8. Rune
Chapter Eight
Rune
O h fuck.
Ow.
I considered opening my eyes, but even moving my eyeballs behind closed eyelids hurt like a bitch, and so I opted to leave them closed. Fuck—this is why I don't party like this very often. This part is just not worth the fun from the night before.
Eventually, after who knew how long trying to convince myself I could go back to sleep and abjectly failing, I had to get up. As always, it was my bladder that forced the issue.
Except, when I cracked my gritty, pulsing eyes open, I was not at home and nor was I at my hostel—oof, right. The yacht. Raquel and Hamish and Duncan, and I partied here last night. I have only vague memories of the night—flashes and glimpses of moments.
Raquel and Hamish falling on each other laughing, Duncan nearly toppling over the side of the boat, yet somehow managing to not spill a drop of his drink, playing some wild drinking card game. Duncan chasing me around the boat trying to pin me down and tickle me.
I assessed myself—clothed, so nothing happened between Duncan and me. My hair is loose, wild, and tangled. My makeup was probably smeared to hell and gone.
I stumbled to my feet, blearily peering around in search of the bathroom.
Duncan was conked out on the couch with his head angled toward where mine had been—he was shirtless in a pair of black jeans, barefoot.
His hair was messy and draped over his face, fluttering with his soft snoring exhalations.
One door beside the giant screen was closed, the other open; the open door led to a bathroom, and I lurched toward it, unsteady on my feet.
After taking care of business, washing my hands, and splashing cold water on my face, I felt marginally less like warmed-over death.
Now I just needed caffeine. The kitchen was in the basement of this boat—well, lower level, not a basement; I don't know shit about boats.
But there was also a kitchenette up here; maybe there was a coffeemaker.
I rounded the bar and poked around a bit, and found a pod coffee machine, a box of coffee pods, and a jug of distilled water.
A few minutes later, I had sweet, blessed coffee in a mug—there was no cream or sugar that I could find, but fuck it.
I don't need it, I just prefer it. Right now, I was definitely a beggar and thus couldn't be a chooser.
I found bottles of water in the fridge as well, and I took my coffee and a bottle of water out onto the deck, soaking up the early morning sunshine.
I spent the next several minutes lounging in the sun, sipping coffee, trying to coerce memories from last night out of my alcohol-addled brain.
Mainly, I wanted to make sure I hadn't done anything stupid with Duncan.
It seems unlikely I'd have gotten re-dressed afterward if we had, but you never know—booze makes you do weird shit, man.
At some point, I heard noises from the saloon—a male grunt of pain, followed by a rough, raspy voice grumbling, "Ohhhh fuck me. Ow—too loud." A few minutes later, I heard the toilet flush, and then. "Oh, thank god, a coffeemaker."
I felt him approach from behind, and then he was gingerly lowering himself into the chair beside me, a mug full of coffee in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. He set the bottle between his thighs and opened his palm, revealing six pain reliever gel capsules.
He tossed three into his mouth, chased them with a long, gulping glug of water, and then proffered the other three to me with a wordless grunt.
I grunted back as I took them from him.
He sipped coffee, I sipped coffee, the sun shone too brightly, and somewhere a seaplane droned and a motorboat hummed.
After tossing back the last of his coffee, Duncan glanced at me. "You remember much of last night?"
I shook my head. "Bits and pieces. You?"
"Same." He tugged at a belt loop. "I'm still wearing pants, and you're fully dressed, so I don't think we did anything. Did we?"
"Don't think so. I'm not sure how, why, or when you lost your shirt, though."
"Eh," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "My shirt always vanishes when I drink. Dunno why."
I snickered, and immediately regretted it, wincing and closing my eyes as a wave of hangover headache surged through me at the noise. "Oh god, don't make me laugh."
"I…didn't? I dunno what's so funny about what I said."
I looked sadly into my empty mug. "Coffee all gone. I has a sad."
Duncan snickered, and then mirrored my groan and winced. "Oh, fuck. Laughing does hurt." He took my mug and shuffled back into the saloon, and I heard the noises of coffee being made, and then he returned with full mugs. "Here."
I accepted the mug with a grateful smile. "Thank you, Duncan."
He nodded. "Welcome."
"I was laughing because you're the shirtless guy at the party," I said. "There's always one guy who ends up shirtless after a couple of beers."
He snorted softly. "Yeah, that's me."
Not long later, Raquel and Hamish appeared on the deck, looking as ragged as Duncan and I did, clutching coffee and water and wincing at the sunlight.
No one said anything for a while, as we each tried to rouse ourselves into something resembling life.
