Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
KELSEY
There’s a narrow stairwell at the edge of the aft deck. I’ve walked past a few times, but I never go near it, because that’s the way to Bruno’s level. Bruno’s forbidden, mega off-limits level.
But what choice do I have? He’s not answering his texts. I need a number or some sort of a-okay. I’ll call through the door or something.
I climb the steps. It’s quieter up here than the main deck, which is already freakishly quiet. The corridor is short. If the yacht is like a shark, Bruno’s stateroom is the tail half, and his workshop is the nose part, secluded behind what looks to be a very heavy closed door.
I knock.
Nothing.
I knock again. “Bruno? I need to talk to you. Quick question.”
No response.
Is he even there? McGillicuddy said he was there.
“Just a quick question regarding budget.”
No response.
I flatten my hand on the door, and it moves. Opens silently.
The workshop is more intimate than I expected, with a low ceiling and drawers and cabinets all along the walls. Lights angled from several directions, like a strange photography studio. Even the air is different in here—drier, cooler, perfectly still, like stepping into a forbidden tomb.
Bruno is at the center of it, bent over a worktable, wearing some kind of headband, and it looks like there might be a lens attached to it.
I mostly see his back, the curve of his shoulders, the tense stillness of him over the work.
He seems so different from how he usually is, like the sense of contents under pressure or something.
He’s whispering, too—low, almost rhythmic words that I can’t quite make out, full of intensity, like he’s talking to himself in a dream, and he’s holding something so tiny I can’t see what it is. It makes his hands look large, like bear paws or something.
I should leave—I really should, but somehow, I can’t. I stand there, rooted to the ground.
“Bruno?”
He goes rigid. The whispering stops. Something small hits the mat.
He turns, and for just a second—before he fully registers me—the expression is still on his face. It’s an expression I can’t make sense of. The lens makes one eye enormous and strange, and he looks wild, like I walked in on something I’m not supposed to see.
But then he seems to come back to himself and he’s Bruno again.
“What are you doing up here?” he demands.
“The door was open—I’m so sorry—”
“This level is off-limits. I told you that.”
“I know, but I’ve been texting you about the budget and—”
“Did I not tell you to figure it out?”
“Yeah, but I thought that meant the aesthetic part, and I can’t just—”
“The budget is whatever it takes.”
He’s already turning back to the bench.
“Out!”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I’m sorry I came in here.”
I pull the door shut behind me and move fast—down the stairs, across the deck and down some more stairs, all the way to where Annie and Phillip and Fernando are waiting for me with the boat at the ready.
“Did you get some guidance?” Annie asks, looking concerned.
“Whatever it takes,” I say, disturbed about whatever that interaction was just now. What a jerk!
The tender boat turns out to be like a boat version of a town car, all leather banquettes, tinted windows, and even a small refrigerator. There’s a driving compartment up front and a sheltered riding compartment in the back.
The three of us sit in the front, with Fernando driving.
I gaze out at the waves. I can’t stop thinking about his hands. The size of them over something that small—and then he barks, “Out!” Like I’m this naughty schoolgirl who got herself sent from the room before she could make heads or tails of anything.
I ask them about what made them join Bruno’s crew.
Annie tells me that she originally got into yachting as a quick way to pay off her student loans, working her way up to a position on Bruno’s boat, and now she’s trying to earn enough money to invest and retire early. Fernando wants to buy a house in cash.
“Fernando hates all debt,” Annie informs me. “We argue about that. I believe in some debt.”
“I’m going to own my own house, free and clear by the time I’m thirty-five, and there’s emotional value to that,” Fernando says.
“At a cost,” Annie says.
I find out that Phillip lost his savings by opening a restaurant that collapsed, Captain Bane has been on Jeopardy and drills himself up in the captain’s bridge, and McGillicuddy is trying to put distance between her and a terrible family tragedy, but they don’t say what it is.
And apparently nobody knows Gordon the engineer’s reason for being out at sea.
Fernando thinks he’s on the run. Annie thinks he just doesn’t like people.
“How do you do it? Having to be quiet all the time?”
“Every job has its trade-offs,” Fernando says. “You get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t recommend this job to a boisterous person,” Annie says. “But we have quiet fun down there, like Scrabble.”
“A lot of Scrabble,” Fernando says.
Annie smiles. “And we sometimes take the boat to the shore and let our hair down.”
Annie has a whole itinerary for us in town and Ubers arranged.
