Companion Required

by Brian Lancaster

“Fuck off.”

  “You want a drink?” asked Kieran. “I’ll put it on the room.”

  “Cabin. Yeah, go on. If I’m not going to get laid, I might as well get drunk. Get me a Long Island Iced Tea.”

  “Done.”

  Kieran returned and sat down next to Kennedy before handing over his drink. When Kennedy saw the two rainbow-colored umbrellas sticking out of his tall glass, he huffed loudly and rolled his eyes, but a corner of his mouth lifted.

  “D’you want to talk about it? You and Patrick?”

  As soon as the words left Kieran’s mouth he regretted them, for instantly dampening Kennedy’s improved mood. He glared sidelong at Kieran before shaking his head and exhaling a long sigh. Kieran thought that meant he didn’t, but after a few moments Kennedy started talking softly.

  “I honestly didn’t know he was going to be here. Pete says they booked at the last minute. If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not worth the aggravation. And if you’d heard Richmond’s delightful sermon, you’d know I’m the supervillain in all of this. Used up nine good years of his life. And then I went and ruined everything.”

  “You cheated on him?”

  “Of course not. Unless you call prioritizing work over social life cheating.”

  “He broke up with you because you worked too hard?”

  “In his defence, I did fuck up a lot. Often at the last minute. Dinner dates, birthday parties, Christmases, a number of holidays. But even though it was a nuisance, I assumed he was okay with that, thought he knew I had to work hard to make a success of the business. Which meant we could also afford the luxury house, nice cars, designer clothes and the whole comfortable lifestyle. And the bloody cruises, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I see.”

  “He broke up with me, you know? Not the other way round.”

  “You still have feelings for him?”

  Kennedy thought about that for a long moment before responding.

  “Yes, but not in the way you think. More like disappointment, really. And sadness, I suppose. He’s still bitter at me, otherwise he wouldn’t be telling every new partner those unpleasant things. Don’t even know what he has to gain. You should have heard what Richmond said about me in their cabin. In front of everyone. Accused me of cheating on him, even when we were together, which is a barefaced lie. And he as good as called you my paid whore.”

  “Well, I am, really. Without the sex. Shit, maybe we should get married.”

  Kieran warmed inside when Kennedy laughed aloud. Putting the straw to his lips, he sucked at the cocktail before becoming serious again.

  “I should have wised up by now. The same thing happened the last time we all met up. Leonard’s birthday party, I think it was. He had some new guy with him then, too. Ben or Bob. Remember this bloke holding court in the kitchen, going on very loudly in front of everyone about how I fuck with people’s lives. And how I would probably die alone and single—a sad, lonely old man, with no friends and nobody to take care of me.”

  “Boo-hoo.”

  “Exactly. I’d been standing outside, but barged in at that point and told them all that when that particular eventuality comes along, at least I’ll be able to afford the best drugs and be able to hire a drop-dead gorgeous gay male nurse to be at my beck and call—”

  “Kennedy,” Kieran interrupted. “Don’t want to pee in your iced tea, but Patrick just walked in.”

  “Where?” asked Kennedy, sharply, darting his head up and peering around like a frightened ferret.

  “Ten o’clock. Side door.”

  “Shit. Sit in front of me.”

  “What?”

  “Sit in front of me. You’re supposed be my bloody boyfriend, remember?”

  Rather than sitting in front, Kieran perched himself behind Kennedy, squashed up against the man’s back, his knees on either side. For a second, Kennedy froze, before he released an exasperated sigh while shaking his head. Peering over Kennedy’s right shoulder, Kieran could see Patrick squinting around the room, trying to get accustomed to the dim lighting. Kieran had no doubt he had come looking for someone, and it wasn’t difficult to guess who.

  “Quick,” Kennedy hissed over his shoulder. “Kiss me.”

  “What? I am not fucking—”

  “Five hundred. I’ll give you an extra five hundred pounds. Please!”

  “Shit. Turn your face to me, then.”

