Chapter 5
Memories – Jack
I t’s finally time to go, and all my employees, new and old, are all hustling and bustling in preparation for our departure. I’ve done all I can, so I decide to take a little snooze on the deck.
I close my eyes and enjoy the reflection of green the beaming sun causes.
The calming sounds of the rushing waves don’t hurt either.
Thankfully, this time, I don’t dream about Harper.
But when I wake up an hour or so later, Denver, one of my favorite deckhands, is sitting nearby.
“Oh, you’re up, sir!” he says. His lanky back is bent over, and his elbows are on his knees.
“What time is it?” I ask after yawning.
He checks his watch. “Quarter after two.”
“Got it.” I sit up and put my sunglasses, which were laying by my head, on. “I assume that means we’re taking off soon?”
He nods. “Yes, sir. Captain Bryant is just wrapping up a meeting with the new steward.”
I groan. “Why can’t we call her a stewardess? That’s what she is, isn’t it?”
His eyes squint, and he lifts his shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just out of style now. You know, like how you don’t call female waiters ‘waitresses.’”
“I think that’s stupid, too.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, sir.”
“Hm.” I pick at a callous on my hand. “What’s she like anyway?”
“Who? Kayla?”
“Yeah, the new steward.” I take my time to enunciate the last word.
He straightens up and rubs his hands on his pants. “She’s really nice. Pretty quiet.”
Good. Quiet is good.
“For the most part, she seems like a smart but also sheltered girl from a small town in the Midwest.”
“Is that so?” Before I met and fell in love with Harper, who was a retired runway model born and raised in New York City, I thought that was exactly the type of girl I wanted to end up with.
Maybe it still is, I wonder.
“Yeah. I think she said she was from Indiana.”
“I see.” I’ve only ever been to Indianapolis.
Before we can say anything else, my phone rings in my pocket.
“Sorry, I have to take this.”
“No need to apologize.” That’s what I like about him, he’s chill and seems to always go with the flow. Oh, and he’s also incredibly hard working.
I walk to the other side of the boat and answer.
“Jack? It’s Dimitrios.” He is the agent of the Greek author I’m trying to get to sign with my company.
“Hey Dimitrios. How’s it going?”
“Good, good. Are you still planning to be here in a about a month?”
“Yep. We’re about to sail off any minute.”
“Ah, great.”
Like with most people, I made up a lie about why I couldn’t just fly over. When it came to him, I went with my go-to and said I’d recently had an ear infection that could cause it to be very painful for me when descending with the altitude changes and pressure. The truth was, that I was deathly afraid of flying. But admitting that out loud made me seem weak, and that’s one of the last adjectives I want to be associated with my name.
“How’s Yannis doing?” I’ve been working on him for months now, but he keeps insisting he wants to publish his brilliant thrillers with the same smaller publishing house that he worked with in the past.
“He’s okay. He’s in the middle of writing the third book in the ‘Til the War Starts series.”
“Right.” I haven’t had time to read the first two, but Bryant did, and he’s a huge reader. So, I trusted him when he told me how good they were. “Well, I don’t plan on taking up too much of his time once we get to Karpathos.”
“I know. But I do hope you can get through to him.”
I run my fingers through my short, dark hair. “Me, too.” His books haven’t been getting the attention they deserve, and I know he’s only making a small fraction of the money he could be make once on my team. That means, his agent gets more money, too.
“I showed him the good things you did for Marco Pisenti.”
He’s another thriller writer who I signed when he had less than a thousand copies of his book sold. However, once I got my hands on him, he quickly passed fifty thousand, then one hundred thousand, and so on and so forth. He’s a millionaire today. I truly believe that if it wasn’t for me, he’d still be a starving artist writing his days away in an Italian café.
“And?”
“… he was intrigued.”
I pump my fist. “That’s good news.”
“I hope so.”
“You and me both, buddy.”
After hanging up with him, I call Sophia, my personal assistant.
“Did you confirm our reservations at the Grande Café?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And we have the best table in the house?”
“Yep. I asked for the one with the best view.”
“Great. Thank you.”
I want to show Yannis all the luxuries his new life with me would look like.
With that, I think we are good to go. But when I peek into the bridge, Bryant and the new girl are still talking. Her back is to me, so I can’t see her face. However, she is making him laugh, which I consider to be a good sign… as long as the humor isn’t forced and goes overboard.
I like to think that we run a serious operation here, and shenanigans are only appreciated at a minimum.
That’s something else Harper didn’t understand. She was a prankster, and she loved getting a rise out of me—especially if she happened to get it on camera. I hated it, but I put up with it because she was ungodly attractive, and she had a sexual appetite superior to any other woman I’ve ever been with.
But that’s all over now, I remind myself. Sometimes I swear I can still feel, smell, and hear her next to me. Her warm embrace, flowery perfume, and her charming laugh…
I grab at the bridge of my nose and shake my head. Get ahold of yourself, man! She made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t ready for the “wifely” duties that I expect out of my bride. For instance, she will need to accompany me to professional events where drinking excessively and dancing on tables is frowned upon.
All of that was fine and dandy when we were in some random European bar, but not when all my colleagues are around. So, after the fairytale aspect of my life was over, she couldn’t handle it.
Exhausted by all my thinking, I slump down into the cabin and lay on my bed.
“You need a woman who can do both,” I recall Bryant saying to me after Harper left the first time.
I knew he was right, but I just kept letting her worm her way back into my life.
But that was before all the pictures leaked online about her engaging in heavy PDA with Mateo Vincent, a well-known fashion designer out of New York.
Ugh. Pain still pulses through my heart when I think about it.
“We’re just friends!” she plead with tears streaming down her face.
“Harper, you do not shove your hand down the front of your friend’s pants.” That was one of the more distasteful images I’d seen.
“We were drunk!” She was practically crawling on the floor by that point.
“That’s no excuse.”
“I’m sorry! I love you, Jack.”
She tried to crawl up on me, but I shook her free.
By that point, I was so done with her and her drama… the images surfaced not long after she almost destroyed my reputation at an author’s book release.
I still cringe thinking about that night, too.
It was a self-help book about the writer’s struggle with addiction. So, I told Harper ahead of time that it would be a dry party.
Well, despite her telling me she’d be fine with that, she was having none of that, and she brought a flask.
A drunk person may be able to hide behind a sea of other inebriated people—but they stick out like a sore thumb among an otherwise sober crowd.
She made a mockery of herself and me that night.
I should’ve known it was over then. I was such a fool.
But luckily those pictures were taken and released.
“Good riddance,” Bryant said over drinks a few nights after.
I smiled and clinked my glass against his. “Yeah…”