The liqueur was warm and sweet. As the alcohol kicked in, I got a bit of a head spin.
“Whoa,” I said, grabbing onto the top bunk. “I better slow down, especially after last night!”
Caitlin just laughed and said, “It didn’t seem to end too badly, so maybe you should have another.” We clinked our tiny glasses and gulped them down. Caitlin poured another one. “To good times and new friends,” she said, looking me in the eye and gulping hers down. I closed my eyes and poured the nip down my throat. “Ellie, don’t you know the rule about looking someone in the eye when you toast and drink?” She sounded horrified. “It’s seven years bad sex!”
“Sounds like complete rubbish,” I laughed, feeling slightly giddy. “But then again, who’d want to take the risk?”
“My thoughts exactly,” she said, pouring another. “Last one, then let’s go.”
We were laughing and dancing our way into the crew bar when a slight girl with stringy hair grabbed onto Caitlin’s arm quite firmly. Her eyes were red and watery—it looked like she’d been crying. Caitlin immediately pulled her into a hug, patting her back. Clearly the story had a history, so I left them to it and popped inside.
The moment I walked in the door, I spotted Maria and regretted my decision to enter without backup. My first instinct was to turn tail and run—to be quite honest I found Maria a bit terrifying and the last thing I wanted to do was strike up a conversation with her. But I couldn’t get rid of my father’s advice, which echoed relentlessly in my head. “Always settle an argument, Ellie,” he used to say. “Apologise first, regardless of whether or not you think the other person will. Be the bigger person.”
Right, then. I took a deep breath and entered the fray. “Hey, Maria,” I said, once I was close enough that she had to acknowledge I was there, “I think we got off to a bad start.” She didn’t say anything, so I tried again. “I had no idea about you and Seth, or I would never have even looked at him…”
Maria stood silently, her arms crossed and her mouth a thin line. She stared straight ahead, doing her best to ignore me, and I wobbled as I considered moving even closer. Rejecting the idea, I instead reached out and touched the wall to steady myself before continuing.
“I only just found out today that you guys were together,” I explained, “so I feel really bad. I’ve always had a rule about getting involved with friends’ exes, and so I just didn’t know.”
Dan used to say I just needed to give him breathing space, that it wasn’t necessary to fill every silence in a conversation. I’d always disagreed. Nothing good could come from a half silent conversation—so naturally, I kept talking, despite the fact Maria was still mute, and apart from raising her eyebrows slightly at the mention of the word ‘friend’, remained completely expressionless.
“We had a few drinks at the crew bar, waiting for you guys to arrive, and well, you know… Sorry.” I was definitely straying into babbling territory. I was starting to wonder if she would ever say anything, since it was becoming blatantly obvious that she wasn’t going to come around so easily.
At last, my words received a reaction as Maria put her hands on her hips. “Well,” she said, her voice icy, “maybe if you had been here for more than five minutes before getting into bed with him, you might have found out. I see that you are drunk again tonight. I wonder who you will sleep with next?” She sneered disdainfully.
My cheeks burned and tears threatened to well up in my eyes. Perhaps I had been just a tad optimistic to have expected Maria to respond positively to an apology. I had put myself out on a limb to apologise, and it had clearly been a big waste of time. Was I going to have a problem with her for my whole contract? Surely, with her looks, she could just move on. It was a big ship.
She wasn’t finished. “I curse the stupid British bardajonas they hire for this job,” she said, and then added, “Anyway, I do not care about you and Seth. He is leaving next San Juan.” She zeroed in on my look of surprise, and a fleeting expression of triumph crossed her face. “I am not interested in being a one-week fling, but if that is what you want…you can have him.” She spun on her heel and walked away.
Wait, what? I stared after Maria long after she’d disappeared, my thoughts a jumbled mess. I rapidly went over all of my interactions with Seth, and couldn’t remember him ever mentioning that he was buggering off in a week. Surely Maria was wrong. He couldn’t be leaving—I’d only just arrived! He was my cruise ship fantasy man; he couldn’t leave just after I’d met him! Not to mention he’d slept with me, and he’d seemed so keen on me… I bit my lip, suddenly nervous. Despite thinking about Seth earlier in the day as the love-’em-and-leave-’em type, I hadn’t ever thought he’d actually leave.