  Kennedy turned halfway, while Kieran craned forward and closed the distance between them, crushing their lips together. When Kieran first leaned in, he expected the man’s lips to be firm, solid even, certainly not so soft and pliable. Before the thought had a chance to take hold, Kennedy opened his lips and…whoa. Moist warmth filled his mouth as their tongues collided, Kieran tasting the sweet cola and sharp bite of spirits in Kennedy’s mouth. Part of his brain knew they were faking, but the sudden contact fired up his synapses, tingling his nerve endings, stoking his heartbeat and reaching all the way down to his groin. Within seconds he was no longer pretending, but throwing himself into the kiss, hungry after days of zero physical contact, his body on sexual autopilot. When he tilted his head to take in more of Kennedy’s mouth, the man beneath him rumbled with pleasure, the most simple yet carnal of sounds, which set Kieran’s blood hammering through his veins and his erection straining against his shorts, nudging Kennedy’s back. He barely heard the angry voice growing louder and repeating over and over, the same mantra that kept pace with the blood pounding through his brain—Ken, Ken, Ken.

  “Ken! For fuck’s sake!”

  Kennedy pulled his face away and, for a split second, stared aghast at Kieran before slowly turning his attention to the voice.

  “I have no idea what game you’re trying to play,” said Patrick, towering over them, his hands on his hips, “but you’re not fooling anyone.”

  Kieran could see the anger in Patrick’s face but barely acknowledged the words coming out of his mouth. Thoughts of the kiss and his reaction to the encounter still shimmered through his slowly calming body, confusing the hell out of him.

  “We need to talk. But not in front of that,” said Patrick, nodding at Kieran. Finally, his conscious mind and his body began to coalesce, his annoyance sharpening at this man who had just reduced him to something inanimate.

  “You want me to stay?” Kieran whispered into Kennedy’s ear.

  Kennedy said nothing, continuing to stare up at the man.

  “No, he wants you gone, you little prick. Go up on deck and play with the other children. Leave the grown-ups to talk grown-up things.”

  “Kennedy?” asked Kieran, a little louder.

  Still no reaction.

  “Don’t you know when to take a hint, kid? Just get the fuck away and leave us alone, will you?”

  “Kennedy!” barked Kieran, angry now, shaking Kennedy’s shoulder and startling him out of whatever reverie had taken him.

  “Go back to the cabin,” said Kennedy, his voice soft and odd. Then over his shoulder, “Please. I’ll come and join you soon.”

  When Kieran peered up, Patrick stood leaning back slightly with his arms folded, a smug grin on his face. Cold anger and embarrassment swept through Kieran as he struggled to his feet. Standing still for a moment, staring at the top of Kennedy’s head, he had been about to fire back something caustic at Patrick. But what was the point?

  He’d been dismissed.

  Instead, he turned around and headed out of the door without a backwards glance.

  Enough already.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kennedy

  The sudden loss of warmth from Kieran’s body took Kennedy by surprise. During the kiss—from a supposedly straight man, no less—something strange had happened inside him. A simple truth had come to light, something that had been so obvious, so fundamental, that he had been blind to it all these years.

  “We need to talk,” came the voice of his ex-lover. />
  Nine years, to be precise. He had spent nine years of his life with the man in front of him. Pretty much all of his thirties. And in all that time, they had never been in love. Not really, if they were both going to be honest. Maybe they had loved each other once, in a brotherly kind of way. Kennedy had provided a financial security blanket while Patrick had brought domesticity and continuity. But they’d been nothing more than a partnership of convenience.

  “Kennedy! Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, Patrick,” he replied calmly, peering up at Patrick instead of looking through him. No doubt about it, his ex still looked good—a little heavier of frame perhaps, but still handsome and in good shape. Over Patrick’s shoulder, he noticed Joey rush into the bar, but on seeing them together, he moved to one side of the room, a few metres away.

  “First of all, what’s with snogging the rent boy? Was that show put on just for me?”

  “Okay, enough, Patrick. Let’s put a few things straight, shall we?”

  “Straight? Fine. Let me start. In case you didn’t know, your boy’s got a girlfriend back in England.”

