1
June
Returning home from months at sea is like waking up from one dream right into another. Charter season is four months of sunshine, the bluest water that has ever existed, and lots and lots of money. But it’s also sixteen-hour shifts, sleep deprivation, and late nights scrubbing the vomit of hungover billionaires from white carpet. At the end of the season, we always come to Mitch’s, an Irish pub that puts thedivein dive bar. Mitch’s is dirtier than someone who cleans a twenty-million-dollar yacht for a living would like, and the dust on the bookcase beside our table is likely a health violation, but seeing as it’s the first mess in months that isn’t my responsibility to clean, I couldn’t care less.
Some people never experience déjà vu, but I feel it all the time. More and more as the years pass. Every time I slip into this booth at Mitch’s, for instance. Jo, theSerendipity’s second stew and my soon-to-beformerbest friend, says I’m just bored. But I disagree. How can I be bored when I work on a giant boat and run away to the Caribbean four months a year? How can I be bored when I get paid to see theplaces most people only dream of? As Jo’s nieces would say, I amliving the dream.Usually, I don’t disagree.
Usually.
But as I stare across the table at Jo,nightmareis the word that comes to mind. I can see her mouth moving, but I don’t hear a word. I’m distracted by the ache in my bad knee, which, after the last four months working barefoot, is aggravated by even the lowest of low-heeled wedges. In a few days, my knee will adjust to life on land along with the rest of me. All I have to do is ignore the pain until it fades. But what Jo’s just told me? I won’t adjust to it. I refuse.
“Nina?” Jo’s voice comes back into focus, and the feeling of déjà vu slips away. Her gaze darts from me to her fiancé, Alex, beside her.
“It’s an awful idea.” It’s all I can manage, because this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Jo quitting the yacht? To help Alex run a restaurant?
Jo frowns into her drink. “That’s all you have to say?”
“You can’t even cook, Josephine. They don’t pass out Michelin stars for knowing how to operate a microwave. How are you going to help this man run a restaurant? Sure, he makes a good cheese Danish, but the sex can’t be that good.”
“I’ll try to focus on the part where you compliment my cooking,” Alex says.
I shoot him a glare. “Don’t.”
Jo twirls the straw in her glass. “I won’t be cooking. I’ll help manage the place,” she says.
Alex puts an arm around Jo’s shoulders, and though I love him for loving Jo, I also want to punch him in the ribs. Not hard enough to break one, but enough for him to understand how all this is making me feel.
A better friend would smile, buy a round of shots, celebrate this new phase of her friend’s life. But I am not Jo’s better friend. I’m herbestfriend. And as such, I can’t help but think of all the things I’mlosing.You’re upset because she’s choosing him over you, the voice in my head says. The voice isn’t wrong. Of course Jo is choosing Alex over me. He’s the fiancé. I’m the best friend. That’s what happens when people get engaged, or land their dream job, or find something else they can’t resist.
“This is worse than a secret fetus,” I whisper into my drink.
Alex tenses. “A what?”
I wave a hand at Jo. “I thought you may have impregnated her. She’s been acting weird all week.”
Beer dribbles down Alex’s chin when he turns to look at her.
“I’m not pregnant,” she says. “You’ve seen me drinking all season, Nina. We shared a fishbowl at that weird pirate bar—”
“Davy Jones’s Locker isfestive, not weird.” I fiddle with one of the dangling unicorn earrings I take off only to shower and sleep. “You could’ve been pregnant. I don’t know your life. How am I supposed to know if you adhere to CDC guidelines?”
“Youdoknow my life,” Jo says. “Which means you also know I never planned to work in yachting forever. I never planned to work in yachting at all.”
The three of us fall silent. Mitch’s walls are littered with photographs, and ticket stubs, and dollar bills, making me feel as if I’ve stepped into a stripper’s scrapbook. I glance at the wall beside us, my heart cartwheeling in my chest when I spot the Polaroid of me, Jo, and Ollie, theSerendipity’s chef before Alex. I decide that our current chef, Amir, is my new favorite. His food isn’t as good as Ollie’s or Alex’s, but at least Amir has never broken my heart.
Ollie and I started on theSerendipitythe same year, when both of us were new to yachting. We worked together for eight charter seasons, and it was in this very bar, almost a year ago to the day, that I’d found out he was leaving to become sous chef at Miami’s illustrious Il Gabbiano.
Don’t think about him, the voice in my head chides. But how can I avoid it when he’s staring right at me from that damn Polaroid? I lean over and grab the photo, yanking it free from the wall with one sure pull.
“Nina,” Jo says. “What are you doing?”
I shove the photo into my bra. “Souvenir,” I say. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it: burn it, tuck it into a book, sneak back here in a week and staple it to the wall again.
“Shots!” Britt, theSerendipity’s third stew, appears beside the table with four shot glasses crowded in her hands. She grins at us, completely oblivious to the tension she’s walked into.
I take two of the shot glasses and glare at Jo. “I need this more than you.” I tip Jo’s shot down my throat before chasing it with mine.
Britt scoots into the booth energetically, nudging me against the wall and blocking me into this hellscape.
