Caribbean Crossroads

by Connie E Sokol

  He stood, chest rising and falling, listening. “Megan, I know you’re here.”

  Nothing.

  Surveying the silent deck, he said. “I look like an idiot talking to myself.” Then, realizing he needed a better tack than his own humiliation, he said, “I told Britt to knock it off. Just know, if she puts one toe out of line, I’ll tell Clint and she’ll be on another ship.”

  The chug, chug sound of the ship engines churning the water filled the silence.

  “It wasn’t anything you’re thinking. You know what she’s like. You know that.” Bryant looked around, wondering for the first time if she was actually not there. “I told her, clear as day, there’s nothing between us, never can be.”

  Bryant shook his head. “Listen, I can’t do this. I care about you, Meg. I like you and I’m here, still here, even with all the grief you’ve given me from day one. There’s a problem, so let’s talk about it. But I’m not going to chase you down every time you get scared.”

  The waves churned against the side of the massive ship. Not a sound or a movement on the deck. Shaking his head, he turned and went back in the walk-through, down the steps.

  Megan watched it all, crouched from behind the farthest chess table. As soon as he was gone, she grabbed her knees and sobbed silently.

  It wasn’t the shock of seeing Brittany and Bryant like that, not really. She could see it for what it was. It was that sickening, familiar feeling of betrayal. Brittany’s blonde hair, her smacked up against him, the clandestine feeling, and Megan being the one that didn’t know. Images of Jackson and his antics uncontrollably sped through her mind like a fast forward movie. That feeling of going along happily, thinking you could trust, but then a shock to that trust.

  Rosa.

  Suddenly the image of Rosa crying over her cart, her being betrayed by Miguel, trusting him with her money and him skipping town, came barreling back to her. And Megan had said she would help her!

  She jumped to her feet, running back down through the hallways and finally finding her on the last rooms of her shift. Rosa exclaimed something in Spanish and began to cry again.

  “Rosa, I’m so sorry, lo siento. I couldn’t find the help, I mean, I tried but tomorrow—”

  “¿Puedo ayudarle?” Megan froze at the sound of Bryant’s voice.

  She turned to see him approaching them, looking flushed as if he had been running too. He took in Megan’s tear-stained face and squeezed her hand.

  “We can talk about us in a minute. What’s going on?” Bryant turned to Rosa. “¿Cuál es el problema?”

  With utter relief, Rosa let out a flood of Spanish. Megan stared in amazement as Bryant conversed simply but fairly fluently in Spanish with Rosa, the latter gesturing to and fro.

  Yes, the home building in South America.

  Apparently, he and Rosa had come to some resolution as they both nodded heads and he gave her a side hug.

  “Don' preocupación,” said Bryant. Rosa smiled, wan but somewhat comforted, with another hug from Megan and pushed her cart to the next hallway. Once Rosa was out of sight, he turned to Megan. “To be on the safe side, and if it’s okay with you, I’ll talk with Mrs. V. in the morning and get more details. We don’t know this Miguel guy, it could be true, it could be false.” Megan started to say something.

  “Megs, I know what you’re gonna say, but trust me. It’s better to get the truth right out of the gate. Don’t you worry about this. I’ll take care of it from here.”

  She had been ready to say something about trust but held it back, and she knew why.

  “Megan, I need you to know—”

  She stopped him, putting her fingers on his lips, and turned back toward her hallway.

  ***

  Megan lay awake through the night, unable to sleep, trying to find clarity in the settling sediment of what had just happened. The anxiety wasn’t with Bryant and Brittany. The scene had answered the question of Brittany’s interest—and Megan’s earlier unsettled feelings—clearly enough. But she wasn’t worried about Bryant. Her soul confirmed to her that this was a setup, and all the tumblers had fallen into place. Bryant had done the right thing and she knew it.

  No, that wasn’t what bothered her. It was her reaction—childish, frightened, avoidant. What was the matter with her? Will she never stand up to this feeling, to this fear? If only she clearly knew what it was. Each moment of being with Bryant seemed to clean the fallout from last year—to release more confusion, more feelings, more refuse, revealing the way back to herself. How much of the wall was still to be dealt with?

