Freedom to Me

Excerpt

Freedom to Me
Sidney Quinn © 2026
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

“Come on then, Brixton. It’s just up this way.”

Felix Brixton, recent arrival from London to the Californian seaside town of Carino Bay, followed a few steps behind his old school friend, Nicholas Sommers.

Well, friend was a mischaracterization. Nicholas and Felix had attended the same boarding school where Nicholas had been one of his most prolific and cruel bullies. As they traveled in the same high-society circles, they’d had cordial relations once they reached adulthood. He was the only person Felix knew in the entire state of California. Besides, going to a house party at a posh beach house seemed an ideal way to meet the local community.

“All right, Nicholas, all right. I’m coming.”

Felix’s stylish boat shoes didn’t handle the sandy pathway well. They could have taken the neat boardwalk up to the two-level house, but Nicholas, ever impatient, led them on the most direct route. Nothing about the way Felix was dressed—or the way he was as a human—was built for anything like rough terrain.

Felix was the absolute picture of a flamboyant English gentleman. Though not particularly tall, he was reasonably fit, well-proportioned, and well-suited for the high-end and colorful clothing he favored. His impressive coif of hair was not naturally blond, but the color suited him. It was, in fact, a very expensive dye job that blended ash-brown roots into cornsilk blond, which had the knock-on effect of hiding any gray hairs threatening to make their presence known. He was reasonably handsome, in a quirky, offbeat sort of way, with high expressive eyebrows and blue eyes set just a little bit too far apart.

He was the kind of man who was easy to remember and easy to pick out in a crowd, for better or for worse.

Nicholas Sommers, shorter, broader, with mouse-brown hair and prematurely balding, stood in sharp contrast to Felix. If Felix was the quintessential British gentleman, Nicholas was the banker or parliamentarian. He’d been handsome in his youth, but midlife had bitten him hard and fast. He looked closer to his fifties, even though both of them were in their early forties.

By the time they made it up to the stone walkway, sand caked Felix’s white linen pants around the cuffs. He paused to try to brush them off and empty his shoes.

“Get a move on,” said Nicholas in an impatient tone. “We’re already late as it is.”

Felix carried his shoes up the back porch, tapped the sand out of them, and popped them back on. He followed Nicholas into the packed party full of well-dressed people. A woman in a cocktail dress stepped past him, dropped something into one of the bowls at the table, and scooped up a name tag.

Nicholas grabbed Felix’s hand and dragged him over to the table. “Here. Give me your keys. Write your name on a sticker and stick it on the back. Oh, and wear a name tag.”

“Is this some kind of…don’t drink and drive thing? Because I wasn’t planning on having more than a drink or two, and it’s not that far of a walk if I…”

“Just do it, Brixton. Don’t be such a killjoy.” Nicholas grabbed the keys that Felix was holding, wrote his name on a sticker, and took a minute to examine the six different bowls sitting on the table.

Each was a different color, and each held different quantities of keys.

Nicholas looked him over with a sneering, cruel-edged expression Felix recognized from dozens of childhood pranks and dropped his keys into a baby-blue bowl. He pressed the adhesive name tag on the chest of Felix’s tailored pink flamingo button-up, smirked, and nodded toward the bar. “Let’s get a drink, ay?”

Nicholas’s interest in Felix vanished about ten minutes after they had their first drink. “Stay here. Mingle. I’ve got some people to say hello to.” He disappeared into the crowd, toward a cluster of well-dressed people in their thirties and forties.

Nicholas never came back. But Felix did spot the occasional glance and snickering look cast his way.

It was not lost on him that Nicholas wasn’t wearing a name tag, nor had he dropped his keys in a bowl. Roughly half the people at the party of various genders had name tags on, while the other half didn’t.

Felix sipped his drink of rum and pineapple juice and squeezed himself into a corner. He was usually an outgoing and personable man, but something about Nicholas turned him into a scared, bullied child again. He thought about leaving, but he didn’t want to earn a reputation as a killjoy days after arriving in town.

A moment later, Felix lost sight of Nicholas altogether. Some of the keys began disappearing from the bowls, and the party seemed to be thinning out. He looked down at his watch and sighed. “I should’ve known better.” He shot back the rest of his drink and moved back to the bowl that contained his keys.

Felix pawed around in it for a moment, but he couldn’t find his keys.

“The Jolly Rover, I presume?” came a voice from behind him.

Felix turned to find a tall, handsome man with rich brown skin made deeper and warmer by the sun, and dreadlocks that would have skimmed his shoulders if most of the locs hadn’t been pulled up into a high ponytail. Monochrome tattoos covered his arms, some of sea life, some of patterns and symbols Felix couldn’t place. A silver barbell pierced one of his eyebrows, and he wore silver hoops in both ears. His clothing—a black, loose-cropped tank top and dark-wash skinny jeans with a chain belt—had a biker edge to it. He looked to be either Felix’s age, or perhaps slightly younger.

“P-pardon?” Felix stammered. Something about the stranger was instantly magnetic, even though he and Felix couldn’t be more different in style and color palette.

