Moored Heart (Catalina Dreams Book 1)

by I. M. Flippy

  “I know what you mean,” Jason said. “I want it too. I don’t feel casual.”

  “I think this is the first time you’ve told me something you want,” Charlie said. He smiled now, squeezing Jason’s fingers. “You’re not great at opening up.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Jason said. “But you got me all vulnerable in bed in the dark.”

  “Oh yeah, that was all on purpose,” Charlie said, his voice cracking. The boat rocked them, as if the two of them were alone in a cradle. Two dumb babies left alone together in the universe, Charlie thought. “I lured you into your own bed and made you come so you’d be weak and willing to talk.”

  “I know your ways.” Jason chuckled. His breath was warm on Charlie’s skin.

  “So, we’re... not casual?” Charlie said. “Sorry, I’m just um... checking.”

  “Don’t ask me as if I have a choice in the matter,” Jason said. “I’m not deciding it’s not some fling that doesn’t mean anything. It means…”

  “What?” he whispered.

  “It means a lot,” Jason said. “You mean a lot.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie said. “You mean a lot too.”

  Jason kissed the back of his neck again, and the curve of his shoulder. “I should’ve known,” he said, shifting in the blankets and snuggling yet closer so that Charlie pressed up against his chest. “I don’t do anything halfway. Especially relationships. Once I’m in, I’m in. This was never going to be a fling.”

  Charlie fell asleep that night in Jason’s arms smiling, secure in the knowledge that he would never have to pretend to like that mesh crop top.

  In the morning, everything felt like sunshine.

  Charlie woke to Jason’s cock, hard as a rock and pressing up against his ass. He moaned and pushed back, and a rousing bout of morning sex followed until they finally rolled out of bed.

  They ate fruit and bagels in their underwear, and Jason hand-fed him a strawberry dipped in Cool-Whip. Charlie felt like he was in a fairy tale, watching Jason laugh at the way he batted his eyelashes and wrapped his lips around the fruit. They drank champagne and swam in the ocean and snorkeled.

  The nearest boat to them had driven farther off. No one was around to see Charlie ride Jason’s cock on the upper deck with all the screens open. Charlie had ridden him right into multiple orgasms that made him see stars until he finally slid off Jason’s body to the slick floor, feeling limbless and euphoric.

  This is it, Charlie thought. I found my guy. This is forever.

  Forever ended up lasting about twenty-four hours.

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms again. In the morning, they begrudgingly made their way back to shore after flirting with the idea of staying out another day. But Charlie had already agreed to get back to the store and Jason had to work on his book. He was more excited about it than he ever had been after all the notes he’d discussed with Charlie.

  Jason parked the yacht in his usual spot, but when it came time for Charlie to leave, he got clingy. Charlie brought his giant suitcase up to the deck and when he bent over to fix the zipper, Jason grabbed his ass and spun him around into a scorching kiss, attempting to drag him back to the bedroom.

  “Not yet,” he murmured. “Not yet. Just this. Forever…”

  “I gotta go to the store,” Charlie pouted. “Told mom I’d work when I got back in the morning.” But he let himself be embraced, basking in Jason’s adoration.

  “Okay,” Jason finally said. “But let me take you. It’s not like I have a clock to punch.”

  In the dinghy, the breeze was cool and blew Charlie’s hair around as he grinned like a dope at Jason who grinned dopily back at him. He had never been in love before and found it to be both more mundane and more exciting than he’d ever imagined.

  Jason nearly crashed them into a couple boats before safely reaching the dock. He looked up and suddenly his face fell, his lovesick grin collapsing like some wilting flower on high-speed film.

  “Jay!” A man about Jason’s age stood on the dock, waving down at him. He was next to a woman about Jason’s age. She was pretty and sun-kissed, her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. Charlie immediately pegged her as Jason’s ex-wife and the man must be a friend of his.

  The strange thing was that even as Charlie saw Jason’s exuberant grin die on his face, it did not occur to him that this would go badly. He had never been in a similar situation before. All the men he’d ever dated or been with were comfortably out to their families and none of them had ever thought twice about introducing boyfriends. It was the happy bubble of the island. Charlie had been told before that he’d grown up in a bit of a utopia. But he’d never realized how true that was.

