Abby checked the clock: only twenty minutes till they were due in the lounge for trivia. “Oh, yeah. I’d better,” she said. “Just a sec.” She jumped up and tucked her journal back into the dresser drawer.
Only when she stepped into the bathroom did she see her husband, still standing in the shower, naked and dripping wet, his hands lathered up with soap. For her.
“I can assure you,” Sam said with a smirk, “that my intentions are pure.” And for the first time in what Abby had come to think of as the Long Break, they found their way back to each other, one sudsy wash at a time.
Javier and Caroline were supposed to meet everyone for trivia at Hawthorne’s Pub at 6:30. Caroline checked her foldout map of the boat. The pub was located on level six, and she punched in the number on the elevator keypad, watching the floors zip by.
“I didn’t know Hawthorne had a pub,” she said absently. She was standing on her tiptoes, shoulder to shoulder with Javier, trying not to collide with the woman next to her. “Shouldn’t it at least be named after someone who had a reputation for drinking?” Caroline pressed.
Javier shrugged. “Isn’t every writer a drinker?”
“You have a point. Still, Hemingway’s Pub, maybe? Or, Tolstoy’s Tavern? I don’t know, somehow those strike me as more right.”
Javier laughed. “More right? I don’t think you’re helping your case for literature. Maybe you mean better?”
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Yes, I guess that would be better.” When they arrived at the lounge, the others were already waiting. Lacey and the boys were huddled in conversation at a table in the corner, while Lee, Abby, and Sam sat at an adjacent table. The bar was packed. Javier and Caroline found two extra stools and scooted them over to the adults.
Their master of ceremonies, a pretty young woman who introduced herself as Athena from South Africa, welcomed everyone and proceeded to outline the rules of the game. Since no more than four players were allowed on a team, Javier amiably slid his chair over to join the kids. Caroline stayed with the adults.
For the first few questions, Caroline’s team did tolerably well. What is the capital of North Dakota? Which artist sang the Piña Colada Song? Name a country that borders Libya. Caroline was pleased that she knew these: Bismarck; Rupert Holmes; Egypt. When the questions grew increasingly difficult, though, she sat back and gulped her soda. She was miserable at trivia. Her group volleyed possible answers back and forth. Thank goodness Sam appeared to know something about everything—history, geography, telekinesis.
“Okay, gang,” Athena announced, flipping her long dark braid over her shoulder. “Next one’s tricky.” Javier pointed at Caroline in mock challenge. “Who was Dolly Parton’s first husband?”
“Oh, I know this one!” Lee whispered to their circle. “It’s Carl Thomas Dean. He also happens to be her only husband.”
Caroline stared at her blankly. “How do you know this stuff?”
Lee shrugged. “A lot of spare time on my hands during preschool nap time?” She scribbled the answer on their little white card.
Next was a question about the order of the planets.
“I have a trick for that.” Abby fanned her fingers out in front of her. “It’s that acronym. You know the one: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally?” She began to rattle off the planets one by one. “So that would be, let’s see—Pluto, Earth, Mars . . .” They held their breath while they waited for her to figure it out. “Wait a second. What the heck is D?” Lee was the first to burst out laughing. “Lovey, I think that’s an acronym for something else.”
Sam furnished the order of the planets, a list that flew off his tongue like a foreign language he was fluent in, and eventually it was Lee who remembered that the Aunt Sally acronym applied to the order of operations when solving math problems: parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.
“See? I knew it was useful information I’d stored away,” Abby quipped.
“Less useful, though, if you can’t remember where to apply it,” Sam kidded, and everyone laughed, including Abby.
“Last question.” Athena cleared her throat for emphasis. “What does the Italian word coriandoli mean?” Everyone groaned. “I’ll give you guys a hint,” Athena said. “It’s something that you find at weddings.”
Caroline shrugged. “Cake, maybe?”
Since no one could think of a better answer, they went with it.
They exchanged cards with a group who were wearing matching red T-shirts that said, I’M WITH EDDIE.