  The first brick had been her hesitancy in trusting again. Then it was about Bryant himself—was he good, was he playing, or did he truly care for her? Then it was something she couldn’t pinpoint but turned out to be Brittany. So what was it now? Would it always be something? Was it simply an excuse to stay distant, to stay unhurt?

  Softly, thoughts of Bryant helping Rosa stole into her mind. Once again, his take-charge manner, his ability to assess and handle the situation impressed her. So why couldn’t he seem to apply it to his own life? Was his personal instability the thing that kept her at bay now?

  Whatever it was, it was time to move forward, without a ready answer. This Berlin Wall she had so carefully constructed continued to come down brick by Bryant brick. She had to choose now, right now, to let it completely collapse, or it might be stuck and cemented forever, keeping her unable to tear it down with anyone.

  Closing her eyes, Megan allowed the myriad of deeply buried sensations to rise. Fear. Pain. Betrayal. Anger. A swirling mass of pushing, pulsing feelings bubbled to the surface and washed over her. Tears fell thick and strong and she allowed herself to cry silently. She didn’t know how long she lay that way, reliving the past pains that had remained lidded and sealed, but at last there wasn’t anything left. It was as if a dam had burst and all the stagnant water had been pushed out by fresh mountain water shed. In the depth of it, Megan sensed something more embedded in the emotional bedrock, something that could not be named. Something not to be touched just yet.

  But the anger was gone. The bitterness, the hurt. She wiped and wiped at the tears that had fallen down her face and into her ears. She felt strangely clean, and had no energy, or desire, to reconstruct the safe brick wall. Not today.

  At 5:00 a.m., Megan finally rose, dressed in a long skirt and warm sweater wrap, and went back up on the Atrium deck. She eased into her familiar lawn chair and closed her eyes, sifting through memories of the past year, trying on ways to share it with him. As the sunrise barely peeked over the horizon, she felt a dawning awareness too. It was time to do things differently, and in the clean wake of things to make room for something new.

  Megan felt him before she heard him. Solid sounds of footsteps echoed on the stairs, not running this time, sure and steady. A breeze slightly lifted her tousled hair. She felt alert and clear, more clear than she had in months. Megan knew why he was here and what he had come for. And she was ready to face it.

  Bryant sat down on the lawn chair beside her, gazing out at the sparkling ocean and the early morning sky. The ocean churned steadily below them for a few quiet moments.

  “Why do you run?” He said it sincerely and without accusation, staring at the sea, as if they had been in deep conversation and nothing more natural could have been asked. Megan focused on her skirt.

  “Because I’m scared of you.”

  “Of me? You could take me down cold. I’ve seen you muscle Tag.”

  He had tried to be light but he didn’t need to be. “You know me. And that scares me.”

  “I don’t know that much. And there isn’t anything scary.”

  Megan gazed at his profile, thinking one last time. Could she do this, could she open that door? “Do you want to know something more?”

  Leaning forward, arms resting on his knees, he turned his head slightly to her, “Yes.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

  He though
t. “Why did you come? I don’t mean about helping Jillian. What is it that keeps you here but holding back, and not really with me?”

  Megan sat very still, her long legs crossed, her skirt billowing at the base with the breeze. She stared at the endless nothingness of the sky. Cerulean blue, so clear you could float away in it.

  “Because I didn’t want to go home.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I got cheated on, lied to, and dumped. Hard.” She paused—measuring, choosing. Deciding.

  He remained still, his face in the math-solving repose.

  “I was his house cleaner, if you can believe that. Actually, for the four of them, all good Christian roommates at NCU.” She didn’t try to withhold the sarcasm. “They paid me well for one, sometimes two days a week. And then I started adding some light cooking, nothing fancy.”