  “Yes, I know he had a girlfriend. Just like you and I had girlfriends back in university.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? Just like the last one, this little cocksucker moron’s taking you for a ride—”

  “No!” said Kennedy, standing and meeting Patrick’s gaze. “You do not get to slag off Kieran! Have a pop at me all you want, but leave Kieran alone. He’s been nothing short of heroic for standing by me and putting up with this whole stupid charade. Yes, Richmond told me in no uncertain terms what everyone thinks of me, but Kieran deserves none of it. Only one man on this ship has defended me through all of this, and that’s Kieran.”

  “Yeah, because you’re paying him to.”

  “Not true. I’m paying him to be a companion, not a defender. The lot of you managed to turn Ewan against me last year, and I was paying him, too. But unlike the rest of you evil bastards, Kieran has a good heart. And he’s the first person who has ever got me. Understands why I do what I do, what I’ve achieved despite everything and everyone. Someone who sees the things I’ve accomplished without being jealous or judgmental.”

  “Like me, you mean?”

  “If we’re going for honesty, then, yes.”

  “Fucking unbelievable,” Patrick spat out, turning his head away. “Still reinventing history much? You always did put your work before us. Never put any time aside for me. You alone were the one responsible for ruining us.”

  “No. It takes two, Patrick. I admit I spent a lot of time getting one deal after another off the ground. I was single-handedly trying to salvage my uncle’s company from going under. You knew that. But you never gave me any encouragement or support. All you ever did was either whine endlessly or nit-pick everything I did, especially when I got home dog tired. Berating me for where I dropped my jacket, or if I slept the night on the sofa, or what channel I watched on the television. You made life in that house unbearable. And now Richmond tells me you thought I was cheating on you all that time, while I was away at weekends working my ass off. That is not only untrue, but monumentally unfair and, frankly, unforgivable. You know what? The day you stormed out, I felt as though I could finally breathe again.”

  Patrick stood unspeaking then, but a change occurred in him. His eyes became teary, the revelation having clearly hit home. Kennedy didn’t want that. From the start, he had only wanted to clear the air, but not at the expense of hurting Patrick’s feelings. When he looked around, he noticed Joey had left.

  “It’s been five years, Pat. You need to let this go. For both our sakes.”

  Patrick unfolded his arms and thrust his hands into his pockets.

  “Richmond told me you’ve barely left the cabin the whole cruise,” said Kennedy. “Is that true?”

  Oddly enough, Patrick smiled at that comment.

  “Rich has a tendency to exaggerate. Of course we’ve left the room for meals. But Joey can be very demanding in the bedroom.”

  Kennedy’s spluttered laughter, which had Patrick chuckling too, finally dissolved any remaining tension between them.

  “We’re never getting back together, are we?” asked Patrick, as though he already knew the answer.

  Kennedy smiled sadly and shook his head very gently.

  “Joey’s nice, Pat. And he clearly worships you. You two suit each other.”

  “He’s young, and messy. And a bit of a scatterbrain where finances are concerned.”

  “Which is why he needs someone like you.”

  * * * *

  Kennedy passed only a handful of fellow passengers on his way back to the cabin, everyone else undoubtedly getting dressed up for the captain’s dinner that evening. When he reached the double doors, he took a deep breath before swiping his key card. Things had needed to be said—damage limitation—and he had let sleeping dogs lie with Patrick for far too long. Neither of them liked to apologise. Even so, trepidation unsettled his stomach now. He had meant what he’d said to Patrick, about Kieran being a decent guy. But Kennedy had forced that kiss on him and overstepped the boundaries he had set. If Kieran was pissed off at him, he had every right to be.

  Inside the room, lights blazed but nobody appeared to be there. When he walked into the bedroom, Kieran’s case sat open on top of the bed. Why was he packing? They weren’t due in Hong Kong for four days. Had Kennedy succeeded in scaring him away?

  “Kieran?” he called out.

  No answer.

