Chapter Twenty-One Lucky
Chapter Twenty-One
Lucky
My heart galloped in my chest and my mouth went dry.
Like you?
“You’re right,” I said with a fake smile. “Maybe someday, when I find a pot of gold and hell has frozen over, I’ll think about dating again.”
“Not all men are terrible,” he said. “And you only have to find the right person once.”
He made me want things I couldn’t have. Had told myself I didn’t want to have. I tried to brush off what he was saying. “Maybe I will try to date the right kind of guy when I’m done with yachting. Until then I’ll be too busy. Plus, the rules.”
I walked a bit faster toward our destination. Hunter was being a friend to me. Kind and caring. It would only make sense for him to tell me to stop dating losers when that had been the only type of man I’d dated so far.
But I yearned, literally yearned, for his words to mean something else. For him to be saying that I should date someone like him.
Or that I should just date him.
Hunter asked, “What is everyone else doing today?”
“Since we have a charter tomorrow, we won’t be able to go out tonight. We’ll just have a couple of beers on deck, like we have before. It’s a working day. When we have a whole day free, Andre likes to rent a car and explore. You could do something like that, too.”
“Oh no, I can’t rent a car.”
“Why not?”
“I may have the tiniest bit of a road rage issue.”
“That must make it hard to get places,” I said.
“Not really. Living in New York City means it’s not a problem.”
“Personally, I find it hard to imagine that you’re not actually perfect.” He was like someone a romance novelist had dreamed up.
His mouth pressed into a thin line. “I’m the furthest thing from perfect.”
“I don’t believe you,” I told him as I took off my shoes, ready to board the Mio Tesoro . “I don’t want to compare, but of the two of us, I’m willing to bet you have your life much more together than I do.”
“In what way? We’re both doing the same job.”
Fair point. “For starters, I’m guessing that you don’t suffer from crippling impostor syndrome.”
“What are you an impostor at?”
“Life,” I told him.
“You can’t be an impostor at life,” he said as we walked down the stairs toward our cabin.
“You can. I feel like I never know what I’m doing and I’m faking everything.”
“Lucky, that’s adulthood. None of us know what we’re doing. We’re all faking it and trying to do our best. Nobody has to get it perfect because nobody can.”
We entered our cabin and I wished that his words were true. It would have been nice if I could believe that everyone around me was struggling as much as I was. I always felt completely alone and the odd person out.
But he made me feel like I wasn’t.
I needed to get out of this room—it suddenly seemed way too small.
“You can shower first,” I offered. I set my bag down and went to the aft deck to sit in the sun for a little while. I had to stop thinking about my bunkmate all the time. I felt like I was getting obsessive.
“Lucky! Ahoy, mate!”
I looked up and saw Georgia sitting on a lounge chair with a flute of champagne. I went over and joined her.
“You do know it’s too early to be drinking champagne, right?” I said.
“Technically, this is a mimosa. I put a drop of orange juice in it. And I hate that we have these restrictions about when we can drink things. I feel like half my life is wondering if it’s too late to drink coffee and the other fifty percent is figuring out if it’s too early for alcohol.”
She was going to be hungover and unhappy tomorrow when the guests arrived.
We were expecting a bachelorette party and I hoped things would stay on this side of utter chaos.
“Sorry I didn’t show up this morning,” she added before taking another sip of her “mimosa.”
“I know you’re not outdoorsy.”
“What do you mean? I’m outdoors right now drinking champagne on the deck!” she said with a grin, toasting me with her flute. “I’m sure you didn’t miss me, though. You must have enjoyed having Hunter all to yourself.”
I had. But I knew better than to say that to her.
“Are you two official yet?” she asked. “And you can lie to me all you want, but I know you think he’s cute and you might shank someone if it meant he’d be your boyfriend.”
Also true, which made me feel anxious. “I can’t think of him that way.”
“You can and you should.”
I shook my head. “You have no idea how much I ...”
Despite me not finishing my sentence, since I realized I was saying too much, Georgia got it. “I’m guessing you think about him all the time.”
Now that I had opened the door just a crack, I found that I wanted to unburden myself. I had no one else to talk these things through with. “I’ve told myself I’m never dating again but he makes me want to change my mind. I am so tired of having the same internal conversation. That we’re just friends and to stop wanting inappropriate things and misreading everything he’s saying.”
“Well, I’m not going to be any help because I would tell you to read way into it and be totally inappropriate.”
“There are rules.”
“You should be tired of saying that, too. Captain Carl is an unreasonable person. You shouldn’t have to keep rules unreasonable people make. If you lived in a country run by a dictator, nobody would blame you for rising up in rebellion.”
“This is not a dictatorship,” I told her. “We’re free to leave anytime we like.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. To give you the heads-up—you should probably make a move on Hunter soon. I think you’ll regret it if you don’t. And he might get tired of waiting.”
