Chapter 3 #3
"I know, darling. Kobe told me about you.
" She clasps her hands together, and her nails are perfect, this shade of nude that probably requires an appointment and a postcode I can't afford.
"Have you settled in? Is the ship treating you well?
It can be overwhelming at first, I remember my early days. "
"It's good. It's... really good, actually.
" And it is, and I can't help the smile that comes with it, because this ship is still the most incredible place I've ever been and I haven't stopped marvelling at it and I don't care if that makes me look like a kid on her first holiday abroad. "Thank you."
"Good. Good." She tilts her head, and her eyes travel over me, quick and thorough, cataloguing. "You're so young. Kobe said you were young but I didn't expect... well. You look about sixteen." She laughs, musical and fond. "In the best way."
I don't know what the best way to look sixteen is.
I smile because she seems to mean it kindly and because I don't know what else to do with my face when a woman who looks like a walking perfume advertisement tells me I look like a child, but somewhere in the back of my brain a tiny voice says did she just..
. was that a compliment or a measurement?
and I don't know the answer, so I file it under "Review Later" and keep smiling.
"Is Artem still here?" she asks, and his name comes out of her mouth like she's said it ten thousand times.
No weight. No hesitation. No internal collapse of vital organs.
Just his name, tossed out the way you'd say coffee or Tuesday, and I want to take notes because HOW, how does a person say his name without their voice doing something involuntary, I need to know her technique because mine is clearly broken.
"He left a few minutes ago," I tell her, and I'm deeply proud of how normal that comes out considering that what I actually want to say is he left and the room still smells like him and his fingerprints are still on the water glass and I washed the glass but I can still see the ghost of them in the right light and yes, I know how unhinged that sounds, thank you for not asking.
"Toward his suite, probably. He's a creature of habit," she murmurs, already turning, already moving with that liquid certainty. Then she glances back over her shoulder, one more smile, perfectly timed, perfectly warm. "It was lovely to meet you, Star. I'm sure we'll be seeing lots of each other."
"You too. Mila."
The click of her heels fades down the corridor, toward the guest suites, toward whatever part of this ship she shares with him through years I know nothing about.
I stand in the reception with the water wall humming behind me and the orchid motionless in its glass cylinder, and I'm still holding a bottle of cedarwood oil in one hand because I forgot I was locking up, because she said his name and I forgot everything I was doing, and that's just..
. that's just fantastic, Thornton, really excellent work tonight, very professional, totally normal behaviour, standing in an empty spa holding the oil you chose because it smells like a man who doesn't belong to you while a woman who clearly does know him, in some way you can't name and don't want to examine, walks toward his suite in a wine-coloured dress that you couldn't afford with a month's salary and heels that make a sound on teak that confidence makes.
She called him Artem the way I call my own name. Like it was hers. Like she'd been saying it so long it had worn smooth in her mouth and she didn't even hear it anymore.
And she's walking toward his suite right now, and I'm standing in an empty spa with oil on my cuffs and his cedarwood on my skin, and the comparison is so absurd that it should be funny, it should be hilarious, I should be laughing at myself for even entertaining the possibility that a girl who eats bread rolls standing at a staff mess counter has any business thinking about a man who owns the deck she's standing on.
But I'm not laughing, and my planner has gone completely, terrifyingly silent, and the only thing in my head is the memory of his fingers curling on the table when I was gentle with him, and the sound of her heels clicking away toward his door.
I turn off the lights. Lock the spa. Walk down to Deck 2 in my flat shoes and my rolled-up trousers, and eat a bread roll standing at the counter because the tables are full and I don't mind.
I've eaten standing my whole life. The bread is good.
I chew and swallow and I don't think about his hands or the glass or the voice that said not the hands or the heels on teak or any of it, because I'm a twenty-year-old massage therapist with forty-two euros of savings and a recurring Thursday appointment that's going to destroy me, and the only sensible thing to do is eat my bread and go to sleep.
I'm a terrible liar, even to myself. Especially about bread and billionaires and the way cedarwood smells on someone else's skin.