  For the next thirty minutes, after checking with his friends, he searched all the places on the boat Kieran liked to hang out—the coffee shop, the bowling alley, the cinema. Eventually, he headed up onto the rain-glistening deck, where the bad weather had finally cleared, to the relaxing spot along the sea rail with the row of chairs and sun loungers.

  “Kieran?”

  The familiar figure pressed up against the deck railing made no sign of acknowledgment. Perhaps a slight movement of the head or a stiffening of the body, hard to tell in the dimness of twilight. There was most definitely an exhalation of smoke from a cigarette Kieran had been nursing. Just as Kennedy thought, the damage had been done, maybe too late to salvage anything—but he had to try. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward and joined the ‘Hate Kennedy’ party.

  Standing there companionably for a while, following Kieran’s gaze out to sea, he gathered the right words to say. On the horizon, the last vestiges of the day’s light tinted the sky, shimmering an orange and purple mélange across the tips of the waves. A couple of times Kennedy chanced a sidelong look, but Kieran kept his gaze trained on the ocean, taking an occasional puff from the cigarette.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Kennedy. “Did you know that twilight has three phases? Civil twilight is what we’re seeing now. Starts right after sunset, once the sun’s lost from view and drops to around six degrees below the horizon. The second is called nautical twilight, between six and twelve degrees, and the third is astronomical twilight, between twelve and eighteen. On a good day, like today, twilight is accompanied by a spectacular light show.”

  “So what’s dusk?”

  “Officially, dusk is the transition from the darkest phase of twilight, just before night kicks in.”

  “What is it about the human race that we have to categorise something as lovely and natural as sunset?” asked Kieran, still observing the horizon.

  “Twilight.”

  “Sunset. Twilight. What-the-fuck-ever.”

  “Back before television and the Internet,” explained Kennedy, “people had a lot of time to kill. Man had to do something with all those spare hours. Apart from reading, writing and masturbation.”

  A snort of laughter next to him gave Kennedy a tiny ray of hope.

  “What I asked of you earlier, in the club, was wrong. I panicked and I’m— I regret that. What I should have done was to grow some balls and deal with the situation on my own. A few years ago, actually. The way I’ve
had to all my life. If I made you uncomfortable, that was unintentional.”

  “Are you apologising?”

  “I don’t apologise, remember? Look, Kieran, we have another four days on the boat. I can’t do anything about that. But if you want, I can rearrange your flight so that you can fly back home from Hong Kong. I’ll still honour the deal. Make sure you get the full amount plus the additional money for the—umm—extra service I asked you to perform. You’ve been a trooper—I truly mean that—and you’ve put up with more shit than anyone else in your place would have done. More than I ever would have. And I respect you for that.”

  Kennedy fell silent then, hoping that Kieran would say something, anything.

  Nothing came.

  “And if you don’t want to come with me to the captain’s table dinner tonight, I’ll also understand—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” said Kieran, turning to him and stubbing out the remains of the cigarette on the sea rail. “What kind of message would that send to the assholes you used to call friends? Fuck that, I’m coming. And I’m bringing my best game.”

  “O-kay,” said Kennedy, a touch apprehensively. As a businessman, Kennedy had learned to deal with a fair amount of bravado in his time. Kieran’s fierce tone and somewhat veiled threat made him a little nervous.

  “But I’ll be getting changed in Steph and Laurie’s cabin,” continued Kieran. “Even though she’s still sick, Steph’s insisting on adjusting the length of my dress suit trousers and then pressing them. And Laurie’s going to give my hair a quick trim. So I’ll be coming with Laurie and I’ll see you there.”

  Kieran’s assertive tone appeared to leave no room for negotiation.

  “Understood,” said Kennedy, disappointment filling his stomach like concrete. Part of his enjoyment over the evenings on the cruise had been in getting dressed for dinner together, assessing each other’s choice of evening wear. “And will you be joining us for pre-dinner drinks?”

  “Might be a little late, but I’ll be there. Okay?”

  “Thank you. Are we good, then?”

  “We’re getting there, Kennedy. We’re getting there.”