Chapter 12
Twelve
As they waited for ferry tickets, John slipped the gold-accented designer sunglasses Lisa had provided on his nose.
Vivian’s hair gleamed copper in the Moroccan sun.
If she’d let him talk about the kiss, he would tell her it happened because she’d just listed all the things he tried hard to hide from the world, and she loved him anyway.
She never asked him to change.
“I know how you tick, too,” burst from him. “The things you said earlier, about me… I know them about you, too.”
The ticket booth agent waved them forward.
“Could we not dissect me here?” Vivian dropped dirham on the counter.
The ticket agent printed their boarding passes and landing cards.
“Merci,” Vivian said, then pivoted toward the passport line.
“Then when can we talk?”
“On the ferry, if no one’s around.” As they shuffled forward, Vivian handed him Jason Jones’s passport. “About this next part, don’t stress. If there’s a problem, I’ll figure it out.”
Ordering him not to stress was like ordering him to be taller.
He swallowed. “But what if—”
“Nope.” She squeezed his hand. “No what-ifs, no catastrophizing.”
The security officer waved them over.
“You go first.” Vivian nudged his back.
His belly dropped like she’d shoved him from an airplane.
“Passport, please?” the officer asked in French.
Blood pounded in his ears. Small win—his hands didn’t shake as he slid the passport under the plastic window. When the officer inspected him to compare him to the passport, John smiled a big, toothy, maniacal grin.
Christ, he was bad at this.
The officer returned the passport. “Hurry, sir. Your ferry is departing.”
That was it? He’d had more invasive receipt reviews at Costco.
On the checkpoint’s other side, he waited for Vivian.
The officer eyeballed her. “Your hair is a different color.”
“I wanted a change,” she said.
“Why?” the officer asked.
Shit, was the officer not letting her through? If Vivian was denied entry, he’d cross back over the security line. They’d come this far together—he wasn’t leaving her now.
“My boyfriend broke up with me,” she said.
The officer locked her gaze on Vivian’s face. After an eternity, she stamped her passport and handed it back to Vivian. “I’ve been there. Enjoy your trip.”
Relief flooded John as the officer waved Vivian through.
He kissed her cheek and murmured, “I was worried.”
“You didn’t show it. Gold star.” She paused by a trash can. With a sigh, she pulled something from her bag and pitched it in the bin. “Farewell, old friend.”
“What was that?”
“My baton. I can’t sneak it through the scanners. Shall we?”
The bag check line progressed quickly, and they were on their way to the red-and-white ferry. Before joining the line to board, they showed their passports and tickets to another official, who waved them through.
“I forgot international travel is a pain in the ass,” John said.
Vivian scanned the crowd. “Security lines are a good thing.”
German tourists wheeled bikes ahead of them. An occasional car drove past them to roll onto the ferry, but most of the line comprised other shambling pedestrians. In the blue straits beyond the marina, catamarans skipped like dragonflies along the water.
An agent scanned their boarding passes at the gangplank.
“I’m dying for a coffee,” she said. “Want anything?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Caffeine sounds good.”
She led him up a spiral staircase. Passengers had already claimed half the upholstered seats. The aroma of rich coffee and baked goods overwhelmed the salty tang in the air.
“Bonjour,” Vivian said to the cashier at the counter. “Two coffees and a water, please.”
The cashier delivered the order quickly. At a table in the corner, John set their coffees down while Vivian withdrew a small yellow box from her bag. Dramamine. She popped two pills from a blister pack and swallowed them with her coffee.
“Do you get seasick?” he asked.
Outside, sunlight silvered the water’s hypnotic ripples.
“Big-time. Carsick, too, if the roads are especially twisty. Our jaunt with Lisa upset my stomach, and I’d rather not spew in public. Since my senior prom, I always carry it with me.”
“How does a prom cause motion sickness?”
She dropped the box back in her bag. “Mine was on the Spirit of Baltimore—it’s a dinner cruise ship that can be rented for special occasions. I vomited prolifically during ‘Call Me Maybe.’ That song still makes me queasy, which is a shame since it’s a bop.”
Mental note to never play that song around her.
“Where’d you go to high school?”
“Parkville Senior High, home of the mighty Knights. What about you?” She uncapped her coffee and blew on it, then sipped. “Any good prom stories?”
“Nope. We were living in Marseille when I was in high school. No proms in France.”
She had a tiny drop of coffee lingering on her bottom lip. He was desperate to wipe it away, but that would be too intimate. Instead, he gestured to his own mouth. “You’ve got a little…”
The drag of her tongue over her lip sent a lusty zing through him.
