“Ugh. Lovebirds!” Ed moaned. “Get a room!”
“Hey, Ed, isn’t your boyfriend around here?” Justin asked good-naturedly. “Why don’t you go find him?”
Ed met his boyfriend Connor, formerly known to me only as Curly Beard, while filming The Fishbowl. Although the Network strictly prohibited staff from socializing with the contestants, they still found a way to make a connection. More importantly, they’d managed to keep it going ever since. The Network promoted Connor from production assistant to camera operator, and Ed recently moved from Boston to Los Angeles to be with him while pursuing a stand-up comedy career. I couldn’t have been happier for them.
“He’s doing some pre-boarding filming. I’m not allowed,” he said to Justin. “Besides, someone had to keep your belle here from having a panic attack. Did you know she gets seasick?”
Justin tilted his head at me the way he did when he didn’t want to say he thought I wasn’t being one hundred percent truthful. “You never mentioned that. You do?”
“I don’t know. When I was in high school, I threw up on the swan boats at the local fair.”
“Wasn’t that right after you bought tacos out of some guy’s van? Because I’m not sure that was the boat’s fault.”
This was the problem with dating someone long enough for them to hear all your stories. “Maybe . . .”
“You’ll be fine!” Ed said. “Now, let’s go before they take off without us.”
“Depart,” I said. “Or set sail.”
“Whatever.” Ed took off for the ship, luggage in tow.
“What’s really wrong?” Justin asked.
He gazed into my eyes until I realized I’d been freaking out over nothing. “I don’t know. I’ve been on edge all week. Partially it’s the bakery. What if Sarah can’t come up with new recipes? What if Tammy Rae hates me?”
“You are a resourceful, brilliant woman. You can be very persuasive. Plus, Sarah’s a genius in the kitchen. Even if Tammy Rae says no, the two of you will come up with something.”
I sighed. “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m being stupid. I don’t know why I’m so jittery.”
Behind me, someone walked by wearing a t-shirt showing a woman with long, dark hair, pouting out from the inside of a clear fishbowl. And suddenly, I realized exactly why I felt so on edge: Ariana. The one person who could always make me act like my brain took a vacation without my body. No one confirmed whether she’d be onboard. I couldn’t relax until we set sail without her.
Justin followed my gaze, and understanding flashed across his face. Instead of commenting, he squeezed my hand and gestured grandly toward the ship. “Shall we?”
We rolled our carry-ons through the special check-in point reserved for VIPs. After presenting ID and going through the metal detectors, Justin and I headed up the gangway. My head swiveled to catch every speck of activity. To our right, I spotted one of the stars of The Marrying Kind, a popular dating show. When I turned to talk to Justin, over his shoulder, I spotted Tabby Rangoon, winner of last year’s America’s Next Drag Supermodel. I’d missed her season while locked in the Fishbowl, but many people had been excited to see a forty something queen beat out all the twenty-year-olds vying for the crown.
The interior of the ship was more extravagant than any hotel I’d ever visited, with marble floors in the entrance, gold paneling on the stairs, and huge glass elevators giving us a view of everything on the way up. Colored lights alternated on and off, flooding the entryway with dancing pink, blue, and purple beams. As the elevator traveled upward, I spotted a coffee shop, the purser’s desk, a row of designer shops in the background, and a sign advertising a live show in the theater later.
“Is that a real casino? I thought Ed was joking.” I pointed through the window at the edges of a neon sign.
Justin consulted a sheaf of papers in his hand. “It is. There’s a casino on the fifth floor, nightclubs on the sixth and twelfth, and a five-star restaurant overlooking the ocean on the fifteenth. They serve romantic dinners, by reservation only. We should go there one night.”
For the zillionth time, I thought about how lucky I was to find this guy. Popping onto my toes, I leaned in for a quick kiss. “That sounds amazing.”