A phone rang somewhere in the saloon.
"That's no my mobile," Hamish grumbled.
"Mine's in my purse in the room," Raquel said.
"My phone's been on vibrate since the day I got it," I said.
Duncan groaned. "It's mine. It's just so far away." With a heaving sigh, he lumbered to his feet and staggered into the saloon. "Hello? Oh, hey Uncle Brock. Uhhh…forget? Forget what?"
Raquel sat bolt upright. "The flight!"
Duncan held a hand out to silence her. "Yeah, we sorta celebrated a bit last night, so we're dragging ass. Sorry, Uncle B. Yeah, we can be there. All right, see you then. Bye."
"We tied a bit of one on last night," Hamish said. "I've no been that pissed in an age. Jaysus, I'm hungover."
“Is your uncle mad?" Raquel asked, sounding worried. "I feel bad. He's doing us a favor, and we don't show up."
Duncan shoved the phone in his back pocket, shaking his head gingerly. "Nah, he's cool. He figured it was something like that. He's running a couple errands instead, so we have a couple hours to get our shit together and meet him at his dock."
"I need some greasy-ass food pronto," Raquel said. "So we need to drag our hungover asses to breakfast."
"Word," I said, levering myself out my chair. "And in my case, I need to retrieve my luggage from my room."
Ninety minutes later, we'd eaten said greasy-ass food and drank several buckets of coffee, retrieved my luggage, and were buckled into Duncan's uncle's seaplane as he piloted it away from Ketchikan.
Brock Badd was a silver fox. I'm not into old dudes, but this old dude was handsome as hell.
Brown hair shot through with silver cut in a neat, classic, Old Hollywood side part, wearing mirrored aviators, he had chiseled, angular features, day-old stubble shadowing his rugged jaw, and a physique a man twenty years his junior would be jealous of.
I see now why Duncan claimed his physique was largely the result of unfair genetics—I saw the resemblance, as well. Duncan definitely favored Brock, especially in the jawline and the lean, hard build.
Brock greeted Raquel and Hamish with gentle handshakes and congratulations, waving off Raquel’s profuse apologies for oversleeping our original departure time.
When he greeted his nephew, he did so loudly, effusively, with a lot of rough, unnecessary back slapping—giving him shit for being hungover, in a teasing way.
Me, he greeted with a speculative look, a gentle hug, and a knowing grin. What he thinks he knows, I couldn't have said, but he obviously thinks he knows something about me, or about me and Duncan. I smiled back as if I was clueless and took my seat on the seaplane.
You couldn't really hear anything over the drone of the propellers, so all four of us opted to close our eyes and try to rest on the flight.
I jolted awake with a mortifyingly porcine snort as the seaplane touched down. "Wha—?"
Duncan's shoulder was a firm, warm support under my left ear. He patted my thigh. "We just landed in Anchorage."
"Oh. I fell asleep, huh?" I said, sitting upright.
Duncan chuckled. "Yeah, you were out for the count." He grinned at me. "You, uh, have some…" his thumb slid over the corner of my lip.
I groaned, even more embarrassed. "I was drooling ? Someone shoot me."
He just laughed again. "Hey, drool happens. Don’t worry about it."
I rolled my eyes. "I fell asleep on you, drooled on you, and snorted like Babe the pig when I woke up. I think that's plenty of grounds to be embarrassed."
His deep brown eyes danced with humor, and he pinched my chin. "You're adorable, Rune. Drooling and snorting and all."
"Adorable," I muttered. "Lovely. Every girl longs to be adorable because she drools and snorts in her sleep." The noise of the engines, however, meant Duncan didn't hear this part.
Brock taxied us to a dock, where a dockworker moored us to a pylon. After thanking Brock, Raquel and Hamish went in search of a taxi to the hotel while Duncan and I hung back to talk to Brock.
"My friend with the jet has confirmations from everyone," he said. "So that's all set. Duncan, when you two are ready to come back to Ketchikan, just let me know and I’ll come pick you guys up."
“It'll just be Duncan, actually," I said. "My flight back to LA is out of Anchorage, now. I switched it around the other day."
Brock frowned. “Oh, really? I was under the impression that you two were an item."
Duncan coughed in surprise, glancing at me with a shrug. "I have no idea where you'd have gotten that impression, Uncle B. We're just friends."
Brock smirked—and again, I saw where Duncan got his propensity for devilish smirks; Brock's was every bit as debonair, mischievous, and tempting as Duncan's. In an old guy to whom I'm not attracted sort of way, I mean.
Geez, get a grip, Rune.