  “I came early from class one day, they usually weren’t there. As I came in, Jackson—that’s his name—was with another girl, introduced her as Tessie. They had come from the back rooms, which wasn’t allowed in the honor code. I couldn’t be sure what they were doing together, or if anything had happened, but they were laughing and talking low. He said she was his study partner. I wanted to believe him more than I really did, but he smoothed it over. He was good like that.

  “Anyway, we started dating, I don’t know how, really—studying, group dates going bowling, to the movies. Then he asked me to go hiking. One thing led to another, and another. It was easy at first, really easy.”

  The sounds of ocean slapping the side of the massive ship filled the pause.

  “Then one week I was cleaning and an answering message came on from a Chazzy someone—it sounded important. So when he and a roommate walked in, I mentioned it though I wasn’t sure of the name. It was the look that they shared. His roommate said, ‘Chazzy—yeah, we know her,’—then he laughed, kind of short and throaty.”

  She looked down and swallowed, fixing her skirt.

  “Another time I was cleaning the computer desk and accidentally hit the mouse. I saw something … something that made me sick, and I talked to Jackson about it. He said it was his roommate’s stuff and not to worry. That’s what he always used to say—don’t worry about it, it’s all good. He had always said things, lots of things. How he cared for me, liked me … loved me. And plans for our future. We’d be at the mall and he’d stop and look at rings and say, ‘Seeing your taste, that kind of thing.’ His trademark smile—he had a dimple, very slight, but right here, and he’d emphasize it when he wanted to.” She stopped, seeing it clearly. “He always made comments about … questions about kids and working and how I felt about it, that sort of thing. It had been three whirlwind months and I thought we were getting very close. He actively took me there.”

  Megan looked out at a gull briefly landing on then rising from the ocean.

  “A few times he acted funny—like we were out on a date and suddenly took my arm and turned into a store. Things like that. Or,” she paused, narrowing her eyes, “sometimes he’d make me uncomfortable. The way he kissed me or, or looked at me. Allude to some things, though never outright. I just thought I was being sensitive. I haven’t had a lot of—of experience with guys, that way.”

  “Then one day I came up to the apartment and I saw him on his motorcycle, his back was to me. A girl with bright blonde hair sat close behind him with her arms tightly around his waist. They were both looking over at something and didn’t see me. She pointed and laughed and I noticed two things at once: the winter sun reflected off a ring, it was on her left hand. And she was wearing my favorite blue coat that I’d given up the year before. That’s when I knew.”

  Megan turned to Bryant. “It was my sister.”

  “I started tracing things, talking to people, and found out. About him. Things that would make you sick. Things that I still can’t imagine are true. And then the truth about our relationship.” She laughed hard and short. “He’d been dating four of us, all at the same time, all for an apartment contest, ranking us on body shape first; specifically, how we looked in a swimsuit, how we cooked and cleaned, if we had income potential to work after marriage. Apparently I was ahead in the cleaning, and—” she hesitated. “Other areas.” She shook her head. “It was a great big joke, but it was working. Four viable candidates. He kept us a secret until he had decided which one would pan out the best, convincing each of us separately that we’d be married by the end of the semester.”

  “Did you tell any of them?”

  “I told my sister what I knew and she got mad. At me.” Megan glanced at Bryant. “Said what did she care. He was a catch, he had a right to look for what he wanted. And he’d found it, she was the one with the ring after all. The rest of us had only been promised one.”

  “But then,” she stopped and shook her head. “He still wanted me to clean for them, didn’t see anything wrong with it.” She paused, an ache in her jaw. “So I did.”

  Megan closed her eyes. “I just went into duty mode, and part of me didn’t want him to know he’d so fully affected me. To act like I was fine, my usual way of dealing with trauma. So I cleaned for one more week and then at the end of one day, he was watching TV on the couch—some sleazy show—and I told him that I couldn’t come back. He looked over from the screen and said how was he supposed to find a replacement with that kind of short notice. That a job was a job and it had nothing to do with what happened between us. That I was unprofessional and a sore loser, and”—she swallowed—“some other things.”

  “And I stood there, fighting to not give him the satisfaction of emotion. I told him no, in clear terms. And then I left.”

