Chapter Six You’re Naked
Chapter Six
You’re Naked
Owen can’t be sure how long he sits in the tub.
Any time the water tiptoes toward lukewarm, he lets the faucet run for a little bit until it’s scalding again, steam rising
off the surface as he sinks deeper and deeper into comfortable bliss.
He didn’t even bother to bring his phone, not wanting anyone to text him. He just needed to be alone for a minute. It’s been
a long time since he felt that overstimulated. The bath helps, though. One usually does.
Pacific Coast Cruises provided an entire gift basket for each of the rooms that included toothpaste, deodorant, some lotions,
face masks, and a few other miscellaneous necessities that any cruise-goer might’ve accidentally left the house without.
Including a pack of lemon-lavender-scented bath bombs.
Unfortunately for Owen, his and Kevin’s bathroom is the only room without a tub. And knowing his luck, he’d walk out of Kaitlyn
and Abigail’s bathroom just in time to catch them getting frisky in bed or something. And while Owen’s seen more than his fair share of Kaitlyn and Abigail naked, he’s never seen them naked together, and he’d very much like to keep it that way.
So he’d awkwardly snuck his way into Jacob’s room, listening to the water fill up the tub, unable to stop himself from snooping
through Jacob’s bathroom kit while he waited. Not that there was anything interesting, nothing other than the small bottle
of cologne that Jacob has worn almost every day since long before they met.
Owen had even been stupid enough to buy himself a bottle after the breakup. A small one. Just enough to spritz his pillowcase
every now and then.
Sighing as he rests his head against the small leather pillow sitting on the side of the tub, Owen wipes away the thin layer
of sweat that covers his forehead with a washcloth, his deep-fried bleach-blond curls clinging to his forehead, appreciating
the moisture probably.
Owen keeps his eyes closed, doing what he can to regulate his breathing.
In. And out.
He’d heard so much about Jacob before they met, when he introduced himself over FaceTime after accidentally stumbling into
the background of a call. He’d seen photos and videos, heard all about what Jacob was doing while he wrapped up his last semester
at Duke. Owen even attended Jacob’s graduation ceremony virtually from the comfort of Kaitlyn’s couch, cheering as Jacob’s
name was called and smiling as he stumbled over himself on his way to getting his diploma.
That’s probably when the crush started. Watching how Jacob moved, almost like he’d never quite grown into his body.
Like a newborn calf learning to walk or a puppy whose paws are too big.
There wasn’t much to it, not at first. Those blossoming feelings that come with hardly knowing a thing about a person, more mysterious allure than anything else.
They’d never had any real conversations, just stupid jokes and memes they sent over Instagram.
Then, one day, Owen accepted an invitation from Kaitlyn for Jacob’s moving-in party. It felt like the perfect chance to get
to know his best friend’s brother. He’d even made sugar cookies, laboring over the oven as texts from his friends slowly began
to roll into their group chat. One by one everyone dropped out of the plans, leaving Owen the only person who knocked on Jacob’s
door.
Owen almost canceled on Jacob too.
Almost.
But he felt bad, and he didn’t like the idea of Jacob being in his apartment all alone on his first full night in the city.
“Oh, you brought cookies!” Jacob answered the door with a welcoming smile that’d caused Owen’s heart to skip a beat. “Thanks!”
“A welcome-to-the-city present.” Owen smiled right back, praying the expression came off more natural than nervous. Inside
the apartment, a single lamp, air mattress, and desk with a MacBook were the only things that’d been unpacked and assembled.
Everything else was still in boxes.
Despite Owen’s resistance to conversation with people he doesn’t know, Jacob talked enough for the both of them, telling Owen
all about his drive across the country with the moving truck he’d rented, how amazing it’d been seeing all the sights, getting
a flat tire in Texas and having to walk a mile to the nearest shop for a spare. He even pulled out his phone and showed Owen
photos, including the one he took at Four Corners.
“It’s where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico all meet!” he’d said like he’d seen one of the Wonders of the World. Owen stared, wondering what Jacob wanted him to say, then saw the confusion on Jacob’s face, and maybe . . . disappointment? Like Jacob had been hoping for more.
The problem was that Owen did care. Jacob probably could’ve made anything interesting. But Owen had never been that great at small talk. It was one of the
reasons he didn’t have that many friends in school; even when he’d gotten to college, finally out from under his parents’
thumb, when he had the freedom to actually have a social life, the bed in his dorm had seemed much more comforting.