  “Jay! Hey!” the man on the dock said.

  All of this was clearly a shock to Jason.

  Jason glanced at him, and something about his expression was all wrong. He didn’t look at Charlie knowingly as if to share with him a conspiratorial communication like, “Oh boy, I guess we have to talk to this guy.” He looked at Charlie as if he were a problem, as if Charlie had somehow stumbled into his boat by accident and now had to be dealt with. But Charlie didn’t realize that was what the expression meant until later.

  Instead, he tied off the boat and helped Charlie out while waving up at the man and woman. “Cal! Alyssa! Hey, hey…”

  Charlie climbed up to the dock and felt more awkward than he ever had in his life as Jason heaved the suitcase on his shoulder and tossed it over to the dock. He must have been truly startled by the presence of his friend and his ex because he nearly dropped it in the water. Charlie smiled tightly at the couple. They were blinking at him, smiling in a slightly bothered way as if they weren’t sure what to make of him, and he wasn’t sure if he should introduce himself or wait for Jason to do it.

  He had been too busy fantasizing about the fun things lately; sex, domesticity, forever.

  He hadn’t imagined this kind of moment. But if he had, this was not how things would have gone in his imagination. He would have pictured Jason being free and easy, cheerfully waving at his ex and his buddy and nodding at Charlie and saying, “Hey, guys! This is Charlie! Wow, what a surprise to see you two here!” Then they would all go to lunch. Jason would sheepishly admit how he’d stumbled into gaining a boyfriend and his friends would tease him about it, but all in fun.

  That was not at all how things were going to go, and he didn’t realize it until Jason climbed up onto the dock and said, “This is um… This is Charlie. He’s doing some work on my boat for me. I told you about him! He’s the guy I met at the boba place. We were just chatting. Talking about the boat.”

  The lies were so bad, yet came so quickly, they took Charlie’s breath away. There was just enough truth to them. Jason had obviously told his friend, Cal, about Charlie. Partly, anyhow. Charlie was some guy he’d met at Big Boba who... fixed boats? Charlie stared at Jason. For a moment, there was no anger or sadness as the three of them casually chatted. It was like the moment after being badly hurt, the numbness just before the pain. The conversation was a confusing hum around Charlie.

  It seemed that Alyssa and Cal had come out to the island as a surprise. It wasn’t that far away after all and they’d had some free time over the weekend. There was some discussion about who was looking after Jason’s dog (Alyssa’s sister) and where they should now go to eat. None of it included Charlie at all, although Cal and Alyssa shook his hand. They said hello and teased Jason about how his boat was old and busted and definitely needed some work. But Charlie immediately had the feeling he was unwanted and expected to leave. Jason wasn’t even looking at him. He had become some other person.

  He had expected a ride in Jason’s golf cart back to Porcelain Pot. But Jason wasn’t saying anything about that, even to tell his friends that he just had to drop off his friend, Charlie, and then they could hang out, much less inviting them to come along to see the shop, which they easily could have.

  Charlie was completely abandoned. He was alone on
the dock...again.

  “I should go,” he finally said. He didn’t miss the relieved expression on Jason’s face and suddenly realized he had been waiting for Charlie to make a move to leave.

  For the first time anger rushed through him, so sudden and so hot that his hands shook from the adrenaline.

  “Yeah, I gotta go,” he said, a horrible lump appearing in his throat. He felt hot tears behind his eyes, and that was even worse. “See ya.”

  He didn’t acknowledge Cal or Alyssa. He couldn’t even look at Jason.

  He grabbed his suitcase (and how was Jason going to explain to them how he had a suitcase anyway?) and stomped up the ramp from the dinghy dock to the pier, feeling the unfamiliar but unmistakable pain of humiliation like a swarm of bee stings raising welts all over his body.

