Chapter 20
“You know what the real problem with cruises like this is?” Jake says as we head down the hallway toward my room.
I glance back at him. “What?”
He tugs the bill of his Catfish ball cap and grins. “Two weeks of breakfasts like that and suddenly real life feels wildly overrated.”
Real Life.
The words land right as we pass Zach’s cabin.
“Not to mention, it’s hard to go back to eating alone after that,” Jake adds.
When we get to my door, I lean my back against it and stare back at Jake with narrowed eyes. “Hold up. Don’t you live with Lily and Frasier? That’s not exactly eating alone, is it?”
He lifts his chin up to the ceiling and groans to the sky.
“You’re right.”
When he looks back at me, his brown eyes twinkle with amusement.
“But Lily doesn’t laugh at my dumb jokes, and Frasier’s definitely not jumping off cliffs with me.
He’s always been my camera guy. So yeah, give a guy a break.
I’m allowed to reminisce over the only girl who has tolerated my jokes, listened to every dumb thing I’ve done, and still spent three consecutive days in my presence. ”
I huff out a laugh. “Three days isn’t exactly a lifetime achievement.”
He dips his chin and leans in. “Is that your way of saying that you are laughing at my jokes?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Damn.” He takes a step back and shoves his hands in his board-short pockets. “Here I was thinking we were becoming friends, and then you hit me with that.”
“We are friends,” I say. “I just don’t move that fast.”
Or at all in most cases. What Jake doesn’t realize is that he’s lucky I talked to him. Most of the time I push people away, but he and his friends were impossible to ignore when they started chanting my name while I stood on top of a cliff.
He nods, rocking back on his heels.
“Okay,” he says. “I can work with that. Slow is fine.”
I raise a brow. “Good.”
“Yeah,” he continues, glancing down the hallway before looking back at me. “But I feel like there’s a pretty important step missing here.”
“What step?”
He gestures vaguely between us. “The one where I actually have a way to talk to you after tomorrow.”
I fold my arms. “Mhm.”
“Because right now,” he adds, pulling his phone halfway out of his pocket, “this whole ‘slow burn friendship’ thing you’ve got going on kind of ends the second we get off this boat.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, we've spent the last three days together. Cliff jumping, eating breakfast, wandering around this ship.” He gestures down the hallway. “We essentially adopted you into our group, and I still don’t know anything about you.”
I take him in. “That's not true.”
“Oh, yeah?” he says. “Where are you from?”
“Nope,” I answer, shaking my head while holding back a smile. “We agreed when we met that we would keep everything to the cruise.”
“Keep it to the cruise.” He nods in agreement.
“See, that worked fine until the aforementioned adoption.
Since then, you've learned everything possible about me.” He raises his hand between us, counting out the list. “You know what school I go to. Where I grew up. You even found out about the time I asked a girl to prom over the stadium mic, and she yelled back that we were just friends.”
“You left out the part where the marching band then had to carry you back across the field to your team,” I add.
He barks out a laugh and points at me. “See! You know more about me than any of my exes combined.”
“Not out of choice.”
“Still. I feel like it's only right that I know where you're going to college? What if I'm also there, and you start spouting out all my secrets?” His eyes go wide. “Imagine if my team found out that I tried to jump over the bonfire at my homecoming and singed off half my eyebrows. I’d be mortified.”
I smile, clapping my hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about me telling them, though. I’m pretty sure Lily and Frasier would’ve already told them.”
He sighs.
“There’s also the little fact that I don’t go to Brighton U.” Not yet, at least. The reality right now is that I don’t go anywhere.
He narrows his brown eyes. “You're unbelievably suspicious, you know that?”
“I prefer the term private.”
“Private,” he repeats. “At this point it's less 'private' and more 'witness protection.' You know, there’s absolutely nothing about you online? Tell me, Honey—if that's your real name—who are you running from?” he teases.
My stomach drops, and dread trickles its way down my spine, because—
“You looked me up online?”