An unpleasant thought wormed its way through my mind—had Seth only been using me for sex? It hadn’t seemed like it at the time, but now I couldn’t help but wonder. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I remembered earlier that day, when he’d dragged me off for a bout of sex in which only he’d got off. He’d said he’d return the favour later, but later hadn’t actually happened yet. And now I was stuck thinking that maybe he hadn’t actually liked me at all, that maybe I’d been the chubby girl so desperate for male attention that I’d been naively easy to get into bed…
I desperately wanted answers to the innumerable questions clamouring in my mind, but a quick look told me that Caitlin was still caught up outside, in what looked like a pretty involved conversation. Shit.
I wasn’t in the mood for the crew bar anymore, but going back to a quiet, dark cabin without Caitlin probably wouldn’t help much either. I’d just sit and overthink everything that had happened since I’d first come aboard. I contemplated leaving, if only for the sake of my poor gnawed-on lip, but then Jock caught my eye from behind the bar. He smiled warmly at me, his eyes bright, and waved me over.
Maybe I’d stay for one drink, after all. He was really very cute, and anyway it wasn’t really fair to Caitlin to disappear.
I drifted over to the bar and mustered up a smile in return. “Hey, Jock. Can I get two glasses of house white, please?”
Years of bartending had, no doubt, honed Jock’s awareness of customers’ moods, including the ability to slice right through bullshit. He placed two glasses on the counter and got straight to the point. “Are you ok, lass? You look really down.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, watching him measure and pour the wine. “How are you?” I thought I sounded convincing, but the look on Jock’s face as he slid the wine over told me that I wasn’t doing a very good job. I took a sip of my drink, trying to think of what to say. It was difficult not to show how upset I was, especially with my mind spinning with Maria’s Seth-related bombshell…but I really didn’t want to explain everything and have Jock think I was a complete trollop, like Maria obviously did.
Jock studied me for a moment, polishing a glass, and then leant over. “I saw you talking to Maria a bit ago,” he said quietly. “She has a habit of bringing people down. You might say it’s her primary occupation. I wouldn’t let her get to you.”
Oh. Well, that was nice to hear. I took a deep breath, wondering how much to say, and then opened with, “Well, yeah. She hasn’t really taken a liking to me, unfortunately.”
“Not sure she takes a liking to most other women,” he offered, a crooked smile on his face.
I managed a laugh, but it ended up sounding more like a sob and I swallowed hard several times before saying, “We got off to a bad start because…well…” I shook my head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We just didn’t hit it off. To be honest, it was just a shit first day, actually.” They say that getting something off your chest is good for you, but as the words came out of my mouth, I rather felt like I was going to cry. Now that would be embarrassing. I stared straight ahead, focusing on one of the bottles behind Jock, digging my nails into my palms to keep back the tears. Perhaps I should have gone back to the cabin after all.
Jock’s expression was as soft and kind as his wo
rds. “Ellie,” he said gently, “your first couple of weeks are going to be hard. It’s a different world. People come from all over to work here, and while that clash of cultures can be exciting, it can also make for a whole lot of misunderstandings.” He reached over and placed his hand on top of mine. “You’ve probably heard that life on board flies pretty much at the speed of light, and while the good experiences build up quickly, so do the bad.” He smiled and added, “If it helps, I don’t think Maria’s as crazy as everyone says.” He squeezed my hand and then released me. I looked down at my hand, still feeling the warmth of his touch.
“Thank you,” I said, dragging my gaze back up to his face. “I hope you’re right. It’s definitely a whole new world.” Normally I would have broken into song at such an obvious Disney-expression—but I felt too deflated.
Before I could say anything else, arms slid around my shoulders and I was hugged from behind.
