“You are living a blessed life, aren’t you? Broadway actress, Hollywood film star. What’s next? Oh, yeah. Dancing with me on a luxury yacht.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I’m really just a simple person at heart?”
“Ordinarily, no,” Luke said, tilting my chin up so he could look at my face. “But since I’m just an Alaskan logger who owns only one decent suit, I can’t think of anything else that would explain what you’re doing with me.”
“Maybe I like the way you help people. Or the way you do business. Or maybe I was just captured by those photos of you on the front porch of your cabin. If that doesn’t convince you, than maybe knowing how you’d drop everything to come help me would show you why I feel the way I do.”
“And how exactly is it that you feel?”
I bought a little time by melting into his arms, and we danced cheek to cheek. I wanted to say the perfect thing, but just then Alex appeared with the first dinner course, and I made a midcourse correction.
“Hungry,” I answered.
After a meal of Tuscan chicken, asparagus, and a peach torte, Luke and I walked to the bow of the ship.
“I know this sounds idiotic, but the ocean is absolutely enormous,” I said.
“No, no. I think Magellan said something like that.”
We stared out at the endless expanse, the moon drawing a streak of white as far as the horizon. Luke pointed off into the distance.
“Just a few thousand miles straight ahead of us is Japan,” he said. “And if we sailed in that direction”—he pointed his hand further south—“for a few days, we’d be in Hawaii. Have you ever been there?”
“No, but I think I’d love the islands.”
“They’re beautiful. Everything looks like the day of creation.”
Luke squinted one eye as if looking through a telescope. He pointed in a third direction. “If we were to sail that way, we’d end up in a remote area of Southeast Asia where I’ll be about this time next week.”
“Why are you going to Southeast Asia?”
“Another mission trip, supply run, whatever you want to call it. It’s the biggest tour I make all year.”
“What will you be doing there?”
“Missionaries are building a hospital. Each year I fly in medical equipment, medicine, supplies. Those kinds of things.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“About ten days, a little more with travel.”
“Send postcards?”
“I would if there was any way to mail them. Everything gets on and off the island by boat or canoe.”
We stood at the front of the ship in silence for a moment, holding tight to one another as the breeze began to cool. I was well past the point of recognizing a love that had eluded me all of my life. This was it. I felt like a newborn fawn trying to stand on her wobbly legs for the first time.
“I’m not sure I want to go on much longer without you in my life,” I said, the words coming directly from my heart, bypassing logic and circumstance. “It scares me a little to think of you flying across the Pacific by yourself, but on the other hand, knowing how much I’ll miss you tells me how I really feel about us.”
“Which is where we were before the dinner interrupted us,” said Luke. “So … you’re an actress. You’re good at reading people, right? What would you guess Harper Gray is feeling right now?”
I tried to smile. “Since this is all so new to her, she probably feels very overwhelmed, carried away by something powerful like ocean waves, something that’s not safe, but good. Her mind would be thinking, There’s so much you don’t know, slow down, but her heart would be saying, The fire you prayed for has been lit and is burning a beautiful, healthy glow. Don’t douse it, keep feeding it until it’s a passion that will burn forever.”
“And …?”
“And also, she would say …” I paused, not because I wasn’t sure, but because I was so completely sure I wanted the words to stand alone and fill the space around us.
“I love you,” I finally whispered, hiding my face in Luke’s shoulder. I bit my lip, closing my eyes, afraid of what he might say. The silence that followed lasted a long time.
“Do you want to be loved?” Luke finally said in a quiet, confident voice. My heart and mind fused, joined one another in unity of purpose. I felt harmony in a way that touched on the spiritual, as if all of me had finally come together.
“Only if it means being loved by you.”
The ship swayed, and with our eyes closed, we kissed, a different act of surrender. I’d crossed some invisible border from a lifetime of being single to a moment of being loved, and I knew at that very instant I could never go back.
“I love you, Harper.”
Luke and I rocked gently in the moonlight, listening to the water, feeling the sea breeze.
“I don’t want to live without you,” I said. “I don’t want you to go back to Alaska.”
“We don’t have to figure out everything tonight. Let’s let love grow a while.”
“I just feel like I want to grab on and never let go. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Who said anything about losing me?”
“Can’t we just freeze this moment and stay here?”
“If I ever lost you, I hope I’d be satisfied just remembering how I once touched you,” Luke said. “Thankful that God allowed me to hold you, have you in my arms, and know you loved me.”
“I don’t know if I could be satisfied with that,” I said.
After a long period of silence, we walked to the side-by-side chaise lounges on the top deck and scooted them even closer, lay down next to each other, our backs to the bridge and our feet to the horizon. I pulled a light blanket over us, reached under to hold Luke’s hand. We were steadfast in our promise to not sleep together and committed to not spending a moment of the night apart.
