Drifting by J Calamy
Book 1 in the Diving In series
General Release Date: 12st June 2022
Word Count: 45,970
Book Length: SHORT NOVEL
Pages: 188
Genres:
CONTEMPORARY,EROTIC ROMANCE,GAY,GLBTQI
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Book Description
Two men starting over, and the discovery that could shatter their worlds.
Artist and antiquities expert Cole Hadley is in a good place. Assistant Cultural Attaché to the US Embassy, Cairo, he’s over his divorce, rebuilding his confidence after years of fat-shaming and misery and checking off the first of his bucket-list items, SCUBA diving in the Red Sea.
Hank Ashton, bearded, built, the best—and meanest—divemaster on the Sea, is stranded in the dying town of Al’Shahin. He owes a local gangster a pile of money and is stuck teaching basic classes at a failing hotel to pay the debt, the dream of his own dive shop slipping further away every year.
Cole’s joy and wonder at Hank’s world cracks his carefully constructed shell, forcing him to realize how lucky he is. In turn, Hank’s lust for Cole’s body and care for his happiness go miles toward healing Cole’s bruised heart. Their shared passion for the marvels of the undersea world spills over into a sizzling affair…one they both know has an expiration date.
Until, in exploring the sea, they make the discovery of the century, one that could change both their lives. But their very different plans reveal just how little they know each other. Cole and Hank have to decide exactly what’s important to them and be brave enough to get it, if they’re to have any hope of resurfacing together.
Reader advisory: This book contains mentions of bullying including fat-shaming and homophobia, as well as reference to gangster activities.
Cole held very still. The washes of anger and shame were as familiar as the rising and setting of the sun. He had learned, the hard way, to let them slosh around, making him hot and cold by turn, his emotions scattering everywhere. What was important was the here and now, and letting those feelings just pass on through so he could get on with his life. His new life.
He was not letting things like this run him sideways anymore. Especially from a handful of Tel Aviv kids who have never met me in their lives. I’m an adult with my own life. A new amazing life. I’m the Deputy Cultural Attaché with the US State Department, no fucking less.
Hank was back. Gorgeous, muscular, slab-of-granite Hank, with his fake smile and his real scowl and his awful tattoos and shaved head and hot Dad beard. The divemaster looked Cole up and down from behind his shades, drumming his wide, scarred fingers on the counter.
“Are you serious?” he asked. Cole’s back stiffened. There were slights he could ignore, but he was well past his limits and getting insulted by some pile of bricks was not happening on this day. Not this year. Not this Cole.
“Excuse me?” he snapped, channeling his best staff meeting voice. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“About diving?” Hank asked, jerking off the shades. “I mean are you serious about diving. Is this just curiosity or—?”
“Oh!” Cole shook out his shoulders, loosened his death grip on the counter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. Yes. I am very serious. This is bucket list for me and…” He paused, considering what to say. Hank’s face was still closed off but something in his eyes made Cole reconsider.
“I’m an artist,” he blurted. “And the ocean has always been really important to me. I’m from the eastern shore. Grew up in the water.”
Hank’s demeanor changed. It changed right in front of Cole’s gaze. A slow smile lit his entire face, his teeth flashing in the dim light. He has such pretty hazel eyes for an angry bastard. I feel like they should be ice blue or some cliché. Too warm for his personality. The change was clear—some part of what Cole had said made Hank happy. Happy in a way he had not been until this moment.
“Can I talk you into private lessons?” Hank asked. The counter creaked alarmingly under his forward lean.
“Why?” This pile of bricks had gone from mean guy to eager excitement in a flash. Cole leaned back. “I just need my open water dives.”
“Do you really want to learn with them?” Hank said, shooting a glance the way the university kids had gone. “They are not serious. They don’t give two fucks about anything.”
“You don’t know that about them,” Cole said, wagging a finger. He leaned forward gingerly, drawn in by Hank’s excitement. The counter creaked the other way.
“True. But they’re kids,” Hank said, rolling his eyes. “Kids who might figure out what they are serious about eventually, but not this week. Not in this class.”
