Love Overboard

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

Jack

He thought back to that first day, when he had seen her walk into the mess. The girl from the bar, the one he had thought about all evening, even as he laughed and joked with his friends from back home. They had teased him as he returned to the table with an Aperol-tinted stain down his shirt, but he couldn’t stop berating himself for not having asked her name. When she had walked out of the bar, amber-tinted curls flying in the wind, he had resisted the urge to run after her.

He couldn’t remember now if he had just wanted to sleep with her, this lovely woman with long, smooth brown limbs, but she had certainly played on his mind. Then there she was, introducing herself politely in front of the rest of the crew, avoiding his gaze as he watched her, running through the funniest lines he could pull out to defuse the tension between them and maybe even get her to smile. He had failed miserably, of course, when she had finally looked at him with that expression of derision and he had made his weak joke about the spilled water, and she had been deeply unimpressed.

With Captain Mary watching on he’d had to remind himself what he was here for – his on-land antics would have to be put to one side. She had finally entrusted him with a first officer role and he wasn’t about to mess that up for some pretty girl with hazel eyes.

She had introduced herself as ‘Chef Harlow’. It seemed clear to him that she had no interest in his banter. She was there for the same reason as him: to work. He had resolved that he would try and suppress this little infatuation. He barely knew the woman anyway, and there were plenty of other pretty girls out there.

‘I thought you hated me.’ Sofia’s voice broke through, suddenly clearing away the fog of his reminiscing. He looked down to marvel at her face, and brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes.

‘Well, that was only because you hated me. You literally threw a drink over me the first time we met.’

Sofia slapped at his bare chest playfully. ‘You look quite charming in orange I think, and anyway, that was only because you were very rude.’

‘I thought that Brits loved a bit of banter.’ He was aiming for cockney, but it came out sounding more Australian.

‘Not with strange Americans I’ve only just met who push in at the bar.’ Sofia giggled.

Jack feigned a shocked expression, covering his mouth with his hand.

‘No you’re right, it was all very improper.’ His British accent was terrible, and he always enjoyed how much it seemed to rile her. This time she did not take the bait.

‘No but for real, you always seemed to want to get away from me, when you weren’t raiding my fridge.’

He smirked at that, thinking of how he had planned to apologise for his weirdly macho behaviour earlier that day, when he had told her she wouldn’t be able to help load the boat up, even though he had, of course, been right. He had been nosing around, trying to piece together clues about this strange, mesmerising woman. The shelves in the fridge had been beautifully, if a little neurotically, organised. Fruits and vegetables piled high, and making up every colour of the rainbow.

The punnet of strawberries made him think of early summer in his grandmother’s house. He and his mum would go out into the garden, when he was only as tall as her knee, and spy the bursts of scarlet among the bright green leaves. Each time he found one, he would hand it over, stretching all the way up to reach the box in her hands. It wasn’t until the punnet was full that they would sit in the grass and gorge on the sweet fruit.

The taste of them brought him so clearly back to that moment, that he hadn’t noticed Sofia come in until it was too late. Behind the fridge door her eyes were full of rage. The plump red berry in his hand might as well have been a grenade. The ensuing explosion was almost as destructive.

‘I think you might have overreacted with the strawberries.’ He was amused to see a flash of anger pass across her face. ‘You’re still angry about that now?’

Sofia seemed embarrassed for a moment, and then defiant. ‘I am actually – it was my first day and I wanted everything to be perfect, how would you feel if you found me messing with some of your—’ she reached for the right word ‘—ropes?’

‘I would not mind you messing with my ropes one bit.’ It was a lame joke really but it made her giggle. He was struck by how joyous it made him, to see her laugh. ‘And to clarify, I never hated you, Sofia. I just always got the impression that I made you... I don’t know, uncomfortable in some way. I could never quite say the right thing.’

It was the truth, but not the whole truth. He didn’t want to admit that he was the one who often felt uncomfortable in her presence, that he could never quite understand the tension that festered between them. What’s more he suspected that he hadn’t wanted to understand it, better for them to clash occasionally and then avoid each other, than to give that ‘tension’ its proper name. The pact to stick to their half of the boat had given him some welcome respite, to actually concentrate on his job.

The morning on the deck, when he had seen a figure standing in the fog, his brain delirious from sleep, had convinced him it was his mother. The dark curls fluttering in the wind drew him closer. For a moment, after Sofia had turned round, he was frozen with shock. It was the stuff of dreams, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was awake.

It was his domain – dawn on the deck – and there she was, radiant but also, as usual, very unhappy to see him. When she had taken a jab at him, he heard himself sounding like a petulant child, reminding her that this was his part of the boat, and for the rest of the day he felt embarrassed about it. He never lost his cool like that. He was exactly the privileged sulky man-child that she had accused him of being.

Petra had come to him in a state of despair. ‘One stewardess down, a green deckhand and now our chef is having a panic attack about the menu,’ she gushed breathlessly. He had thought she was exaggerating. Petra shook her head. ‘No really, she’s having a lie-down. I thought she was going to faint or something. That poor girl’s perfectionism will be the death of her, I swear.’

He had stepped in, cooked up his ‘signature’ beef burgers, the only thing that his mother had ever taught him to cook, and incidentally, the only thing she actually could cook. He told himself he was doing it for Captain Mary, that he didn’t want her to bear the brunt of the guests’ displeasure, but if he was being totally honest with himself, he really didn’t like the idea of Sofia getting in trouble either. Maybe this good deed would atone for his spiteful words that morning.

