Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
KELSEY
Ispend the entire helicopter ride on my phone.
First I text Sienna to beg her to cover my Tuesday and Thursday classes, which involves some class-covering horse trading where I come out with the shit end, but what can I do?
I let Mia know I won’t be at yoga on Wednesday morning, and then finally I text Francine a highly apologetic text about missing her birthday dinner.
Hold the phone—the hot recluse is paying you three hundred large to ride around on his yacht with him for a few days?
He’s donating it to our outreach program, and if you knew how high-handedly he purchased my ongoing fake-date services, you wouldn’t think he was hot.
I will happily take all the details from your yacht ride as a late birthday present.
Also, he’s objectively hot.
He didn’t even ask me. He literally put it into motion, knowing I would say yes.
He just assumed you could be bought?
Yes, and the horrible thing is, he’s right.
I send her a helicopter selfie.
Riding the helicopter like a pound of cod.
Cutest pound of cod ever.
Srsly not to make light of it. That is a shit feeling when someone treats you like that. You’re worth more than that. But it’s not like you’re going to spend the money on Gucci bags and fancy restaurants. It’s for the kids.
Frown face. That’s what makes it so manipulative.
I check the show Slack, which is the main message board for everybody in the cast and crew of Anything Goes. There’s not really anything new on it, but I read in depth on some stuff that doesn’t even pertain to me. Basically I don’t want to interact with Bruno right now.
He sits across from me, also reading something, seeming unhappy that I’m unhappy. His face looks all hard and steely.
Good. Stay on your end.
How quickly things change. Just this morning I was in full-on sparkle-unicorn mode when I opened my eyes and saw him there, all pretty gray eyes and expressive eyebrows and burnished-bronze beard stubble.
I was positively glowing from the magical night we had, and all the hot sex.
For a while there, I was even wondering if this impossibly wonderful hookup could last.
The thing is, it seemed like so much more than a hookup. I thought he was into me and interested in me as a person the way I was interested in him. I didn’t think he’d use all the little details I shared with him to manipulate me.
But what did I expect? The man lives alone on a yacht and needs elaborate excuses to escape family functions so that some sort of dreadful secret doesn’t come crawling up into the light like a hairy centipede.
Red flags gone wild.
I’ll make the best of it. I’ll download a few ebooks, wear the pretty dresses and sit around on his stupid boat reading.
And then maybe burn the dresses.
Or not, because they are gorgeous.
I open my calendar and start rearranging things, and I absolutely do not look out the window.
But then I do.
We’re flying over Long Island Sound, and the light is turning the water into silver sparkles, and there are sailboats below us like little white dots.
And then there it is.
I see it from maybe half a mile away. My first thought is, Whoa.
It’s enormous and forebodingly aerodynamic with its dark hull, sharp lines, and multiple decks stacked in slanted tiers. Even from here, the boat has a certain sharklike attitude. If he could wrap the thing in barbed wire, he probably would.
I go back to my phone. I am a woman who has been conscripted against her will and I am NOT going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me press my face against the glass like his boat is so amazing.
I glance out the window only one more time, briefly, just gauging how close we are.
There’s a helipad up top, or at least I’m assuming that’s what the giant H in a circle is on the very top of the boat.
“We’re descending,” Bruno says. These are the first words he’s dared to speak since we took off. He knows I’m mad.
“Yippee,” I say to my phone, which he hopefully understands as the speaking equivalent of a thoroughly unenthusiastic thumbs up.
The helicopter banks and drops. My stomach lifts. The helipad is growing larger, the empty deck rushing up to meet us.
We touch down. The blades sound like they’re slowing. Bruno unbuckles his seat belt like this was nothing but an Uber ride. He opens the door and steps out and offers me his hand.
“I got this.” I grab my purse and follow him out. The wind from the rotors whips my hair into my face and my dress is doing something a little obscene and I’m clutching my bag and my phone and trying to look dignified, but I really want to get out from under those blades.
Bruno takes my arm and leads me to the edge of the platform. “You don’t have to duck like that. The blades can’t touch you.”
“It feels like they might!”
We start down a flight of stairs that descends from the helipad down past two levels to a large, luxurious, open-air deck below, which features a hot tub and various lounge areas, some of them shaded by canopy things, and there’s even a small bar area.
