Page 64 of Falling Overboard

We lay there, facing one another, our chests slowly rising and falling together.

“I should get up,” he said, whispering the words.

I wished I could tell him he didn’t have to.

But the real world existed beyond that door. Guests were coming, the captain had expectations, we had jobs to do, I couldn’t date him.

“We should both get up,” I agreed, but neither one of us moved.

Until we heard someone yelling in the hallway. That got him on his feet quickly.

He looked down at me and I could have sworn that what he wanted in that moment was to climb back into bed with me.

But then he disappeared into the bathroom and left me alone, wanting and aching for him. I rolled onto my back and put my hands over my face.

So, so bad. This was all so bad.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lucky

We had made it through the week—this was the last official night of the charter. Our bachelorette party had been a total nightmare. Not just in their constant demands, which seemed to change on an hourly basis, or their nightly drunken fights, where the bride fired the other six women as bridesmaids and then reinvited them at breakfast the next morning, or their staying up every night until three and getting up at seven after completely trashing their cabins, or the way they demeaned us all, as if we weren’t people.

No, the nightmare was that they kept finding new ways to be horrible and make our lives as difficult as possible. These malnourished, high-strung, sociopathic socialites had been acting like they were auditioning to be on a Bravo reality television show for the last six days.

And despite the fact that they had told us the first night that they were all in relationships, they had been on the exterior crew like Kodiak bears on spawning salmon.

Hunter, most of all.

I kept reminding myself that there was only one day left as I went into the primary cabin, only to find Emilie standing in the bathroom,texting on her phone. Nothing had been done. “What are you doing? Why haven’t you cleaned any of this?”

She should have been nearly finished by now. The guests were upstairs at dinner, pretending to eat their food, and the cabins needed to be cleaned and the beds turned down before they returned downstairs.

Something had shifted between the two of us the night I caught her sneaking into my cabin. She was more belligerent, more defiant, lazier.

Whatever goodwill I had earned by protecting her from her uncle had disappeared.

“I’ll get it done. Calm down. Why are you always riding me?” she asked.

“Georgia and I have been picking up your slack for the last week. It’s going to stop, and you are going to pull your weight.” Could she hear how my voice was wobbling? It was hard for me to lay down the law like this. She probably couldn’t take me seriously when I couldn’t even take myself seriously. “Now get this cabin done.”

She picked up a rag and began to listlessly move it in circles on the countertop. I left and wished I had it in me to inspire her to do more. I had tried begging. I had tried asking nicely. I’d done my best to be motivational. I had tried offering to show her precisely what needed to be done. Bribing her.

Nothing worked.

If I weren’t so afraid of Captain Carl, I probably would have gone and tattled on her. Maybe he would have sent her packing back to Canada and we could have picked up a new stew who would actually do the job.

When I got to the crew mess, Thomas and Kai were staring at the monitors. I went over to see what they were looking at, and it was the guests at dinner. Everything had been served and Georgia had cleared away all their plates. Now they were just drinking and yelling at each other. The volume was turned down so that we couldn’t hear them, but it was easy to see how angry they were.

The bride, Sasha, stood up and threw her glass of red wine in her maid of honor’s face.

“It’s going to take forever to get that stain out of the deck,” Thomas said nonchalantly, in the same sort of tone he might use to comment about the weather.

It was probably because we had all become numb, resigned to our fate where these guests were concerned.

I had done everything in my power to make them happy, all to no avail. I had brought on manicurists, pedicurists, hairstylists, makeup artists. I brought on some French stylists, but all of their clothing options were declared to be “trash.” I offered to get the guests some aestheticians but that had only offended them.

“Do we look like we get Botox and fillers?” Sasha had demanded angrily, and I did my best to keep my gaze off her injected lips and the way her forehead didn’t move despite her fury.

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