Page 31 of Ship Happens

“Did they hurt?”

Nodding again, Owen tugged his shirt back on when Jacob pulled back. “The skin gets more sensitive,” he explained. “And I probably could’ve gone with something less intricate.”

Owen could’ve sworn that Jacob wasn’t paying attention, though. His attention was rapt on Owen’s body, staring at the fine lines and tattoos. He remembers never being looked at like that before, not by anyone he’d hooked up with, and certainly never anyone he dated.

Jacob had looked at Owen like he was a thing to be appreciated, studied, like he wanted to know every intricate detail he could about Owen’s body.

Now, sinking lower into the bathwater, Owen watches the streaks of deep purple from the bath bomb mix with the blue, swirling on the surface like oil on water. He doesn’t want to be an asshole to Jacob. It doesn’t feel good. But that does nothing for his anger, because there’s no one else to direct it at.

No one besides himself.

Does he not have the right to be mad at Jacob? He’s thrilled that Jacob is doing what makes him happy, that he’s finally working somewhere where he seems to be taken seriously, where he’s finally getting to study what he cares about.

And all he had to do to get it was leave Owen behind.

Maybe that’s not fair.

But what about the situation was fair? For weeks Owen sat in their home, alone. Taking care of Fitz, coming home to the empty apartment at the end of the day, waiting for their schedules to line up with the time change so they could FaceTime, only for Jacob to be pulled away at the last second because he was needed somewhere.

It was a sort of loneliness that Owen had never felt before, even as a teenager when he was struggling to get his diagnosis. When he had no real friends to speak of, no one to talk to other than the friends he’d made online to chat about The Chetek Archives and his fan art.

It was the sort of loneliness that sat deep in his soul, that ached constantly, no matter what Owen tried to do to combat it. Hanging out with Kaitlyn only made him think about Jacob more. Going out to the movies or to eat was much the same. Going on walks worked for a bit, but when Owen kept returning to the empty apartment, those feelings would come rushing back.

They’re still there, rising to the surface of Owen’s heart so easily.

He misses their stupid inside jokes, their movie nights, the sound of Jacob’s laughter. He misses when Jacob would talk too much, or those flashes of embarrassment he’d feel when Jacob got excitable in public. He misses how Jacob would leave his beard hairs all over the sink after he was done shaving. He misses grabbing Jacob’s phone for him when he’d forget it at a restaurant, Owen waiting until Jacob realized it was missing before revealing he’d had it all along. He misses holding Jacob’s hand, going to Safeway to get him Claritin when his allergies were at their worst. He misses talking with Jacob in bed, head resting on his bicep.

Owen misses his best friend.

He doesn’t want it to be true. He wants to be past the relationship, he wants it to be over, to be able to say that these feelings are long gone.

But they haven’t gone anywhere.

He’d heard stories of Jacob’s thrill for adventure, his inability to sit still for longer than a few weeks. Kaitlyn told him how he signed up for nearly every study-abroad program he could, even taking a student research job on a fishing boat that navigated along the East Coast during his senior year.

Even his move to San Francisco had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. Of course, Owen noticed smaller instances here and there while they were together. Sometimes Owen would come home to find their bedroom totally rearranged. Or there was the time Jacob sprung an entire week-long vacation down in Monterey on him without asking Owen if he could take time off from the shop first. And the day he showed up with Fitzwilliam totally unannounced.

Then the call came. Jacob’s voice had been quiet, like he had something to hide. He finally revealed the news that his research team would be heading “into the field.” Apparently, there was only so much they could do from the comfort of a lab.

“The lab is in Dover,” he said. “The first one, at least.”

“There’s a marine biology lab in Dover?” Owen asked, not thinking of anything other than the North Carolina town near where Jacob and Kaitlyn had grown up.

“No, like Dover in Britain. On the Channel. Where the migration path is.”

“Oh . . .”

“Yeah, and I know that it’s a huge ask, and that you don’t really like traveling, and that things . . . haven’t been great for the last few weeks—”

“You want me to upend my entire life and move to a different continent with you?”

“Well . . .” Jacob’s laughter was forced and uncomfortable. “Yeah, I guess there’s really no other way to say it.”

It’d been hard enough to see him leave for Duke. Months of unemployment had followed the budget of Jacob’s department at UCSF being shredded to bits. He had taken on a few temporary jobs as a teacher’s assistant, lab tech, even joining the janitorial staff part-time for a bit. Then one of Jacob’s former professors had emailed him, figuring he was perfect for the research team that he was putting together.

Owen had urged him to take the job, knowing how miserable Jacob had been when he was unemployed. “Useless,” in his own words. Besides, the job wasn’t supposed to last more than three months, five at the absolute most. Jacob had time to fly back to San Francisco, and Owen even braved the flights to North Carolina solo a few times just to see Jacob and his family.

“I could be in Europe for years,” Jacob said to him. “We need to see if the data is consistent. That’ll involve tracking patterns over multiple seasons, seeing what changes.”