Sailor Proof by Annabeth Albert
Chapter One
Derrick
It was going to happen. Today was finally the day I was going to deck an officer and thus end any hope I had of ever making chief of the boat, and probably earn myself a court-martial to boot. But Fernsby had it coming, and he knew it, the way he met my eyes as he gave a cocky laugh. He might be a junior-grade lieutenant who had to answer to the other officers, but he wasn’t stupid. It didn’t matter how much he had it coming, a chief fighting with an officer of any rank over a personal matter was going to be harshly punished.
But it might be worth it.
Fernsby had been goading me the entire long deployment, every chance he got, which considering the close quarters on a submarine was pretty damn often. And now here he was, joking with another officer about winning the first-kiss raffle for our homecoming, knowing full well that I was standing right there. And that he’d be kissing my ex.
Personal matter indeed.
And totally worth punching that smug smile away.
“I hope we go viral. Social media loves two hot dudes kissing.” Fernsby smirked as he waggled his eyebrows at the big-eyed ensign who’d been hero-worshipping him all damn tour. And of course he was smirking. First kiss was a storied tradition for most navy deployments, and sailors loved vying for the honor of being first to disembark and greet their loved ones. Usually I was happy for whoever won, and over the years I’d seen more than one proposal as a result of that first kiss.
God, I hoped Fernsby wasn’t planning that.Bad enough that he couldn’t stop ribbing me that Steve chose him over me and that I’d been the last to know Steve was cheating. Watching them be all happy was going to suck.
“I’m gonna get so lucky.” Fernsby’s knowing gaze met mine over the ensign’s head.
An angry noise escaped my throat. “And I hope—”
“Fox. A word. Now.” My friend Calder appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the narrow corridor and hauled me backward, effectively cutting off my tirade along with a good deal of my circulation.
“Yeah, Fox. Go on with you.” Fernsby made a dismissive gesture as I growled, but Calder kept moving, giving me little choice but to follow. He dragged me past various compartments through the mess, where two of our fellow chiefs were playing cards. He didn’t stop until we were in the chief’s section of the bunking with its rows of triple beds, steering me into the far corner by our bunks and about as close to privacy as we were going to get.
“What the fuck?” Calder wasted no time in unleashing on me.
“It’s nothing.” I looked down at my narrow bunk. I had the bottom bunk, another chief had the middle, and the top bunk was Calder’s. And I was more than a little tempted to disappear into mine and pull the blue privacy curtain. “Fernsby was running his mouth again.”
“You sure as hell looked like you were gearing up to slug him. I saw your clenched fist. I’m surprised smoke wasn’t coming out of your ears.”
Calder wasn’t wrong, so I shrugged. “I need to stop letting him get to me. I know.”
“Yeah, you do.” He shoved my shoulder the way only a longtime best friend could get away with. We’d been lucky, meeting up in submarine school, both getting assigned to Bremerton, and then ending up on the same boat together as chiefs. Calder had a vested interest in me not fucking up, and my skin heated from how close I’d come to doing just that.
“I’m pissed because it looks like he won first kiss and now I have to watch that,” I admitted in a low whisper.
“What you need is a kiss of your own,” said the guy who probably had different dates scheduled for each of our first three days home.
“Ha. Would be nice, but not happening.” It went without saying that I wouldn’t have anyone in the throngs of family and friends waiting on me. Simply wasn’t how my life was structured, and most of the time I was fine with it. Calder was the one who would have a big contingent of friends and family. And I was well-acquainted with his undying belief that the solution to one terrible relationship was to find another more casual arrangement. “I’m not exactly a rebound sort of guy.”
“Everyone knows that about you.” Calder rolled his eyes. He was both taller and broader than me, which was saying something because I wasn’t exactly tiny. However, his playful demeanor always made him seem younger. “But you should be. And I’m not even talking about getting laid. I’m saying you need to make Fernsby and Steve-the-lying-ex-from-hell jealous by having some hottie there to greet you.”
“God. I wish.” I let my head thump back against the panel where the bunks met the wall. Unlike Calder, I wasn’t counting down the minutes until I could get lucky, but I had entertained more than fantasy about how to pay Steve back. A rebound held limited appeal from an emotional standpoint. But jealousy? Yeah, I wouldn’t mind trotting out someone hotter than Steve, who always was a vain fucker. “But we’re only a couple of weeks out from homecoming, and I’m not exactly in a position to meet someone while we’re deployed.”
Unlike some other deployments, the submarine force had very limited communication access. No cell phones, no swiping right, no mindless surfing of hookup sites. Hell, simply getting messages to friends and family could be challenging, let alone trying to conduct a revenge romance on the down-low.
“Call in a favor?” Calder quirked his mouth. He undoubtedly had multiple persons who would love nothing more than to pretend to be madly in lust with him.
“From who?” My back tensed and my nerves were still jangling from listening to Fernsby brag. “It’s not like my contact list is awash in friends with benefits or even friends period.”