I nodded off and awoke later while it was still dark. Luke had covered us with a second blanket. I listened to the sounds of the water, then the sound of breathing, and then to no sound at all. I had only one desire in the world. I wanted to be the same person when I awoke in the morning, when the sun rose over the deck as bright as heaven. I wanted to know I was loved and that I’d never be alone again.
~ Twenty-seven ~
There’s no feeling in the world quite like waking up on someone else’s luxury super yacht. I stirred before dawn, warm beneath the extra galley blanket.
I could feel the ship pitch ever so lightly, rocking us where we’d fallen asleep on deck chairs pushed together. The smell of salty ocean air awakened my senses, filling my lungs with the newness of day and the thrill of possibilities. I sat up, and a light morning gale caught strands of my hair, blowing it in front of my face. How different this bed was from the one in Chicago.
I whispered to Luke, who was still sleeping, “Do you want to wake and see the sunrise with me?”
He roused, first opening his eyes, then pulling himself up to a sitting position. He was still wearing his dinner clothes from the night before, but the once-pressed dress shirt was a mass of wrinkles that brought a smile to my face.
On the starboard side of the ship, a shimmering golden dome was piercing the skin of the sky. It rose from out of the Pacific Ocean like the birth of a planet.
Before the sun had fully risen, Alex emerged from the ship’s galley, dressed in white shorts and a matching sports shirt. She carried two thermal decanters of coffee, regular and decaf, and set them on a foldout table with cups, cream, and sugar.
“Oh, Alex, you’re so good to us,” I said.
“Thought you guys might be ready for a cup,” she said. Her face was beautiful in the morning light, and I wondered if she’d ever worked as an actress, like so many in LA had. “For breakfast I can make omelets
. Or if you prefer, we have toast, bagels, fruit?”
“An omelet would be amazing this morning. Ham and cheese?” Luke said.
“I’d love one too,” I said. “Same thing.”
Luke poured two cups of coffee, steam rising off each like a gentle geyser spa in winter. We stood together at the starboard railing, marveling at the brilliant sunlight of morning. There were no other ships in sight except a lone freighter, miles off in the distance.
“What do you feel like doing in paradise today?”
“Captain Brewer said something about deep-sea fishing last night,” Luke said. “What about you?”
“I have a script I should be reading.”
“That’s like doing homework on vacation. Why don’t you come fishing with me?”
“I may. Captain Brewer said he won’t take the ship back to Marina del Rey until early tomorrow morning. I may catch some rays. I’ll bet I can tan in thirty minutes in this sun.”
A half hour after breakfast, Captain Brewer brought out deep-sea fishing poles and tackle from the lower deck. He arranged the three of us in cushioned chairs that faced the open sea and taught us how to cast our lines out into deep water. We fished for the next several hours and listened while Captain Brewer regaled us with stories of the movie stars and studio moguls who’d angled for yellowfin tuna, marlin, and shark from that very spot.
As lunchtime approached, I wanted to make myself more useful and decided to lend Alex a hand as she prepared lunch in the galley for guests and crew.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Alex,” I said while the two of us pared melon, fingers sticky from the juice, “have you ever worked in movies?”
“Hasn’t everyone who lives and works in LA?” she joked. “I dabbled in it long ago. Was a walk-on in a soap for about two weeks, did some improv with a theater troupe, that’s about it.”
“Can I ask you a favor? Would you help me run lines after lunch?”
“I’d love to.”
Following a delicious lunch aboard the Aloha Freedom, I dug out the 120-page script from my suitcase and carried it to the table where the five of us had just finished lunch. Alex wiped the table with a wet cloth; it dried almost instantly in the ocean breeze.
“I’d like your help with a scene that begins on page seventy-six,” I said, turning to the page in the spiral-bound manuscript and setting it in front of Alex.
“This is a scene between my character, Meredith, and Angel—he’s a guardian angel performing some special work in her life.”
“Okay, I think I’ve got it,” Alex said, straightening her posture.
“Ah, let’s see—Meredith, you’ve been blessed with a gift, to love others. Don’t you know what a shame it would be to lose that?”
I stepped back from the table, distancing myself from the script and the temptation to peek at it.
“I never intended to become this person,” I said. “You trust someone with all your heart and soul, and they leave. You don’t see that where you come from, but it’s pretty common down here.”
“If you won’t risk loving someone, then what’s the point?”
I turned to Alex, the way I imagined I’d face Angel in the movie. She kept her eyes transfixed on the script, making sense of it in her mind, picturing how she’d speak her next line. I lowered my voice.
“My heart’s been broken, all the pieces dropped to the bottom of the sea. Nothing beats inside me anymore. I appreciate your efforts, Angel, but it would take an act of God for me to love someone again.”
“And that’s where my part of the scene ends,” I said, dropping character.
Alex said, “Oh, there’s one last line in the scene. Mind if I read it?”
“No, go ahead. They’re always adding new things.”
“Okay, say your last part again, and I’ll read it in context.”
