Off Plan

by May Archer

  “Remember that wall from earlier?” Loafers made a slicing motion in the air between us. “I can no longer hear or see you.”

  He bent over, ass out, lifting with his knees, and managed to wrestle the suitcase—and I mean full-contact, bonzo-gonzo, garbage wrestling, that had the car bouncing like much more interesting shit was happening inside it—into the trunk. The whole time, he was so careful to ignore me, it was clear he was aware of every breath I took.

  Which was, well… fucking hot, if I was being honest. And I couldn’t help but notice that Loafers, while still being a prissy little fucker, was nevertheless passably cute, with all that hair wanting to curl and those greener-than-green eyes.

  An ember of lust flared in my gut.

  I didn’t have to like the guy in order to fuck him, after all. And I just might be willing to risk my dick getting frostbite for the chance to see the cold-as-ice man on his knees with his mouth around me.

  I’d definitely be fantasizing about it.

  “There.” Loafers looked at his handiwork with a satisfied expression. “Told you I could do it.”

  “Gold star for you.” I yawned and looked at the other two bags, then checked my nonexistent watch. “Tick tock. Time’s a’wastin’, Loafers.”

  He made a disgruntled noise but got to work loading in the other two cases—one more in the trunk and one jammed in the back, behind the passenger’s seat—while I got in the car, set the ancient radio to the classic-rock station, and rolled down the windows so it was slightly less sauna-like.

  Loafers got in beside me, slammed the door closed, and glared in my direction.

  “All settled?” I asked mildly. “At last?”

  “No thanks to you.” He rubbed his hands against the legs of his pants, leaving damp, dirty trails on the beige material. His shirt was wrinkled, dusty, and almost completely untucked from his pants. “I certainly hope you’re more helpful than this with the guests at the resort. What exactly do you do, anyway? You certainly don’t behave like a livery driver.”

  “A livery driver?” I grinned. “Fuck, no. I’m a tour boat captain, Loafers. I occasionally fix cars when people need me to. We don’t get much call for livery drivers on Whispering Key.”

  Mason scowled. “Really. Do you expect me to believe all the guests rent cars to get to the resort?”

  He managed to make it sound like I was lying, when in fact he had no grip on reality.

  “The guests. At the resort. What, exactly, did Mr. Goodman tell you was happening here?”

  I could feel the man’s eyes boring into me from the other side of the low console like he wondered if I was being deliberately obtuse.

  I flicked him a glance. “Being serious here. You’ll find that Big—uh. Mr. Goodman—tends to play his cards close to the vest. I was told to come and get you. I know jack shit beyond your name.”

  Loafers sank down in his seat, and his chin went up mulishly. “Well, I’d think it was all fairly self-explanatory. I’m the new doctor for Whispering Key.”

  “You.” I glanced over at him, at the khaki pants that still had a crease down the center front of each leg, and those shoes that were probably worth more than the car we were riding in. “Are Whispering Key’s new doctor?”

  He sniffed. “Is that so shocking?”

  “Fuck, yes. Are you out of your mind? What would possess a person like you to take a job in a place like Whispering Key?”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “I assure you, I’m perfectly qualified for the position. I graduated top of my class in medical school, I have excellent references, and I have years of experience dealing with a wide variety of emergent situations. Broken bones. Infections. Lacerations. Bruising.” He made a motion toward my eye and frowned. “Speaking of which, you should really put ice on that, you know.”

  “Yeah.” I eased the car into traffic. “I know.”

  Loafers sighed and unbent one tiny fraction of a millimeter. “Look, I realize there’ll be limitations to what I can do, but I think that would be true for any medical professional, especially since Mr. Goodman implied the facility would be relatively small.”

  “Small,” I repeated in dawning horror. Try nonexistent.

  “Yes. Small for an island with a five-star resort, I assume he meant.”

  Oh, sweet baby Jesus and all the fucking angels. “A five-star resort?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Think, Loafers. Did he say a five-star resort? Or The Five-Star Resort?”

