Chapter 5
It’s close to ten p.m. before Chelsea and I are primped and ready to head to the evening mixer.
Her hair is down in loose blonde curls, framing her face, while a dress the colour of blood sticks to her like a second skin.
She’s all long legs and perky tits, wearing nothing more than mascara and lip gloss.
The bartender isn’t going to be able to resist her, and I know that’s Chelsea’s plan.
My scarlet locks have been straightened within an inch of their life, and the short, black babydoll dress shows off the dragon tattoo on my back with its low cut. My cat eye is sharp, and my lips match the colour of my sister’s outfit.
Pulling simple black flats from my bag, I move to slip them on. Chelsea scoffs. “You’re seriously wearing those?”
“It’s all I brought other than sneakers and flip-flops.”
“Here, you can borrow some of mine.” She pulls a pair of stilettos from her bag, and even though they’re black, I won’t wear them.
“I can barely walk normally on the ship as it is, now you want to throw alcohol and heels into the mix? I’ll fall and break my neck!”
“Oh, live a little, Rosie.”
Letting out a long groan, I ask, “Do you have anything else?” I’ve never understood how there can only be a half size difference between our feet given the height difference, but I’ve never complained since I was able to use her closet like a shoe store.
“Here, try these.” She passes me black strappy sandals with a chunky heel.
I slip my foot in, unable to deny they are more comfortable and sturdy.
The straps are excessively long, tying them up my calves is most likely going to cut-off circulation.
But when I regard myself in the full-length mirror, I dismiss the worry.
My legs look longer and more toned, and they go with my dress perfectly, matching the straps criss-crossing across the chest.
Stepping up next to me, and dwarfing me with her height, Chelsea threads her arm through mine. “You’re really set on showing off your tattoo?”
“Yeah. What’s the point in having it if I constantly hide it?”
“All right, maybe they’ll be too drunk to notice.”
I level my sister with a glare. There’s no way someone in our family will ignore the ink on my back, but it’s a part of me I no longer wish to hide. I sat for hours to earn it, and I’m damn well proud. “You ready?” I say to her through the reflection.
“Hell yeah!” Chelsea swipes the keycard off the table by the door, tucking it into her clutch next to our secret pack of cigarettes and lighter.
My phone’s locked away in my luggage, and it’s weirdly liberating to not be weighed down by the numerous cumbersome things women need to cart around with no fucking pockets.
Chelsea opens the door for me again, and we meander down the hall, back toward the dining room, the sound of the loudly closing door echoing through the silent hallway.
“Hey, Rosie?”
“Yeah?”
“Who’s in your highlight reel?”
“My what?” What the hell is she getting at? Is she asking who I think about when I diddle my skittle?
“We talked about it in class. How when you die, you relive your best memories. I was just wondering who would be there for you? What are your favourite memories?”
“Wow, that’s not what I thought you meant. Umm…” For a minute I ponder the question while we stroll casually back to the dining room. “You,” I reply. “All my best memories are with you.”
A small smile spreads across Chelsea’s face. “Same,” she confirms. “Let’s make this a night worth remembering.”
My sister is rarely ever sentimental. Protective? Overbearing? Slightly condescending? Yes. Mushy-gushy? Never.
Instead of jabbing her about her impromptu wave of feelings, I tuck it away. Saving it for a day when I may need the reminder, and the strength it can offer me.
As we approach the room, music bleeds out into the hall. Heavy bass rattles the handles as we reach to pull the heavy wooden doors open.
The previously empty dance floor is now crowded with people, and the dancing has spilled over to any available area around the stage.
My eyes meet Sam’s as he leans against the bar, and my breath catches.
He’s changed his clothes, but the deep red of his t-shirt makes his cobalt irises pop.
He looks so sexy and laid-back in board shorts and skate shoes.
“Looks like he was waiting for you,” Chelsea says, bumping me with her bony elbow. “Go get him.”
I gulp, nerves swirling in my stomach. “Come with me? Sam can introduce you to his bartender friend.”
“Oh, finally decided to tell me his name, did you?”
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“I’m just kidding, I know you’re nervous.”
My cheeks flush as I take my first step, Chelsea following along next to me.
Abruptly, Tyler and Liam intercept us, causing me to stumble in these godforsaken shoes.