“Okay,” I said, raising my fingers to my lips to jog my memory. I paced the deck, out beyond the covering into the hot midday sun and back. “Oh, okay. Meredith says, I feel like my heart is broken. Nothing is beating anymore. I appreciate your efforts, Angel, but it would take an act of God for me to love someone again.”
Alex said, “It says Meredith exits the room, and Angel says, Why do you think I’m here?’”
Surrounded by an ocean of blue water, I felt the power of those words.
“That’s really powerful,” Alex said, thumbing through the rest of the script before closing it and setting it down. “She’s saying only an act of God will change things, and apparently, she’s talking to the angel God sent to do just that.” I nodded, and we sat in silence a few moments.
“I need a break from the sun,” I said. Picking up my sunglasses and the script from the table, I ducked below deck and slipped into cooler quarters. In the light of day streaming through a small round porthole, the walls in my cabin became a dark caramel color, inviting a calm I was beginning to get used to.
I could hear Luke and Captain Brewer talking in muted, barely indistinguishable tones. The cozy bed tempted me to climb in for a nap. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought of the commercial I starred in that kept me financially afloat during the hardest year of my life. God had been there even when things were difficult. He had been in that Drowz-U-Tab commercial with me—and in Chicago when I really couldn’t sleep—and I felt His presence here as I curled up in this luxurious bed, knowing I could trust Him no matter what the circumstances.
Luke and I bid a fond farewell to Captain Brewer, Lan, and Alex on Sunday morning, once the Aloha Freedom had been berthed in its slip at Marina del Rey. Whatever formality existed in the usual separation between guests and crew broke down entirely on Saturday night when the five of us played cards and told jokes until midnight after an amazing meal of freshly caught, freshly grilled tuna. Luke and I slept in our own stately cabins below deck, overcoming the powerful temptation to share a bed, yet feeling better in the morning for our decision.
We could have called for Angus to pick us up, but given the extraordinary hospitality and generosity of the movie studio and our indulgence in luxury superyacht living, we were determined to find our own ride.
“Here we are again, about to say good-bye,” I said. “What time does your plane leave?”
“Three o’clock, but I’ll have to get through check-in and security, and before that, fight through traffic.”
“So we’re saying good-bye in the parking lot in Marina del Rey? I go my way back to Hollywood, you go yours back to Eugene, Oregon.”
“Wasilla, Alaska. Remember? I have to go home for a few days before I fly to the islands.”
“Every meeting starts out with joy and ends with agony.”
We embraced again, contact between us sparking melancholy. Luke removed his cell phone and called for two taxis using the number from a painted sign at the marina.
“When will I see you again?” I asked.
“You know the answer to that question. Don’t make me point out to you how full our calendars are. I’ll be locked into this trip for the next two weeks; you’re off to live the dream of every actress in the country.”
I shook my head at the absurdity of contradictory ambitions. For almost ten years I’d chased an acting career that came with one-in-a-million odds. At the same time, I’d longed for, dreamed of, finding a soul mate, something that seemed even less likely than the acting dream. But both had happened, and in a stroke of cosmic irony, happened at concurrent times, their contradictory trajectories represented by two taxis headed in opposite directions.
“I feel torn apart,” I told Luke, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, the first of our taxis was pulling in the entrance to the marina.
“Let’s keep our cell phones on,” I said, my voice more desperate than I wanted it to be. “Let’s just stay in contact as much as possible, okay? I
want to be able to reach you anytime I want.”
“Harper, it’s going to be fine. Just pour your energy into this movie. Make it a great one. Time passes, it always does, and we’ll get together as soon as they turn off the cameras and roll away your costumes.”
We kissed again. It was the lingering sort of kiss where you pray for magic, pray that when you open your eyes you’ll find all your circumstances changed.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
Luke waved his arm to the taxi. It stopped in the parking area on the other side of a chain-link fence.
“You take this one,” Luke said.
“No, you’ve got a plane to catch. You take it.”
“There’s no way I’m going to leave you here by yourself.”
Luke picked up my overnight bag and walked me to the taxi. He opened the door, like a doorman at a fancy theater in New York, setting my bag on the seat and shutting it after me.
“I hate this,” I said through a window that only opened halfway. Luke lowered his face toward the window as I raised mine, and we kissed one last time through the narrow space between us.
~ Twenty-eight ~
“Hi Harper, did you see any of the press running on you this weekend?” It was Emily, the publicity manager. “Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, and Variety all covered the breaking story about Joseph handpicking you for the picture.”
“I didn’t see any of it. I was away from media for the weekend.”
It was just after 9 a.m., and we had yet to shoot a frame of film due to technical lighting issues and a delicate, misty rain. I guess it does rain in Southern California. I sat in one of the canvas chairs, already in makeup and costume, sipping a cup of coffee, nervous on the first day of shooting.
“Anyway, I spoke to your agent,” Emily said. “She agreed it would be a good idea for you to do a short follow-up interview with Entertainment Tonight about the first day of filming.”
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