Noah was already at the beach when I got there, sitting on a striped towel with a cooler bag, looking out at the ocean.
I want to be clear about Noah. He wasn’t my boyfriend. Not really. He was a struggling writer from Nassau who came into Dog-Eared every Thursday for an oat milk latte and wrote his manuscript. He had asked me four times before I said yes. He had been patient with me when I said I needed more time to make our relationship official, and that was six months ago. He had brought up the question of the identity of our relationship many times since then, but each time I wanted to take a step further with me, I’d pull myself two steps back.
This is how much Jason had messed me up. I knew that. But I also knew I was recovering from his betrayal. I knew that despite Noah’s lack of a plan in life, despite his habit of freaking out at the smallest of things, and despite the fact that he was thirty two years old and still shared an apartment with a roommate, I liked Noah. I was almost prepared to take our relationship to the next level, to call him my boyfriend and not just someone I liked and slept with.
But then Jason arrived and fucked up everything again.
I had told Noah briefly about being married once. He didn’t know any details, and hadn’t really asked me any either.
He was Noah, he was pleasant, he was good in bed, and that was enough.
For now.
I ran across the sand toward him. Behind me, at a distance I was acutely aware of, Jason was taking strides with his ridiculously long legs and was easily able to catch up with me at an unhurried pace without appearing to try.
“Stay back,” I called over my shoulder, without turning. “I mean it. Give us space.”
Noah stood when he saw me, smiling in that easy way of his, and I ran faster and let him pull me into a hug. His hands went to the small of my back, then on my ass, and he kissed me. I teased him with my tongue and his kiss got deeper and longer.
I was aware of exactly where Jason was standing.
When we broke apart, Noah looked over my shoulder.
“Who’s that?”
Jason was standing right behind me, arms crossed across his broad chest, eyes fixed on Noah. Completely expressionless. In his black t-shirt and with that professional expression on his face, he looked more like a bodyguard from a mafia movie and not a real estate mogul who was living in a tent on his ex-wife’s lawn. Which in some sense was true. He was nothing more than a bodyguard to me. He was here to “keep me safe”, and that’s about it. Our history should have nothing to do with this.
Noah was eyeing Jason and looked at me with a curious look on his face.
I took a deep breath. “Noah, this is Jason. He’s my… my…”
“Bodyguard.” Jason interrupted, as if he was reading my mind. “She has an active threat, and I’m here to give her protection against it.”
Noah’s face went through several expressions very quickly, and rested on a mix between dread and surprise. “A threat? Cam, what kind of threat?”
“I’ll explain later. The short version is that JasonthinksI have a threat. From the—” I paused. “The cartel.”
The color left Noah’s face with remarkable speed.
“Thecartel?” He looked at Jason again, then back at me, then at the open beach around us. Panic was pooling into his eyes. “Babe.Babe.We’re just — we’re just out here, anyone could see us, anyone could just—” he lowered his voice into a whisper “— shoot us.”
“No one is shooting at us, Noah.”
“How do you know that? How can you possibly know—” He was already reaching for his beach bag, his movements accelerating toward frantic. “Why else would a man who looks likethat—” he gestured at Jason with a sweeping motion that I found irritating, “—come all the way here to protect you? This is serious, Cam. This is serious and we should not be out in the open.”
I closed my eyes for two seconds.
This was Jason’s fault. All of it.
The entirely reasonable Saturday afternoon that had been derailed first by Jason following me around like a puppy and now by a grown man dismantling a beach picnic withunbelievable speed. A woman with a dog stopped to look at Noah with great curiosity.
Noah grabbed the cooler bag with one hand and my wrist with the other. “My roommate has his girlfriend over, we can’t go to mine. We’ll go to your home. Come on—”
“Noah—”
“Come on, comeon—”
I looked at Jason over Noah’s retreating shoulder.
