“It’s okay.” It’s not. I don’t usually like the texture. But I pucker my lips, shrugging. Bohdan’s hand, spread across my shoulder, where his fingers trace the edges of the tattoo, moves with me. I tip my head, glancing at him. “Do you like hibachi?”
He’s behind his prescription sunglasses now—I think I saw him take a propranolol earlier, he really was out in the sun toolong while Talon played gladiator—but he just jerks his chin. “No.”
“He doesn’t like anything!” Talon exclaims, tossing his hands in the air before throwing his whole body back in his chair and sending it screeching across the deck, two feet away from the bar table where we were watching the sunset until the wordhibachipopped into his brain.
“Incorrect,” Tia states simply behind her straw.
Jay starts gesturing towards us, saying, “Wrong.”
At the same time, Bohdan’s thumb presses down into my tattoo and his words, rough around the edges but not on me, slide down the exposed skin between my shoulder blades. “I like Sloan.”
Talon tosses us all an exasperated look, but it shifts into one of pleading when he brings his hands together in some sort of mock prayer and taps them against his chest. “Please. Pretty please. I’m not above begging.”
I try to laugh, but it dies when I hear my brain perk back up.
Bohdan can’t like you that much—can’t like you at all really—or he wouldn’t have left.
I can’t tell it to shut up, at least not out loud, and at least not here. I learned at a young age talking to yourself was generally frowned upon. So I squeeze my eyes shut and jerk my chin, and I hope the thought might finally fall out of my head, maybe through my ear canal, where it can tumble out on the ship deck and I can finally stamp it to death under my sandals.
I don’t think anyone notices when I blink my eyes open again—Talon’s arguing with Jay about whether shrimp or steak is better—but Tia’s mouth sits in a shrewd line, one finger taps against the side of her glass, and I feel Bohdan tense beside me.
Neither of them have time to say anything—Talon wins a game of rock, paper, scissors against Jay that started and finishedbefore anyone could intervene, and he’s dragging us down the deck of the ship towards the hibachi restaurant.
It seems like the type of thing you’d need a reservation for on a ship this large with this many families, but Talon can be charming when he wants to be, and he somehow secures us a grill right in the centre of the room.
He points to the metal spatulas held by the chef when he slides into his seat. “Can I have one of those?”
“Knew it,” Jay mutters under his breath, pulling out his own chair beside Talon.
The chef slashes the spatulas through the air. “No.”
But nothing deters Talon Valdez, and he points his chin to the chef’s hat. “What about one of those?”
They do give him one of those, and unfortunately for the rest of us, they have extras.
I think they’re for children, because they don’t fit right on any of our heads. Not that Bohdan’s ever made contact. He grabbed it before it could get anywhere close.
Tia and Jay take selfies, and Jay must have had too much wine because he even goes on Instagram Live, panning the camera everywhere and zooming in on Talon, who somehow convinced the chef to let him come behind the grill, until fans started telling him how much Philadelphia sucked this season and he abruptly ended it.
Our friends laugh, and we do, too. Bohdan’s fingers skate along my thighs under the table, and while Talon throws shrimp in the air and jumps backward when the heat of the flames gets to be too much, Bohdan and I talk.
We talk more than we did in the last year we were together. And I don’t know if it’s the ticking clock that hangs above our heads, or if we’re existing in some other dimension since we scrapped the rules.
He tells me about his parents—retired now and so happy, spending most of their time back in Brno with his grandparents, who still ask about me every time they call.
He asks me about Lu, and a muscle jumps in his jaw when I say I’m on a hiatus from therapy, but he doesn’t press.
I tell him about my new job, how I can’t wait to finally get my hands dirty somewhere in the world, and I make this giant deal about the fresh start I’m getting, how I’m finally, finally moving home.
His features harden at that—eyes turning to slate, the muscles in his jaw tense, and he takes a heavy swallow. But he forces a smile and his fingers press into my thighs.
He shares stories about broadcasting. We laugh because it’s not something either of us ever would have considered for him, but he says he likes it—sort of. He dodges my questions about Shay and whether he’s getting a permanent spot at the desk next season, and he considers, taking a too-long swallow of water, when I ask him if it’s hard to be around the thing he loved more than anything and not be able to have it.
His eyes find mine when he nods, voice somehow rough and soft and something I feel all the way down to my bones. “Yeah, it is.”
I wrinkle my nose and listen to my brain when it says not to read too much into it, he’s only talking about broadcasting. “Did you ever think we’d be ... here?”
“On a floating mall in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea heading towards Naples while Talon plays chef?” Bohdan glances up at Talon, who’s trying his hand at flipping one of the metal spatulas.
