Tea was served in an elaborate “tea” lobby and came with a tower of finger sandwiches. It was lovely but all Charley could think about was that at eight o’clock the following morning she would start her journey back to Florida and Kyle would become a memory. Her heart ached with the idea that after all the time that had passed since her divorce, she had finally met someone. It was just her luck that he lived on a ship that traveled around to ports halfway around the world from her home.
“Stop moping,” Jules said.
“I’m not moping. I’m just a little sad, that’s all.”
“Then do something about it.”
“What, beg him to ask me to stay? And then what, live in a twelve by twelve room for six months at a time? How long can a relationship survive that? He didn’t ask anyway.”
“He did tell you that he loves you. Maybe he’s working out the details. You’re being very negative, which really isn’t like you. You have to give the guy some bit of encouragement. Tell him how you feel.”
“It’s more likely he’s working out a smooth escape in the morning.” She hated the bitterness she heard in her voice.
Jules sighed. “I think you’re wrong, sweetie. I also think you are pushing him away to protect yourself and it’s going to haunt you. Maybe this romance with Kyle doesn’t have a happily ever after, but it doesn’t have to end tragically either.”
She knew her friend was right about the guilt she would take home with her. She didn’t want to hurt Kyle but she knew dragging an unworkable relationship out could only lead to worse pain later. Her marriage had at least taught her that. “I’m just being realistic. He has his life and I have mine.”
Jules gave her a look that said she knew she was full of shit. “If you say so. Come on, let’s get out of here. Drew and the others are meeting us at an Irish pub a few blocks from here. Maybe if I get you drunk, you’ll start listening to me and stop whining.”
“I do not whine.”
It was undoubtedly a whine. Jules just raised her eyebrows and smiled. They collected their purses, left money on the table and walked toward the door.
The Canadian town was clean and had a very European feel as they made their way to the busy shopping street with pubs and restaurants. Directly across from the Irish pub was a Scottish pub. Charley watched as Jules debated with herself for a moment over which one Drew had said they were going to. In the end, she decided it had been Irish and they entered the traditional bar.
Nearly everything was covered with wood and the floors creaked from age. It was noisy and filled with life. Even Charley smiled when she saw Drew, Bob and the others chugging tall mugs of beer at a back table.
The long wooden table was laden with half-eaten hamburgers, steaks and fries. Three empty pitchers told her that, the men had been at this for a while. They all cheered when the two ladies arrived.
Charley noticed that the next table was full of girls who she’d seen on the ship. One of them was Varinka, the cocktail waitress who had made cow eyes at Kyle the evening they’d danced in the nightclub. Charley smiled at the table and they all waved except for Varinka, who turned her head and downed a shot of dark-brown liquid.
She sat down next to Bob. “No sailor tonight?”
“He had to work.”
“Too bad.” Bob seemed genuinely sorry.
Bob was a good-natured guy who lived on the same side of the country as her. He had a stable job. He was good-looking and probably looked great in uniform. Why couldn’t she have fallen for him?
She waved off talk about Kyle’s absence. “Did you have a good time on the cruise, Bob?”
“Great! I’m going to need two days to sleep it off.” He smiled and downed half of his beer.
Two more mugs arrived along with several pitchers. Drew poured her a mug.
“I think we need some shots of Jameson,” Jules said.
All the men agreed and before Charley could stop them they had ordered a round for her as well. Now she had a shot and a beer in front of her, and she didn’t really want to drink either.
Jules started nagging at her to drink up, but soon got distracted by two men fighting across the crowded room.
Bob took pity on her. He took her shot and downed it himself. “You owe me one.”
“Thanks,” she said.
He put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. It was kind of brotherly and actually made her feel a bit better. “It will all work out, Charley. You worry too much.”
“So I’ve been told.” She took a long pull on her beer and stole a french fry from Bob’s plate.
Before she knew it, she was laughing and having a good time. When she really thought about it, she had nothing to be sad about. She’d had a great week with Kyle and had seen things she might never see again. She’d taken the photographs of a lifetime and if Captain Cristou was right, she might have more opportunities in the future. It might have been the beer, but she started to feel better.
It was stupid to ruin the last night of the trip with sorrow. She had nothing to regret.
“Time to go,” Bob announced, at eleven o’clock. They had to be back aboard by half past.
As they got up to leave, so did the table with the girls who worked aboard the ship. Two of them were on either side of Varinka, holding the wobbly girl upright.
“Is she okay?” Charley asked.
A short blonde smiled. “Just had a few too many. We’ll take care of her.”
Varinka turned and shook off her friends help. Her mouth was twisted in an ugly smirk. She was wearing a low-cut sweater that showed most of her ample bosom and her skirt showed the rounded bottom of her ass. Luckily, she was wearing thick, black tights or she would freeze when she left the bar. Her skin was slick with sweat and her breath could start the room on fire if there had been the smallest spark.
When she spun around, she nearly knocked Charley over. Bob put a hand out to steady her and the girl’s friends stopped her from tumbling over. Charley tried to back away but the pub was so crowded there was no place to go.