The elevator dinged to a stop, and we exited on the ninth floor. My feet sank into the plush carpet filling the room. No dancing lights here, thankfully, but the public areas of the ship gave me visions of the most lavish room I’d ever stayed in. Even nicer than the place my ex-boyfriend took me for my birthday a few weeks before I found out about his wife.
Consulting the packet holding my keycard and ship map, I headed to the right. Justin called me back before I moved three steps.
“Where are you going?”
Pointing at the sign, I said, “Room E622 is this way.”
“I’m sure it is, but Room E615 is over here.”
“What’s in Room E615?”
“We are.”
“No, we’re not. We’re in Room E622.” At Justin’s expression, the suitcase clattered out of my hand onto the faux marble floor. “Wait, what? We’re not in the same room?”
We met in the center of the hallway to compare notes. Since we were a couple who met on The Fishbowl, and the Network paid for the cruise, we assumed we’d share a cabin. Neither of us thought to compare our room assignments.
Disappointment flooded me. “How can we not be sharing? Are we each stuck in single rooms? Can we share a twin bed?”
He shook his head. “Somehow, I doubt it. If so, there would be no reason for us not to share.”
“No sex for a week?” I didn’t try to hide my disappointment. Especially since the only night we’d spent together the past few days, Justin fell asleep while Sarah and I worked in the kitchen past midnight. I’d expected to make up for lost time on this cruise. All week long.
“That’s not possible.” He looked like he’d just been told we only had a week to live. “They wouldn’t do that to us. Would they?”
“They probably would,” I said glumly. After being constantly locked out of my college dorm room by a roommate who thoroughly embraced the hookup—and waking up more than once in the middle of the night to a show—I couldn’t kick my roommate out of our cabin. Justin and I would have to find another solution.
“Well, if they do, we can always sneak off to a janitor’s closet or something. They probably don’t have any doors that lock you in after sixty seconds onboard, right?”
I laughed at the reminder of the changing rooms in the Fishbowl. One of the first nights on the set, my friend Rachel snuck in there with another competitor, and they got stuck. It took over an hour for the producers to let them out. “All we need is an empty cabin. Maybe Ed can sweet talk Connor into helping us come up with something.”
“You think if there’s a secret sex area, they’re not going to hog it?”
Damn. He had a point.
I said, “Ok, fine. I hear there are giant hammocks in the spa area. Ever have sex in a hammock?”
“Not in front of thousands of people. Besides, we’d probably fall out.” Justin shook his head. “This has to be a mistake. I’ll go down to main level and talk to the producers.”
“What if they did it on purpose?”
“Then we’ll find another way to steal some time alone. We’re not going to spend a week on a cruise ship completely apart. Anyway, how much time would we have spent in the cabin, with so much ship to explore? We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks.” With a sigh, I kissed him and turned down the hall.
Alone and significantly less excited than I’d been a few minutes earlier, I continued to my room, eyes following the patterned carpet. When I reached my cabin, the door stood cracked, so I nudged it open with my hip and called into the interior. After a moment, a familiar voice responded, and my spirits lifted a tiny bit.
“Hel-loooo?”
“Rachel?” I barreled into the room, jumping into a tackle hug. We hadn’t gotten off to t
he best start in The Fishbowl, but as the show progressed, the Midwestern cheerleader became a good friend and one of my most respected competitors. “Rachel! It’s so good to see you!”
“Hello, roomie! How are you?”
With her dancing brown eyes and shoulder-length wavy blond hair, Rachel looked exactly the same as I remembered. Her tan hadn’t even faded over the winter, leading me to strongly suspect she’d gotten it from a bottle. If only I’d thought of that. By the end of this week, I’d either still be ghostly white or turn eggplant purple. My fair skin knew no in-between shades. It even bypassed the normal reds usually associated with sunburns.
“Don’t think I’m not glad you’re here, but I’m bummed not to be sharing a room with Justin. Do you know what happened?”
“The Network split us all into single-gender rooms to avoid hanky-panky.”
“Hanky-panky?”
