High and Dry (Pride Road Trip 2026 #10)

Chapter 1

“Felicia, why are there drag queens dancing on the deck of the cruise ship you booked me on?”

Mark tried to sound patient and calm, but he hadn’t boarded the ship yet, and it already didn’t look like the peaceful, quiet get-away he’d had in mind when he turned over the task of booking a cruise to his personal assistant.

He’d mentioned he was thinking about going on a cruise for his vacation, and Felicia had insisted that he let her handle it.

“I’ve been on several cruises,” she had said. “You've never been on one. I’ve got this.”

Her eagerness to take over should have been a red flag, but he’d mistaken it for a legitimate desire to help him out with her lived experience. He should’ve known better.

“Oh, are they?”

They weren’t face-timing, but they didn’t need to be for Mark to be suspicious of her tone. He could picture her face: eyes wide and round, eyebrows raised, lips in a sweet little “o” of innocence. He narrowed his eyes, even though she couldn’t see it.

“Yes, Felicia. They are. Why?”

“Oh, gosh, Mark, I couldn’t say.” Her voice was sugary enough to give him a phantom toothache. “Maybe it’s something to do with Pride month?”

Fuck.

When he’d planned to schedule his vacation time in June, he hadn’t given a thought about it being Pride month, much less that there could be a Pride-themed cruise.

If he boarded that ship, he was going to be trapped for a solid week among fellow queer people.

Lesbians? Handshake of homosexual solidarity.

Transwomen? Live your truth, sister. Gay men, whether cis or trans? Problem. Big, big problem.

“And you just happened not to notice that when you picked this particular cruise?” he asked.

“To be fair, you had set dates when you could go, and you said you wanted to go to the Bahamas,” she said. “A lot of cruises get booked months in advance. A year or more for the popular ones. I wasn’t spoiled for choice.”

Mark rubbed the bridge of his nose. She could be telling the truth because what he knew about cruises could fit in a thimble, and she had years of experience with them.

But this was Felicia, who’d been trying to encourage him to get back on the market in increasingly unsubtle ways since he and Ryan had broken up, so he trusted her about as much as he’d trust a cobra with its hood spread.

“Uh-huh. Okay, assuming I buy that, is it too late to get a partial refund?”

“Yep!” She sounded far too cheerful about it. “If you back out now, you lose everything, so you might as well go.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

He supposed he could hide in his cabin the whole time.

It wasn’t how he’d envisioned spending the cruise.

He’d assumed he would be surrounded by straight people who were all at least thirty years older than him, so he could spend the week sunbathing on the deck, sipping cocktails in the lounges, and exploring the ports in peace.

He glanced at the drag queens, who had started a conga line.

So much for that plan. Holing up in his cabin it was.

“And don’t even think about spending the whole week in your cabin,” Felicia said, her voice turning stern. “I couldn’t get you one with a balcony, so you’ll be stuck in a tiny room with a porthole, and you can barely handle elevators.”

Oh, she’d thought of everything, hadn’t she.

“Besides, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of hot gay men on board who can keep each other occupied, so you won’t have anyone lying in wait every time you open your door.”

He almost fell for her negging tactic, but he realized what she was doing in time to smooth his hackles.

“Nice try,” he said, wanting to make sure she knew he saw right through her. “Are you going to demand photographic evidence that I left my room as well?”

“I wasn’t going to, but now that you mention it, sounds like a good idea,” she said, and Mark could visualize the satisfied smirk curling the corners of her mouth.

“Take a time stamped selfie at a different location every day to show me when you get home, and maybe I won’t give you hell about trying to back out. ”

“You’re a horrible person.”

“Try to have a good time, Mark,” she said, and she almost sounded as if she meant it.

As soon as the call ended, he took a selfie of himself making a rude gesture in front of the ship with the dancing queens clear to see in the background. She replied with a laughing emoji.

With a resigned sigh, Mark joined the queue to board the ship and prayed to whatever high power was listening that the week would speed by without any unexpected problems, especially not in the form of an attractive man.