Chapter 65
Ore
Day 9
She woke up to the soft sounds of Daniel getting dressed. The murmur of fabric pulled over skin, the pang of elastic settling around an ankle, the jangle of a fastened belt.
Even though her eyes were closed, she could place him in the room, as he went about his morning routine. She stirred and turned to see him pulling and tugging at the peaks of his hair in the mirror. There was something intoxicatingly intimate about observing him in his solitude. There was no self-consciousness in his movements.
He caught sight of her spying in the mirror, and, very uncharacteristically, poked out his tongue at her. She giggled. She wouldn’t have believed that stern Captain Wilsons had any goofy tendencies at all, much less that she would find them so endearing. That was the sort of thing that should have given her the ick – it had taken far less in the past. With Daniel though, she was enthralled by his quirks, his ‘flaws’, his ‘awkwardness’, even his ‘cringey’ declarations made her feel giddy with curiosity. She wanted to see everything, know everything, understand everything abouthim. Not just pick at the scab, but examine it under a microscope.
‘Morning,’ she mouthed back into the mirror.
In response he turned and dove onto the bed. She yelped as he landed on top of her, smothering her with the covers. She really could not stop herself from the girlish giggles as he comically rummaged through the layers of fabric until he found her face. She quietened then, only the sound of their breathing audible.
I love you.The thought was sudden but not intrusive, like it had revealed itself rather than burst onto the scene. Ore had been in love before, but it had always felt like a bit of a contest. When she was a teenager, she had agonised about whether she was more in love with them than they were with her, and then at Columbia she’d had a short fling, just before the Kyle incident. Both had proved to her that the lover was usually the loser, better to take everything a little less seriously. She’d had a couple of confessions come her way since then – men she’d dated in New York, one even exclusively – and she’d revelled in the power of being loved a little more than loving. The way they looked at her adoringly, and she could look back with something closer to ‘interest’, the way she could enjoy the upper hand.
Now though, right here,shewas the one gazing adoringly; she was the one doing the loving. It wasn’t the first time she’d done those things, but it was the first time she’d done them fearlessly. She wasn’t sure what it was about Daniel that made her feel so untouchable, but lying there in his arms, she found that it didn’t matter to her if he loved her ‘as much’, or maybe even at all. It only mattered that he was there, with her.
When he dipped his head to meet her eager lips, she wished that she could stay in this moment forever. Blissful and weightless and loving.
‘I better get to work,’ Daniel murmured against her mouth. Instead of letting him go, she held on tighter, scattering more kisses all over his face. It was his turn to giggle. ‘Ore, really, poor Dudley has been up all night …’
‘OK fine,’ Ore conceded eventually, releasing him from her embrace reluctantly.
‘But I’ll see you later? At your place?’ he asked with faux nonchalance.
‘Sure thing, swing by whenever you’re done with work,’ she replied gamely.
‘I’ll pick up some dinner on my way.’ He pulled on his jacket and planted a peck on her forehead. Ore felt she might burst with joy, but as he gave her a small wave and shut the door gently behind him, a swirl of sadness laced through her contented mood. The domesticity of this scene, the plans after work, it was a fantasy, and worse than that, it was one that could never become real.
No, she was living in the moment; she had no doubt that leaving Daniel would be nothing short of heartbreaking so why pre-empt it now? Better to exercise a healthy dose of denial, at least for the next five days.
For the next three Ore and Daniel fell into an enchanting routine. Whilst Daniel manned the wheelhouse, Ore would enjoy a slow morning, go for a swim, maybe lounge in the sauna for a while, and then locate Carlos. He’d whip her upa simple lunch, which they’d taken to enjoying together, usually straight from the hob, forks in hand, leaning against the counter tops. She’d put in their dinner order, something she and Daniel had agreed upon the night before. The afternoon was for writing and avoiding Chuck and Claude like the plague.
As the piece came together, Ore became more and more convinced that she needed at least one named source to go on the record. Otherwise she was just opening herself up to an unwinnable libel case. Chuck’s team of formidable lawyers was one thing, her having no actual proof of where all the accusations had come from – that was a fool’s mission.
Apart from that one huge missing piece of the puzzle, the article was actually shaping up pretty nicely. There was no shortage of allegations, and the interviews she’d gotten with the crew and Mel painted a damning picture of a man drunk on delusions of his own power. Some moments she felt energised by the scope of the wrongdoing, and others she felt depressed by the prospect that he would most likely never be held accountable for them.
At around 6 p.m. she would close her laptop and go for her ‘walk’, which consisted of a few laps of the yacht. She was beginning to feel the effects of cabin fever. At night, she would dream about strangely mundane things, like driving down the highway, or running through Central Park.
On her ‘rounds’ she might come across another guest or a crew member. Now that she’d decided to stop ‘reporting’, she found that everyone was much more chatty. One particular run-in with Richard lasted almost an hour, and ended with an invite to have a ‘private dinner’ with him in his suite – she politely declined.
As 8 p.m. drew closer, she would feel the butterflies in her stomach stirring. She might have a shower or try to distract herself with some TV while she waited for the knock on the door. At the sight of his face, the butterflies would quell themselves, lazily basking in his sunny smile.
‘Hello, beautiful.’ Daniel would sweep her into his arms and give her a kiss that was somehow both an exciting promise and a steadying hand.
At some point food would arrive, but Vicky got into the habit of knocking once and leaving a tray outside. Often, neither Ore nor Daniel would hear; they were too far away, dancing naked on the surface of that very hospitable planet where only they existed. Sometimes the food was cold when they checked but by the time they checked on it, but they didn’t care.
They ate in bed, feeding each other even the most impractical of meals, daring mouthfuls amidst the white sheets. After they had replenished their energy, they would feed the other hunger again, and then maybe one more time for luck after that.
As they dozed to sleep, Daniel might tell Ore about a rare bird he saw that day, and she might recount her conversation with Carlos in the kitchen. One of them usually fell asleep first, in the lull of the other’s voice, but soon enough a light snoring was coming from both bodies.