Varinka was less than an inch from Charley’s face when she spoke. Her thick Russian accent and too much alcohol left her words slurred and elongated. “Just so you know, as soon as you get off the ship tomorrow, he will come back to me. He always comes back to me. Someone like you could never hold a man like him.”
“Okay,” Charley said. She didn’t want to fight with this girl. She knew it was foolish to argue with someone who was obviously inebriated. Though, she couldn’t have been more shocked. Varinka could not have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two. She was still a kid. Charley recognized that she was the adult and just agreed with her claims.
“He always comes back to Varinka. He loves me.” She flailed her arms and smacked one of her friends in the back of the head. “Not this bitch.”
Her friends grabbed her and moved her quickly toward the exit. The little blonde who had been helping, stopped and turned to Charley. She had a guttural accent that might have been Dutch or another northern European country. “I’m so sorry, madam. Please, she’ll be fired if anyone reports that she was rude to a passenger. I know she shouldn’t have said anything, but they’ll put her off right here and she’ll have to find her own way home.”
“I won’t report her.”
The blonde’s shoulders slumped. “Thank you, madam. I’m truly sorry and Varinka will be as well when she is sober again.”
“Go take care of your friend. Don’t worry about me.”
The blonde moved to walk away, but then turned around. She looked as if she was debating over her next words. “Madam, I know it’s not my business, but what she said about Mr. Macintyre, is not true. She wishes it were, but it’s not.”
Charley didn’t know what to say. She just nodded, and the girl ran to join her friends.
“Well, that was exciting,” Drew said.
“I thought we were going to have a catfight,” Bob added laughing.
They all joked about
the incident as they left the Irish pub. The cool air of Canada felt wonderful after the stale, stuffy bar. Charley took deep breaths and tried not to think about Varinka or Oswald.
As soon as they were back onboard the group went to the martini bar. Charley pulled Bob aside and said goodbye before she made her way back to her cabin. They had a flight at eleven in the morning out of Seattle and she had to pack her suitcase and gear.
Jules’ suitcase was already out on the small couch and looked to be nearly packed. Charley started with her camera equipment and methodically secured it all in her bag before she started on her clothes. It was quiet, maybe too quiet as she thought about all the wonderful memories she would take back home with her. She ignored the sharp pangs in her chest and just kept folding clothes and stuffing them into her bag.
At midnight, the ship pulled away from the dock at Victoria. Charley felt the gentle rocking as they left port. She thought about Varinka and hoped that the girl had gotten aboard without too much notice. She hated the idea that she might be put off the ship and stranded in Canada having to fend for herself.
At one in the morning, the knock on the stateroom door made her nearly leave her skin. Her heart raced as she looked through the peephole and found Kyle’s distorted image looking back at her from the corridor. Even the fishbowl effect of the glass peephole could not hide how beautiful he was.
She pulled the door open. His smile nearly brought tears to her eyes. Why did he look so happy? Why wasn’t he devastated the way she was?
As soon as he saw her face, his smile faded and he backed her into the room. “What’s wrong?”
His questions made her so angry she nearly couldn’t speak. She actually sputtered for a second. “What’s wrong? You know what, Kyle. If you have to ask me what’s wrong, then you should just go back to your own room.”
She pushed him back toward the door but after two steps backward, he stopped and stood his ground. “Look, we both knew that this week was going to come to an end. That’s what vacations are like. You go and have a good time, and then they end. You act as if this is a surprise.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to make this better?”
The only good thing that had come from Kyle’s visit was she no longer wanted to cry. Now she wanted to punch him in the nose. In the back of her head, a voice was screaming at her to stop and think. All the emotions built up inside her would not allow the logic through.
Kyle said, “I’m trying to be realistic and logical.”
“Go away, Kyle.” Her voice was loud enough that if there were people in the corridor they would be able to hear.
His eyes widened. “Did something happen today?”
She couldn’t tell him about Varinka. She wasn’t going to cost the girl her job. Besides, that girl had nothing to do with the fact that no good could come of letting him stay with her for one more night. Every moment was torture at this point. “No. Just go.”
Kyle looked down at his feet for a moment and then up at her. His voice was only slightly above a whisper. Sorrow dripped from every word. “Okay, if that’s what you want, Charley. I’ll go.”
Her heart literally felt as if it were splitting in two. She thought she might throw up. Her tattered heart was screaming at her to do something to fix this. Tell him how you feel. Beg him to go with you to Florida. Ask him if you can stay. Do something. But her head said to make a clean break now. It will hurt less than dragging this out for days or weeks. It was an impossible situation.
“That’s what I want. Goodbye, Kyle.” Her eyes burned with unshed tears.
He never took his eyes from her face. She could see myriad emotions flying through their beautiful blue depths. Before she knew what he was going to do, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly. His mouth pressed against her temple. “I guess you have your reasons. Take care of yourself, Charley.”