  “I…” Loafers flushed. “Whichever. I was possibly a little overly enthusiastic and I didn’t do as much research as I normally might have before accepting the position. I honestly have no idea how many five-star resorts there are on the island.”

  None. The answer was none. At least not the way he was thinking about them.

  Oh, God. Was this funny or tragic? I honestly couldn’t say.

  I made a strangled noise, and Loafers hesitated, like he wondered if I was about to pass out. “Keep talking,” I instructed.

  “But there’s nothing else to say!” Loafers lifted his hands and let them flop uselessly back to his lap. “Clearly you have an issue with me, but if my credentials were good enough for Mr. Goodman, they should be good enough for you and for the guests at the resort. I’m a hard worker. I’m an achiever. I’m up to the job.” He gave a firm nod, and I wondered if he was trying to convince himself or me.

  Thing was, I had no need or desire to be convinced.

  My hands tightened around the steering wheel, and I imagined it was Big Rafe’s neck.

  “Look, if you need an apology for earlier, I… I apologize, alright?” Loafers spat the words all fast and wheezy, like he didn’t want them in his mouth any longer than necessary, and I turned to look at him in surprise. “I wasn’t as kind as I could have been back at the airport. I was possibly a bit judgmental.”

  “Possibly?”

  His eyes narrowed. “But you weren’t kind at all.”

  “As apologies go, I’ve heard better.”

  “So we got off on the wrong foot,” he persisted. “It happens. And I acknowledge that it’s partly my fault. I’d really like it if we could rewind this morning and start over. I’m not at my best, you’re clearly not at your best.” He made a vague motion toward my eye and my shirt. “But just because a person looks like a serial killer doesn’t mean they are, and I know that. And if we’re going to be stuck together for the next three years of my contract, I’d rather not make an enemy on day one. So…” He thrust his hand toward me and pasted on a fat smile. “Nice to meet you. I’m Mason Bloom.”

  I knocked his hand away and pulled the car to the curb in front of a strip mall with only the tiniest screech of tires. “Are you kidding me?”

  He blinked. “About…? Oh! Sort of? I mean, in my defense, you’ve got that black eye, and your shirt is filthy, and you looked like you wanted to murder someone. Possibly several someones. Possibly me. So, you know—”

  “Not that.” If I’d looked like a serial killer, it was probably because I had been plotting murder, and that was even before I’d heard this bullshit. “We’re gonna be working together for years? You and me? Under contract?”

  Loafers’ green eyes went wide. “Uh. Well. Yes? I mean, I’ll be under contract, anyway. Mr. Goodman applied for a private grant on behalf of Whispering Key that will pay off my medical school debts once I’ve completed three years of satisfactory employment. I know we won’t be working together-together, since I imagine doctors and tour boat captains don’t often mingle, but we’ll likely see each other from time to time, so we could be—”

  I shook my head emphatically.

  “—friends? Friendly acquaintances? No?” His voice got softer until it trailed off altogether, and his face shuttered. “Fine. Forget I offered.”

  I pinched the top of my nose so hard, a jolt of pain lanced through my bruised eye and I hissed. I smacked the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. “Fuck!”

  This was
Rafe’s secret mayor business. He hadn’t done anything that would make the lives of the people on the island better, oh no. Instead, he’d lured this prissy asshole down to the key under false pretenses so he could check a box on a form, and now we’d be stuck paying him for three goddamn years.

  I knew fuck-all about doctors’ salaries, but I knew those shoes weren’t cheap.

  So, yeah, my serial-killing career was gonna start with Big Rafe. That is, if Loafers didn’t kill him for me, once he learned the score.

  Loafers opened the car door and got out on the sidewalk.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I scrubbed a frustrated hand through my hair. “Get back here, Loafers. I’m not actually going to hurt you, dumbass—”

  He ignored me. He tilted the seat forward so he could reach his suitcase and started rummaging around in it.