The cake is already in the works, and Phillip is going to check on that and then shop for his produce.
Fernando and Annie and I are going to hit the party store for decorative items, and I’ll be at the office supply store for a banner, and I also have to figure out gifts for us to give each other.
Not thirty minutes later, the three of us are wandering the aisles of a party store. Annie shows me some garlands. Fernando, whose official title is deckhand, strategizes about how we can hang things.
I find a small “puppy and kitten in love” figurine thing and show it to them. “We have to put this on top of the cake! It’s so unbelievably cute!” I show how it sparkles in the light.
I look up and catch them both staring at me.
“What?”
Annie says, “You are just so different from what we would’ve thought a girlfriend of his would be like.”
“So different,” Fernando says.
“You seem fun,” Annie says. “Nothing against Mr. Blackwood, he’s just a very serious individual.”
“He’s totally serious. I guess that’s why we work. I’m the fun girlfriend. A lot of people think I’m too extra, and not in a good way, but Bruno likes it.”
I examine a giant teddy bear holding a fluffy heart, just listening to myself. I’ve wanted a guy to like my extra-ness my whole life, and now I’m play-acting it, making it part of the story in this totally fake relationship. It’s kind of sad and pathetic, really.
Most people think I’m too extra, but Bruno sure likes it!
Bruno. The man who dismissed me from his workshop this morning like I contaminated the place.
I pick up the giant teddy bear and stuff it into the cart.
We send Fernando to the print store to pick up the big banner. “What’s the name that it’s under?” he asks.
“It will be the giant banner that says heart you, Chumpywumpy,” I joke.
Fernando’s eyes widen.
“Yeah.” Annie laughs. “Chumpy Wumpy is two words, not one, or Mr. Blackwood will freak out!”
“She’s kidding,” I say. “The order should be ready and waiting under the name of Kelsey Winters.”
Fernando rushes off.
Annie and I duck into a little gift shop on the corner to get our presents. Annie tries to disguise her look of pity when she realizes I’m shopping for my own anniversary present.
“It’s fine. We’re a very practical couple,” I say.
“We had no idea. A year he was seeing somebody and we didn’t even know!” she says.
“We’re practical and private.”
I know exactly what I want the second I see it.
It’s in a rack by the register, between a display of seashell magnets and a basket of saltwater taffy.
A kids’ watch. Plastic band, bright red, and on the face is cartoon Roadrunner, and his legs are the arms of the watch, and his tongue is out in an absolutely unhinged way.
Six dollars.
At a nearby bakery, I find Bruno a fancy subscription to cookie of the month club. It comes with a starter box.
Phillip is waiting for us at the tender boat. We put our stuff in next to his groceries. Fernando arrives last with a rolled-up tube. He says something about them losing the order, but he got them to do it as a rush job, and Annie gets a text from the musicians saying they can do a last-minute gig.
“And what kind of music do they play?”
“It’s a fiddle and an oboe duo. Very Appalachian, but they can totally do melodic romantic music. They’re amazing! They’ll bring their own boat—a friend’s skiff—and motor out to the yacht. They might not be there right at five, but they’ll come, she’s sure.”
I smile. It sounds like Annie is a fan. “Let’s do it!”
We arrive back at the boat at four ten—Annie, Fernando, Phillip, and me, and a four-foot teddy bear, six shopping bags of hearts and fairy lights and flowers and streamers and things, plus a giant cake in a box. Fifty minutes. We can do this.
Phillip rushes down to get going on the charcuterie board he has planned; dinner will be much later.
Annie and Fernando string the fairy lights and garlands from every available protrusion, exactly like the wild spider’s web of love I’d imagined.
I set the cake on a little side table and carefully press the “puppy and kitten in love” cake topper figurine atop it.
Captain Bane wanders down and gives some ideas for more places for lights.
Annie puts out candles in protective glass cases, and we put them everywhere, and she starts in scattering paper hearts and flowers all over.
I wish Bruno would come by and see...I think he’d be proud of what a nice celebration we pulled together in no time.
I wrap the presents. The Roadrunner watch goes in a small box with a ribbon—my gift from “Bruno.” I wrap the cookie subscription starter box and affix a card on top. Twelve months of joy delivered monthly, Happy Anniversary, Captain. —K
McGillicuddy really likes the giant teddy bear, and she thinks it should be affixed to the railing of the stairway that leads down from the helipad. “It’ll be watching over the romantic dinner! It’ll be perfect!”