Chapter 8
TIAGO
What was I doing?
What was I thinking?
Dealing with my family was going to be stressful enough, so why was I sitting in Aravind Gupta’s fucking private cabin on this ferry? It was one thing to let him guide me inside because the stress and the sun really had fucked my vision to hell and back.
But this?
I had lost my mind. Not a week ago I was thinking about all the ways I was going to rip him a new asshole for the shit he wrote about me, and now I was letting him buy me a pretzel?
I needed to get out of here.
I contemplated standing up. Now that my eyes had adjusted from being out in the sun, I could make out most of the nook we were sitting in. There wasn’t much more than the couch-bench thing I was sitting on, a little table in the corner, and the window, which was letting in all the natural light.
I could navigate to the curtain and maybe sneak past Aravind and hide…well. Fuck knew where. The rest of the ferry was so dimly lit I’d barely been able to follow a path to the deck where I nearly killed myself from heat exhaustion.
It was annoying that Aravind was right about my own dipshittery. I should have brought water. And sunblock.
And it had taken so much out of me that the thought of leaving the cushioned seat I was on was hell. Maybe I could play nice for a little bit. I had a few hours left before my dad or Thierry was going to meet me at the ferry station, so maybe I could take some peace where it was being offered.
Aravind might have been a dick in his article, but he wasn’t being so bad right now. And I appreciated that he wasn’t awkward about my sight. He wasn’t treating me like I was made of glass.
And hell, maybe it was performative. Maybe he was trying to show off just how cool he was with everything. I’d dealt with those people too—usually who were trying to get into my pants.
Which I very much doubted was Aravind.
Somehow though, I didn’t think he’d be able to hide it if he was pretending. He didn’t seem to have a great poker face.
“You look like you need to shit.”
I startled. I hadn’t realized he’d come into the room, and I tilted my gaze slightly to the left until I could see most of him. With the clear bit of pinhole vision, I gave him a slow up and down.
It was much easier to make him out in here, and I hated how fucking good he looked. His hair was in a bun, but several strands had escaped and were framing his face. I was almost a hundred percent sure he had on a pink eyeshadow, and he was wearing a formfitting black T-shirt and very tight jeans.
He was walking sex, and I did not need to be fantasizing about him, of all people.
“Pretzel,” he said when I didn’t rise to his bait.
He disappeared out of my sightline, but I heard him take a seat beside me, and then there was the sound of him scooting the table between us.
A barrier. Yes. Good.
I grazed my fingers gently across the top—a trick I’d learned in the short two-week occupational therapy session my parents had booked me back when I was first diagnosed. They bumped into a little container.
“I got you the cinnamon and the jalapeno one. Just in case your delicate constitution can’t take the heat,” Aravind said.
I turned and glowered in his direction. “Why are you giving me shit?”
“Because I’ve eaten with white boys who try to prove themselves before, and it always ends with them blowing up a bathroom. I don’t know if you want to deal with that kind of humiliation in front of me.”
He…had a point. An annoying point. Luckily, I could eat spice just fine and grabbed the first pretzel, pulling it close. It was the cheesy one, and I lifted it to my mouth, grinned at Aravind, and took a huge bite.
“Oh my god. This has zero spice,” I said through a mouthful of the soft bread. It was jarred pickled jalapeno that had been baked into oblivion.
Aravind snorted. “I don’t know your life or your tolerance level.” He shifted around, and I heard paper rustling, then the sound of him chewing.
“What are you having?”
“Plain, extra salt, extra butter, and a giant vat of cheese dip.” His words were thick with the bite he was chewing on.
I fought the urge to pick up my phone and open the camera so I could see him.
It was yet another trick I’d learned as my vision started to narrow.
I could see my whole phone screen if it was close enough to my face, and on the screen, I’d be able to see all of him.
But that would be creepy behavior. And I was not a creep, damn it.
“Want to try some?” he asked.
No. No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen. Not a chance in—
“Yeah, sure.”
Come on, Tiago. What the fuck?
Aravind’s soft fingers brushed along the back of my wrist. “Here. Uh…I don’t know how much of the table you can see.”
I shifted my eyes from right to left until the cup of cheese sauce came into view. Turning my hand out palm up, I waited, and after a second, he laid a piece of pretzel along my fingers.