“Sorry I took so long,” a familiar voice said in my ear. Caitlin rested her chin on my shoulder. “Dramas outside.” She let go and leaned back against the bar, her elbows on the counter. “What did that bitch say to you?” she asked, looking worried. “She walked past me on her way out a few minutes ago.”
I didn’t want to have that conversation in front of Jock, so I snagged Caitlin’s drink and handed it to her. Pushing her away from the bar, I glanced back and smiled at Jock, mouthing ‘thank you’ at him. He was so kind and warm, I didn’t actually have to fake it that time. He winked and turned to serve his next customer.
I clung to Caitlin’s arm and guided her to a space we could talk more privately, or more accurately, so I could blurt out the question I’d been burning to ask her. I collapsed into a seat and managed to squeak, “Seth’s leaving on Sunday?” I took a few gulps of my wine.
“Oh,” Caitlin said, her eyes searching my face. She knocked back half of her glass of wine, shrugged, and said, “Babe, it doesn’t really matter. If he’s leaving, it just means you can just go on to bigger and better things… He was your warm-up game.” She grinned wickedly.
I knew everyone else was casual about sex, and it wasn’t as if I’d planned to act like an angel, but I still felt like an idiot. Seth could have at least mentioned it. I felt like that was only the courteous thing to do, though I had a sinking feeling that maybe that was my naivety speaking. Even though I obviously hadn’t gone into it thinking it would turn out to be a long term relationship, it would have been nice to think there might have been a tiny chance for it to be ongoing. Maybe I’d been unrealistic. I knew I’d sound like a wet blanket trying to explain it all to Caitlin, but I gave it a go anyway, reasoning that I couldn’t feel worse than I already did.
“I just feel like a prize idiot,” I said. “Everyone probably knew except me, and now I’ve pissed off Maria, basically for no reason.”
A fan of getting straight to the point, Caitlin said, “Ellie, fuck her. She’s a fucking bitch. You didn’t do anything that any of us wouldn’t have done. You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. He’s leaving on Sunday; so what? Just move on, babe.”
She was probably right, but it didn’t really help. I still felt stupid and cheap. Hardly the way a liberated woman ought to think (hah), but I couldn’t help the flickers of guilt from surging to the fore. I’d had a few partners before I met Dan, but no one night stands. Well, no, actually, that wasn’t quite true. I’d once gone home with a bloke from TGIF bar, but that was due more to a misunderstanding regarding his celebrity status. In my drunken state I’d thought he was Marvin from JLS, but instead he’d turned out to be Mark who worked at the fish and chip shop. In my defence, they’d looked very similar…
In any event, that had only been once, and the rest of my romantic life had always progressed at a snail’s pace. I’d had friends who’d hopped from one bed to another, and while I’d never thought it was wrong, it had never really been my style. I was always much better at accepting the liberal behaviour of others than I was at accepting my own. And so I’d always clung to the familiar. The thrill of the chase. The frisson of sexual tension that came from getting to know each other before jumping into bed. It was one of the things Dan had loved about me, actually. He’d said he liked the idea of an old-fashioned courtship. Except once we were properly together, sex suddenly dropped to the bottom of his list of priorities—with me, at least—and things in the bedroom had gone downhill almost overnight. Which was bizarre, thinking back on it; weren’t men supposed to be keen on sex no matter what? Still, although I’d tried numerous times, in the end I’d just accepted that our relationship wasn’t going to be very physical. And I’d been okay with that. As long as we loved each other, I’d reasoned, then I was happy. Sex wasn’t nearly as important as honesty and communication. Of course, then it had turned out we didn’t have those either…but I had been okay with minimal sex for years. Yet the moment I arrived on this ship, I jumped into bed with a guy I barely knew. What had I been thinking? That wasn’t like me even before I was a scorned woman! Maybe I’d been so sex-starved from my years with Dan that my hormones had run riot upon being presented with a perfect specimen of the male half of the species. I quite liked that idea, actually, seeing as it more or less got me off the hook for my behaviour. Hah. Didn’t really change the facts, though—just when I’d started a fantastic new job, with people I’d be trapped with for months on end, I had acted like the kind of woman you don’t want to introduce to your male friends for fear she’ll sleep with them. I thought about Laura and cringed. I hated those women.