“Let’s hope we did better than Eddie’s crowd,” Caroline whispered. As Athena read off the answers, Caroline checked Eddie’s card, which happily had a preponderance of wrong answers matched by an equal number of beer smudges. Remarkably, Caroline’s group had gotten all correct answers through question nine. But when Athena announced the last answer and another table let out a whoop, Caroline knew they’d lost.
“Coriandoli means confetti.” Caroline shook her head. “Not in a million years would I have guessed that.”
“Me either,” said Sam.
Athena had later hinted it was something people throw at weddings, prompting one passenger to call out, “Rice!” The crowd chuckled.
Athena, however, was bemused. “Rice? Really? You throw rice at weddings? Not in South Africa.” She wagged a finger in the air. “In South Africa, we would never throw rice. That would be wasting food.” And again, everyone laughed, as if in bonhomie.
Her words struck Caroline, though. Here she and her friends were eating and drinking to their hearts’ content, some passengers already beginning to slur their words. What must the ship’s staff think of all these rowdy Americans living to excess? It was the first time on the cruise that Caroline had considered the dichotomy, and she felt embarrassed, ashamed. The crew must think they were ungrateful gluttons. She would make a point of talking to some of the stewards for her article.
As the game wrapped up, Caroline took Javier’s hand in her own. “C’mon, let’s go get some air,” she suggested. She needed a break from all the noise, the nonstop revelry. They waved good-bye to their friends and stepped out into the cool night.
11
When Lacey walked out on deck, a red glow about ten yards away flickered in the dark. She approached the light, thinking it might be Ryan. But when she drew closer, she saw it was a crew member, probably in his twenties, watching her.
“Got an extra I can bum off you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “My apologies. This is my last one.” He hesitated. “Would you like mine?”
Lacey desperately wanted it but knew she shouldn’t take it for a whole host of reasons. “Maybe just one puff,” she said finally. He handed it over and she inhaled. The burn that crept down her lungs felt good, oddly cleansing. She’d forgotten the appealing rush of nicotine in those first few seconds.
“You mustn’t tell anyone, though,” he said, suddenly mysterious.
“Okay.”
“I’m Victor. From Namibia.” He held out his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Victor from Namibia. I’m Lacey, from Charleston, South Carolina,” she added.
“The pleasure is mine, I’m sure.”
It felt a little weird to be speaking so formally, but she supposed part of it was in the translation. She’d dumped Chris when his little posse of admirers had shown up tonight. She didn’t feel like hanging out at the arcade and was seriously considering curling up in her cabin with a book. Her mom had brought a stack of paperback romances—maybe one of them would be decent.
“Do you know where Namibia is?” Victor asked, interrupting her thoughts. “On the west coast of Africa?”
“Yes, I know where it is,” Lacey said quickly, though she hoped he wouldn’t ask her to pinpoint it on a map. “I still don’t understand why our shared cigarette has to be a secret, though.”
He hesitated before answering. “The crew is not supposed to fraternize with the passengers.” He puffed on his cigarett
e.
“Really? Huh.” She considered that for a moment. “Why not?”
Victor shrugged. “Captain’s orders. Typically, we hang out in crew quarters down below. But I needed to deliver something to the captain, so here I am, catching a smoke before I return to my bunk.”
“Well, don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Do your parents know you smoke?” he asked softly. “You seem very young.”
She flung her hair over her shoulder. “I’m twenty-one,” she lied. “But thanks for your concern. No, my mom doesn’t know I smoke, but there are a lot of things she doesn’t know about me.” Technically, Lacey didn’t think of herself as a smoker, but she liked to light up from time to time.
Victor exhaled and was quiet for a moment. “Such as?”
Lacey was surprised by the boldness of the question. There were probably too many things to list out here in the middle of the ocean to a perfect stranger. Like the first time she’d fooled around with Todd Larson her freshman year in high school (in the back of his car and totally unglamorous) or the time that she and her best friend, Ellie, had snuck off to go skinny dipping in the harbor. Or how she’d stolen a sweater from Macy’s on a dare from Jane Kellen when they were in middle school. But the big one was the one that probably counted the most.