It’s everything you’d ever want in the most wonderful living room ever.
There are five people lined up at the very foot of the stairs all dressed in white uniforms, shoulders squared, hands behind backs, eyes forward. I feel like I’m in a presidential receiving line.
A whistle sounds—two short blasts.
“Hi!” I say when I reach the bottom.
The woman at the head of the line steps forward. She’s maybe fifty with platinum-gray hair pulled back tight in a ponytail and she’s holding a clipboard. “Welcome aboard, Ms. Winters.”
Bruno says, “Chief Steward McGillicuddy will see to all of your needs.” With that, he strolls over to a man in a captain’s hat who has just appeared through a door.
The rest of them continue to stare into the distance like mannequins in the Tommy Hilfiger polo-shirt department. They are all absolutely motionless, except for a dark-haired guy whose jaw seems to tighten and release a lot, like he’s trying not to laugh or maybe not cry out in agony.
“Hey, everyone. I’m Kelsey.”
Chief Steward McGillicuddy claps twice and does a strange hand signal that morphs into some other hand signal, and the crew members scatter, a few racing up the steps toward the helicopter; the others dispatch to places unseen.
So much for the introductions.
McGillicuddy’s pen is poised over her clipboard. “Your stateroom is on the main deck, portside. Your luggage will be placed there shortly. Dinner is served at six sharp, breakfast at seven. Any dietary requirements?”
“Umm... a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with every meal?”
“Okay. And as for food.”
“No, that was a joke—I’m a wine person. As for food, no mushrooms?”
McGillicuddy notes this on her clipboard. “Wine preferences?”
“Whatever you have open.”
“Consider it all open.”
“A dry white?”
McGillicuddy notes it on her clipboard, then turns and walks.
I follow, clutching my purse to my chest. We head through a pair of double doors into an interior lounge area that is even more sumptuous than the exterior lounge area.
The walls of this yacht are dark wood and polished brass, a little bit vintage like the Orient Express, except it’s a giant freaking boat. The carpet is green with a subtle leafy design. There are couches and furnishings in earth tones.
I look around for anything Bruno-ish, like I don’t know, watch magazines or a huge mural of watchmakers toiling in a watch factory or something, but there’s nothing, which I suppose is in itself Bruno-ish.
My stateroom is down a flight of stairs and through a hushed corridor. McGillicuddy opens the door and steps aside.
It’s gorgeous. King bed, white linens, more dark wood, three massive windows with a view of the water.
McGillicuddy strolls across the room and opens a door. “This is your bathroom. Rain shower. You’ll see the floor is heated.” She moves on to another door, which is my closet, already stocked with all of my dresses and clothes.
“That was fast!”
McGillicuddy nods once. It’s as if she’s going for the minimum possible words.
“How did they do that? They were heading for the helicopter when we left.”
“Efficiency.”
“Did they sprint? Was it like a relay-race situation?”
“The crew likes to be efficient.”
A glass of white wine sits on a coaster with a small arrangement of white flowers on the bedside table.
“Oh, wow.”
Ms. McGillicuddy points her pen at a diagram of the yacht on the inside of the door.
“Mr. Blackwood’s workshop and private quarters are on the owner’s deck,” McGillicuddy says.
“That entire deck is off-limits. Above it is the captain’s bridge.
The bridge is off-limits. The helipad is not to be accessed without approval. ”
“So the top three layers are no-go zones.”
“Exactly. You’ll have the run of the main deck, including the salon, dining room, and aft deck.”
“The aft deck is the one with the hot tub? Because that looks like the fun deck.”
“The aft deck is indeed the one with the hot tub. You must keep in mind, however, that this yacht is a quiet space. Mr. Blackwood expects an environment free of noise, disruption, and social interaction.”
I wait for her to smile or clarify or add a “within reason.” She does not.
“So... I shouldn’t let off the fireworks I brought? Or practice my kazoo?”
Her lips thin. “Not advisable.”
“And I guess my crash cymbal performance is right out.”