I came out of my retrospective to see Caitlin staring at me. “Dude,” she said. “Don’t look now, but your loverboy is here.”
Promptly ignoring her, I spun around and saw Seth and Luciano walking through the door. Seth smiled and waved when he saw me, looking unconcerned and clearly unaware of the storm about to descend upon his head. After a moment’s conversation, Luciano peeled off towards the bar, while Seth continued in our direction.
“What’s going on here?” Seth asked, pinching my bum in greeting. “Who died?”
Caitlin shot him a look and then said, furrowing her skinny brows, “Maria gave her an earful.”
“Ahhhhh, okay,” Seth said, softening. “Don’t even worry about her, Ellie. She’s just a bully.” I obviously looked unconvinced, because he put his arm around me and continued, “She’s jealous that you and I are having a good time together.” He pulled away again, clearly worried someone would see.
Just as well—I wasn’t really in the mood for canoodling. Between Maria’s bitchiness and Seth apparently leaving, I was jittery and anxious and completely uninterested in anything but the truth.
“Can I talk to you, please?” I asked.
“Oh no, I’m in trouble now,” Seth joked, nudging Caitlin’s arm. She fixed him with a piercing glare and then stalked away to join Luciano at the bar.
Seth turned to me and said, “Now, Miss Ellie, nobody ever likes to hear the words ‘Can we talk?’ Especially after only knowing each other for two days…” He sighed.
Too worked up to acknowledge his tone, I got straight to the point. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving on Sunday? I thought we had something good starting…”
Seth stood with his arms folded, tapping his foot. “Aw, come on, Ellie. We only met yesterday. I thought we were both on the same page here—that it was fun while it lasted. It wasn’t exactly relationship-building material.”
I shook my head, struggling to find the words to express what I was feeling and knowing I was completely failing. “Well, no, but it would have been nice to at least be aware…”
Seth opened his hands and shrugged. “It’s just the way it works on ships. Nobody wants to get real about what’s going to happen. It’s part of the game. We just talk…say the right things…everybody’s happy.”
I wasn’t. Quite frankly, the idea that Seth had just been ‘saying the right things’ made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and made me wonder how much, if any, of our time toget
her had involved any truth on his side. I’d thought he found me sexy and attractive and beautiful, and for a brief moment I’d believed it and my self-esteem had soared. And now I felt like it had all just been a façade, him saying the right things at the right time to get what he wanted. It was a depressing thought.
As much as I tried to stop it, my bottom lip quivered a little. I really didn’t want to turn into a sobbing mess in front of Seth, but I felt overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. I’d come aboard the Galene with high spirits, intending to have a good time, and now I felt completely mortified. The strong, independent image I’d been hoping to encourage had slunk away, tail between her legs, and my awkward, self-conscious self had crept back out. Never mind jumping in bed with someone so soon; the worst bit there was letting Seth’s compliments fool me into thinking I was actually desirable. That plus the outright hostility from people like Maria, who didn’t care that I’d made a mistake, made me just want to jump ship at the next dock and run home again, taking refuge in my parents’ familiar cosy house.
I raised my eyes, attempting to plaster on a neutral look, but Seth had already seen my emotions. He sighed again and said, patiently and more than a little condescendingly, “Look, Ellie, I’m sorry that you’re upset, but I never imagined you would think anything of it. If you decide you’d like to keep having a good time until Sunday, let me know. If you don’t, whatever; it’s cool.” He shrugged and turned away. I didn’t have the energy to stop him, and instead just watched as he strolled back across the room to join Luciano at the bar.
Staring at his back, I thought about the forums I’d read online. They’d all warned about the party lifestyle, but I’d seen that as a good thing. I had come here for fun; I just hadn’t imagined it could turn sour so quickly. My over-eager first moves were already proving to be rather embarrassing. Ugh.
Sex, Lies, and Cruising Page 5