Page 29 of Ship Happens

“Oh, you brought cookies!” Jacob answered the door with a welcoming smile that’d caused Owen’s heart to skip a beat. “Thanks!”

“A welcome-to-the-city present.” Owen smiled right back, praying the expression came off more natural than nervous. Inside the apartment, a single lamp, air mattress, and desk with a MacBook were the only things that’d been unpacked and assembled. Everything else was still in boxes.

Despite Owen’s resistance to conversation with people he doesn’t know, Jacob talked enough for the both of them, telling Owen all about his drive across the country with the moving truck he’d rented, how amazing it’d been seeing all the sights, getting a flat tire in Texas and having to walk a mile to the nearest shop for a spare. He even pulled out his phone and showed Owen photos, including the one he took at Four Corners.

“It’s where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico all meet!” he’d said like he’d seen one of the Wonders of the World. Owen stared, wondering what Jacob wanted him to say, then saw the confusion on Jacob’s face, and maybe . . . disappointment? Like Jacob had been hoping for more.

The problem was that Owen did care. Jacob probably could’ve made anything interesting. But Owen had never been that great at small talk. It was one of the reasons he didn’t have that many friends in school; even when he’d gotten to college, finally out from under his parents’ thumb, when he had the freedom to actually have a social life, the bed in his dorm had seemed much more comforting.

“I’ve got a bed frame coming too,” Jacob said, catching Owen hovering in the doorway to the bedroom, staring at the air mattress.

Owen felt his cheeks flush from the boyish smile that Jacob gave him, so earnest and kind. As the night had continued, Jacob mostly talking at Owen, Owen had resigned himself to the idea that he’d blown his one and only shot at a good first impression. The one thing that his parents had taught him mattered the most in this world.

“Oh, okay?” Owen offered.

“I just . . . didn’t want you to think I’m one of those guys who sleeps on a mattress on the floor.”

“That would cause mold,” Owen replied flatly.

And Jacob laughed. Not at Owen; it was more like he was laughing at a joke that Owen hadn’t told. “Yeah.” Jacob smiled down at him. That was the first time Owen noticed his dimples. “It would.”

What a fool he’d been, silently crushing on Jacob from afar for so long, patiently waiting as Jacob reported in to Kaitlyn about the labs he’d applied to, praying that UCSF would accept his application.

And he’d completely fumbled his one chance to make a good impression.

Then, he’d found the box marked Books in big, bold, poorly written letters. “Where should these go?” Owen asked.

“Oh, yeah. Over there is good,” Jacob said, nodding to the corner near the desk. “My bookshelf isn’t coming for another week.”

Nodding wordlessly, Owen ripped open the tape with the box cutter and lifted the flaps. Right there, near the top of the box—covered by a thin sheet of bubble wrap and a bunch of Superman and Green Lantern comics—sat these expensive-looking leather-bound editions of books that Owen recognized in an instant.

Because he owned a set himself.

“You read The Chetek Archives?” Owen asked, plucking out a copy of the third book. Beautiful gold foil painted out the title, a symbol from the world’s magic system embossed on the front.

“Oh, yeah! I love those!” Jacob exclaimed, eyes shining.

“Me too!” Then, curiously, Owen could feel the smile on his face sink, resetting himself to normal.

Like he was afraid he might be too much.

That’s what his parents would say.

But Jacob didn’t skip a beat. “Okay, wait. We need to have a serious discussion here.” He dropped the box he’d been flattening onto the small pile of cardboard on the kitchen floor. “Have you finished them? I need to talk to someone about that ending.”

There’d been something so infectious about the way Jacob lit up, like he’d been waiting ages for someone to discuss these stories with. They spent the next three hours talking about the fantastical tale of the ancient city of Chetek, and the ensemble of characters who discover—over the course of the first big arc of the twelve-book series—that the city is actually alive and has been communicating with and influencing them to come together to fight an ancient celestial evil. The characters even start traveling to different planets toward the end of the series, which Owen agreed jumped the shark a little bit, and not just because Jacob said so.

Jacob showed Owen the original story he’d written for a TTRPG that used the books’ world as a basis, and Owen showed Jacob the fan art he’d done of the characters that’d been used on the series’ wiki.

That’d led to Jacob asking Owen about his drawings, which led to him asking about Owen’s tattooing, which led to Owen pulling up the hem of his T-shirt to show the patchwork of art that decorated his skin. All of the moving and lifting had caused a small flare-up in his arthritis, his wrists tinted an aching red that he tried his best not to feel self-conscious about. But Jacob didn’t even seem to notice. He’d been too enamored by the art that decorated Owen’s body.

When he felt the need to shift the attention away from himself, Owen asked Jacob about his work with squid.

“It’s actually cephalopods in general, but my interest is in squid.”

“What’s this?” Owen asked, pulling yet another book from a box he’d gotten back to unpacking, surrounded by even more comics and trade paperbacks.

“My thesis.” Jacob hovered over Owen’s shoulder as he flipped through it. “I worked in a lab in Japan and researched how climate change was affecting migration patterns of various species.”