Chapter Twenty-Two Lucky
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lucky
We had made it through the week—this was the last official night of the charter. Our bachelorette party had been a total nightmare. Not just in their constant demands, which seemed to change on an hourly basis, or their nightly drunken fights, where the bride fired the other six women as bridesmaids and then reinvited them at breakfast the next morning, or their staying up every night until three and getting up at seven after completely trashing their cabins, or the way they demeaned us all, as if we weren’t people.
No, the nightmare was that they kept finding new ways to be horrible and make our lives as difficult as possible. These malnourished, high-strung, sociopathic socialites had been acting like they were auditioning to be on a Bravo reality television show for the last six days.
And despite the fact that they had told us the first night that they were all in relationships, they had been on the exterior crew like Kodiak bears on spawning salmon.
Hunter, most of all.
I kept reminding myself that there was only one day left as I went into the primary cabin, only to find Emilie standing in the bathroom, texting on her phone. Nothing had been done. “What are you doing? Why haven’t you cleaned any of this?”
She should have been nearly finished by now. The guests were upstairs at dinner, pretending to eat their food, and the cabins needed to be cleaned and the beds turned down before they returned downstairs.
Something had shifted between the two of us the night I caught her sneaking into my cabin. She was more belligerent, more defiant, lazier.
Whatever goodwill I had earned by protecting her from her uncle had disappeared.
“I’ll get it done. Calm down. Why are you always riding me?” she asked.
“Georgia and I have been picking up your slack for the last week. It’s going to stop, and you are going to pull your weight.” Could she hear how my voice was wobbling? It was hard for me to lay down the law like this. She probably couldn’t take me seriously when I couldn’t even take myself seriously. “Now get this cabin done.”
She picked up a rag and began to listlessly move it in circles on the countertop. I left and wished I had it in me to inspire her to do more. I had tried begging. I had tried asking nicely. I’d done my best to be motivational. I had tried offering to show her precisely what needed to be done. Bribing her.
Nothing worked.
If I weren’t so afraid of Captain Carl, I probably would have gone and tattled on her. Maybe he would have sent her packing back to Canada and we could have picked up a new stew who would actually do the job.
When I got to the crew mess, Thomas and Kai were staring at the monitors. I went over to see what they were looking at, and it was the guests at dinner. Everything had been served and Georgia had cleared away all their plates. Now they were just drinking and yelling at each other. The volume was turned down so that we couldn’t hear them, but it was easy to see how angry they were.
The bride, Sasha, stood up and threw her glass of red wine in her maid of honor’s face.
“It’s going to take forever to get that stain out of the deck,” Thomas said nonchalantly, in the same sort of tone he might use to comment about the weather.
It was probably because we had all become numb, resigned to our fate where these guests were concerned.
I had done everything in my power to make them happy, all to no avail. I had brought on manicurists, pedicurists, hairstylists, makeup artists. I brought on some French stylists, but all of their clothing options were declared to be “trash.” I offered to get the guests some aestheticians but that had only offended them.
“Do we look like we get Botox and fillers?” Sasha had demanded angrily, and I did my best to keep my gaze off her injected lips and the way her forehead didn’t move despite her fury.
I said, “Of course not!” and only worried momentarily about my pants catching on fire and then having to jump into the ocean to put them out.
I’d then arranged for a couple of massage therapists to come on board, which was nice for me because I’d been training in Swedish massage with the intent of getting certified. Increasing my skill set would potentially put me in a position to ask for a salary increase.
My attempt at getting the guests to mellow out through the power of massage failed and had only led to another screaming fight between them.
The one time the guests didn’t fight was when they were sunbathing nude on the sundeck. The exterior crew did their absolute best to be professional under the circumstances, but the women seemed to particularly delight in hounding them and trying to make the guys uncomfortable. The guests didn’t want Georgia, Emilie, and me to serve them when they were on the sundeck—just the men.
I didn’t do what they had asked. I didn’t trust them to not maul the crew if given half a chance. I just put a big, fake smile on my face and apologized profusely, telling them the exterior crew were far too busy doing other things and that I would do my absolute best to take care of them.
The one thing I did that they actually seemed to enjoy was when I set up the bachelorette party and hired some local male strippers. I was glad that Georgia was on lates that night. So was she, as she’d managed to hook up with one of the strippers, and then proceeded to argue loudly with Emilie that he should count as a temporary crewmember since he had been working on the yacht, which meant Georgia had earned extra points. Emilie strenuously disagreed.