“Thanks. Who would you have taken if dances were a thing?” she asked.
He buried his face in his coffee. “My high school girlfriend—Genevieve Alarie.”
“Is her last name spelled A-L-A-R-I-E?”
“Yes, why?”
“Wow, you are blushing.”
He touched his strangely smooth cheek. “No, I’m not.”
“Spiritually, I mean.” Vivian tapped on her phone, typed a few keys, then twisted it toward him. “Is this her?”
Gen smiled at him from Vivian’s phone. The years had been kind to her. Same sparkle in her eyes, same wide smile. And, right on cue, shame gnawed at him like it did every time he thought about his first girlfriend.
“That’s her.”
“I’m surprised you don’t follow her.” Vivian scrolled through the social media pics. “Good for teenage you. She’s beautiful. And takes lots of shots of coffees and sandwiches.”
“Her family runs a café.”
Vivian rested her chin on her fists. “Was she your first love?”
“First everything.” He thumbed the cleft in his chin. “But we lost touch. Have you ever handled a situation so poorly you wished you could go back in time and redo it?”
“Uh, yeah.” She tick-tocked her eyes. Oh, yeah. “I can relate. What happened?”
“Things were great for the first six months, but Gen… I’m an asshole for saying this, but she was clingy. Wanted me to spend all my free time with her. But I don’t work that way. I need space. A little solitude.”
“Which I definitely gave you.” She quirked her lips. “Sorry. I retract that statement. For the obvious reasons, none of which I can say in an open environment. Continue.”
“There’s not much more to the story. Let’s just say I handled the breakup poorly.”
“Is that a pattern of yours?”
The fuck? He leaned back in his chair. “My reaction to your revelation and being strapped to a lie detector was pretty tame, all things considered.”
“Shhh.” She circled her gaze around the ferry. “Sorry. Also retracted. Let’s stop talking and fill out our customs declarations. Just a heads-up—the first time you write a different name feels weird, but you get used to it.”
She dropped the forms and some pens on the table.
He picked up the fountain pen.
“Oh, shit. Not that one.” She yanked it from his grip. “Here’s a normie pen.”
She slid a Bic across the table. This was the first time he’d ruffled Vivian’s feathers since they started this adventure. It was kind of fun.
“Was the other one a bomb?” he asked. “Switchblade?”
“Jesus.” She winced. “Just fill out the damn form, please. And stop grinning.”
He clicked the Bic. By the second letter of his first name, he’d messed up the customs card. He was filling this out as Jason Jones, not John Seymour. He turned the o into an a.
Vivian was right—this was weird, but the rest of the form was easier.
“Done,” he said as he signed Jason Jones’s name.
“Me too.” Vivian’s card was filled with the same spiky handwriting as the love notes she left him whenever she went on a business trip. “Let’s get our passports stamped. The line’ll be longer in Gibraltar.”
She rose from the table and descended the central staircase. The short line for customs was near the observation deck.
“Passport and customs form, please.” The customs official greeted them with a smile. “What brings you to Gibraltar?”
“Our honeymoon.” Vivian handed over the forms and their passports.
A half-truth, the kind she’d said made it easier to escape detection.
“Congratulations.” The official paged through the paperwork, then compared passport photos to the people standing in front of him. “How long will you be in Gibraltar?”
“We’re only here today, then renting a car and driving to Málaga,” she answered. “Do you need to see our hotel reservations?”
John shifted his weight. They hadn’t made reservations.
“No need. Enjoy your time in Gibraltar.”
The stamp in their passports echoed like cannon fire in his heart. He couldn’t say if it was celebratory or more of a firing squad situation since he’d just deceived a government official.
Vivian collected their documents. “We will, thank you.”
Off to the side, as his blood pressure returned to normal, Vivian tilted her head.
“You look pale. Want to catch some fresh air on the observation deck?”
He nodded. Outside, they circled to the port side. His heart lifted as they came face-to-face with an enormous mountain peak that seemed to spring straight up from the ocean.
“Holy shit. That’s the Rock of Gibraltar.” He shaded his eyes. “It’s pointy.”
Vivian leaned against the railing. “I was expecting awe at one of the world’s most famous natural wonders, but I’ll take pointy.”
Acrid cigarette smoke drifted past them.
Vivian wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather enjoy the view upwind, actually.”
They rounded a corner, and Vivian stopped cold. As he collided with her, she flung out her arm and pushed him back. “It’s her.”
“Her who?”
Her brow was cranked low. “Lola.”
* * *