“All... jokey. Is the thought of someone knowing you’d go on a date with me so embarrassing you’d threaten to murder them?”
“I wouldn’tactuallymurder Britt with a cupcake, Ollie. It would be very inefficient.”
He sighs and passes the dish towel to me. “Here. It’s fecking hard to be mad at you with frosting all over your face.”
I hold the towel in my hands, unsure if I want to remove the frosting moustache or not. Ollie looks... pissed off, but there’s something else too. “You don’t really think that, do you?”
“Think what?”
“That I’m embarrassed by you.”
Ollie doesn’t reply. He holds my gaze, one eyebrow lifting slightly. The look in his eyes makes me want to play dead right here on the galley floor. I’ll drape this kitchen towel over my face and never take it off.
“But I...” I’m not sure what I want to communicate. Ollie doesn’t embarrass me. The idea that anyone could embarrassme, the world’s most embarrassing person, is laughable. “That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what’s it about, Nina?”
“I don’t want people getting their hopes up.”
“People or me?”
I wince. “You?”
Ollie crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the counter, his expression serious as he watches me. “You don’t have to worry about getting my hopes up, Nina. You don’t owe me anything. Maybe I make it seem like you do, but I mean it. If you sincerely don’t want to be with me, I’ll drop it. That’s what I’m trying to do. But I’m fecking confused because you’re constantly contradicting yourself, and I’m starting not to know what’s real and what’s not. If you really don’t want to go on a date with me, then we won’t go. I’ll even give you the bottom bunk.”
I wipe my face with the towel to buy time. What to say? I’m proud of Ollie and his accomplishments. Of all he’s overcome. I even find his irreverent demeanor charming. He feels like the opposite of me in so many ways—able to detach from the people who hurt him (except me, it seems), so willing to start over, so open to changing his life—and yet we’re so similar, too intense, too over-the-top, too much. I love him, but I can’t tell him that because the words feel like a promise I’m not sure I can keep.
I let the towel slide off my face and into my hands. The way Ollielooks at me has me all twisted up inside. I think of the fun we were having moments ago. Of my increasingly conflicted feelings about committing to him ever since the night he tucked me into his bunk after I got too drunk at Lotus. Why am I constantly pushing him away when all I really want is to pull him close?
“I want to go on the date,” I say, forcing the words out before I can change my mind.
Ollie blinks at me. “You... do?”
“Just as long as you really mean it, that you won’t get your hopes up.” I twist the kitchen towel in my hands. My heart races as I look at him. “I’m not embarrassed by you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t... it’s been almost a decade, and I...”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I don’t know if I can give you what you want, but I...”
“Nina—”
“I’d be lying if I said there was absolutely no chance of us ending up together at the end of charter season.”
Whatever Ollie is about to say dies on his lips. I’m not sure I’d have heard it anyway. The sound of my pulse in my ears is overwhelming.
“Okay,” he finally says.
I busy myself by wiping down the nearest counter. “So... what time is this... date?”
“Uh... I thought we’d leave at four,” he says.
“Marvelous.”
He nods and turns away. He’s quiet as he cooks breakfast. It’s as if he’s worried this small step forward could become two steps back with one wrong word. I’m quiet too, trying not to think about what mynobecoming amaybecould set into motion as I clean up the bits of cupcake from the floor.
When breakfast is ready, Ollie passes me the first plate, a lookmoving between us that has nothing to do with food. In his eyes I see fear, and hesitation, and hope. I wonder what he sees in mine. I wish he would tell me. Maybe then I would know how I feel.
“Four o’clock,” he says, once my arms are loaded up with plates.