He winces, taking a step back. “That makes it sound worse than it is. I just searched your name, assuming Honey was pretty unique.” He shakes his head. “What I saw, though. Well, that was... unexpected.”
My throat tightens.
Jamie cheating on me. The videos of all the people ridiculing me. Jenni in Zach’s bed. The booing at the stadium.
No piece of my internet history looks good.
I swallow, my face burning red. “W-what did you see?”
My fingers curl into my palms, my nails bit into my skin as heat creeps up my neck.
Did he see it?
Did he see me?
Zach said he had it taken down, but I never checked. I couldn’t. The idea of searching my own name and finding those videos made me feel like my chest was closing in on itself.
What if something slipped through?
What if—
“A bunch of girls putting honey in places that I didn't realize were allowed without a paid subscription.”
Paid subscription?
I stare at him for a second, and the tension drains out of me so fast it almost makes me dizzy.
Oh. Oh.
He didn’t see anything. There’s nothing there anymore because Zach fixed it for me.
Jake's still watching me intently, and since I don't want him to ask me why I've fallen into my own thoughts, I say, “So you saw one and thought, ‘yes, I should definitely keep going’?”
He shrugs. “Scientific curiosity.”
“Sure.”
“Also, there were a lot of views. I figured something interesting had to happen eventually.”
I nod, holding back a smile. “Sounds like you were very committed to the research.”
“What can I say?” His eyes track my face. “I just really like honey.”
I immediately look down and tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear for something to do. I'm not an idiot. He’s made a few jokes about being interested in me, and as nice as he is... he’s not Zach. That’s why I’ve been so adamant about being just friends.
“Yeah, well. I’m sure you’ll recover.”
“So is this it? We dock in an hour, you disappear and I spend the rest of my life wondering about the mysterious girl named Honey?” he asks playfully.
“Wow,” I say. “That escalated quickly. We went from cliff jumping to a whole life spiral in, like, thirty seconds.”
“Look, I'm just planning ahead.” He shrugs as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. “If the mysterious Honey disappears tomorrow, I'd at least like the option of texting her once in a while.”
I fold my arms. “Mhm. Texting me once in a while sounds suspiciously like staying in touch.”
He pauses, steps back and then raises both his hands in surrender.
“Okay,” he says. “Fair point. I guess I'm just going to have to scour cliff-jumping excursions around the country and hope you show up on one of those.”
I laugh, rolling my eyes before pushing him lightly in the chest. “Fine. Give it here.”
“Wait.” His brow lifts. “Seriously?”
I nod, holding out my hand.
It’s just a number after all, and this is the exact kind of thing I stopped doing at St. Michael’s.
Letting people in and giving someone the chance to know me beyond casual hellos.
For a long time, it felt safer to disappear, but Zach didn’t leave so I could keep doing that.
He left so I’d figure out how to live my life and have friends.
“Seriously, but just so we're clear,” I say as he passes me the phone, “this is strictly a friends who jumped off cliffs together situation. That's it.”
He grins.
“Yeah.”
I type my number into his phone and hand it back to him.
“Friends,” I repeat.
Jake glances down at his screen, then back at me.
“Friends,” he agrees, and the smile on his face says he's perfectly happy with that.
I place my hand on the door and lean my head against the wood. “I should probably get in there and pack before I convince myself that real life is overrated and book another cruise.”
“Hey, if you’re booking another one, don’t do it without me. I’ve already proven I’m excellent company.”
He opens his arms, and I find myself wrapping mine around him, enveloping him into a hug.
Jake squeezes me once before letting go.
“Well,” he says, rocking back on his heels, “guess I’ll see you around, Honey.”
“That’s statistically unlikely,” I reply, pushing my door handle.
He clicks his fingers and then points at me. “It’s still possible.”
I laugh, shake my head, then glance back at him.
“Good luck at school, Jake. May the student body never find out about the time you tried to start a chant for yourself, and no one joined in.”
“You know what? Maybe it is a good thing I won’t see you every day. You know too many of my secrets.”
He gives me a small salute with two fingers off the brim of his cap.
