I stand in the doorway and my eyes fall to the glass he left behind. The condensation is drying. Two sets of fingerprints in the fog, overlapping, mine and his, layered on the same surface. Already disappearing.
I pick up the glass. Wash it. Dry it. Put it back on the shelf.
And then, because I am alone and the door is closed and no one on this ship can see me, I press my palms to my face for one second, just one, and breathe in cedarwood and his skin and the ninety minutes that are still living in my hands, and then I putthem down and I go clean my room because I'm a professional, that's what I am, that's what I do.
Highlight this, self: you survived. Session one, complete. No spontaneous combustion. No inappropriate touching. No audible sounds of emotional distress. Gold star, Thornton. Now do it again next Thursday.
And every Thursday after that.
For the foreseeable future.
With your hands on his scarred back and his heat in your palms and his voice saying "not the hands" in a way that made your entire spine melt.
...add to planner: investigate career change. Deadline: before next Thursday.
I'M LOCKING UP THEsupply cabinet when I hear heels on teak.
A quick, confident rhythm. I step out into the spa reception and a woman is crossing the floor toward me, and she is so beautiful that I actually stop what I'm doing, which I never do, because I notice hands and posture and tension patterns, not beauty. But this woman doesn't give you a choice. Dark hair, glossy, past her shoulders. Olive skin. A wine-coloured dress that fits her the way his dark shirts fit him: like the clothes know their job and are doing it well. Early thirties. She moves through the spa reception the way this ship moves through water, smooth and certain and like the room was expecting her, and I'm suddenly and painfully aware of my creased uniform and my rolled-up trousers and theoil stain on my left cuff that I've been pretending isn't there for the last two hours.
"Oh!" She stops when she sees me, her whole face opening up into a smile so warm it feels like being handed a blanket. "You must be the new girl. I'm Mila. From the gallery?"
"Star," I offer, and then, because apparently I've forgotten how introductions work, I add, "Star Thornton," as if she asked for my full government name and I'm at passport control.
"I know, darling. Kobe told me about you." She clasps her hands together, and her nails are perfect, this shade of nude that probably requires an appointment and a postcode I can't afford. "Have you settled in? Is the ship treating you well? It can be overwhelming at first, I remember my early days."
"It's good. It's... really good, actually." And it is, and I can't help the smile that comes with it, because this ship is still the most incredible place I've ever been and I haven't stopped marvelling at it and I don't care if that makes me look like a kid on her first holiday abroad. "Thank you."
"Good. Good." She tilts her head, and her eyes travel over me, quick and thorough, cataloguing. "You're so young. Kobe said you were young but I didn't expect... well. You look about sixteen." She laughs, musical and fond. "In the best way."
I don't know what the best way to look sixteen is. I smile because she seems to mean it kindly and because I don't know what else to do with my face when a woman who looks like a walking perfume advertisement tells me I look like a child, but somewhere in the back of my brain a tiny voice saysdid she just... was that a compliment or a measurement?and I don'tknow the answer, so I file it under "Review Later" and keep smiling.
"Is Artem still here?" she asks, and his name comes out of her mouth like she's said it ten thousand times. No weight. No hesitation. No internal collapse of vital organs. Just his name, tossed out the way you'd saycoffeeorTuesday,and I want to take notes because HOW, how does a person say his name without their voice doing something involuntary, I need to know her technique because mine is clearly broken.
"He left a few minutes ago," I tell her, and I'm deeply proud of how normal that comes out considering that what I actually want to say ishe left and the room still smells like him and his fingerprints are still on the water glass and I washed the glass but I can still see the ghost of them in the right light and yes, I know how unhinged that sounds, thank you for not asking.
"Toward his suite, probably. He's a creature of habit," she murmurs, already turning, already moving with that liquid certainty. Then she glances back over her shoulder, one more smile, perfectly timed, perfectly warm. "It was lovely to meet you, Star. I'm sure we'll be seeing lots of each other."
"You too. Mila."
The click of her heels fades down the corridor, toward the guest suites, toward whatever part of this ship she shares with him through years I know nothing about.
I stand in the reception with the water wall humming behind me and the orchid motionless in its glass cylinder, and I'm still holding a bottle of cedarwood oil in one hand because I forgot I was locking up, because she said his name and I forgot everything I was doing, and that's just... that's just fantastic,Thornton, really excellent work tonight, very professional, totally normal behaviour, standing in an empty spa holding the oil you chose because it smells like a man who doesn't belong to you while a woman who clearly does know him, in some way you can't name and don't want to examine, walks toward his suite in a wine-coloured dress that you couldn't afford with a month's salary and heels that make a sound on teak that confidence makes.
She called him Artem the way I call my own name. Like it was hers. Like she'd been saying it so long it had worn smooth in her mouth and she didn't even hear it anymore.
And she's walking toward his suite right now, and I'm standing in an empty spa with oil on my cuffs and his cedarwood on my skin, and the comparison is so absurd that it should be funny, it should be hilarious, I should be laughing at myself for even entertaining the possibility that a girl who eats bread rolls standing at a staff mess counter has any business thinking about a man who owns the deck she's standing on.
But I'm not laughing, and my planner has gone completely, terrifyingly silent, and the only thing in my head is the memory of his fingers curling on the table when I was gentle with him, and the sound of her heels clicking away toward his door.
I turn off the lights. Lock the spa. Walk down to Deck 2 in my flat shoes and my rolled-up trousers, and eat a bread roll standing at the counter because the tables are full and I don't mind. I've eaten standing my whole life. The bread is good. I chew and swallow and I don't think about his hands or the glass or the voice that saidnot the handsor the heels on teak or any of it, because I'm a twenty-year-old massage therapist with forty-two euros of savings and a recurring Thursday appointment that'sgoing to destroy me, and the only sensible thing to do is eat my bread and go to sleep.
I'm a terrible liar, even to myself. Especially about bread and billionaires and the way cedarwood smells on someone else's skin.
Star
"...SUCH A GIFT," MILAis gushing. "Honestly, Star, I don't know how you do it. I had a shoulder massage last year at a spa in Milan, three hundred euros, and the woman practically dislocated my arm. But your hands." She holds up her own, fingers spread, and wiggles them. "Magic."
We're sitting in the staff mess at breakfast, which surprised me. Mila doesn't eat in the staff mess. She's not staff, not exactly. She's a consultant, which means she occupies the strange middle territory between guest and crew: guest-deck cabin, access to the fancy restaurants where I'm not allowed to breathe, but here on a work contract like the rest of us. She could eat in the main dining room with the crystal stemware and the napkins that are probably worth more than my trousers. She could eat anywhere on this ship.
