“Hey, Britt,” Nekesa calls. “If Nina kills you, does that mean I get bottom bunk?”
Britt tips her head to the side. “I did say you could have bottom bunk over my dead body, so sure. But Nina won’t kill me. She loves me like a sister. Don’t you, Nina?”
“I’m an only child, but rumor has it I ate my twin in utero,” I say, then addMurder Brittto the to-do list, making sure the words are big enough for her to see.
Britt snatches the pen from my hand and addswith love.
“Get off the fecking counter, Britt,” Ollie says. He glances at Britt’s addition to the list and snorts. “Good luck with that,” he says, then sets the beef cheeks aside to marinate and leaves the galley.
“So...” Britt says, hopping back onto the counter as soon as Ollie disappears. “Are we ever going to talk about this?”
RJ and Eglé drift into the galley, dragging a large cooler behind them.
“Talk about what?” Eglé asks.
Jo was absolutely right about the possibility of my throwing Brittoverboard. “Yes, Britt. Talk about what?” I touch a fingertip to the end of my pen and point it at her threateningly.
“We’re talking about the elephant in the room, of course,” Britt says, because, unfortunately, she has no fear of me. I ought to fire her for it.
“Elephant is right,” I say. “He stomps around this boat like an elephant having a tantrum.”
I’ve done a pretty good job pretending Ollie bringing up our legal status never happened. If I act like nothing is going on, maybe he’ll give up on his ridiculous ultimatum and see it’s no use. So far, it seems to be working. He hasn’t brought it up since then. If I wanted to be more self-aware, I might spend some time working through the mess of my feelings for Ollie. But I refuse to shell out hundreds of dollars for therapy, much to Jo’s annoyance. She’s become a real therapy evangelist ever since starting family therapy with Alex and Greyson. She even goes on her own now and threatened to gift me a few sessions after the last time I stonewalled her about Ollie. I told her she wouldn’t be able to afford the amount of therapy I need, and she dropped the subject.
“You’re talking about Ollie, right?” Eglé asks.
“Who else?” Alyssa says.
I turn to glare over my shoulder at her and Nekesa. “Does anyone on this boat work but me?” RJ laughs from across the galley. “What areyoulooking at?” I say to him. “Don’t you have a poop deck to swab?”
“Who cares what he’s looking at?” Britt says. “Shoo, RJ.”
“You heard her,” I say, and wave him away. “Scram.”
RJ rolls his eyes. “Have fun hauling the coolers on the tender yourself.” He gets to his feet and leaves the galley.
“Thanks, Nina and Britt. Now he’s going to be in a bad mood,”Eglé says. “I better get back to work before he turns that angst on us lowly deckhands.”
“Can we get back to the topic of Nina and Ollie?” Nekesa says.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Britt says.
Alyssa looks at the rest of us with a bored expression. “What’s there to say about it? They hate each other.”
“Nina and Ollie are totally in love,” Britt says.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Nekesa says.
“I don’t pay you to gossip about me when I’m sitting right here,” I say, and addcurse stewardesses and their future descendantsto my to-do list.
“You don’t pay us. The Greens do,” Britt says.
I sigh. “Either way, if you’re going to continue fabricating conspiracies about myself and Ollie, I’d prefer you to do it off the clock. Let Mom and Dad work it out.”
“So I’m a grown-up and not a big man-baby like you were saying, oh, I don’t know, five minutes ago?”
I nearly leap out of my skin at the sound of Ollie’s voice behind me. I hadn’t heard him come back into the galley.