My life was full of regrets. I was too afraid to try to add Hunter to the list.
If he got tired of waiting, he was free to date anyone he wanted.
Just not me.
There was always something to do on a superyacht, some chore that needed to be completed, some porthole that needed to be detailed. It was easy enough to keep myself busy and away from the cabin.
I even skipped dinner, which wasn’t a hardship because Andre was making it in honor of Pieter and it involved pizza with grilled bananas, bacon, and garlic.
I knew I was running away from my problems and felt like a coward. It wasn’t the first time I’d done it. I’d always found it easier to leave than to face romance-related issues head-on.
Why couldn’t I just get over this infatuation? Relegate Hunter to the friend zone in my mind and keep him there? All the exterior crew were attractive men. I didn’t feel this pull toward any of them. I hadn’t had even a smidgen of a crush where they were concerned.
But Hunter was unlike all the other men on board.
When I was certain the crew had finished eating and gone up to the sundeck to have a few drinks, I snuck into my cabin. I breathed a sigh of relief that it was empty. I would just live my life like normal and hope that my stupid and inappropriate feelings would catch up to reality sooner rather than later.
After I got ready for bed, I grabbed my laptop and headphones and crawled into my bunk, intending to block everything out with a good movie.
I’d just put my headphones on when the cabin door opened. “There you are!”
Hunter.
My heart literally leapt up at the sight of him. He was here. Here with me.
Not out there with Georgia and Emilie. He had chosen me.
He had a bag of microwave popcorn in his hand and kicked the door shut with his foot. “What are we watching?” he asked.
Then he climbed into my bunk, and for a moment, I was too stunned to respond. “I ... I haven’t chosen anything yet.”
He opened the bag and the air was briefly filled with the scent of artificially buttered popcorn. “I vote Singin’ in the Rain . That was Harper’s favorite.”
“Okay.” I was not going to read into this situation and think it was significant that he was sharing his sister’s favorite movie with me. I did a quick search and found the movie, starting it up. My stomach grumbled because I hadn’t eaten. I reached for the bag of popcorn but he pulled it away.
“You love pasta, I love popcorn,” he said as an explanation while grinning at me.
“There’s no way you love popcorn the way I love pasta.”
“Debatable. Generally, as a rule, I don’t share food.” Then, in defiance of his own proclamation, he offered me the bag.
As I took out a handful, I told myself, again, to not mistake his gesture for something it wasn’t.
It was advice I should have taken to heart.
Because one minute we were watching the movie together and the next I woke up to sunlight streaming in through the porthole.
I didn’t remember turning the movie off. Gene Kelly had been dancing and singing in various types of weather and then suddenly it was morning. It took me a second to get my bearings, to come fully awake.
Then I realized that Hunter was asleep next to me.
There was a momentary sense of utter panic but it quickly subsided. Despite all of my protests that we were only friends, I was glad he was here. That we had felt comfortable enough with each other to fall asleep together.
He wasn’t touching me—he had fallen asleep on top of my blankets, while I was underneath them. He was softly breathing in and out, his face relaxed and vulnerable. I turned onto my side so that I could study him.
It really was unfair how unbelievably handsome he was.
Then it occurred to me how weird this might appear. What would he do if he woke up to see me staring at him?
I reached over and pressed against his shoulder. “Hunter.”
He didn’t respond—his breathing stayed even.
It probably didn’t help that I didn’t want to wake him up. I wanted to stay here with him, in this little warm bubble where nobody else existed. Where there weren’t any rules to worry about, no guests, no Georgia and Emilie trying to snag him, no terrible past weighing me down.
Just us.
I shoved a little more forcefully this time. I couldn’t even get out of bed unless he was awake—he was closest to the door. We only had a few hours before the charter guests arrived.
He finally awoke with a start, his eyes unfocused, his hair flopping over onto his forehead. He pushed it out of the way.
“Lucky?” He sounded so disoriented.
“I think we fell asleep watching the movie.” My laptop was wedged between the wall of the ship and my bunk. I hoped I hadn’t broken it by sleeping on it.
“Oh.” He breathed the word out and I felt it against my face, washing over me. “I’m sorry about that.”
He absolutely did not have to be sorry. I was happy. So I echoed the words he’d once said to me. “Don’t be.”
We lay there, facing one another, our chests slowly rising and falling together.
“I should get up,” he said, whispering the words.
I wished I could tell him he didn’t have to.
But the real world existed beyond that door. Guests were coming, the captain had expectations, we had jobs to do, I couldn’t date him.
“We should both get up,” I agreed, but neither one of us moved.
Until we heard someone yelling in the hallway. That got him on his feet quickly.
He looked down at me and I could have sworn that what he wanted in that moment was to climb back into bed with me.
But then he disappeared into the bathroom and left me alone, wanting and aching for him. I rolled onto my back and put my hands over my face.
So, so bad. This was all so bad.