“And where have you two been?” Tyler drawls, lurking like a snake in the grass searching for weakened prey.
“The room,” Chelsea snaps, stepping up. “You know…since we don’t have our own.”
“Sucks to suck,” Liam snickers, brown, greasy hair swaying around his shoulders. If I had the nerve, I’d punch the motherfucker square in the throat.
“You’d know.” Chelsea retorts, pushing between them and dragging me along by the hand.
“Be careful,” Tyler sneers, “dressed like a couple of sluts, who knows what you’ll attract.” It’s like shaving all his hair off made him even more of a fucking asshole.
Chelsea whips us around so fast my head spins. “The more the merrier, fuckwad.”
Liam’s eyes shine. His ever-growing infatuation with my sister beams brightly as he no doubt pictures her with him and another guy. Tyler’s face contorts, disgust evidently plastered on his features.
“What’s the matter, bro? You can’t call me a slut then be grossed out when I say I want to be gang-banged in the brig.
You brought it up.” She’s rendered him speechless, and is fucking glowing because of it.
Turning back toward the bar, she flips her golden curls over her shoulder.
“Let’s go get some dick, Rosie,” she directs to me, and I nod, baffled by her again.
Chelsea moves like liquid through the crowd as I try to keep up, the chunky heels working against me. They’re clunky and I wish I just wore my flats.
The bar appears before us, Sam’s smirk shining through the crowd. He closes in on me, disregarding my stunner of a sister entirely. It makes my heart flutter in my chest.
“Problem?” he questions, referring to the encounter with my stepbrother and his idiot-stick parasitic best friend.
“Nope,” I reply as Sam’s arm wraps around me, tugging me closer. My face has to match the colour of my hair as the world narrows to only us. No stumbling strangers, no loud music, no hateful family. Only him and his cerulean eyes locking me in, smothering out the room around us.
Sam’s lips swoop down, capturing mine in a sudden and hungry kiss. His fingers curl into my bare skin as his tongue becomes demanding. Unable to resist him, my tongue slips out, sliding against his.
His body tenses, then loosens leisurely, as he fights to restrain himself, and it just drives my need to ride him higher.
Slowly, he pulls away, leaving me breathless and wanting.
“You look beautiful,” he drawls. His blown pupils light me up, and the way hunger drips from his words makes me wet.
For fuck’s sake, it’s been like thirty seconds and I’m a horny puddle.
But I need him to satiate the need ripping through me like a wildfire.
Darting my sights over Sam’s shoulder, I witness my sister lightly dragging her fingers down the bartender’s arm as they lean in close to converse over the noise. She’s got him hooked, without a doubt. But he’s still working and I can’t abandon her until his shift is done.
Sam turns his head. “Looks like your sister has a thing for Brad.”
“Yeah, she mentioned him earlier.”
“Interesting…” he says slowly, leaving me hanging.
“Why is that interesting?” I probe.
“Because he mentioned how hot your sister was when you two were talking at the bar.”
Like usual, my confidence deflates. I’m an ugly duckling compared to Chelsea, who should have been a model instead of a thoracic surgeon. But she’s too smart not to do anything with the brain she was gifted.
It’s stupid of me to pout over this, and that’s not really the nucleus of the issue. It just snowballs back to the fact that the one man who seems to yearn for me, isn’t going to be around when the week is over.
“Want to dance?” Sam’s warm voice breaks through the depressing thoughts, and I shrug. He leads us to the back of the room, leaving Chelsea behind. The music isn’t any quieter here, but the overstimulating sound of a hundred people screaming over each other has diminished. “What’s the matter?”
I’m not about to dump my poor-me’s at his feet. That will undoubtedly smash the mock persona I’m presenting to pieces. “I just feel bad ditching Chels.”
He looks back to her, still bent over the bar soaking up all Brad’s attention, irritating everyone around her who wants to order a drink. “She looks happy to me.”
“Yeah… But what happens when Brad needs to go back to work and she’s alone, looking for me?”
“Don’t you have family she can sit with?”
That’s true, but it’s unfair of me to subject her to them after the shit this afternoon, and the inquisition she will get after Tyler blabs about the dragon skeleton inked across my shoulders and down my spine. “Yeah…I guess.”