She blushed. “That’s what my grammy used to say, and I’m sticking with it. Anyway, they don’t want us hanging out in our cabins too much, so we’re stuck sharing. Tiny spaces, same-sex roommates.”
Until she mentioned it, I hadn’t paid much attention to the size of the cabin. Behind her, two sets of bunkbeds dominated a room about the size of my bedroom at home. Twin bunkbeds, naturally. Lovely. Any remaining dreams for a romantic getaway cruise with my boyfriend skidded to a halt.
Heavy curtains along the starboard wall suggested a much larger window than the one-foot porthole ensconced in the far wall. A flat screen TV hung in one corner over a mini-fridge, across from a wooden chair and built-in desk. The room service menu, cruise newsletter, and telephone took up the entire surface.
“It’s small, but cozy. We’ll be fine. Except for the part where I should be sharing with Justin.” I wrinkled my nose at her. “Ugh. Any idea who else we’re sharing with?”
She shrugged. “Ed said it should be no more than two people from each show per room, so you lucked out with me. If Ariana’s onboard, she should be sleeping elsewhere.”
“Have you seen her yet?”
“Nope. And no word if she’s coming. Ed didn’t know.”
“Yeah, I asked him, too. Even offered to bring Connor cookies if he’d tell me, so I know they weren’t holding out on me.”
Rachel glanced at her wrist, one of the few people under fifty who still wore a watch. Of course, hers tracked steps, monitored heart rate, and streamed music, so it wasn’t exactly my grandmother’s timepiece. “I’m going up to the deck to watch the ship cast off. I’ll meet you here when it’s time to meet at the muster stations.”
“The mustard stations?”
“No, silly.” Her tinkling laughter never failed to make me smile. “Muster stations are where we learn what to do in the event of an emergency. Like an evacuation station. But don’t worry. The boat’s not going to sink or anything.”
Again, I envisioned Leo and Kate floating on a wooden door among the wreckage of the Titanic. Unsinkable, my ass. Of course, if Justin and I found ourselves in the same situation, I knew to secure my life jacket and make room. Thank you, Mythbusters.
Before I responded to Rachel, my phone buzzed with a text from Justin confirming that the cabin assignments weren’t a mix-up. I texted back, promising to meet him at the muster station in about half an hour, after I unpacked and gave my first confessional interview. Rachel left me alone to unpack. Her clothes already took up more than half the closet, so hopefully whoever our other two roommates were, at least one of them was a nudist. Had the cast of Terrified in the Jungle been invited?
A few minutes later, I navigated my way down the halls to the elevators, scanning for familiar faces among the crowd and seeking out the nearest emergency exits.
When I reached the hallway housing the elevator bank, I stopped dead in my tracks. She stood in front of me. The last person I wanted to run into, here or anywhere else.
Ariana. Even more impossibly thin than the day I left the Fishbowl, somehow looking taller, every bit as beautiful, and probably with a voodoo doll of me stashed in her suitcase. After the way she’d lied and schemed to get me off The Fishbowl so she could steal Justin, not any part of me was remotely happy to find her here on the ship. As long as no one confirmed her presence on the cruise, I’d stupidly allowed myself to believe she decided not to come. On a free Caribbean cruise.
She stood regally as ever, with her shoulders back and her nose in the air. Silky black hair streamed down her back. She crossed her arms over her enormous fake breasts, glaring at the elevators as if their slow arrival were a personal insult.
Into her phone, she spoke very slowly, as if explaining something to a three-year-old. “Is everyone who works there an idiot? Let me talk to your supervisor. I can’t possibly spend a week on vacation with only a five-thousand-dollar limit on my debit card.”
I snorted at the thought of not being able to exist on “only” five grand a day, when food and shelter was covered. Unfortunately, the sound drew her attention to me. She sneered.
Of all the times to run into her, I wished I hadn’t been alone. If Justin stood beside me, he’d squeeze my hand reassuringly and say something like, “Hey, it’s okay. You won, remember? You can’t avoid her all week, so you might as well be polite.”
