Toby didn’t respond except to rock with the motion of the boat, but when I darted a glance down, he swallowed hard. “You know, you missed the most important thing about your soul mate.”
“Did I?”
“You have to be sexually compatible.”
“Oh. Well, yeah. Obviously.” I frowned. “I mean, how could we not be?”
“Beale, angel.” Toby shook his head sadly. “There are lots and lots of ways to be sexually incompatible. As in lots. But like, most obviously… what if you don’t find him attractive?”
I scowled. “I will. He’ll be attractive because he’s my soul mate, not the other way around. I don’t have a lot of preconceived ideas about whether he’s tall or short, dark or fair, or any of that. “
Toby scowled. “How lovely, my precious unicorn. But here in reality land… I dare you to convince me you don’t want someone like that bartender with the nice ass everyone keeps mentioning.”
That was the second time he’d brought Silvio up since Rafe had mentioned him that morning, and I had to bite my lip to keep myself from pointing it out. Some people always wanted to be the center of attention. “Silvio does have a very nice ass,” I admitted.
“Better than mine?” He gave me an arch look and twisted in his seat to give me a visual, like I might have forgotten what his ass looked like or where he kept it.
I fixed my eyes on the water, a little turned on by his flirtation, but mostly amused. Somewhere in the course of the morning, I’d figured out that his forceful flirtation was more like a distraction—a deflection—when he felt vulnerable, so now it didn’t make me feel pressured, it almost made me feel… protective.
For all his world-weary attitude, Toby was naive enough to miss that the biggest part of what made him attractive had nothing to do with his ass and everything to do with the way he’d stuck up for me earlier, and the way he tried to listen when people talked, and the hilarious, dry-as-dust comebacks to almost everything.
I found myself saying, “You have a very nice ass also…”
I darted a glance at Toby, who seemed shocked for a second but decided to play it off. “Why thank you, dearest—”
“Just not quite as nice as his.”
Toby gasped and clasped a hand to the base of his throat. “Excuse you? What a thing for a man to say to his soul mate.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not my soul mate.”
“Not if you talk about this ass with such casual disregard, that’s for damn sure.” He slapped it lightly.
“So, now that you know way, way more than I’d rather have you know about me, what’s your deal? When you’re not getting into ‘circumstances’ and jetting down to Florida, what do you do?”
“Oh, the usual.” He waved a hand. “Work. Exercise. Skincare.”
“Right. Same. My skincare routine is intense. Do you have family?”
“Sure. Everyone comes from somewhere.”
“I guess you’re not close, then?” I persisted.
“I came out to my mom after a bad breakup freshman year of college, and she suggested my problem was in dating guys instead of girls. When she offered me religious pamphlets, I left town immediately and never came back, and they sure as hell didn’t come after me. So, no, you might say we’re not close.”
“Gotcha. So, what do you do for work?”
“Boring. Better topic: did you know Mase and I met back in college? Freshman year. He was my roommate.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. Was he being deliberately evasive? Had he missed the part where I said I was stubborn?
“Cool. So where do you work?”
“New York. Ever been?”
I shook my head. “Never been out of Florida. What kind of work?”
“This and that. Writing mostly. Never out of Florida! Wow. You know, I was gonna be in the Maldives this week? You’d like it there. Plenty of water. Birds, too.”
He almost, almost got me. But not quite. “Writing! That’s an interesting job. What do you write? Novels? Grants? Musicals?”
“Nothing you’ve ever read.” He snorted. “You’re not exactly my target audience.”
“Oh.” Well, then.
That put me in my place, didn’t it? Whatever he wrote was clearly way above my pay grade.
It felt like the sun had gone behind a cloud, and even the breeze off the water felt cold, which was silly, really—more than silly—when I thought about it. This was a guy I’d known for less than half a day. He’d said nice things, but in the end, was it really a shock that he’d established the same opinion about my intellect after spending a few hours with me that the rest of Whispering Key had after knowing me for decades?
“So how long until we reach this island?”
“A few minutes.” I pointed ahead of us. “That bit of land is Menucha.”
He turned to look at it, then glanced back at me. “It looks delightfully dry.” He grinned.
I gave him a clipped nod. “There’s actually a small dock on the northwest of the island where we can tie up, so you won’t have to get wet at all. If you grab the binoculars from my bag, you can probably see it.”
Toby frowned, probably because my jokey-ness had evaporated, but he opened my bag and removed my binoculars, looped the strap behind his neck, and set his sights on the island.
“The east side is…” I frowned as I noticed a boat in the distance getting steadily closer, and adjusted our course to make sure we passed them to starboard.
“Is?” Toby prompted.
“Full of mangroves,” I finished, watching the other craft. “What the hell is that guy doing?”
Toby lifted the binoculars. “Dancing. I’m guessing TikTok is involved. And there are a bunch of people in bikinis and board shorts. T-shirts suggest Sigma Alpha… something.” He grimaced. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Great. Once again, I adjusted the tiller and steered wide to avoid them.
“You know, I wasn’t kidding.”
I shifted my gaze back to Toby. “Yes, I know. It’s definitely five o’clock somewhere. Probably France. I understand how time zones work.” How dumb did he think I was?
He laughed shortly. “Not that. I mean, that you probably haven’t read anything I’ve written. It wasn’t a slam. Not to you, anyway. I don’t talk about work, Beale.” He hesitated. “I can’t, even if I wanted to, which I do not. I signed a nondisclosure agreement years ago.”
This was unexpected. “What do you write, man? Hateful political tirades?”
“No, darling. Nothing that terrible.”
“Is this the reason you had to leave New York?”
“No, I… No. That was a whole different—” He broke off as the thumping bass of the Venga bus song floated across the water, along with high-pitched squeals.
It seemed like no one on the party boat was paying attention to their heading or the location of any other boats in the water, because their current course and speed meant they’d collide with us in about a minute.
I cut the tiller sharply, setting us on a westerly course that would put us nearly parallel to the wake of the other boat, which was going to suck but would be infinitely better than a collision.