of deflating my temper completely.
“What’s your problem?” I demanded.
Mason looked away and shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” I repeated. “You’re not… right. There’s something off, and I can’t put my finger on it.”
His eyes flew back to mine. “Because you know me so well, after spending a couple hours in my company? How about ‘It’s none of your fucking business,’ then. That more accurate?” He spread his hands. “I mean, Jesus, what could possibly be my problem, Fenn? Here I am, stuck on this fucking island until I find a new job, with no one to blame but myself because I signed the contract sight unseen, like God’s own idiot child. I have no car down here, but hey, who cares, right? I’d have no place to go if I did, and my phone signal dies in at least three places between here and the clinic.”
“I told you it was spotty—”
“I have no air-conditioning. No cable TV. It rains every goddamn night, with thunder and lightning fit to wake the dead. I haven’t slept well in days because it’s so hot—”
“I fixed your air conditioner this morning—”
“I have no one to talk to! The only creature on this island I’ve really bonded with is Topaz, Mr. Wynott’s Pomeranian. The only humans who kinda like me are Lety Irvine, who speaks mostly Spanish, and Taffy, who has to like me because it’s her job, but who can’t make a statement without turning it into a question. I will not talk about anything but the weather with my family or my best friend, because then I’d have to admit how egregiously I fucked myself by taking this job. And the one person I tried to talk to proved he might not be a serial killer but is indeed an asshole, because he’s avoiding me like I’m diseased ever since I…” He broke off with a little hitch of breath and sank into his desk chair. “Seriously, Fenn. Just… leave me the hell alone, okay?”
I stood there, blinking down at him for a long minute.
I wished someone could explain to me why the sight of this one particular guy looking all dejected and tired and defeated did my head in. I was no Beale Goodman, going around rescuing strays, and there were many very compelling reasons why leaving Mason alone would be the best thing for both of us, the loafers on his feet being just the tip of that iceberg.
But I didn’t need to have Aunt Mary’s “sight” to know that wasn’t gonna happen.
Mason Bloom in his fancy shoes was my polar opposite in almost every way—that was a given—but there were ways in which it seemed we were very, very much alike, too. We both knew what it felt like to be stuck in a place you didn’t really choose, in a life you didn’t really choose. We both knew what it felt like to blame yourself for it.
I didn’t just want him badly, I actually did like him, I realized with something like a sigh. I liked him quite a bit. Enough that I wanted to be his friend. To make sure he was okay.
So in the end, it turned out Fenn Reardon’s One and Only Life Rule was made to be broken, and it wasn’t exactly a surprise when my mouth started talking before my brain had a hundred percent caught up.
“Sounds like you need a beer.”
“Beer?” Mason snorted. “No. I need an exorcism, extensive therapy, and a good night’s sleep.”
“Potato, potahto, really.”
Mason snorted again, then sobered. “Why do you do that?” he demanded. “Joke with me, and then… stop? Get all pissed off, and then… stop? Act like you give a shit, and then… stop? The hot and cold is really fucking confusing, Fenn.”
I considered this. Strong irony, really, in the fact that I was the one leading the straight guy on, pissed at him for being confused when I was guilty of confusing him.
This wasn’t something I wanted to think about at all. It was definitely not something I wanted to think about sober.
“Well, I need a beer,” I said in place of an answer. I headed for the door.
“Does this place even have beer?” Mason demanded. “I swear I’ve tried to find some at the grocery store, Omar’s Sundries, and the Concha. Why doesn’t this island have a bar?”
I paused, startled, and turned to look at him. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. I get beer from a brewery over on the mainland that’s better than anything they’d have at Pickles’, anyway. And,” I added, “I share it with a fortunate few.”
“Well, lucky you.” Mason sounded peevish.
I took a deep breath, let it out, and said something incredibly fucking foolish—which seemed to be my MO whenever this guy was around.
“You wanna come with, Loafers? ’Cause if you wanna talk, I’ll listen. I’m probably a better bet than the Pomeranian, at least.”
Mason jumped up to follow me so fast, his rolling chair hit the wall behind him with a crash… which just proved he was no smarter than I was.
Chapter Eight
Mason
“I’m pretty sure,” I said slowly, enunciating each word, “that hot beer and cold sunshine is…” I paused to burp delicately, like the civilized individual I was. “…the best medicine.”
From the other side of the enormous checkered blanket he’d laid out across the cool sand, Fenn chuckled and turned on his side toward me.
“Pretty sure there’s a flaw in that statement,” he mused, his words mumbled and slow. “Not sure I care enough to figure out what it is right now, though.”
