Chapter 24
JORDAN
The crew was gone, the Maiden Voyage was quiet, and the light outside had gone gold over the harbor.
Jordan was in the galley with three paper bags of groceries, a wrapped bunch of flowers, and absolutely no plan. She hadn't made breakfast for another person once since she'd lived here.
The first bag contained a fresh loaf of sourdough and a baguette.
The second held a jar of honey, a jar of strawberry jam, two lemons, a bunch of dill, a packet of smoked salmon, and eggs.
The third bag contained crackers, a wedge of brie, a wedge of aged cheddar, a bunch of grapes, a punnet of strawberries, a pot of Greek yogurt, and a bag of toasted granola with seeds and dried apricots.
She'd gone to the market as she didn't usually help herself to ingredients from the galley.
It was Lindsay's territory and she didn't want to mess up her system.
She put everything away and unwrapped the loose mixed bunch of garden-style flowers, white and pink and pale green, with peonies.
The vase situation was—she didn't have a vase in her cabin.
She went upstairs, rummaged through the cabinet under the bar and found a glass jug that Dani used for sangria.
It would do, so she trimmed the stems, filled the jug, arranged the flowers, and took them to her cabin where she set them on the desk.
Her cabin still looked like a small hotel room and it probably always would, but she wanted it to feel a little more welcoming for Dani.
Her eyes were drawn to the picture of Sam and lingered on it for a beat.
Strange, how long she'd held on. Sam had chosen the Navy over her, and then the Navy had taken her entirely.
And somehow Jordan had spent years emotionally loyal to the ghost of her.
If Sam were alive, Jordan wondered what she'd make of this.
Maybe she'd be jealous. Maybe she'd be glad.
Maybe she'd shrug, like she always did about things that mattered, and pretend she didn't care.
"What on earth should I wear?" she mumbled to the picture, opening her wardrobe which was mainly filled with identical pressed uniforms. Apart from that, she only had two pairs of jeans, two pairs of sweatpants, a hoodie she'd worn to death, six t-shirts in various states of fade, white tank tops, a single button-down shirt, and a few warm cardigans. It wasn't much.
"How about this?" She picked up a navy T-shirt, put it on along with her better pair of jeans and stood in front of the mirror.
The reflection was—fine. It was her and she didn't even know why she was overthinking this.
Perhaps because none of the crew had seen her out of uniform apart from Rei once, when she'd bumped into her at the market.
Was she ready for this? She was nervous about having Dani here. Even if they didn't tell the crew yet, they'd be spending time out of work together, and doing normal things with another person had become a foreign concept to her.
It had been nice falling asleep with Dani and she imagined it would be even nicer to wake up slowly together without duties or alarm.
Until this week, Jordan's life had run on a very small set of variables.
Coffee on the foredeck in the morning, a run along the harbor path, errands in town, the occasional visit from her mom, or an afternoon either reading on the sundeck or working through the small repairs and updates the boat always seemed to need.
Dinner usually meant something easy in the salon, eaten alone with a book or with whatever match was on.
By ten she'd be in bed, by six she'd be up, and another quiet day would pass.
After Sam, she’d wanted a life that didn't ask much of her and didn't owe much in return, and the Maiden Voyage had given her exactly that.
But somewhere along the way the quiet had stopped feeling like peace and started feeling like absence, and she hadn't noticed the difference until this week, with Dani.
Jordan let herself imagine, for a moment, what the next few days might look like. Breakfast with Dani on the aft deck, late and slow, a walk along the harbor. dinner somewhere with cloth napkins. Then coming back to the boat together, going to bed and not having to set an alarm.
She stopped herself before she got any further. She'd let Dani in her bed for three nights and was already mentally mapping out way too much. Whatever this was, it didn't need a plan and for once, she could simply let things unfold and see where they went.
“Right. I need a glass of wine,” she said to the picture of Sam. She put on some moisturizer and redid her ponytail before she headed to the salon to open the bottle of beautiful red she'd saved for a special occasion.
She poured herself half a glass, then, deciding she needed liquid courage, added a little more, and took it up to the foredeck.
The foredeck at sunset, when the boat was in its slip in Key West, was one of her favorite places in the world.
The light came off the water in a slow gold that turned to orange and then to pink and a deep almost-violet shade.
The harbor went quiet on a Sunday evening when the day-trippers had gone home and the live-aboards were having dinner on their decks.
The foredeck faced out toward the water, the harbor opening up ahead. From the surrounding boats came the quiet murmur of conversations, the clink of cutlery on plates, someone laughing softly two slips over.
Jordan set her glass on the small table by her usual chair, sat down, and leaned back to watch the sunset.
Along the waterfront, the Sunset Café would be filling up by now.
Her crew had invited her along plenty of times over the years and she'd always declined, preferring not to mix business with pleasure.
They'd long since stopped asking. Maybe she'd join them some time.
Dani had woken something up in her, and it was time to start living a little.
The sun was almost on the horizon now, half-disappeared into a strip of low cloud, the underside lit copper. Above it the sky had softened from blue to rose, with two thin pink streaks pulled across the top.
On the yacht in the slip next to hers, someone turned on music. Something French — a woman's voice, low and a little smoky, a piano underneath. Jordan didn't know the song but she liked it and it fit the hour. She closed her eyes and listened.