Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,29

working lately anyway, but now there was no more wondering if he might score a few hours here or there.

The Navy locked us down hard. No traveling beyond fifty miles. No going to bars, restaurants, or anywhere non-essential. We couldn’t even get haircuts. When the Navy waived haircut regulations and forbid us from going to the barber shop, shit was getting real.

And it was getting real. Too real, too fast, but at the same time, nothing really felt different when I went out except there weren’t so many cars on the road, and a lot of parking lots were deserted. Otherwise, I still went to work, did my job, and came home to the man I would have preferred not to be around at all but couldn’t avoid because no good deed went unpunished.

Tristan and I had been getting along all right, but that didn’t mean things were easy or that I wanted to be there. We were just going out of our way to be polite, which actually made the tension worse. It was like being deployed with someone I couldn’t stand, except now I was walking on eggshells in my own home. Ugh.

Shame Tinder wasn’t an option anymore. Especially since the more I time I spent at home with Tristan, the more I wanted what Tinder had to offer, and not just for the usual reasons. Being stuck at home with him meant seeing him a lot more. Lounging on the couch in a skintight Under Armour shirt. Wandering around in gym shorts and nothing else. In snug jeans and nothing else. It really wasn’t fair to be living with a man that good-looking—a gay man, no less—and not to be able to touch him. Or go touch someone else while thinking of him. Because after a few days on lockdown with Tristan, he would’ve been the man I was thinking of while I was with someone else, which meant I was clearly losing my ever-loving mind.

At least I was working today.

At the other desk in the guard shack, MA2 Colby groaned, popping open her third Monster energy drink of the day. “Oh my God, this lockdown shit sucks.” She lowered her mask, took a swig, then gestured with the can and damn near unloaded it all over the camera monitors. “Like, I love living alone, and I stay home most of the time anyway, but I like having the option of going places or seeing people.”

“I know, right?”

“At least you’re not stuck by yourself,” she muttered. “I mean, even if you guys are still…” She paused. “How are things with him? With everything going on?”

I sighed, fussing with my own mask. “Everything going on hasn’t helped, that’s for sure.”

“Has he had any luck finding a job?”

“Right now? Pfft. He’s been looking around for something he can do online, but…” I shook my head.

“Ugh. That sucks.”

I grunted in agreement but didn’t say anything. And damn it, I wished I could say something. I wished there was someone I could confess to about why I’d married Tristan so I could talk about the real reasons I’d been fucking miserable before the pandemic had taken away almost every escape we had from each other.

It helped that I could vent to Colby a little about the tension between me and him, but I couldn’t tell her everything. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Not without basically announcing that we had a fake marriage for the express purpose of exploiting military benefits. And yes, there was a part of me that felt dirty about that, but the Navy had done Tristan dirty, so that mostly appeased my conscience. I couldn’t think of anyone who I could trust with the information who wouldn’t also judge the shit out of me for it. I’d never even get to the part where the pandemic had come into play because I’d be too busy defending the arrangement until the end of time.

Maybe that should have told me something, but it wasn’t like I could course correct now.

Movement outside turned my head. A car was pulling up to the gate, and I quickly recognized it as Chief’s car.

I got up and double-checked my mask was still secure, mostly so he didn’t bitch at me about it. He didn’t even believe in the masks, but in between telling us all the reasons they were useless, harmful, and/or a coup on our civil rights, he’d give us a hard time if we weren’t wearing them according to Navy