A minute later, he was gone from her stateroom and from her life. The room was so empty it was stifling. Charley stood staring at the closed door for twenty minutes. Her feet demanded that she run after him, apologize and tell him that she loved him. She’d never told him. As that thought hit her, the first tear pushed over her bottom lid. She barely saw the rest of her packing through the waterfall that followed.
The corridor outside Charley’s stateroom seemed endless as he walked the length of it to the forward stairwell. What just happened?
He had fully intended to go up the one flight to his stateroom but found himself continuing to climb and then crossing the short distance to the Constellation Lounge. There was always a going away party there on the last night of the cruise. People were happy and sad that it was over. He just wanted a drink.
“What can I get you, Kyle?”
Kyle had barely noticed the crisp white arm of the bartender’s sleeve as he leaned over the bar toward him.
He looked up. “Vodka, rocks, Gene.”
“No shift tonight, sir?”
Kyle gave a weak smile. It was none of the bartender’s business, but it was nice to have friends who cared enough about him to ask. “No. I have the next forty-eight off.”
Gene nodded and a minute later placed the drink in front of him.
The glass was half empty when he noticed he was no longer alone at the bar.
Jules sipped at her own clear liquid and watched him. “Where is Charley?”
He shrugged. “Sleeping, I guess.”
“She didn’t want to come with you?”
He shrugged. He didn’t want to discuss his relationship with Charley’s friend. A moment later, he found himself talking in spite of his determination to keep quiet. “I guess she just didn’t want the same things I wanted.”
Jules wrapped her dark-red lips around the straw and sucked in the last of her cocktail. She looked up at him. “She’s cautious. She has a right to be. She doesn’t see how it can work out.”
Gene came over, and Jules ordered another gin and tonic.
“Maybe she doesn’t want it to work out.”
“I think she does, but she’s afraid. She was feeling better but then the thing with that girl tonight probably freaked her out.”
He was only half listening, but caught bits and pieces of what Jules said. “What girl?”
Jules raised her eyebrow. “The Russian girl, at the pub in Victoria. Charley didn’t tell you?”
“No.” She had his full attention. His heart started to race. Could something have happened that Charley didn’t tell him about?
Jules looked uncomfortable. She frowned as if deciding what to say next. “I guess she didn’t want to get the kid fired.”
He had no idea what Jules was talking about. “There are a lot of people in Victoria. It’s a busy city.”
“This one works on the ship and said you were her guy. It was pretty tense there for a moment. She was drunk and we all just laughed it off.” Jules shrugged.
“I told Charley how I feel about her. What more am I supposed to do?”
Jules took her drink from the bar. “More,” she said.
He watched her walk away. She crossed the room to a group of tables that Drew and the others had pulled together. Drew got up and kissed her cheek before they both left the lounge.
* * * * *
He ran down the dock once he saw her familiar red hair moving away toward the taxi stand.
“Charley, wait.”
She turned. Her eyes were red and puffy. She really looked terrible, as if she hadn’t slept all night. That made him feel a bit better. At least she wasn’t apathetic to their situation.
She looked away and watched the street for her ride.
“You are really just going to walk away without even talking to me. I want to be understanding, Charley, but you really make me mad.”
Finally, she turned toward him. “What am I supposed to say? You have a life here on a ship. I have a life in Florida. We had a good time. That’s it. Now I go back to reality and you go back to…whatever.”
&nbs
p; “Is that really what you want?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s life, Kyle.”
She kept her large suitcase in front of her as if it was a suit of armor, shielding her from him. He looked at Jules but the brunette kept her eyes averted.
A large black car pulled up to the curb. The young man that got out called her name. She nodded and gave him a weak smile. The driver came over and took her suitcase. She looked lost.
Kyle took a step forward and wrapped her in his arms. She was afraid, he knew that was the problem. He hated that he had some part in causing her pain. Why did she have to feel so good in his arms? Why did his heart feel as if it was going to push out of his chest? “Charley a long time ago my father told me something that has made all the difference.”
Her arms finally came around his back. They gripped at him as if she might pull herself inside his skin.
“What was that?” she asked.
He broke the hug and kissed her hard on the lips. “Life is exactly what you make of it. Good or bad, ultimately, you are in control.”
He could see she was about to say something but he cut her off. “What happened with your ex was not in your control, but everything that happened since then was up to you. Meeting on this ship was a moment of fate, but what happens from now on is determined by the two of us.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, and tears started down her cheeks.
Her tears were breaking his heart. She needed more than he could give her at that moment. He was only a first officer on a ship. He had another three months on his current contract. None of it was fair. Yet his father’s words continued to echo in his head.
The driver held open the back door and Jules climbed in.
“I’ll call you,” Kyle said.
“I don’t see what good can come of that.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Don’t,” was the last word she said as she climbed into the car and drove south away from him.
Chapter Thirteen
It should have been the happiest night of her life. A gallery show. An entire section of a major art gallery dedicated to just her photographs and she felt as if her heart were breaking all over again.
Alaskan Exposure Page 17