“Hey, go easy on the kids. We were all young and clueless, once.” Cole wasn’t sure why he was defending them, but it was true. He was glad he did when Hank rested his chin on his hand, head tilted like a Labrador. It felt good, to have someone’s complete attention this way.
“You ain’t even mad?”
“Nah. I have a whole life, a world I love. Who are they? Just random strangers. I bet you ten bucks we’d be best friends by the end of the first day. But why private lessons?”
“If it’s about the money—”
“No.” Cole laughed, considering his stuffed bank account. The account of a man whose only hobbies were books and pottery, a man who ate street food and bought street art and didn’t bother with expensive clothes or anything else. Someone who hasn’t taken a day off in two years. He had enough per diem socked away to splurge a little. And if the sexy divemaster turned out to be a genuine asshole, Cole would just cancel. The group chat he shared with his best friends from the State Department would be hysterical all the same. Laura and Elia would love this.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s give it a shot.”
“Good.”
The moment drew out again, excitement warm and fluttering in Cole’s belly. It’s going to happen. I am getting my open water certification. I’ll be a certified diver. And I’m doing my open water in one of the most famous coral reef systems in the world.
“Hank!” The voice made them both jump. A tall thin man in a matching polo came out of a back office with some papers. He bustled over, smiling widely to Cole.
“Welcome, sir!” he said. “I can take it from here. Hank, why don’t you go home?”
Hank’s demeanor changed again. Big as he was, he hunched down over Cole’s paperwork, looked uneasy for a flash, then his face closed into the scowl Cole now recognized as his default.
“I’m signing this guest up for lessons,” he said. “Then I’ll go.”
There was a brief contest of wills, but Hank simply turned his back and began typing rapidly at the computer. Cole made himself busy on his phone, since staring at Hank’s back, stretching his tight polo, seemed unwise in front of his boss? It has to be his boss.
“Be here at seven. We’ll get you geared up then head to the pool,” Hank said over his shoulder.
“So early?”
“I am sure we can accommodate—” the other man said, but Hank shook his head, his shoulders set in a stubborn bunch.
“Seven. That way you won’t lose the rest of your day. There are some good tours…” He trailed off, shooting a glance at his boss.
Cole felt like he was watching mental tennis. The boss with his plastered smile covering his frustration, and Hank looking more and more like a boulder, unmovable, arms crossed, feet up on the rungs of the stool. Cole lost it. He burst out laughing, startling both men into looking at him.
“I’ll be here at seven,” he said. “See you then.”
After a slow circuit of the property, and a leisurely snorkel around the deserted pier, Cole decided to order some room service and call his friends. Hank the hunk. Or Hank the Grump King, however Cole was calling him, filled his thoughts in a way that needed some ground-truthing. And for that he needed his friends. He looked at the clock by his bedside and did some quick math, wondering if both Laura, who was in DC, and Elia, currently in Myanmar, could be on at the same time. Barely.
A few chirping dial tones later and the split screen on his laptop showed his two best friends from State, their voices ventriloquist strange with the delay.
“Cole, where are you?” Laura’s face swung close to the camera, her curls flopping over her eyes. She was in bed, the glow of her phone casting a blue circle of light on her face.
“I’m on leave in a town called Al’Shahin and it’s hot as hell here,” Cole said, fighting the urge to shout, like that would help them hear him.
“I’m so jealous! It’s cold as heck here!”
“It’s hotter than Cairo but the air is clean,” Cole said.
Elia’s internet caught up, and she shouted right over them, her image wobbling as she walked. Her black hair was in a bun on her head, held by a pen, and her heels click-clacked on tile. “Cole, I saw your article!” she said. “Are the Brits furious?”
“What article?” Laura asked. “And where are you at this hour?”
“I wrote a policy paper on how the Brits need to give back the stuff they stole from Egypt,” Cole said, letting his pride show through. “And it got into the papers.”
Both women on the screen gave thumbs-up.
