“I am not!” I cried. “And I’m perfectly happy on my own.” What I couldn’t tell Nina was that it wasn’t only Shitty Peter who’d made me give up on love. It was a history of disappointment, not limited to the romantic kind. Yes, Shitty Peter was... well, shitty. He’d made me a lesser version of myself. When we were together, I’d stopped doing the things I loved most: going to Mitch’s, thrifting with Nina, finding new hobbies to try out just because. But I’d learned that even people with the best intentions could disappear from your life whether they wanted to or not, and the wreckage wasn’t worth it. I thought of Beth and Mark. If they couldn’t make it, what chance did I have?
I sighed into my chair. My entire body ached with exhaustion—from the day, from charter season, from this entire year, and suddenly the only place I wanted to be was in my own bed.
I passed Nina her purse across the table. “Walk home with me and get a ride from there?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
We pressed our way through the bar and out into the night, humidity closing in on us from every side. It was strange not to feel the movement of the boat beneath my feet or the breeze off the ocean.
“Sure you’re not mad I ruined things with your handsome stranger?” Nina asked.
“Positive.”
“If you say so,” Nina said, a mischievous look in her eyes.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, nothing.”
I was too tired to press her. I probably didn’t want to know what she was thinking anyway. I looped my arm through hers, and we leaned into each other as we made our way down the sidewalk. Neither of us spoke the whole way home, and I wondered what she was thinking about. Ollie, I guessed. But me? I was replaying that kiss with Alex, grateful to have something good to distract myself with when Nina left and I found myself alone for the first time in months.
Three
“You’re here early,” Nina said when I arrived on deck the next morning. She sat at a table in the galley, polishing a knife with alarming energy. I looked between her and Ollie, taking in his rigid body language as he wiped down the counters. I’d missed either a fight or a make-out session. Maybe both.
I set my purse on the counter. “I couldn’t stand to be away from you,” I said. Truthfully, my condo had been too quiet. All morning I’d moved through my usual routine but found myself restless, fixating on the electricity humming through the walls, my pulse thudding in my ears. I’d stepped onto the patio to make sure my plants were still alive. My neighbor, Belva, took care of them during charter season, and I’d been both relieved and angry to see they were even better than I’d left them. The camellia shrub was heavy with blossoms, and the sword lilies were tall and vibrant. Work, even with a pissed-off Nina, was better than letting my sadness and anger expand into the silence.
The guests for that day’s charter were four college friends celebrating twenty years of friendship with a cruise down to Miami. They were fun but high-maintenance. And not only was I adjusting to having oneless stewardess, but Nina and Ollie refused to speak to each other, leaving me to relay messages between them. Ollie’s mood deteriorated even more when the guests asked if we could throw a “Boob Funeral,” to mourn the perky breasts of their youth, and requested a breast-shaped cake.
“I didn’t train at culinary school to make fecking boob cakes,” he muttered, and I sprinted from the galley before he could direct his anger at me.
When I wasn’t mixing drinks or trying to avoid being flashed by the guests, who, for being disappointed with their middle-aged breasts, sure didn’t mind showing them off, I was busy crafting a boob-shaped piñata and filling it with miniature bottles of tequila.
After lunch, when RJ took the guests out on the Jet Skis, Nina finally radioed for me to take my break. I hadn’t had a chance to catch my breath all morning and collapsed onto my bunk for a twenty-minute nap, then wandered into the crew mess for some food. Sitting at the counter with a peanut butter sandwich, I picked up my phone for the first time since arriving at work and noticed several notifications, all from one person—my niece Mia.
I scrolled through the messages, my anxiety growing with each one.
Landing!
Where are you?
JO!
WTF JO!
????????
I called Mia, leaving my half-eaten sandwich on the counter. Did she mean landing here, as in Palm Beach, here?
“What the hell?” Mia said, answering on the first ring. “We’ve been waiting for you for hours.”
“Not hours,” Kitty, her younger sister, said. “One hour and eleven minutes.”
“Whatever. Too long.”
“Waiting for me where?” I asked.
“At the airport, duh.”