‘I only just clocked the other day, after talking to Patricio, that that citrus grove you took us to, it’s basically yours right?’ Sofia had been trailing her fingers over his arms and chest, eyes closed, when the question rose from their contemplative silence.

‘I mean, it’s my grandmother’s for the moment, but I guess one day it’ll be mine.’ She repositioned herself so she was facing away from him, taking his arm with her and remodelling him into the big spoon. ‘But yeah, I wasn’t worried about being arrested for trespassing or anything,’ he murmured into the back of her head.

She sighed contentedly. ‘I’ll think of that day every time I cut into a grapefruit for the rest of my life,’ she whispered. He smiled into her hair.

Declan had been a mess that morning. Jack smelled him before he saw him, a nauseating mix of body odour and vomit.

‘There’s absolutely no way you can come on the excursion today,’ Jack had said sternly, as Declan groaned over the toilet bowl. They were a steward down, so Petra was already doing double the work and Stuart had to remain on board, which meant there was only one person he could ask to sub. Since their terse exchange on the deck they had successfully managed to only see each other at meal times, and he was going to have to propose a truce, at least for the day.

He had felt nervous going into the kitchen, his palms sweaty on the door handle, like some sort of teenage boy. In the end it had been much easier than he expected to convince her to come; perhaps she wanted to quash the bad blood as well, he thought.

He was a little ashamed to say that his first thought when Sofia stepped onto the tender was how good she looked in the stewardess uniform. The burgundy, which he had been certain up until that moment didn’t suit anybody, somehow looked tasteful against her tanned, brown limbs. He suspected she had borrowed the uniform from waif-like Tabitha, because it was a little too tight and a little too short, but in all the right places. Jack had had to give himself a bit of a talking-to. It was one thing to admire women out in the world, but they were supposed to be working. He had to fight his pervy compulsion to steal a glance at her whenever she was bent over or looking in the other direction.

It was not entirely her fault then that the picnic box was left behind; he too had been preoccupied. She had looked so panicked when she realised her mistake, and Jack recognised that feeling, from his first few charters. When he had everything to prove and everything to lose, and it felt like there might be a parade of people waiting for you back home, all eager to remind you that they had ‘told you so’, that running away to sea would only end in disaster. He had done what he would have done for any member of the crew, but he was aware that her gratitude felt particularly bracing.

The citrus grove was the first time he knew, for certain, that he was in trouble. He had brought her into his world, even if she didn’t know it. The grapefruits she ate were from the same trees he had picked as a boy. Her present rubbed up intimately with his past, and he had enjoyed it, to accompany this new person in this old world of his.

After the debacle with Brian and the sea urchin, when they sat in the moonlight, toes soaked in sand, when the darkness and the alcohol had emboldened them to speak frankly, Jack felt a deep sense of calm. The sea, the sky and Sofia, everything seemed exactly as it should be – maybe that was what peace felt like, he’d thought. Nevertheless, if he wanted to keep his life, perfect as it now felt, the only place for Sofia would have to be as his friend. In the past he might have belittled the idea of the ‘friend zone’ as an acceptable place to end up, but with Sofia, it didn’t feel like a consolation prize.

‘Shall I turn the light off?’ Jack breathed into Sofia’s ear now. She stirred, blinking lazily, and turned her head to look at him out the side of her eye.

‘I like it like this. It feels like the day isn’t quite over yet,’ she said, although she was closing her eyes again.

‘At some point we’re going to have to work out what to do about... everyone.’ Jack dared to say what they had both been avoiding. Sofia just shook her head calmly and then brought his hand up to her mouth and planted a soft kiss on his palm.

‘Not tonight,’ she mouthed.

He stroked her cheek, mesmerised by her deepening breaths as she fell into sleep. Tomorrow they would have to work out a plan. He tallied up a list of people he was dreading having to tell.

He had felt envious of Declan’s puppy love for Sofia, not because he wanted Sofia for himself, but because it was so joyfully uncomplicated. The way Declan spoke about her, and his adoration of her reminded Jack that for some people it wasn’t so hard, to open themselves up like that. To Jack it seemed suicidal to wear your heart on your sleeve – you were just asking for someone to skewer it.

He had confided in Declan about Petra in a bid to warn him that no good would come of trying to start something with Sofia. He was also worried about his own feelings about Sofia, and sometimes when Declan would wax lyrical about her beauty or her food, Jack would find himself agreeing with him. In that way, telling Declan about his and Petra’s tryst was also a way of throwing him off the scent. It was pretty clear from the off that Declan was a hopeless gossip, as well as a man in love. It was best for everyone that he not suspect for a moment that Jack had any feelings other than friendly disinterest and mild irritation towards Sofia.

When Declan recounted his sorry tale of rejection though, Jack had to admit to himself that he was relieved. He hated to see Declan’s tender heart broken, but he had begun to understand the nature of his feelings enough to know that his own heart would have been bruised to see them together.

Jack reached over and turned off the light. Sofia was by now fast asleep. How strange it was to have her in his arms. Never mind his own mixed-up feelings, he had also had to convince himself that she felt nothing for him, and certainly not romantically. But up on the deck, when the others were on their day trip and it was just the two of them, he thought he had spied something like admiration in her eyes when she looked at him, or at least his bare chest. And then yesterday morning, in the dawn, when she had left him with his mother, he felt sure that she had wanted to stay and to hold him. When she was gone, he had missed her too.