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“So do I,” Jada echoed.
“Can I credit Nutella for my happiness, too?” I chimed in.
Ken definitely complemented Jada, standing only a little taller than her and having similar curly brown hair, except his curls were much tighter than Jada’s. He had a genuine smile that made me trust him right away. I felt like I had a good sense of character, especially after working the past year at Stonewall Investigations, and Ken struck me as a good guy.
“Speaking of your happiness,” Ace said, crossing his hands, “where’s Mason?”
“Eh, right. Mason.”
Shit… crap.
I should have just been honest with them from the start. I should have texted the group chat and said Mason and I were done. It was made especially difficult because we all knew Mason. He wasn’t someone I’d just be introducing to the group. Mason had gone to school with us and had always been around in some capacity or another. It just so happened that a couple of years ago, we each had a bottle of wine and ended up divulging a lot of mutually shared and mutually repressed feelings for the other. We started dating and had a decent go of it.
And now, here I was, standing as the lone ranger, having to stumble my way into a “we broke up” speech and potentially dampen the holiday reunion.
A finger tapped me on my shoulder. I silently said a “thank god” and turned, quickly following it up with a silent “what the fuck?”
Nick stood there, a friendly smile on his handsome, unobscured face, his cap flipped so that a tuft of jet-black hair fell out, catching the sunlight that fell from the glass ceiling in waves. He held out something in his hand, and it took me a moment to realize he meant for me to grab it.
“Here, you dropped this back there, Shy.”
I grabbed the ChapStick, placing it in the pocket where my ChapStick already was. “Thank you,” I said, confused as all hell.
“These your friends?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, thinking quick. “Everyone, this is Ni—”
“Neal. And I’m Shy’s bo—”
“He’s my friend,” I jumped back in. “Mainly Mason’s friend. He couldn’t make it, so Mason sent Neal in his place. Didn’t want to waste his ticket.”
This had ratcheted up to a new level of odd. Why was Nick changing his mind, and name, for that matter? I was fine playing this game, but I had to clarify the friend part, because I wasn’t about to jump back into the fake-boyfriend thing when I wasn’t even sure of this guy’s real name. Fake friends would be fine for now.
“All right,” I said, looking around at the group, a Mariah Carey holiday classic playing over the speakers. “Let’s drop off our things and explore the ship. Everyone meet on the dick in—”
“Did you… just say dick?” Ace asked in a singsong voice, eyes wider than normal.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” Nick-Neal said in a cocky tone, with a smirk I wanted to kiss right off his face.
“I think I’d know if I said dick instead of deck… damn it. I said dick, didn’t I?”
The group started to laugh. Even with the addition of a complete (and devastatingly handsome) stranger, for some reason, maybe because it was the Christmas season, I felt like I was suddenly surrounded by immediate family. A warmth filled my heart, tingling its way through me. I still wondered why the hell I had two ChapSticks in my pocket and a new fake friend who had just shared a mind-blowing and secret kiss with me, a kiss I would replay in every one of my fantasies for the foreseeable and discernable future.
Well, this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of year…
5 Nicholas Silva
I had left my suitcase in my suite and freshened up before heading to the deck. Or dick, as Shy liked to refer to it as.
I found myself excited to see him, even though we’d just separated something like fifteen minutes ago. He was entertaining in all kinds of ways. Not just in the fact that he was more than easy to look at, but he was also quick-witted and fun to talk with. I could tell he’d be fun to toy with, too.
But we’re just friends. Fake friends, for that matter.
Which, honestly, would probably serve us both better. When I went up to him, I had been thinking with everything but my head. I followed what my heart shouted for—and my dick twitched for. I wanted Shiro—that kiss had left me with a craving I had to feed. So I spotted him in the crowd and approached him, ready to play the part of his fake boyfriend. If some kind of news leaked off the ship, then I’d deal with it then. For now, I was going to chase the object of my intense desire.