“Good luck to you too, Honey. I hope you stop running and start jumping.”
“Thanks.”
He turns on his heel and walks away. I find myself watching him, taking in his confident stride, and almost admiring his attitude.
Nothing gets in Jake’s way. He just lives for the moment and is happy to take you on the ride.
When I started to lose my nerve at the cliff jump, he was the one chanting my name, getting everyone else to join in.
He’s sweet, funny and nice... but he’s not for me.
Once Jake turns a corner, I slip inside my cabin and shut the door.
Papers across the room move slightly with the motion.
Not surprising. Every surface is covered in paper.
The bed, the desk, the chair—even the TV stand—are buried in notes I ripped from the back of an old notebook when I ran out of room.
There are napkins from the buffet deck covered in sentences with my handwriting getting worse the later it got.
I even found two paper plates in the kitchenette and used them as index cards, because apparently this is my process and no one warned me.
I take a few more steps into the room, wondering how the hell I’m going to clean all of this up before I leave.
There’s a timeline on the desk I don’t want to disturb, and the bed is covered in an arrangement of chapter notes I spent forty minutes on two nights ago and haven’t touched since.
It’s a mess, but...it’s my mess. My thought process laid bare for me to see.
I can’t believe it. I finally have an idea and the second I committed, it suddenly felt like it all made sense. I know the story. I know her strengths and weaknesses; I know so much about this character that I feel like I know her, and because of that, I want to do her justice.
Suddenly, the ship’s loudspeaker plays a tune.
“Please be aware that we will be arriving at our final dock in two hours. If you would like to avoid queues, you are welcome to check out early at any concierge desk on the boat.”
Right.
I’ve got one hour to pack my brain up and make sure I don’t lose any of the papers. I scan the room, figuring out how I can do this.
That’s when I see my laptop on the edge of the bed. I still have one important thing to do before I leave this boat, and the deadline is tonight.
I reach over and take it from the bed, careful not to disturb anything else. Then I swipe Zach’s keycard from my desk and head to his room.
The second I open the door, I’m hit with his scent all around me, and I smile. The room is clean since I’ve only been using it to sleep at night. I’d never tell him, but the fact that his scent still lingers on the sheets has brought me a lot of comfort.
I take a seat at his desk and when I open it up, my inbox is already open. It’s moved my older, starred email to the top with a gray, italicized note over the date:
You received this 5 days ago. Follow up?
Well, at least my inbox realizes how imperative this is.
I take a deep breath and click on the email.
Subject: Transfer Confirmation Pending—Creative Writing, Bachelor of Arts. Enrollment start: September 3rd.
I take one final read-through of the email, as if I don’t know it by heart, then I click the link at the bottom and scroll through the terms and conditions.
At the very bottom of the page, there’s a green button.
'Confirm.'
I don’t debate it this time. I’ve spent enough time doing that. I just click it, and when the school banner pops up, I smile.
Congratulations! We are excited to have you join us.
I've done it. I've made the decision. This is the first day of the rest of my life.
That's all I think as I head out of the room and silently say goodbye to the place that brought me more peace and closure than I ever thought it could.
When I get back into my room, I slip my laptop in my bag and start to pack away all of my notes.
I take pictures of everything, marking the place before picking up each page in sequence and placing it in my notebook. The entire process takes much longer than it should, but I'm not rushing. Disembarkation can wait thirty seconds for me to get this right.
The room looks almost normal when I'm done. There's barely any hint that I've been in here, using this as my sanctuary for the last two weeks. Just a slightly rumpled bed and old towels.
I place my handbag over my shoulder and pull my carry-on suitcase to the door.
Right before I leave, I get my phone out.
Honey: I confirmed the enrollment. September 3rd. I'll explain everything when I see you. I'm getting off the ship soon.
Olivia: CONFIRMED???? Honey. Get your butt back to Atlanta because I need to hug you and I also need to know everything!
Honey: Soon. My flight to you is this afternoon. Will be there by dinner.
Olivia: Love you, Honey.
Honey: Love you too.