  Megan opened her eyes and pulled a stray hair strand from her face. “He never did pay me for that week,” she said. “And I never asked him to.”

  Bryant stared out at the sea, his expression dark and pensive. “What happened to your sister?”

  Megan looked out over the open water. She had tried to tell her sister, tried to explain what Jackson had done and how he was, with her and with others. But Kara insisted Megan was intent on man-hating him. Megan could understand that to a certain degree—it might sound that way, but it wasn't. After several attempts to reason with Kara, there was nothing more she could do. Kara had always been that way—seeing what she wanted to see, content to believe her reality was reality. Jackson had treated her like a queen so what had she to be sore about? Finally, Megan had given up. After hearing of their engagement through the apartment complex grapevine, she finally accepted that Kara had made her choice. And now they both would have to live with it. “They were married five months ago,” she said softly, “and are staying at our house.”

  A gull cawed in a melancholy way above the water.

  “And that,” she stared at the rhythmic waves, “is why I am here.”

  The swish of the boat sounded in the silence. Bryant stared at the waves, his jaw hard. Without breaking his gaze, he reached over and clasped her hand sure and strong. She felt his warmth and tentatively caressed his tan fingers, the rough callouses—she didn’t know why they surprised her. The water beat a steady cadence—soothing, gentle, no rush. He leaned back in his chair parallel to her, still staring out at the sea. She closed her eyes and pressed his hand to her cheek. With one smooth motion, he released his hand and pulled her in to the nook of his shoulder. She rested her head on his smooth, solid chest, enveloped in his strong arm.

  The churning waves rolled against the ship. People’s voices could be heard in chatter from the deck below—where to go at the next port, should we play shuffle board, what theme is the dinner buffet. It washed over and floated away. Megan heard the hypnotic waves, felt the warmth of his body, and soaked up the closeness. Inside, she felt empty and washed clean, like the churning white froth melting into the glassy calm expanse of the endless ocean before her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  For the remaining few weeks of the tour, she and Bryant spent every available moment together. It was unspo
ken, an almost magnetic understanding, that time was passing as quickly as the ocean covered by the massive liner. By the final week, both could feel an underpinning of something fragile coming to a close, and though they spoke in tandem conversation, in threads that continued unbroken from one day to the next, they studiously avoided the eggshell subject of home, though the tangible presence of it often made them silent.

  Megan soaked up the shared time like the afternoon sun warming the teak deck—most especially the last few excursions spent together on random beaches—and always evenings after performances on their deck by the chessboards. But every now and then that ominous feeling surfaced, that thing she couldn’t define or dismiss. During the early morning hours, she would often pull apart feelings as they led her through several emotional alleys, but always to dead ends, the most difficult one being Bryant and Life After the Cruise. She hated to face the truth but there it was—no job, no plan, no real life. His family sounded warm and supportive, if not anxious to have him home. Megan thought that was normal and was surprised that Bryant found it frustrating. About his father, he was decidedly silent—but what could she say about fathers. She sighed. What could she say about hers?

  Despite the surfacing negativity, Megan couldn’t deny the happy changes within herself. Surprising, sometimes breathtaking, she had found herself returning—not a burst, but a gradual opening, petal by petal, like time lapse. And it had felt good. Enlivening. As time had progressed with Bryant, her guard lowered, and she found a better balance between being a friend and much more. Still, questions lingered.

  “Why so serious?” Jillian broke her reverie. “Thinking about Rosa?” Megan stopped making her bed and surveyed Jillian who was looking for clothes in the doll-size drawers.

  “No. Rosa is all settled,” said Megan. “Turned out Miguel was intending to make a run for it, pressured by others, but decided not to. He and Mrs. V. had a lovely long chat and all is well, and forgiven I think. Bryant was pretty amazing through the whole thing, actually. Translated as best he could between them, and made sure Miguel got the message, if you know what I mean.” Megan smiled at the memory of Bryant towering over the short Latino man, charging him to take good care of Rosa.