“I’m just getting into the office,” Elia said. “Ambassador Jenks was smug as hell—added it to all the weekly highlights briefs! It got picked up by The Times! The antiquities director at Smithsonian is furious with you.”
“I don’t work for him anymore,” Cole said with a shrug. “He kept me in the sub-basement for a reason. But Ambassador Jenks pushed me to publish, so fuck Smithsonian.”
“I’m proud of you,” Laura said with a yawn. “You put up with so much there.”
“How is the Red Sea?” Elia asked.
“Hot!” Cole fell forward onto his bed, propped on his elbows “Hotter than a hot place in a hot season with the heat on hot. But it’s beautiful. You know what? I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think I’ll be painting again. There’s a really active artist community here. I am going into town for dinner and see if I can meet some artists. Not just for work this time.”
“That would be pure triumph!”
“But there is a problem,” Cole said. “I signed up for dive lessons to get my cert.”
“You can finally join me!” Laura said, rolling sideways in a nest of pillows.
“And the divemaster is like a wall,” Cole continued.
Both women had the same reaction, hands thrown up and groans of laughter.
“He is like a giant brick wall man.”
“And we were doing so well,” Elia said, stirring her coffee.
Laura sat up and pulled the blankets around her. “I approve,” she said. “Please go hit that wall, Cole. You have all of my blessings.”
“Like a wrecking ball,” Elia muttered.
“Nah—he’s hot, but kind of an ass,” Cole said. “He was yelling at his students and he has that perma-scowl.”
Laura was not impressed. “Eff his personality. What you need is some D. I wouldn’t say you’ve been in a rut but…”
“She speaks truth, tragically,” Elia said.
Cole gave a mock gasp, clutching imaginary pearls. “How dare you,” he said. “First of all, I am here to improve myself.”
“Growth,” Elia agreed.
“I don’t need a brick wall man who doesn’t smile and wears a wetsuit for work.”
“Cole does not and will not!” Elia said, redoing her bun.
“Well of course you don’t need him,” Laura said. “But I’m not talking about a relationship. Just a little sword fighting, A little parry, a little thrust… I feel like that would be a great improvement.”
Cole couldn’t deny that much. When was the last time I got laid? Back in DC, right before I left. That guy from Fifth Column.
“I hate when she has a point and makes it,” Elia said.
Laura shrugged, holding out her hands like it was her burden to be right. Which it was.
Cole groaned, shaking his head. “That is not the improvement my bullet journal demands,” he said. “I’m supposed to be working on my inner peace, not his inner piece.”
This brilliant play on words was met with silence. “I made a joke! Jot that down, bitches.”
“You should be jotting down your dive instructor’s personal information,” Laura said.
Elia’s screen went blank for a moment, though Cole could still hear her tapping away. When she re-appeared, an image of Hank popped up in the text chat.
“I’m on the website. Is this him?”
“In all his glory. I guess he really is that hot,” Cole sighed. Damn it all, there was no escaping it. Hank in aviators at the helm of a boat, all chiseled jaw and bad tattoos…
“Oh my God,” Laura said. “Okay, well now you have to fuck him. For all of us.”
“On behalf of the American people,” Elia agreed.
“A public service,” Elia said. “You are a public servant, after all.”
Cole gave them a mock salute. “He offered private lessons, and I said yes.” He paused a moment. “That sounds bad. I realize now that sounds bad.”
“It sure does,” Laura said. “I’m so proud.”
“Well, it isn’t as bad as it sounds,” Cole said. “I think the younger students just irritate him. No funny business. I am improving myself.”
“We are proud of you,” Elia said. “Suspicious, but proud. I have to go do some real work now. Until later, bitches, and send us photos!”
“I’m out too. I’m heading into town tonight,” Cole said. “There are some sculptors here that work with alabaster. If I meet them, I’ll send you some shots of their work.”
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J Calamy
J Calamy is a queer, disabled veteran and foreign service wonk who spends a good part of the year bouncing down dirt roads in the back of range rovers with men with guns. Coffee, romance novels, and embassy scuttlebutt are her last remaining vices.
Check out J Calamy’s website here.
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