I turned my head to face him and blinked my eyes open. The setting sun was kind to Fenn Reardon, settling into the dips and hollows of his muscular arms, glinting off his scruffy cheeks and messy hair, gilding him all-over gold.
I’d jerked off thinking of this guy.
Could he tell, just by looking at me? Could he scent it on the breeze, like Dale Jennings with his ridiculous pheromones?
Fenn was every bit as scruffy and unkempt as he’d been a week ago—I wasn’t going blind—but he was objectively beautiful, too, with the artless, rugged appeal and grace of motion that, per Victoria, most guys on Instagram would kill for.
Since I was several beers deep in the cooler Fenn had provided, I was also perfectly comforta
ble admitting Fenn was subjectively beautiful, too. His blue, blue eyes and sleepy smile made my head spin and my pulse race in a way that had nothing to do with the alcohol.
I wasn’t sure how it was possible for someone to drive me crazy and make me feel so damn comfortable and safe at the same time, but that was a conundrum for another time. A sober-er time.
A time when Fenn hadn’t just brought me to his favorite spot on the whole island—a kind of natural cavern where some long-ago tide had scooped out the foundation of the rock bed, leaving an awning of rock hanging over the sand maybe two feet high, three feet deep, and six feet wide, under which the sand stayed cool despite the warm breeze and the late-day sun.
“You know, I walked this beach three mornings ago,” I said, turning my face back up to the sky and enjoying the way the light burst in kaleidoscope sparkles across the inside of my eyelids. “I didn’t even notice this spot was here, what with the overhang and that giant sort of treelike thing blocking the view from the shoreline.” I waved at an enormous piece of driftwood that seemed to have washed up on the beach decades or centuries before, and now stuck out of the wall of tide-deposited rocks like a marvel of nature’s architecture.
Fenn snorted. “That giant treelike thing is an actual tree, Loafers. A dead tree, but still a tree.”
“I’m just saying. This place is like a secret fort. This is where I would—” I sat bolt upright. “Oh my God! This is where I would hide a treasure!” I squinted around at the rocks, hoping for a subtle-but-distinct X to suddenly become visible. “Maybe Resolute Goodman—”
Fenn laughed out loud and turned onto his back. “Ah, Loafers. You’re about two hundred years and forty-five treasure hunters too late.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “Am I?”
“Yeah.” He grabbed my elbow and tugged me so I was lying down again. “Resolute left instructions to find the treasure. I told you. If it ever existed, it was never around here.”
“But you told me no one had found it!”
“Yeah, but not for lack of trying. According to Resolute’s diary, the treasure ‘lay in the garden of dreams’ meaning the extensive garden he built to his wife’s precise specifications up on what’s now Margot Lane, near the mansions. But Sarah Goodman tore the gardens apart after he died and never found any treasure. I think Resolute and Jacob spent all the money. Maybe he meant the garden was the treasure because of the value of the land or something.” He shrugged.
“And did Jacob Godfrey know what Resolute meant?”
Fenn shook his head. “Jacob passed a few months before Resolute, so he wasn’t around to ask. But anyway, over the years, treasure hunters have given up on trying to solve the clue and just combed every beach on the island instead. Later on, they brought in metal detectors and ground-scanning equipment—none of which worked reliably, since the island has a high limestone composition.”
“Oh, limestone. That makes sense.” I nodded. Then I shook my head. “What’s limestone?”
Fenn laughed again. “Seriously, I need to get you tipsy daily, Loafers, because it’s a revelation. Limestone is a type of rock. It gets eaten away by the acid in rainwater and washed away.”
“And turned into sand.” I grabbed a handful from beside the blanket and let it filter through my fingers.
“Nope. That’s a whole different thing.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong.” I couldn’t help it if my smile was just the tiniest bit superior. “But I’m pretty sure sand comes from rocks, Fenn.”
“Yep. And my geology degree says I have a pretty fair understanding of how rocks work, Loafers,” he said mildly. “Different rocks, different types of erosion. Limestone erodes and leaves behind pockets that cause caverns and sometimes sinkholes, which is why it’s really hard to narrow down a hole that’s hiding a bag of gold, versus one that’s full of nothing but air and water. Quartz, on the other hand, is the kind of rock that eroded into the sand we’re sitting on. This stuff probably washed down from the Appalachians and into the Gulf.”
“Wow. And ended up here. Right where it’s supposed to be. Like destiny.”
Fenn looked at me again, and light danced in his eyes like sunshine on water. “Deep Thoughts With Loafers. That deserves another beer.” He sat up and took a dripping-wet bottle from the small cooler, then popped the top before handing it to me.
I hesitated before rolling up on an elbow to take it. “You know, I haven’t had five beers at once since…”
“Ever?” Fenn suggested.