  “Seriously? If you wanna change your clothes, you do it on your own time. I have plans.” Plans involving the cold, shaded sand at the rocks near the motel and possibly an entire six-pack of beer so I could attempt to forget this shitshow. “Get your ass back—”

  He clicked the seat into place, plopped down beside me, and slammed the door. Before I could react, he reached over and deftly removed my sunglasses, tossing them onto the center console.

  “Hey!”

  He crushed a white plastic bag in his hand, twisted himself to get a knee on the seat, and leaned over to place the bag gently but firmly against my eye. I gasped at the cold, but my eye stopped throbbing in seconds.

  “An ice pack,” he said unnecessarily, dropping back into his seat. “You’re welcome. If you’d like me to drive so you can see better—”

  “You? Drive my car?” I snorted. “That’ll be the day. Nobody drives her but me.”

  “Ah. You’re one of those guys.” He put his seat belt back on and stared out the windshield. “Figures.”

  I ran my tongue over my teeth. His hair was getting curlier every minute he spent in the humidity, and he looked rumpled and sweaty and human. Not a total asshole. Plus, my eye really did feel better.

  “Thanks,” I said. “For this.”

  “You’re welcome.” Loafers turned in his seat and gave me a critical once-over. “Just to say, if you’re going to go around getting beaten up, I might be a handy person to have around.”

  “I didn’t get beaten up,” I grumbled. “I… dropped a wrench on my eye.”

  “You—” His forehead wrinkled in disbelief.

  “I’m not repeating it.”

  “But how does one—”

  I glared at him over the console.

  “Right. Anyway. Is there any way I can convince you to give us a fresh start? Since we’ll be colleagues?”

  He looked so damn hopeful, the poor bastard, all dressed up in his stupid, stupid shoes, wanting to be friendly.

  How the hell was I supposed to tell him he’d made a monumental mistake in trusting my uncle? Where did I even begin?

  Then again, this wasn’t my responsibility, was it? It was Rafe’s and it was Mason’s. Time for Big Rafe to deal with his own shit.

  I shook my head slowly. “Why don’t you hold off on making any firm plans about that, okay? I have a feeling you might change your mind in time.” As in, exactly as much time as it took to drive to Whispering Key and find out what he’d tied himself to for the next thousand-odd days.

  “If you mean that I might leave during the three-month probationary period…” Loafers sat back in his seat and shrugged. “You should know that once I’m committed, I’m committed. Unless Mr. Goodman has invented the resort—” He snorted at the very idea.

  “There’s a three-month probationary period,” I repeated slowly around the ice pack. “So, as long as you leave in the first three months, there’s no harm, no foul.”

  “But I won’t, is my point. Not unless there’s some kind of emergency. Or I suddenly win the lottery and can pay off my loans.” He rolled his eyes. “And I don’t plan to give Mr. Goodman any reason to terminate my contract in that time either, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

  We’d see how long that lasted.

  We drove down the road in silence for long minutes while Loafers stared out the window eagerly, like he’d never seen a palm tree before. It was kinda weird and also weirdly hot.

  “What in the world…?” Loafers pointed at the road sign in front of us. “Cooter Key Bridge? Is that a tasteless joke?”

  I snorted. “Nope. Real sign, real place.”

  “No,” he breathed.

  “Yep.”

  “But… cooter. Like, as in a…” He made a rolling motion with his wrist, like he wanted me to finish his sentence. “You know?”

  I fought the urge to smile. “As in a cooter,” I said blandly.

  “Yes! Exactly! Who names an island after a…” Loafers snort-giggled, like a thirteen-year-old boy discussing porn, not a cold-fish doctor with more luggage than common sense. “You know.”

  His green eyes lifted to mine and… oh, damn. They were dancing.

  Dear Universe, if you’re even remotely as real as Beale says you are, do not make me like the cute, soulless doctor.

  But because I’d started developing masochistic tendencies the minute Loafers wandered into my life, I couldn’t help teasing him. “It’s named that because of its shape. Duh.”