Ms. McGillicuddy continues. “I have taken the liberty to print you a map to carry with you. You’ll find the Wi-Fi password on the bottom, and there is my phone number. I’ll be your main point of contact. You may text me at any hour. Aside from Bruno, I am to be your central point of contact.”
“Okay.”
“Again, you are not to ascend to the owner’s deck or anything above it without express approval from Bruno. And you are particularly to stay out of the workshop.” She taps her pen on the workshop area with great force.
“Understood,” I say, wondering if Bruno texted ahead to tell them what a problem I might be. Was he shaken by the whole bent-gears-and-sand comment?
The door closes behind her with a soft click.
I sink onto the bed. I take a sip of wine and study the map. Ms. McGillicuddy has circled the top three decks of the yacht and put an X through them. I text an image of it to Francine.
I have the run of the yacht, except for those places marked with an X, which I am to avoid upon pain of death.
My phone buzzes.
#BlueBeardSituation
I rest a bit and then explore the yacht.
While elegant, it feels eerily un-lived-in, far more so than an Airbnb, which at least tries to put up human touches even if those touches are a bowl of weird wicker balls and life-affirming sayings on weathered planks decorating the walls, which, as far as I can see, would be ironic here. It’s like a boat that androids live on.
I shake the thought out of my head and pick up one of the books. A History of Maritime Navigation. I put it back, thankful that I have an ereader stuffed with fun and smutalicious books that have nothing to do with maritime history, though they do at times feature seamen.
I move through the dining room—a long table that seats twelve, set for two, Bond-villain-style—and out onto the back deck.
I go to the railing. The boat is moving now, the shore farther away than it was before. I suppose we’re going north.
I still feel weird that I knuckled under like I did, that a person can look at me and figure out the number that will make me do what they want.
I feel weird and bad about it in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on, but I remind myself that the scholarship fund is getting a bunch of money.
What’s more, the sky is a brilliant blue above me, like a dizzying upside-down bowl of blue that’s darker in the center, and the wind feels soft against my cheek, and the waves are lapping somewhere, and here I am on a forced vacation.
And all I have to do is appear in a few pictures.
For a moment, my mind drifts back to the last three days of the wedding, all the strange, conflicting signs from my family members.
I tell myself not to worry about it. Our reconciliation will be a process, not a one-time event. The important thing is that there was progress.
I decide that I like the cozy intimacy of this back deck the best; it’s a smaller, more low-key version of the front deck, and it feels like the most remote spot on the ship, and the least visible from Bruno’s quarters.
This will be my hangout spot.
The loungers here are made of wood with huge marshmallow-y cushions, and they’re arranged in mathematically perfect rows beneath square canopies, and between each one is an empty table.
I angle it toward the sun and drag another closer so they’re side by side, the way a person might sit with a friend. I put my stuff there.
Excited, I go back to my stateroom and change into my suit and fun beachy cover-up and pack a little bag with my ereader and sunglasses and hat and lip balm and stuff and go back out to the back deck...
And the loungers are exactly where they were before. My bag has been moved to the small table between them, centered perfectly.
I look around. Nobody. Not a soul. It’s like the boat itself rearranged its own furniture the second I turned my back.
I move the loungers back to my preferred position and settle in with my stuff. I pull out my phone, find a playlist, and hit play. Dua Lipa fills the air—quietly, so that nobody will hear. I take a selfie and send it to my galpal loop, and then I just stare out at the sparkling waves.
A text on my phone.
Would you like a snack? A beverage?
Who is this?
This is McGillicuddy.
Thank you, but I’m fine.
We ask that guests use personal earbuds for audio.
I text back: People can hear this?
The standard aboard is for absolute quiet.
thanks for letting me know.
It’s ridiculous, there’s no reason to be a jerk about it; this “standard” is clearly coming directly from Bruno.
I turn off Dua Lipa and go in search of a bathroom—there’s a gorgeous one right inside on the way to the main interior living area, real spa stuff. Then I find a bottle of water in the mini fridge in the bar.
When I go back out, the loungers are back in formation. My ereader has a coaster under it, my towel is folded, and everything is at right angles.
I stand there for a moment. I pull out my phone to text McGillicuddy about it, but what would I say? Did somebody move the loungers back? Am I not supposed to move the loungers around?
Obviously the answer would be yes.