“You need to work on that whole brooding-loner persona.” Calder clapped me on the shoulder, nicer now. “It’s not doing you any favors.”
“Why be the life of the party when I have you?” I laughed, years of shared memories flowing between us. Any social life I did have, I owed almost entirely to Calder. He’d even introduced me to Steve.
“I do like to bring the party.”
“You do.” Closing my eyes, I took another deep breath, trying to steady myself. I truly did not want to fight Fernsby even if my fist tended to forget that. “You’re right, though. Someone there, even pretend, would make me feel less like a fucking loser.”
“Exactly,” Calder agreed a little too readily, making my gut clench. Maybe I was that pathetic.
“But I’m not doing something stupid like an ad.” I cracked an eye open in time to catch him laughing at me.
“Of course not. You save your stupidity for fighting with officers.”
I groaned because he was right. “I’m not the personal-ads type. But who do you know? Surely there’s a guy into guys who owes you a favor whom you could loan me?”
I wasn’t too proud to borrow from Calder’s vast social network.
“Hmm.” Tilting his head, Calder narrowed his eyes, the same intense thinking he did when poring over the latest supply manifest. As a logistics specialist, Calder had a solution to almost every problem that could crop up, apparently my love life included. He muttered to himself for a few moments before straightening. “Arthur would do it.”
“Ha. Very funny. Try again.” I kept my voice down, but my laugh was a lot freer this time. Arthur. The nerve. I had to go ahead and sit on a bunk before I lost it laughing.
“He would,” Calder insisted, serious expression never wavering. “He owes me.”
I shook my head. Arthur. I’d known Calder’s family for a decade now, including his spindly youngest brother who was some sort of musical genius. And also terminally hopeless. “You want me to use your too-nerdy-for-band-camp little brother to make Fernsby jealous?”
“He’s almost twenty-five now. Not so little. He’s been out since high school, so no issues about a public kiss. And Haggerty said Arthur’s hot now. Kid went and got all buff in Boston.”
“Haggerty said that? And you let him live?” Our mutual friend did like them young and pretty. I had vague memories of Arthur having a riot of unruly hair, far redder than his brothers’, and big green eyes, but he’d been barely legal last time I’d seen him a couple of years back. And as I’d already been seeing Steve, and Arthur was Calder’s little brother, I hadn’t looked too terribly hard.
“It was an observation, not a request to go break his heart.” Calder kicked my foot. “Come on. It’s perfect. Arthur has always liked you, but he doesn’t like you.”
“Hey!” I should have been relieved that Arthur wasn’t harboring some giant crush, not indignant.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a catch.” Calder fiddled with the strap on his bunk. Everything got strapped down on a sub, even us. “But he’s always said he’d never get involved long-term with someone military.”
“I don’t blame him.” This was why I was never doing another relationship myself. Romance and the navy simply didn’t mix, especially not submarine personnel. We were bad relationship bets, and I could admit that.
“See? This is why he’d be good for this. He can fake it long enough to get Steve and Fernsby off your back, but it’s not like he’d actually date you.”
“Of course not.”
“Plus all that experience as a dorm RA has him good at shit like signs and banners and cutesy gestures. And he’s been back in Seattle a couple of months now. He’d do it.”
“I can’t believe I’m actually considering this. How are you going to get a message to him anyway?” The last thing I needed was anyone else getting wind of this ill-advised plan. There was no such thing as privacy on a sub.
“Trust me. I’ve got my ways.” Calder’s voice went from confident to hushed as voices sounded near the front row of bunks.
“Dude. Did you hear about Fernsby?” asked one of the youngest chiefs, a Nuke with a chipped front tooth and no filter. I couldn’t see him or his buddy but his surfer-boy drawl was unmistakable.
“Yep. Fox is gonna be so pissed.” The other person had to be Beauregard, who worked with me in Weapons. The Southern accent gave him away. “It’s a wonder they haven’t murdered each other this whole deployment. If a crew member stole my girl—or guy—I’m not sure I could stand the humiliation.”
“Shush.” A third voice sounded farther back, and then there was a lot of fumbling around before Beauregard slapped his bunk.
“Okay, okay, here’s my new deck,” he announced as the three of them exited the quarters.
“See?” I gestured up at Calder. “It would be justifiable homicide.”
“It would. But wouldn’t revenge be better?”
“I dunno. Fernsby’s head would look pretty great mounted on my wall back on base.” I groaned as I thought about returning to my little room in the barracks. I’d let Steve keep the apartment, because I was such a nice guy and all. Damn it, I was tired of being nice. Tired of being taken advantage of and pitied and gossiped about. Fuck it all. “Okay. Whatever. See what you can arrange.”
“Leave it all to me.” Calder straightened to his full height, which came just shy of the low ceiling. “You won’t regret this.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I will.” Dread churned in my too-empty gut, but it was a distraction from all the weeks of hurt and anger I’d been stamping down. At least we had a plan.
