Page 60 of Ship Happens

“I will, thank you!” Jacob postures haughtily before he remembers that this moment should probably be taken more seriously. “It’s a scary thing that you want to do. But it’s also incredibly brave, Owen.”

Owen sucks his teeth.

“I’m serious. I couldn’t do it,” Jacob says.

“You’re not a tattoo artist.”

“It’s not just that,” Jacob tells him. “I’m not as brave as you.”

Owen stops once again, stuck watching as Jacob walks ahead of him.

“You think that I’m braver than you?” Owen sputters. “You’re joking, right?”

“No.” Jacob gives Owen a look. One that tells him he’s being completely honest. “I’m not. You had the courage to come out to parents you knew would never understand you. You left school when you realized it wasn’t for you—”

“Flunking out is very different from dropping out,” Owen tells him. “I wasn’t given much of a choice.”

“Still, you managed to make a living for yourself. You found your passion again, forged your own path. And . . . you were brave enough to let me go.”

Seconds stretch between them as he stares at Jacob, just a few feet away, and Owen can swear that his heart stops beating.

“That wasn’t brave,” Owen replies, voice barely a whisper in his own ears.

“Then what was it?” Jacob asks.

Stupid.

“You let me go, sacrificed our relationship to make both of us happy.”

“Happy?” Owen scoffs. “Really?”

“Well . . .” Jacob’s hand goes to the back of his neck. “Wrong choice of word, maybe, but my point stands. You’re a brave man, Owen Henson. And I know that all of this feels like a lot, and that you’re afraid to fail, to disappoint yourself. But you’re smarter than you believe, you’re a hard worker who fights for himself when it matters the most, and you go for the things that you want.”

He steps closer, studying Owen with those soft brown eyes of his. Owen wants to melt underneath his gaze, hating himself for how easily he folds, forcing himself to resist his most emotional urges.

“Come on, Kaitlyn’s going to yell at us if we miss the tour,” Owen says, stepping past Jacob, and moving ahead of him.

He doesn’t look back to make sure that Jacob is following him.

He can’t.

Their tour guide welcomes them onto the boat as the group is given their second “In the unlikely event that the boat sinks” speech in the span of a week. Which does wonders for Owen’s anxiety. They’re handed branded ponchos by another guide, the boat shifting underneath Owen’s feet as he tries to pull the plastic over his head.

“Hey, can you, uh . . .” Jacob stumbles next to Owen, his poncho only half pulled over his head, as it seems to have snagged somewhere on his life jacket. “Help?”

Owen untangles the poncho where it’s stuck around Jacob’s big head, and pulls at the hem, the thin plastic crinkling.

“Thanks,” he says, cheeks flushed as he readjusts and acts like everything is normal, like they didn’t just have a really weird conversation.

He thinks I’m brave? Owen wonders. Where would Jacob get an idea like that?

The boat takes them a few miles out, back toward the direction they’d approached Sitka from as their guide explains the habitat and migration pattern of the humpback whales that are native to the area. Jacob listens intently, focused on every word the guide has to say, even raising his hand to ask questions.

“Planning on switching your area of study to whales?” Kaitlyn pokes at her brother.

“They’re interesting!” Jacob argues.

“Jesus, you’re such a dork.”