Ugh. I hated when he was right. Or, I mean, when I was right, talking to myself.
At least no one around witnessed this first encounter with my nemesis. Maybe. I peeked at the corners of the ceiling, searching for cameras. A vase on a table by the wall could have concealed a camera, but there was no non-obvious way to check. The mirror above the vase could have been two-way, but since it appeared to be older than me, I doubted it.
The Network had been vague about what type of show we signed up for. Justin and I got all excited about a romantic getaway and a free cruise and didn’t push for answers. The forms we signed involved waiving a lot of rights, but very little facts about what we were getting into. That wasn’t a huge surprise. Before going on The Fishbowl, I’d known only that it was a competition-based reality show offering a cash prize. No one mentioned a prize or a competition when soliciting us for this show.
The producers promised to explain everything else in a meeting after embarkation. It didn’t escape my notice that we couldn’t quit after finding out what we’d agreed to, but whatever. Life’s full of surprises, right?
Justin and I figured, after our last experience, we could handle whatever the Network threw at us, but as soon as I spotted Ariana, butterflies beat out a symphony in my belly.
I could do this. Be the bigger person, Jen.
“Hello, Ariana,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound completely appalled.
“We’ll discuss this later,” she said into the phone, waiting exactly long enough before greeting me to make me fidget. Her brown eyes narrowed to slits before she spoke. “Jen.”
Once I got over the disappointment of running into Ariana, I spotted a stroller parked about a foot away from her. A rainbow-colored teddy bear peeked out of a pocket on the back. No one else stood near enough to be keeping an eye on the infant. Before I could ask, the elevator dinged, and Justin appeared in the open doors. My shoulders straightened immediately when he walked to my side and kissed me before acknowledging her. Take that, Ariana!
“Hi, Ariana,” he said. “Nice to see you again. And you brought a baby?”
She beamed up at him. “Why yes, I did! Would you like to meet my son?”
Both of us blinked at her. She hadn’t been pregnant when we were on The Fishbowl. At least not judging from her concave stomach, skintight clothing, and daily alcohol intake. How did she get pregnant, give birth, and return to her usual size-two self in only sixteen months? Without anyone in the media catching on?
She laughed, a piercing sound I’d convinced myself annoyed me more in memory than real life. Wrong. “Naturally, I named him after his father. I’d like you both to meet my son, Justin Jr.”
Chapter 4
Jennifer in the Guppy Gabber, Sunday:
But it’s all good. This is a huge ship, and there’s plenty of stuff to do. I’m on a mission: Sarah and I need to find out Tammy Rae’s secret ingredient so we can recreate her cupcakes for our bakery. Plus, Justin’s been working super hard, worried about his parents, and we haven’t taken a real vacation since the show, so we’re going to enjoy ourselves. We’re very excited about this trip.
Ariana will not ruin this week for us.
My stomach lurched, sending me a reminder of the huevos rancheros I’d devoured for breakfast. I couldn’t believe this was happening. No way. No. Justin swore they only kissed a little, even after Ariana told me they slept together. He promised—
She burst out laughing. “My God, your face, Jen! You’re too easy.”
I glanced from her to Justin, who stood rigid beside me, fists clenched at his sides. His posture told me he slowly counted to ten before speaking. Or possibly to a thousand.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Me and Justin! I wish you could see the way you’re glaring at him. Don’t you trust your man more than that?”
I turned to my boyfriend, but Hurricane Ariana had already inflicted her damage.
“I’m going to my cabin,” Justin said before I could say anything else.
“Are you okay?”
The tic in his jaw answered me before he spoke: he was pissed, and not only at Ariana. “I need a minute alone. I’ll meet you for the emergency briefing after I unpack. I’m sorry.”
Helplessly, I watched him storm around the corner and out of sight, wondering if I should follow. Once again, Ariana was sowing seeds of doubt about our relationship, and we hadn’t left the dock yet. How would I make it through an entire week without her poison infecting us?
Sweet Reality Page 4