  Charlie remained angry, rage making him breathless as he dragged his suitcase behind him all the way down the pier past the promenade of kiosks and fish markets and around the corner into the hubbub of the main drag in Avalon. He huffed and scowled and clenched his free hand so hard it ached. He wasn’t used to emotions like disdain and contempt. He liked most people. Anybody who ended up on his bad side was there for good reason. But now he had the urge to scream obscenities, preferably in Jason’s face. He wanted to turn right around and go back to Jason and shove him into the water, to make him feel as humiliated as he did. Instead, he kept right on walking down Crescent Avenue, just as eager to get to his mom and Andy and tell them just exactly what he now thought of Jason Winters.

  Finally, he reached Porcelain Pot where he threw open the door, the bells jingling wildly. He marched inside where he let his suitcase drop and stood, panting and glaring and waiting for his mother to finish helping a customer who finally left with his little bag, casting Charlie a wary glance as he shoved past him out the door.

  “Charlie?” His mother came out from around the counter and her smile faded as she took him in. “Oh no,” she said sadly. “What happened?”

  He was angry, and he clenched his fists, determined to stay angry. Jason had just demolished his heart within hours of promising him forever.

  Angry! He thought. I’m angry!

  But when he opened his mouth, he immediately burst into tears, shame and embarrassment making his cheeks heat even as his mother threw her arms around him.

  He didn’t need to say it. She knew.

  “Oh honey,” she whispered in his ear. “I am so sorry.”

  17

  Jason

  “That was weird,” Cal said. He was looking at Jason funny as they climbed out of his golf cart in front of the same Mexican restaurant where he’d taken Charlie for their date because it was the first place he thought of.

  “What was weird?” he said flatly. His voice seemed to come from somebody else’s mouth. He’d felt like that since he’d seen Cal and Alyssa standing on the dock. In the moment, he was sure he’d imagined them.

  He felt like he’d made no choices at all in the last twenty minutes.

  But he had. He couldn’t pretend otherwise, he told himself. He’d heard his mouth spouting out-and-out lies. He’d seen Charlie’s face when he’d said them.

  Oh God, he thought. What have I done?

  And yet as he’d let Cal and Alyssa onto the golf cart while talking in a monotone about how they would go get margaritas and tacos, and thought of everything that had happened with Charlie, he also thought: What have I done? But in a completely different direction. He had built a second life somehow, and it was crashing into his first. What was he to do now?

  “What was weird?” Alyssa looked baffled. She exchanged a look with Cal. “Jay, c’mon. Why’d that guy have a suitcase? He’s fixing your boat?”

  “It’s where he keeps his…” Jason shut his mouth, letting another lie die on his tongue. He hated how quickly and easily they came. What did that even mean about him?

  “Are you all right, buddy?” Cal said, patting his shoulder. He stood in front of the restaurant, on the steep incline of the sidewalk. Here were his friends; Cal and Alyssa knew him better than anyone on earth. His own parents he felt somewhat distant but loving towards. He called them every other week or so, dutiful in his attention. They were never ready with affection. His father was a retired cop too. His mother was a closed book. He was used to that. But Alyssa and Cal, they were his real family, and they were looking at him like he’d already told them who Charlie was. For a moment he wondered if he had just told them and not realized it, considering how much his mouth was running away from him.

  “Let’s go eat,” he said under his breath.

  He wanted to drink all the tequila on the island about now.

  Jason moved in a dream of finding his table and ordering the first thing he saw on the menu along with a double Patron.

  He could feel their attention on him and even having lied, that was galling. It was all too familiar, and it was unwelcome.

  “Jason,” Alyssa said. Their food was being prepared, and their drinks were in hand. Jason took a long swallow and refused to meet his ex’s gaze. “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “Am I being interrogated?” he said. He sucked on the lime left on the rim of his glass and took another sip of Patron. “I’m really glad you guys visited. It’s nice of you. But—”

  “Jesus, Jason, what’s going on?” Cal said. “You’re being weird.”

  “Maybe I’m just a little tired of being questioned!” Jason blurted out. “When I took on the book, you told me it was too soon after the shooting, and I was biting off more than I could chew. When I bought the boat, you thought I was crazy! Everything I do, you two treat me like I’m some child. I am not your kid.”

