Title: Life Underwater
Author: Matthew J. Metzger
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: October 22, 2018
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 55300
Genre: Contemporary, contemporary, academia, trans, non-binary, agender, asexual, interracial/intercultural, disability/phobia, family issues, #ownvoices
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Synopsis
Ashraf never thought he could fall in love. So when he falls hard and fast for marine biologist Jamie Singer, it’s a shock to the system—in more ways than one.
Even if he can wrap his head around what love is and how relationships work, Ashraf’s not sure this is viable. He’s hydrophobic. And Jamie’s entire world revolves around the sea. What’s the point of trying if so much of Jamie’s life is inaccessible to Ashraf?
But Ashraf has vastly underestimated the pull of loving Jamie. For the first time, he wants to face the water, rather than flee from it. He has underestimated the power of love in making people brave, stupid, or a little bit of both.
Maybe it’s time to take a leap—and sink or swim.
Real Life Romance
I spent the last night doing the proofs on Life Underwater with a song by Jason Robert Brown playing on loop in the background. It’s a song about brothers growing up, and there was a line that struck me as I tweaked apostrophes that had managed to turn themselves round. Listening to that song, I realised something.
I have this habit when I’m writing romance.
Someone reviewed one of my other books saying something along the lines of the couple in question didn’t work on paper, but were wonderful together in practice. And as I looked over my latest book, I realised I was doing it again. I was writing couples who shouldn’t work, but did.
Ashraf is the hero of Life Underwater, and on paper, he’s made a really dumb mistake. He’s fallen in love with someone that he simply shouldn’t be able to build a relationship with. Ashraf is an anthropology lecturer, a practising-if-sometimes-lax Muslim, teetotal, serious, staid, the kind of man who just radiates calm. He should teach meditation. And he’s fallen for Jamie.
Jamie, who puts modesty tape on their nipples so they can go dancing topless at their best friend’s gender reveal party.
These two people really should never have met, never mind fallen in love. And yet they are in love. Ashraf exudes it from every moment he’s in Jamie’s presence. And on paper, he shouldn’t be. He really, really shouldn’t be.
And yet—
As I wrote it (or rather, as the story just flowed out in a rush of emotion and typos), I found these characters fitting perhaps more than any I’d written before. They folded around each other in this warm, calm perfection. They didn’t fit, and they didn’t expect to fit.
Maybe that’s where it worked.
Ashraf took himself out of the way while Jamie’s friends came round; Jamie watched bad TV and waited for Ashraf to return from Friday prayers. They ignored each other as much as they adored each other. They poked fun at each other’s interests, but never quite their backgrounds. They didn’t need to know everything, or be there every waking moment.
And when Ashraf wanted to change, Jamie was there to help.
Ashraf has hydrophobia. And more than faith, more than sexuality, more than literally any other thing they don’t have in common, Ashraf feels it’s the hydrophobia that will drive them apart. Jamie is a diver. Jamie is studying marine biology. Jamie should, really, have been born a fish. And Ashraf can’t so much as see the sea without panicking.
Not religion. Not gender. Not sex. Water.
For all the things that don’t fit, it’s only one thing that could risk anything. And Jamie doesn’t even agree! They help because Ashraf asks them to, but they never quite agree that it’s the dealbreaker that Ashraf thinks it is. They simply help, because the man they love needs them to help.
Ironically, I think this is something we forget sometimes when we devour romance novels. We expect things to fit. We expect people to slot together like puzzle pieces and become the entire world for each other, with nobody and nothing else required.
But it doesn’t quite work like that in real life.
We don’t come along to relationships like newly-formed characters do. We have our jobs, our friends, our families. We have that one movie we love to the point our neighbours have never seen it but can quote every line. We leave the toothbrush in the sink. We do gross human stuff that’s always missing (and let’s be honest, sometimes rightly) from the stories.
We remember to write about awful mothers and evil ex-boyfriends and trauma. But we forget about having no common interest. We don’t remember that while some people were eyes meeting across a deserted library, just as many—if not more—were eyes meeting across the dance floor. With nothing more in common than a bit of booze, and a spark.
Sometimes people don’t fit in any way we can measure yet. And sometimes it still works. That’s life. That’s family, friendships, romances. That’s just how it is sometimes.
I have a thing for this. Can we maybe write a little more of it? The people who fit because of the feel in the room, or the tone in the pages, rather than their attributes on paper? The ones who work because they’re in love, not who are in love because they work?
The line in the song, by the way, was this.
“We have nothing much in common, but we are more or less the same.”
Life Underwater
Matthew J. Metzger © 2018
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
He was getting funny looks.