  His jaw dropped and he stared at me. “You’re telling me the island is shaped like a… And they named it after…”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be a doctor?” I demanded, tossing the now-melted ice pack to the floor at his feet and enjoying myself immensely for the first time all day. Possibly all week. “You can say the word, Loafers.”

  “Of course I can!”

  “Go on, then.”

  Loafers cleared his throat. “They named the island after a vagina?”

  “Wait, what?” I clasped a hand to my chest as we cruised to a stop at the light just before the bridge. “A vagina? Dear God! This is the South, Loafers. We’d never be so crass!”

  “But you said…”

  “A cooter is a turtle, obviously. A freshwater turtle.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Is not.”

  “Is, too. Surely you’ve heard of the coastal plain cooter? The river cooter?” I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “The red-bellied cooter?”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “I would never lie about cooters,” I told him solemnly. “Google it if you don’t believe me.”

  “Maybe I will!” He pulled his phone from his pocket.

  “Do it before we go over the bridge, though, ’cause that’s where the signal starts to get spotty.”

  “Does it?” He frowned, but his expression cleared quickly. “Well, I guess that’s more of an amenity than a detraction for people vacationing on the islands, right? Forced to be offline? Not chained to social media?” He pushed a hand through his hair, and a few dark waves fell on his forehead.

  “Mmm. I definitely don’t know anyone chained to social media,” I agreed.

  “Right. No.” Loafers slid his phone away. “Me neither. So, ah… what were we talking about?”

  “Cooters?”

  “Yeah.” His face went even pinker. “You were educating me. Because you have experience with a wide variety of… them.”

  I laughed. This whole conversation was incredibly immature. And fuck me, I liked it.

  “Actually.” I gave him a sideways look just to check his reaction. “I have no experience at all. In fact, you might say my knowledge of cooters is purely theoretical. In all senses of the word.”

  “Oh. Right.” His brow furrowed. “Meaning…”

  “Meaning I know jack shit about turtles, and also I’m gay.”

  “You’re… Ohhhh.” His expression cleared. “That’s cool! Same as my brother.” He paused. “I mean, not about the turtle thing, just the gay thing? Though probably the turtle thing also.”

  “You’re babbling, Loafers.”

  “Sorry, right.�
� Another pause. “I’m, ah… I’m straight.”

  He said it gently, almost apologetically, and I wondered if he thought me outing myself was the world’s lamest pickup line.

  Which it absolutely had not been. Especially since it hadn’t worked.

  “My heart’s breaking, Loafers.” I rolled my eyes. “But don’t cry for me. Somehow I’ll survive.”

  “Oh, no! I mean… I didn’t… It wasn’t because…” His face flushed a deep red, and he took a deep, calming breath. “You shared with me, so I shared with you. As a friend.”

  “Thanks for explaining how friendship works,” I said dryly, and I promptly packed all my thoughts about Loafers on his knees into a tiny little box in my mind and locked it firmly.

  It was a damn shame. I had no illusions that Loafers would last more than an hour on Whispering Key, but I could’ve made that hour really, really memorable. I had exactly one life rule, though. One and only. I didn’t do straight guys.

  Ever.

  And I don’t just mean I didn’t fuck around with them, because duh. I mean, I didn’t pine for them. I didn’t fantasize about them. I didn’t even let myself look at them too closely, since the looking always led to the fantasizing and then to the pining.

  I’d learned that lesson the hard way in Texas some five years back, with broken ribs that had landed me in the hospital and a broken career that had landed me in Whispering Key. It was maybe the one mistake in my life I hadn’t been doomed to repeat, and I wasn’t gonna start now.

  But when Loafers started tapping his finger against the doorframe, passionately mouthing along to the it ain’t me’s in “Fortunate Son” like he actually hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, I felt a tiny bit of sweat break out on the back of my neck.

  Thank God for probationary periods, huh?

  “So, why are we going to, ah, Cooter Key—” Loafers choked.

  “You’re gonna wanna learn to say that without laughing.” I sounded uptight, even to my own ears.