  He shut his mouth before he could say anymore and watched the two of them exchange those knowing looks again. It was as if they weren’t surprised by his outburst.

  “How long have you been sitting on that?” Cal said. “Christ. You have a point, you know. We just... worry. I guess. But you know I have no patience for being patronized. I wish you’d told me I was doing that before. I know we pester you half to death, I thought you wanted the advice, Jay. You’ve never said otherwise.”

  Cal was five years older than Jason and he looked older than that because he spent too much time in the sun. He had the weathered look of a cowboy, and his blond hair was going gray. He wore ball caps and polo shirts. He had a baby granddaughter and two gunshot wounds of his own. He talked straight and didn’t know how to do otherwise. It was a reason Jason had always trusted him.

  “I should have,” Jason said, rubbing his fingers through the buzzed scruff on his head. “I should have said so. It bugs the shit out of me.” It felt good to say it. He took another swallow of tequila and felt looser. But in a flash, he saw Charlie’s heartbroken face in his head again.

  Motherfucker….

  “Well…” Alyssa rolled her eyes. “I know you’re frustrated with me, Jay, but I will not apologize because you’ll know I won’t mean it. I have been concerned since Patton. Since the shooting. You’ve made decisions that weren’t like you. I don’t know how else to say it. Maybe it’s been a new you, maybe you’ve been losing your mind. How would I know? You never say a word about what you’re thinking or feeling and that’s how you’ve always been. So... that’s what you get!” She was holding a margarita, and she raised it in cheers before taking a drink.

  Jason smiled wryly. “Well, that’s fair enough, I guess.”

  “I’m still curious what the hell is going on,” Cal said.

  Cal and Alyssa sat back, sipping their drinks and looking at him expectantly. They still wanted answers. He supposed he couldn’t blame them.

  “Charlie’s a friend...” Jason said. His mouth snapped shut after that, as if he were incapable of saying anything further. He avoided Alyssa’s gaze.

  “A friend who was coming back from your boat with a packed suitcase?” she said. She was smiling at him sadly. He drank his tequila and brooded. He hated the way she was smiling. “Is there
… Are you two together? Are you seeing him?”

  She spoke as if it might be a terrible thing. Her tone dour and a little accusing. Or maybe he read it that way. He couldn’t tell, and the tequila was loosening his tongue.

  “Why would you ask me that?” he said. He wanted to get mad and instead he fell back on defense. “Why would you assume that of all things?”

  “That’s not a no.”

  “What?” Cal said. He gaped at Alyssa. “What the hell are you talking about? Jay and a dude?” He snorted a laugh and looked back and forth between them. “Jay… Why would she say that?”

  “He told me a couple times that he’d fantasized about guys,” Alyssa said. She leaned on her hand, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “You probably don’t remember. You were drunk at the time. I never brought it up because it seemed like some dark secret to you and you loved me, so I just let it drop. It wasn’t a big deal to me. Is that what this is?”

  “What?” Cal gawked at him in horror. “Wait a minute, you’re gay?”

  “Bisexual, I guess,” Jason said, and took a breath. He felt like all the blood in his body had rushed down to his feet. He’d named it now. Not that letting Charlie blow him in the first place hadn’t sealed it already. “I guess. I would be. Bisexual.”

  “But you?” Cal said. “I mean I’m not saying… I’m not an asshole, I’m not—”

  “Sure sound like one,” Jason grumbled.

  “He’s surprised,” Alyssa said. But she shot Cal an angry look. “We’re both just surprised. You haven’t been here very long and now you’re with a guy.”

  “Is that really the boba guy?” Cal said. He took off his cap and scratched his head, put it back, and then threw back the rest of his tequila before slamming the glass on the table. “You’re fucking the boba guy? How old is he? He looked twenty!”

  “He’s thirty-two!” Jason crossed his arms just as the food finally came. That, mercifully, gave him something to do, and he dug in, feeling as if they had a hot light trained on him. They weren’t eating. They just stared at him as if he were an insect under glass.