Sailor Proof by Annabeth Albert

Chapter Thirty-One

Derrick

Arthur had me well-trained. Right as I exited the chow hall, my phone buzzed and right on schedule, my pulse purred like a newly tuned engine even before I saw Arthur’s picture on the message.

It’s your lucky night. Or rather our lucky night. Liam just left on an emergency business trip for Portland, and Craig said this morning that he’s sleeping over at his girlfriend’s house. So just us. All night. As loud as we want.

I laughed aloud. Alert the neighbors, I texted back. I have to check on a few more things here, then I’m all yours.

“What’s so funny?” Calder came loping up from the opposite direction.

Crap. I quickly pocketed my phone. We’d been on different shifts most of the time since we returned from family camp, and I could fully admit that I’d been avoiding him as much as possible the rest of the time. I’d been dreading the big talk that we needed to have.

“Oh. Hey, man. Nothing much.” I smiled at him, but my face felt too stiff, like the air had dropped thirty degrees.

“I hear you’re getting out of here early today.” Calder raised an eyebrow, his intense scrutiny making me shuffle my feet.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“You can stop looking so cagey. I already heard from my mom that you and Arthur are going to that thing for Oliver’s kid this evening.”

Well, hell. I should have known that the gossip network would get back to Calder eventually. I rolled my shoulders, trying to avoid the guilty look he was accusing me of having but probably failing. “It’s Taylor’s birthday. He asked back at family camp if we’d attend. I said maybe, but my schedule worked out so that I can go. You coming?”

“Nah. I’ve got plans.” He waved his hand in a vague way before his eyes narrowed even farther. “And speaking of plans, exactly how long are you two going to carry on this charade? You got Steve all jealous, got a vacation you definitely needed out of the deal, but what’s keeping you guys from breaking up already?”

Time to pay the piper. Looked like we were having that big talk whether I wanted to or not. But I wasn’t going to lie nor was I going to dodge the question. “It’s not a charade.”

“Say what?” Calder tilted his head, mouth pursing like I’d given him a super-sour candy.

“I mean it was. But not now. I like him.”

“I knew it.” Calder pulled off his hat, slapped it against his thigh. “I had a feeling you were hooking up with him. You’ve avoided me for weeks, and you were a little too convincing at camp about being into him.”

“I’m sorry. I should have talked to you sooner.” I’d been too busy having fun with Arthur, heading into Seattle every chance I got, and living in a happy bubble where I didn’t have to royally piss off my best friend to spend time with my guy. I hadn’t wanted to deal with Calder’s hard stares and harder questions, and he was right to call me out on it.

Calder shook his head, expression nearly identical to my grandmother’s the few times I had gravely disappointed her. And like then, the disappointment was worse than anger ever could be. I’d take a punch over the heavy self-loathing bearing down on me.

“It’s not me you should apologize to,” he said at last, voice tight.

“No?”

“You’re both going to be sorry. You’re going to break each other’s damn heart.”

“We’re both adults. We know what we’re doing.” I hope. A group of young midshipmen headed toward the chow hall, and I stepped off the sidewalk to allow them to pass. Calder followed me onto the grass. His let-down expression made my voice even more defensive. “And what makes you so damn sure?”

“Arthur might be twenty-five, but he’s flighty as hell.” Calder made a dismissive gesture. Maybe it would have been better had he slugged me because then I could hit him right back for his attitude about Arthur. “And he doesn’t even have a real job. No way is he sticking around for you to play house with.”

“He has a real job.” By some miracle I managed to keep my tone even and my hands fisted at my sides. “He got a new contract last week. He’s really good at what he does.”

“He might be good at it, but talent isn’t the same thing as job security. I had to bail him out with bills a couple of times when he was in Boston. That’s probably a big part of why he agreed to the fake homecoming stunt.”

That stung. I’d been under the assumption that Arthur had agreed out of the goodness of his heart, not guilt and obligation to Calder. And if he had money worries, I wanted to hear about it from him, not Calder. However, I wasn’t going to let Calder undermine what we had built either.

“Maybe we were both in it for crappy reasons to start, but now I care about him.” More personnel exited the building, so I kept my voice to a low but firm whisper. “For real. And his financial security or lack thereof isn’t relevant to how I feel about him.”

“This is what I mean.” He huffed out a breath. “He might not intend to, but he’ll break your heart. I guarantee you that if he gets an offer for a contract that requires him to be in LA or Vancouver, he’ll take it.”

Another topic I hadn’t exactly covered with Arthur. We were both excellent at avoiding any mention of the future and any plans later than my next day off. “So? It’s not like we don’t travel for work ourselves.”

“Exactly.” Calder pointed at me like he’d caught me in a lie. “Because he’s always been absolutely adamant that he’s never ever doing long distance. I’m not sure exactly what sort of kiss-drunk spell you put on him to make him temporarily forget he hates the navy, but emphasis on temporarily. He’s not suddenly gonna get okay with the military. You’re going to break his heart right back with your next deployment.”

And there Calder went, hitting my biggest fear. It didn’t matter how hard I fell for Arthur. My job would always be the stumbling block to a future together. Eventually Arthur would stop being patient, and that goodbye I was already dreading would come. But I also couldn’t let Calder see that dread.

“You don’t know that. And besides, we’re still working things out as we go. Long-term is a bridge to cross when we get to it.” Or a bridge to avoid. Maybe if we continued to take things one day at a time, we could bumble our way into long-term. Accidentally uncover a way to have forever. It could happen, and I tried to make myself believe the lines I was feeding Calder. “Right now we’re having a great time together, and he makes me happy. Really happy.”

That part was true, a little too true. Arthur made me happier than I could ever remember being. Everything from cooking for him to lying awake talking to him to listening to his latest composition made me happy. And that really was the bottom line here. I wasn’t going to give that happiness up before I absolutely had to.

“That’s something.” Calder’s shoulders slumped like I’d deflated the big guy with a single pinprick. “And I want you both happy. I do. I simply don’t think you’re right for each other. And someone is gonna get hurt.”

“Let me worry about that,” I said with more conviction than I felt. His words slithered through my brain, like spec ops troops infiltrating a target, undermining my defenses. He’d hit on another of my big worries, namely that while Arthur was perfect for me, maybe I wasn’t the best thing for him and that I was being selfish in keeping our relationship going. Me getting hurt was inevitable and a price I was willing to pay, but Arthur hurt was a whole different story.

“Like you worried about Steve?”

Another dart, right to the chest, but I only gritted my teeth. “Arthur’s not Steve.”

“No, he’s not. Unlike the cheating snake, he’s a good guy who’s not gonna double-cross you. But you’re on the rebound, vulnerable, and I’m worried you’re seeing a future that’s just not there because you’re trying to make up for what you lost.”

Fuck. Was Calder right? Was this all simply me on the rebound? Not real emotions? I didn’t want to believe that. “I didn’t lose anything with Steve. We were never going to make it, and I see that now. What I feel for Arthur is different.”

It was. I’d never felt this intensely about Steve, never lain awake plotting what I wanted to talk with him about the next day, never raced to be able to send him a single text, never rearranged things simply so we could have a few extra hours together. That wasn’t a rebound fling, it was—

“Chief Fox.” Grammer, one of the newer guys from our boat, dashed up to us. “Senior Chief is looking for you. Some sort of meeting.”

“On it.” Whatever the emergency was, the churning in my gut said it wasn’t going to be good.