They had been so loud I’d had to shush them for fear of the captain overhearing.
It was like the bachelorette guests were rubbing off on us, making the entire crew snippy and irritable.
Except for Hunter. He’d been the one shining light in all of this.
It started the very first night of the charter, when I had returned to our cabin and was surprised to find him in his bunk.
“What are you doing?” I had asked. “Why aren’t you on anchor watch?”
“Pieter offered to take the night shift.” Pieter had been sexually harassed the least so far out of all the crew, so it was probably a safer choice. “I think he’s doing it to be on the same shift as Georgia. To try and win her heart.”
“I don’t know if that will work out for him,” I said. “She’s the one who told me her heart was black and shriveled and incapable of feeling.”
I knew she’d had a spectacularly bad breakup before she’d joined the Mio Tesoro , and so a part of me understood why she’d come up with the list. She didn’t want to care about someone again.
And I understood it because I was in the same boat.
Literally and metaphorically.
“Regardless of whether or not his plan will work, it’s probably better for me to hide out in here for the week,” Hunter said. He was right. We didn’t want to make the guests feel bad by pointing out that they couldn’t treat him like a side of beef because it might compromise our tip.
We also couldn’t let our crew be compromised. Hiding seemed to be the best option to avoid an ugly confrontation.
So for the last week, that was what we had done. Hunter and I had watched a different musical together every night, laughing and talking and staying up way too late. I’d been so tired in the mornings but it had been worth it just to be with him.
We didn’t bring up the night we’d fallen asleep together. It was a topic we both avoided.
Which was good because it was better for me if I didn’t dwell on it. It was bad enough that I thought about it every night as he slept above me. What it was like to wake up with him, to have him so close.
To exist with him in a place where the buzzing in my mind turned off and I wasn’t constantly worried about what terrible things might happen.
I had just felt ... peaceful. Content.
Maybe even happy.
But being around him made me feel things in specific places in my body where I was busy trying not to feel anything.
I kept hoping he would do something, anything, that would be a turnoff. Clip his toenails in front of me. Stink up the bathroom. Forget to put on deodorant. Something that might gross me out and give me the ability to move on.
Only it hadn’t happened.
He was considerate and clean and respectful and in every way imaginable an excellent bunkmate. He had even started making my bed for me in the morning. And I hadn’t decided whether that was just thoughtful or a message that he was annoyed with my messiness.
Regardless, his wonderfulness just made everything more difficult.
“Oh no, now what?” Thomas said, bringing me out of my Hunter reverie. I focused my attention on the screen in front of me. Hunter had been walking past the guests until Sasha waved him over.
The bosun leaned in and turned up the volume so that we could hear what they were saying. The bridal party was hooting and hollering at Hunter.
Georgia was passing by and came to a stop, staring at the monitor with us. “What is the Sisterhood of the Traveling Implants doing now?”
I didn’t even shush her—I was just worried for Hunter. It was like he’d just wandered into a pool filled with starving piranhas. They were going to strip him to the bone in less than five minutes.
“Come here and give me a lap dance, you sexy thing!” Sasha shrieked at him, waving her hands high above her head.
“Take your shirt off!” someone else shouted.
“And your pants!”
They were all so drunk.
Hunter tried to beg off, saying he had some work to do, but they weren’t listening.
Sasha then peeled off her expensive couture dress and threw it at his head. He reflexively caught it.
Time to save the day. I spun around on my heel and headed for the deck. Those women were seriously objectifying him.
As was I, but I only objectified him in my brain. I didn’t announce it to him out loud.
It was called manners.
By the time I reached the deck, the women were fighting over who was going to dance with Hunter first and he was standing there, his eyes glazed over, his expression a bit frightened.
“There you are!” I said to him. “The captain asked me to escort you to the bridge. Ladies, is there anything else I can get for you?”
“A new stripper,” somebody muttered. They all looked mutinous.
Just a few more hours and they would be gone. I had to remember that. “I’ll be back to check on you,” I said.
I would tell Georgia to limit the amount of caffeine she was putting in their espresso martinis.
And maybe I’d grind up some sleeping pills to add to their martinis so that they would just go to bed.
I let out a sigh. I knew things were bad if I was even jokingly considering spiking the guests’ drinks.
Just a few more hours to go, I repeated to myself.
We would survive this.