“I’ve got a bed frame coming too,” Jacob said, catching Owen hovering in the doorway to the bedroom, staring at the air mattress.
Owen felt his cheeks flush from the boyish smile that Jacob gave him, so earnest and kind. As the night had continued, Jacob
mostly talking at Owen, Owen had resigned himself to the idea that he’d blown his one and only shot at a good first impression. The one thing
that his parents had taught him mattered the most in this world.
“Oh, okay?” Owen offered.
“I just . . . didn’t want you to think I’m one of those guys who sleeps on a mattress on the floor.”
“That would cause mold,” Owen replied flatly.
And Jacob laughed. Not at Owen; it was more like he was laughing at a joke that Owen hadn’t told. “Yeah.” Jacob smiled down
at him. That was the first time Owen noticed his dimples. “It would.”
What a fool he’d been, silently crushing on Jacob from afar for so long, patiently waiting as Jacob reported in to Kaitlyn
about the labs he’d applied to, praying that UCSF would accept his application.
And he’d completely fumbled his one chance to make a good impression.
Then, he’d found the box marked Books in big, bold, poorly written letters. “Where should these go?” Owen asked.
“Oh, yeah. Over there is good,” Jacob said, nodding to the corner near the desk. “My bookshelf isn’t coming for another week.”
Nodding wordlessly, Owen ripped open the tape with the box cutter and lifted the flaps. Right there, near the top of the box—covered
by a thin sheet of bubble wrap and a bunch of Superman and Green Lantern comics—sat these expensive-looking leather-bound editions of books that Owen recognized in an instant.
Because he owned a set himself.
“You read The Chetek Archives?” Owen asked, plucking out a copy of the third book. Beautiful gold foil painted out the title, a symbol from the world’s
magic system embossed on the front.
“Oh, yeah! I love those!” Jacob exclaimed, eyes shining.
“Me too!” Then, curiously, Owen could feel the smile on his face sink, resetting himself to normal.
Like he was afraid he might be too much.
That’s what his parents would say.
But Jacob didn’t skip a beat. “Okay, wait. We need to have a serious discussion here.” He dropped the box he’d been flattening
onto the small pile of cardboard on the kitchen floor. “Have you finished them? I need to talk to someone about that ending.”
There’d been something so infectious about the way Jacob lit up, like he’d been waiting ages for someone to discuss these
stories with. They spent the next three hours talking about the fantastical tale of the ancient city of Chetek, and the ensemble
of characters who discover—over the course of the first big arc of the twelve-book series—that the city is actually alive and has been communicating with and influencing them to come together to fight an ancient celestial evil.
The characters even start traveling to different planets toward the end of the series, which Owen agreed jumped the shark a little bit, and not just because Jacob said so.
Jacob showed Owen the original story he’d written for a TTRPG that used the books’ world as a basis, and Owen showed Jacob
the fan art he’d done of the characters that’d been used on the series’ wiki.
That’d led to Jacob asking Owen about his drawings, which led to him asking about Owen’s tattooing, which led to Owen pulling
up the hem of his T-shirt to show the patchwork of art that decorated his skin. All of the moving and lifting had caused a
small flare-up in his arthritis, his wrists tinted an aching red that he tried his best not to feel self-conscious about.
But Jacob didn’t even seem to notice. He’d been too enamored by the art that decorated Owen’s body.
When he felt the need to shift the attention away from himself, Owen asked Jacob about his work with squid.
“It’s actually cephalopods in general, but my interest is in squid.”
“What’s this?” Owen asked, pulling yet another book from a box he’d gotten back to unpacking, surrounded by even more comics and trade paperbacks.
“My thesis.” Jacob hovered over Owen’s shoulder as he flipped through it. “I worked in a lab in Japan and researched how climate
change was affecting migration patterns of various species.”
The words all blended together as Owen skimmed through the pages, most of the concepts going over his head, but what really
struck Owen was the passion with which Jacob wrote about his research, his love and adoration for these creatures that Owen had only ever seen before in documentaries or in the aquarium level at the Academy of Sciences. It was like Jacob respected them. “Wow, this is . . .”
“Dry?” Jacob finished the thought for Owen. “Dense?”
Owen shook his head, instead saying, “Impressive.”
By the end of the night, the apartment was still mostly bare. Without any real furniture to speak of, most of Jacob’s things
ended up stacked on the floor, left in an approximation of where they’d eventually go.