“Like I already know who I’m going to marry.” Lacey inhaled sharply. There. She’d said it out loud. She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t let the words slip out on the cruise, not even if her mother held her by the hair overboard and threatened to feed her to the sharks. Not that she would, but Lee had been known to go to insane lengths in search of the truth when she suspected Lacey was hiding something. Tyler had already given her a promise ring with a tiny diamond; it was hidden in her top drawer at home. Even if she’d told her mom, though, she doubted Lee would believe her. Her mom was big into denial when it came to inconvenient truths.
Lacey refrained from saying anything more. Like the fact that she was now six days late. Almost a whole week.
Victor raised an eyebrow at her. “Ah, yes? Who is the lucky man?”
“His name is Tyler,” said Lacey. “He’s amazing.”
“My congratulations then,” said Victor. “That’s big news. Most people don’t fall in love like that until much later in life. Myself included,” he added with a wink.
“Yeah, well, my mom might choose another word than congratulations,” Lacey muttered. They both turned to gaze out at the water, a slate of black with a shimmering triangle cast by the moon. A lattice of stars pinpricked the dark sky above.
Victor said, “I take it she’s not happy with your boyfriend then?”
“She’s only met him once!” Lacy found herself automatically launching into a defense of Tyler, but stopped. Her mom was definitely unhappy with her choice of boyfriend. That was putting it mildly. And if it turned out that Lacey was pregnant, well, Lee would probably be the first one to hunt him down and kill him.
Victor nodded, as if carefully processing the information Lacey was passing along.
She felt a wave of embarrassment rush over her. “Sorry, too much information, right? And you don’t even know me!” What was she thinking? Confiding in someone she’d just met?
Still, it felt good to talk about Tyler. She’d been missing him so much, and the current circumstances were hardly helping. The possibility that she might actually be pregnant was starting to take hold. Six days late. In the back of her mind, Lacey knew that during finals week she hadn’t exactly been diligent about birth control. This morning she’d even checked the ship’s little sundries store, surreptitiously combing the aisles for a pregnancy test. But there didn’t appear to be any, and Lacey would rather die than ask the salesclerk.
Victor smiled at her. “You know, where I come from, true love is cause for celebration, not for secret keeping.”
Lacey let the notion sit with her. Victor was right, of course, but he didn’t understand her circumstances, that her mom wanted Lacey to become a doctor or an astronaut before she even thought about guys. Lee thought she knew what was best for Lacey, but her mom had never been in love. How could she possibly understand how Lacey felt about Tyler? It was so hypocritical!
“I know what you’re saying makes sense. Really. That’s the way it’s supposed to be in America, too. But my mom’s different. She wants me to become president or something before I fall in love, get married.”
Victor shook his head. “Sometimes you Americans confuse me. You have so much at your disposal. So many riches, and yet it’s never enough. Someone wants you to do one thing; you want to do something else. When the world is your oyster, why make clam chowder out of it?”
Lacey laughed at the mixed metaphor, but she had to admit: Victor had a point. There were worse things in life than worrying about what your mom thought of your boyfriend. Or whether or not said boyfriend had gotten you pregnant. Even if her mom would consider it the ultimate screwup. Lacey had the perfect comeback for that, though: How could Lee accuse her of being stupid when Lacey had been conceived out of something less than love? Just the pure lust of a one-night stand? At least Lacey and Tyler loved each other. At least they planned to get married.
A loud cackle from the other side of the boat suddenly interrupted her thoughts. When she glanced over, a small group of passengers, their arms slung around one another, were slowly making their way across the deck and singing loudly.