Sam’s sight shoots behind me, eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring.
His grip on me tightens as I try to catch a look at whatever has diverted his attention.
Tyler and Liam loom by the exit, a glower on their faces as my stepbrother dramatically clocks my back with his eyes, and ominously waves his fingers.
Liam flaps his arms like wings, cawing like a crow with a busted larynx, causing Tyler to double over in laughter.
“Idiots,” I grumble.
“What are they going on about?”
“My tattoo.”
“What tattoo?” he snaps, startling me. Sam clears his throat with a cough, before flipping his voice back to normal—all warm and comforting. “Can I see?”
Slowly, I pull from his embrace. Turning around to face the duo by the door, I reveal my back to Sam. His touch is soft as it trails down my spine, following the bones of the beast. A delicious shiver follows in its wake, settling low in my gut.
I extend both hands toward Tyler and Liam, flipping my middle fingers at them as Sam cocoons me from behind, nestling his chin in the crook of my neck. “Let’s get out of here, pretty girl,” he croons against my skin as Chelsea sidles up next to us, Brad’s arm slung over her shoulder.
Having her by my side dissipates the guilt I felt about abandoning her and I nod. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” Sam winks, threading his fingers through mine.
Encased in comfortable silence, he leads the four of us down the hall and out onto the main deck.
With a smile on his handsome face, and a mischievous glint in his deepening gaze, he guides me toward a row of fancy Reserved lounge chairs.
They’re a significant upgrade from the basic plastic ones that line the majority of the area.
Brad and Chelsea break off from our small group, giving us privacy, but keeping close enough to stay aware of each other.
Away from the loud party happening inside, we converse under the stars, downing a bottle of cabernet Brad swiped from the bar.
“So, where do you call home when you’re not on the ship?”
His face falls, though only slightly, before replying. “There’s no point in having a solid home when this is my lifestyle. Depending on the turn-around, Brad and I usually bunk together at a hotel or get a short-term lease wherever we end up until the next cruise departs.”
His lifestyle sounds dreamy. Never being tied down, going wherever the waves take you, literally. What more could I want?
The aurora borealis lights up the night sky. Sam’s words fade away as we are swept up in awe by a geomagnetic event so rare in these parts it’s usually accompanied by a cataclysmic storm. But the waters are calm, the breeze warm and gentle, no trace of a capsizing wave in sight.
I can’t help but feel the threads of fate being woven together in that moment.
A once in a lifetime experience with someone as incredible as Sam, who I found out is from the big city just outside the suburban area where I grew up.
Despite all my reservations about this trip, I’m supposed to be here. I know it in my gut.
A sudden piercing stab shoots through my skull, throbbing behind my eyes as the threat of an ocular migraine looms large. The halo of light hangs in my periphery, and there’s a ringing in my ears so loud it drowns out the sound of Sam’s mesmerized voice, as well as any others.
Looking back to me, he starts to recount his early years. I can’t focus through the painful haze. Passing the bottle of wine back to him, I nod along as though I’m absorbing his story, fighting through the agony to listen.
I ache with the desire to press the heels of my hands into my temples, squeezing to diminish the throbbing for just a moment of reprieve. Maybe press my fingers into my eyes to temper the pulsing behind them.
As suddenly as it came on, it disappears. The headache’s thumping diminishes in intensity with each pump of my heart until there’s nothing left but slight exhaustion.
As I slowly focus back in, Sam's speaking of being an only child. I feel like shit that I missed the brief part leading up to this, hopefully I didn’t miss anything important.
He tells me his parents are long deceased, which is what drove him to life on the ocean, and my heart aches for him—for the young boy he used to be who lost his family too soon. After a somewhat troubled adolescence, he needed to get away, and the job here called to him.
It could probably be perceived as very stalker-esque of me to want to look into this line of employment, but the way he talks about it sparks a longing in my chest. To be free, untethered, living in paradise. Sam makes it sound like a dream come true.
I make a promise to myself in that moment—when I get back on the mainland, I’ll look into all a life like this entails. There’s more than one cruise liner to work on, I don’t have to be on the same one as Sam. Though…if this passion doesn’t fizzle out, I won’t want to be anywhere else.