“Not ever, but a long time. High school.” My eyes flickered to his, and I added darkly, “For good reason.”
“Now that sounds like a story.” He leaned his body toward me on the blanket, his legs crossed beneath him, and grabbed a beer for himself. “What happened? You puke? Confess your undying love for the cafeteria lady? Get a B+ on a test? What happens when Loafers cuts loose and has five beers?” he teased, lifting his bottle to his lips.
“I don’t know where you get this idea of me.” I sighed. “I jumped off a building.”
Fenn choked, spraying beer all over both of us, and I laughed out loud.
“You did not.”
“Did, too,” I confessed. “Slid right down a construction chute from the top of my high school onto a blow-up mattress on the ground. Broke my elbow. Dislocated my shoulder.”
“You?”
I sighed again. “I have done a lot of shit when dared to do it. It’s kind of a personality failing. Stubbornness.”
Fenn’s lips twitched and his eyes gleamed in the fading light. “Is that so?” He drew out the last word tauntingly. “Let’s test that.”
“Let’s not. I said it was so. Was. Past tense. When I was young and foolish. We’re not testing it.”
“Truth or dare, Loafers.”
“No! Nope. I’m thirty-five, not seventeen, and I’m already gonna be feeling this beer until next week.” Nevertheless, I took another long swallow of the dark brew. Fenn knew his stuff when it came to beer.
“If you play, I’ll play, too,” Fenn singsonged. “All my deep, dark secrets revealed.”
I paused in my drinking and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Really?”
“Cross my heart. You can even have the first question, and I’ll give you a truth.”
Oh, man. “Fine, I’ll play,” I agreed. “Why have you been avoiding me for the last week?”
“How did I know it would be this?” Fenn groaned. “You’re so predictable.”
“How did I know you weren’t really gonna answer?” I retorted. “You’re so predictable.”
Fenn snorted and looked resolutely at the water. “I don’t fuck straight men. I don’t fuck around with straight men. It’s as simple as that.”
My cheeks burned. “I don’t recall asking you to… to…”
“Is this like the Cooter Key thing? There are just words beyond your Loafery vocabulary?”
“I don’t recall asking you to fuck me,” I enunciated clearly. “Or fuck around with me.”
“Not in so many words,” he agreed. “But your dick did a lot of talking. Like a mime, pointing out a hole in your wall.” He dropped an arm between us in a parody of my wall-building from a week ago and fluttered his lashes flirtatiously.
I blew out a breath. I’d known that was why, really. I wasn’t sure why I’d expected there to be more to the story. I felt a little disappointed, like I’d wasted a truth.
“What, no comeback?” Fenn demanded. “No ‘but I am innocent and straight, and my poor dick was confused by the jet lag, and stimulus is stimulus, and if you hadn’t fallen on top of me that never would have happened’?”
I blinked at him, deciding how much to say. Every thought in my mind ended with a question mark. “Jet lag would be tricky to claim since New York is in this time zone.”
He assessed me silently for a minute, then said, “Fine. My turn. Why the hell did you come here?”
He made it sound so personal, I had to laugh.
He nudged me with his elbow. “Truth, remember. What made you leave your cushy Loafers life and come down here?”
“My cushy Loafers life.” I snorted. “It was not cushy. At first,” I amended. He looked like he didn’t believe me, which was annoying. “Not kidding.”
“Hmm. I’m imagining you coming out of the womb with matching luggage full of shoes. Leading all the other high-fashion kindergarteners in your perfectly ironed clothing and fine Italian leather.”
“Did you forget the part where I slid off a building?” I demanded.
“No! I just sort of assumed you were wearing those exact shoes while you did it.” He nodded at the shoes I’d left on the edge of the blanket.
“I definitely wasn’t.” I shrugged. “I grew up in Upstate New York. We lived with my grandmother—my brother, two sisters, and me. I’m the baby.”
“Of course you are.”
“My grandmother wasn’t… She was…” I cleared my throat and toyed with the collar of my polo shirt, trying to do the thing I usually did where I emphasized the cuteness of this story. The no-big-deal humor of it. “She was an odd duck. She legally changed her name to Moonflower Bloom and had a ’68 VW bus she parked in the front yard. Total hippie. She grew marijuana in our vegetable garden and believed kids shouldn’t have rules. And these, like, travelers who were friends of friends would stop by all the time and stay the night, or even for a couple months, and sometimes us kids would camp outside or sleep on the floor while they stayed in our rooms. It was kinda wild. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, right?” I grinned and ran a hand through my hair, which had stopped responding to product the moment I touched down in Florida and had since gone feral.