“You know that none of this is real, right?” Victor asked, gesturing widely. “It’s an illusion. In a few more days, the captain will wave his wand and this—the ship, the partying, the beautiful beaches—will all be gone and everyone will go back home. But that is precisely why they come, so they can leave their lives behind for a little while.” He pursed his lips around his cigarette, making it bloom orange in the night. He shrugged and exhaled. “Who knows? Maybe they have a broken heart or a job they hate—but on the ship they can forget about all that and become someone else entirely. That’s the magic. When they get home, though, their real lives are still there. Waiting for them.”
Lacey nodded, uncertain what he was driving at.
“But you, you see.” He pointed, as if he suspected she hadn’t quite understood. “You have something to look forward to. True love. Marriage one day. Perhaps a family,” he added.
Lacey felt herself blanch at the mention of family. Was it that obvious? But then she smiled. Victor might be a little dramatic and dreamy, but he was right: Lacey wasn’t so much trying to escape her life as she was hoping to embrace it.
Victor dropped his cigarette on the deck and stubbed it out with the sole of his shoe.
“You don’t just throw it overboard?” she asked, surprised.
“No.” He shook his head. “Too risky. You never know with this wind, it might get blown back onto the ship.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” She turned her face away from the wind. “Well, thank you, Victor from Namibia. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.” She held out her hand for him to shake.
“Yes, a pleasure.” He smiled, the whites of his teeth flashing in the dark. He took her hand and kissed it. “Maybe I’ll see you around the ship another time?”
“I’d like that,” Lacey said.
She watched him walk away. And at that precise moment she felt a stitch in her abdomen. She held her breath, waiting for more, but none came. Was it a kick? But that was ridiculous! A baby the size of a poppy seed couldn’t kick. Oh my God, she thought, what if there really is a baby in there? It hadn’t seemed real until just that instant. Being late was one thing, but that unfamiliar zip across her stomach, almost like a flutter kick? She’d never felt that before.
Lacey shook her head. She was freaking out. She needed to get back to the cabin, where she could pull herself together. If only she could remember which way led to the front of the ship, it would be so much easier to get home. She started off in search of a sign, any sign, really, pointing the way, and tried not to panic.
On Tuesday, their group decided to split up. Javier and Caroline wanted to explore the Swizzle Stick Pub on the other side of the island. They’d rented a moped, and Lee walked over to wish them good luck. “Watch out for the rotaries,” she warned. “Remember to turn left into them.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her.” Javier patted Caroline’s knee. She was behind him, clasping his middle, her lips pulled into a tight line. A bulky orange helmet rested on her head, and Lee was taken aback for a moment. It was the first time she’d seen Caroline appear anything less than glamorous.
“Consider yourself my sole executor,” Caroline told her, then added, “I’m not kidding, you know that, right?” Lee laughed and shooed them out of the parking lot.
Since the kids were not about to wait one more nanosecond to get online, everyone else was headed into downtown Hamilton this morning. As much as they’d enjoyed Horseshoe Bay yesterday, it had been like pulling teeth trying to get everyone back on the ship. There had been pleas, whining, outright bargaining of souls, so that the teenagers might go into town to check their e-mails. But the adults had been firm: tomorrow. So, now they were keeping their promise. Chris, Lacey, and Ryan hovered near the front of the ferry as they pulled up to dock, eager to be the first to step off the boat.
Abby nudged Lee. “Look at them. They’re like a bunch of bloodhounds. No amount of pepper spray could throw them off the scent.”
“Let’s hope they turn back into cute puppies once they get their fill of the Internet.”
When the ferry docked, relief washed over Lee. The ride had been unexpectedly rocky, and she was grateful to step onto terra firma. They checked the ferry’s return schedule posted outside the main terminal, then crossed over to Front Street. Quaint cobblestone sidewalks meandered through a neighborhood that included Louis Vuitton and other stylish vendors. Lee did her best to dodge the sun, which was intense, blistering even, without a sea breeze. Already, a bead of perspiration was winding its way down her chest, and she held her shirt away from her skin to allow for air. A little bell chimed, and a local man, dressed in a polo shirt, khaki shorts, and knee socks, sailed by them on his bicycle.
The Summer Sail Page 11