“I can’t believe you, of all people, are eating a plain salted pretzel,” I said as I carefully dipped the edge into the cheese and took a bite. Several layers of salt exploded across my tongue.
“Why is that?” Aravind said, like my words were a personal challenge. “Because I’m Indian? Because I’m spicy?” His tone went completely flat, though he popped the P in the word spicy.
I huffed and rolled my eyes. “Because you don’t seem like a salted pretzel kind of guy. You’re always very fussy and seem like you eat out of boutique cafés and wine bars.”
He was quiet for a beat, then said, “Honey, I grew up at arenas, okay? If I wanted to see my dad, I got to live off wings, hot dogs, salted pretzels, and nachos.”
I hadn’t ever really thought about what it would be like to have a dad in the NHL.
Their schedules were the same levels of hell ours were.
Morning practice, afternoon practice, training, meetings, sponsorship bullshit.
There were home games and roadies, and the only real difference was that home games meant you got to crash in your own bed at night, even if that ended up being 2:00 a.m.
There were guys on my team who had kids, but I never asked what it was like for them. I never wondered how often they actually got to see their families.
“That sounds tough.”
Aravind let out a short breath. “It was fine when I was little. You know, I had my mom, and she was amazing. My dad’s parents also lived with us for a long time, so it wasn’t like I had no attention.”
It was better than I got. I swiped my hand over my mouth to clear up a few chunks of the rock salt I could feel clinging to my lips. “That sounds nice.”
“Really?”
I could all but hear the smirk on his face. “I grew up different.”
It was easy to sense the tension after I admitted that truth. He wanted to ask how. And why. Everyone always did. And most people gave in to their impulse, but Aravind just let it lie.
A small part of me wanted to tell him now, but considering I was about to spend two weeks with those people, I didn’t really want to relive all of the past bullshit when history was probably about to repeat itself.
With a breath, I reached out to dunk the pretzel again, but misjudged and flipped the cheese cup. A second later, I could feel hot goop soaking into my shirt.
“Ah! Fuck!”
“Oh my god.” Aravind hopped up and shoved the table back with a loud squeal across the floor.
Dropping the pretzel, I grabbed my shirt with a pinch and pulled it off my chest. It wasn’t scalding, but it was uncomfortable and the last goddamn thing I needed right now.
“Hold on, let me—” Without finishing his sentence, suddenly, Aravind was in my space. His shadowy form took up every inch of my field of vision, and I could feel him swiping something down my front.
“Uh.”
He froze. Then I froze. Then the moment got awkward. He was literally straddling my thighs, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to give in to my instinct and wrap my hands around his waist.
“Sorry,” he whispered. His knees, which were bracketing my legs, tensed.
“No, um. It’s fine. It happens to me a lot these days.” My voice was rough, and I took in a breath, which was a mistake because, fuck, he smelled amazing.
Aravind cleared his throat. “You know what, I think I have a shirt you can borrow.” He hopped off, and I heard a thud as he dropped his suitcase to the floor.
When I heard the zipper moving, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That’s very nice of you, but I’ve seen what you wear, and I don’t think that’s going to work for me.”
All motion stopped. “Oh.” His voice was flat and icy. “Is that so?”
“Crisse,” I swore. “I don’t mean it like that. It looks fucking gorgeous on you, okay? But I don’t think I can pull off mesh.”
There was a heavy beat of silence, and then Aravind burst into laughter. I turned my head almost frantically and eventually caught sight of him doubled over, one hand over his face.
“I’m not going to give you mesh, you bag of precooked rice. I have a T-shirt in here that I sleep in, and it’ll fit you just fine.”
“Oh. Uh…” I stammered as Aravind’s laughter started to die off. “Thank you, then.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, yeah. Just give me a second.”
When he began to rummage around, I let my shirt slap back against my skin. Ignoring the feeling of cold, congealed cheese, I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
The voiceover was muted at the moment, so I tapped the camera on the front, then watched as the screen flared to life. It took only a second for me to find Aravind, who was on his hands and knees, back slightly arched, ass round and perfect in his tight jeans.
God, my imagination was getting the better of me, and I could feel my dick starting to thicken in my boxers. I shifted on the seat as I got even harder because Aravind didn’t do anything quietly.
He was muttering to himself and shifting his body back and forth, gently shaking his hips, and all I wanted to do was lean forward and fucking bite him.
And then he turned and saw exactly what I was doing.