The new arrival held up his keys and displayed the keychain, which read Jolly Rover Tours. He flipped it over, eyed Felix’s name tag, and then the sticker with the name written on the back. “Felix?”

“Yes, I am. Ah, I was looking for those…” Felix reached out for his keys.

The stranger caught Felix’s hand and shook it firmly as he made eye contact. “I’m Jay. Pleased to meet you. Would you like to have some fun?”

“I’m not sure what you mean?” asked Felix. He’d noticed that people all around the room had started to pair off or, in some cases, group in trios, and filter to the stairs or toward their cars. Not everyone did so, but the party was certainly less populated than when he’d arrived.

Slowly, everything clicked into place. Felix turned pink and swallowed, and his eyes got big. He leaned into Jay and whispered. “Is this…is this a key party? I didn’t know people actually did those.”

Jay grinned and shrugged, wobbling a little. “Well, yeah. Dinah has these once a… Hold on. Who brought you?”

“Ah, an old schoolmate of mine. Nicholas Sommers?”

Jay snorted. “That guy’s a dick. No offense.” He held up a hand.

“Oh, none taken. Especially since this all seems to have been a hilarious joke on me to trick me into coming to a sex party.” Felix sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s all a misunderstanding. He dragged me here and made me throw my keys in the bowl. I honestly didn’t know what I was in for.”

Jay tapped the keychain against his palm and considered it. He leaned in. “Listen. I think we can help each other out. There’s no one left that I wanna go home with. That dick, Sommers, will think he’s won if you leave alone. So why don’t we…go for a walk or something? And then, when no one’s looking, go our separate ways?”

Felix took a moment to hold Jay’s gaze. He had warm, kind brown eyes. There was something about him, despite the biker edge, that made Felix feel comfortable and at ease. “All right,” he murmured. “Can we steal a drink for the walk?”

*****

The moon was high and full as the two men walked back toward town on the dark boardwalk along the beach.

“So. What brings you to California?” Jay asked after taking a pull from the bottle of rum they’d nicked from the bar. He passed it over to Felix. “Or are you just new to Carino Bay?”

“Ah, new to the States. I’m originally from London,” said Felix as he took the bottle. He wasn’t very good at drinking straight alcohol, but he took a swig anyway, coughing as it burned on the way down. “I—” He coughed. “—I always wanted to own a tall ship. And one day I decided, ‘If not now, when?’”

Jay pulled Felix’s keys out of his pocket and read the keychain again. “Hence…Jolly Rover Tours?”

“Yes! I bought the tall ship docked in the harbor. The Freedom. My plan is to fix her up and do harbor tours and events, charters—that kind of thing.”

“I know that ship,” Jay rumbled. “She’s been for sale for a few years now. Didn’t realize she’d been sold.”

Felix got the sense there was something he wasn’t telling him, but he didn’t know Jay well enough to push. “The paperwork went through two days ago. The next step is to hire some workmen and a crew. And get the branding sorted.”

“It’s a tough business. I wish you luck with it.” Jay took the bottle from Felix and swallowed a mouthful.

“What about you? Lived here long?”

Jay shrugged. “My family came here from Miami when I was a teenager. I spent a couple of years here, then returned to live with my aunt and go to school. Then I traveled around a bit, including visiting my mom’s side of the family in the Dominican who I hadn’t met. But my mom was still here, so I found my way back. Been here, oh—” He hissed a breath. “—ten years now?”

“Ah, well, I’m fresh off the boat. Er, plane. Just got over the jet lag,” said Felix cheerfully.

By that point, they’d reached the main street of the town. The shape of the Freedom was up ahead, docked at the small pier. She was a beautiful old wooden barque, a type of tall ship with square sails and three masts. With the sun setting behind her and her sails unfurled, she looked every inch a pirate ship or something out of Horatio Hornblower.

Everything about the Freedom promised adventure and spoke of history. Just looking at it made Felix’s romantic heart happy.

Most of the town was asleep. The only lights in the immediate area were a few dots from houses amongst the palm trees and in the high-rise a half a block away. “Well, this is me.” Felix nodded to a seaside condo building.

“Me as well,” said Jay as he pointed to the bar down the street. The neon sign above it was dark, but Felix knew that it read Wreckers Roadhouse. A light glowed inside even though the parking lot was empty.

“You work at Wreckers?”

Jay tilted his head and grinned. “I guess you could say that.” He held out Felix’s keys. “Nice to meet you, Felix. Come by the bar for a drink sometime, yeah?”

Felix reached for the keys, their fingers brushing gently as he did. “I’ll do that.”

Jay turned his hand over and gripped Felix’s fingers briefly. They held each other’s gaze for a lingering moment.

As their eyes met, Felix’s skin tingled, and his cheeks flushed. He was grateful for the low light which hid the pinkening of his cheeks from Jay.

“Night,” Jay murmured and swaggered up the boardwalk, swigging the last of the rum before he dropped the bottle in a nearby bin.

Felix watched him go and smiled to himself. He touched his cheek with the back of his hand. It was warm. He cleared his throat, flicked his fingers, then swiveled on the spot to head to his building.

It seemed the evening hadn’t been a total waste after all.