Page 43 of Falling Overboard

“Do tell.”

“Because it was the only significant time we had off from school when we were younger. So after twelve years it was ingrained in us to like it. The actual season is terrible.”

“Another thing we agree on,” I said as I rushed over to hold open the door to the pub for her. She made me want to lay down my cloak so that she could safely cross over a mud puddle. Or slay a dragon.

Lucky had turned me into a character from a fantasy movie.

The pub was a little hole-in-the-wall, like it had been carved out of a castle dungeon. Stone walls and a ceiling so low I felt like I was going to hit my head. The crew sat at a large table. Lucky took a seat and I sat on her left.

A barmaid arrived to take our orders, and Lucky asked for a club soda. Kai, if I was remembering his name correctly, asked for several bottles of wine and told the server, “In true nautical fashion, we plan on getting wrecked.”

I couldn’t help but grin at Lucky. I enjoyed puns no matter who made them, and I saw that she was also smiling. Like we shared a private language.

The crew were all talking to and over each other, and while they all seemed like very nice people, I wished they would disappear and that Lucky and I could have the date I had teased her about.

She was thinking seriously about something—I could see it on her face. Did she daydream about me the way I did about her?

It had been a long time since I’d felt this way about a girl and not had her feel the same way. It was probably good for my ego to be on unstable ground. Things had become so predictable and routine, boring, that I had situationships instead of relationships.

I knew I shouldn’t chase Lucky, but I wanted to, and the prospect of winning her favor really, really appealed to me.

After the waitress brought our drinks, Lucky suddenly said, “Hey everyone, I thought we could go on a walking tour tomorrow morning as a bonding activity. And we can have lunch after. On me.”

The reactions were immediate and entirely negative.

“Noooo!”

“Why?”

“Not for me.”

“In the morning?”

“On purpose?”

“Don’t they have ticks here?”

Georgia said, “The world is our playground and you want us to go on a hike?”

“Not a hike,” she said defensively. “A walk.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to lay on a beach and drink until I can’t remember my own name,” Georgia responded. “The only walk I want to do here is a wine walk.”

“A what?”

“That’s where I walk the streets of Saint-Tropez at night with my glass of wine.”

Lucky frowned. “That’s called drinking in public and it’s against the law.”

“You and your rules,” the other stew muttered, reaching for her wineglass.

“That’s France’s rules. And I’m trying to unite the crew,” Lucky said, and she sounded so defeated that I wanted to hug her until she felt better.

Georgia, who had made her interest in me very obvious, took a drink and then made eyes at me. “I know how I’d like to unite with the crew.”

“Not like that. This is like, a team-building exercise,” Lucky said.

“The whole reason we work on a yacht is so that we don’t have to do that sort of garbage office team-building corporate junk. We already bond. We get pissed together every chance we get,” Georgia retorted.

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