It was an airport. Of course he was. It didn’t matter that he was waiting at the arrivals gate, and he didn’t have a bag. Ashraf always got funny looks in airports.
For once, though, he didn’t care.
Because the flight from Sydney had clicked over to “arrived” nearly forty-five minutes ago. And Australian accents were starting to float out of the tunnel. His phone had already beeped in his pocket twice.
Jamie: Landed safe, see you soon, love you! xxx
Followed, not ten minutes later, by a second.
Jamie: Don’t go to mosque tonight? I want you all to myself. Please? xxx
Six weeks was almost over.
Mosque could definitely wait.
He saw Professor Hanley first, with his customary battered backpack and fresh-from-the-jungle look. The man was a walking biohazard, and ticked every one of the absent-minded professor stereotypes, from the shabby jacket with the patched elbows to the Einstein-after-electrocution haircut. At his elbow loped his research assistant, George, looking like he’d not slept for the whole trip. He probably hadn’t. And behind them, weighed down with souvenirs and suntans, their brand new PhD students, Meg and Jamie.
Ashraf began to smile.
The sight of Jamie, even after six weeks, was as familiar as though it had been six hours. That fluffy beanie hat. The strays of light-brown hair escaping around the edges. The spray of freckles that had eluded the sun cream. The small ears and sharp jaw, where Ashraf liked to trail his fingers down from shell to shoulder and feel the life underneath his touch. The bright, brilliant brown eyes that would dim shyly when he did.
That lit up like fireworks in the dark when their gazes met.
“Ashraf!”
The yell was like coming home. Warm. Wanted. Safe—even if the weight that smashed into his chest was anything but. Ashraf staggered, squeezing tight around skinny shoulders and trying to breathe past the scarf that smothered his face. Legs snaked around his thighs and clung too. He hadn’t had a four-limbed hug in six weeks, and he never wanted to put them down.
But he did.
If only to catch both arms around a lean back, and kiss them.
Fists clutched at the front of his jacket. That beautiful face turned up into his own. Feet pushed up into perfect ballet points, and Ashraf could have stayed right there, holding his entire world in the circle of his arms, holding that weight like it was nothing, forever.
Even if he wasn’t allowed.
The kiss was broken by a laugh, a nose rubbing against his own, and the brightest eyes in the world.
“Welcome home, Jamie.”
“Missed you,” Jamie enthused and wriggled against his chest as though hugging, without actually putting their arms around him. “What are you doing here? I was all set to surprise you at work!”
“I win,” Ashraf said simply and squeezed. Jamie squeaked, coming up off their feet entirely. “I borrowed Tariq’s car.”
“Oh my God!”
“So do you need to go back with the others, or…”
“Or,” Jamie said firmly and bounced up on the balls of their feet again to deliver a short, sharp kiss. “Let me just say goodbye. Stay right there. Right there!”
Ashraf obeyed. He couldn’t stop smiling. He was getting funny looks again, but for an entirely different reason. Six weeks had been hard—but harder than he’d realised when Jamie smiled like that. Missing them had turned into a sharp, awful pain just with that one smile, and Ashraf didn’t even like the ten feet that parted them as Jamie ricocheted around the others, collecting hugs from Meg and the professor, and pompously shaking George’s hand before dragging him into a hug too.
So when they came back, still wearing their entire personality on their face, Ashraf reeled them in by the jacket and locked his arms around the small of their back.
“Hello,” Jamie whispered against his mouth.
Ashraf silenced them, but only briefly before the laugh spoiled it, and Jamie was nuzzling his cheek.
“You’ve not shaved.”
So?
“I like the bearded look. Very professorial.”
Good.
“Bet Tariq doesn’t know you borrowed the car to pick me up.”
Nope.
“Bet he’d be pretty upset to get sin all over it too.”
Probably.
“Want to get sin all over it?”
“Yes.”
A smile creased against his cheek, and teeth gnawed lightly on his jaw before the warmth, the weight, the wonder, pulled away. The loss was staggering. Painful. Too soon.
“Come on,” Jamie said. “Take me home in style.”
Ashraf slid their fingers together and decided to take the scenic route.
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Matthew J. Metzger is an ace, trans author posing as a functional human being in the wilds of Yorkshire, England. Although mainly a writer of contemporary, working-class romance, he also strays into fantasy when the mood strikes. Whatever the genre, the focus is inevitably on queer characters and their relationships, be they familial, platonic, sexual, or romantic.
When not crunching numbers at his day job, or writing books by night, Matthew can be found tweeting from the gym, being used as a pillow by his cat, or trying to keep his website in some semblance of order.
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