Chapter 31
31
The storm blows itself out almost as quickly as it started, but there’s a ton of clean-up to do.
Adam, Liam and I sweep up the broken glass and take inventory of everything that got broken or lost – some of the cushions blew overboard, a lot of the food and alcohol is ruined and will need to be replaced.
There isn’t time to talk to Berry, because we’re heading straight back to port to drop off the guests who are shaken by the bad weather and desperate to get back to dry land.
I’m pretty sure they’re also pissed off following a conversation with the captain, but it’s not my problem.
I’m just glad I’ll never have to deal with Marc ever again.
When I eventually make it back to our room, Berry’s packing.
‘What are you doing?’
She doesn’t look at me.
‘We’re in port. The guests are gone.
I’m leaving.’
‘Wait, what? Now? Why?’
She shakes her head.
‘Don’t even pretend to care about this, Hope. ’
She crouches down to pull a drawer out from under the bed, grabbing handfuls of clothes and shoving them into her backpack.
‘About what? About you? You know that’s not true. ’
She edges past me into the bathroom and comes back with her Pickle Slut bag.
‘I don’t know that.’ She won’t meet my eyes.
‘Were you two together this whole time?’
‘God, what? No. Of course not.’
‘But you were together when you got here?’
‘Yes. But we broke up. And because no one knew we were together, I couldn’t tell anyone when we split up. ’
She shakes her head, her face twisted with hurt.
‘He called you his girlfriend. I saw you kissing him.’
‘He called me his girlfriend because he was pissed off at Marc. And he kissed me. You saw him kiss me. But I stopped it. I stopped it.’
I reach out for her then, but she holds her hands up to prevent me from touching her.
‘You knew I was upset. But you didn’t come after me.
You went after him.’
‘We were together for a long time,’ I tell her.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.
I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone.
But it’s over, I promise.
Properly over. I want you. ’
‘I don’t think you know what you want. ’
She bends to pull the last of her clothes out of the drawer and then zips up her backpack.
I shake my head. My heart’s racing.
I can’t let her leave without explaining.
But I can’t think of what to say to make her understand.
‘How long were you together?’ she asks me.
I tell her six years and her breath catches, tears springing to her eyes, as she grabs her bag and reaches past me for the door.
‘Six years and you didn’t tell me.
You promised him, but what about me?
You didn’t think I deserved to know?
That you were with him.
That you came here together as a couple?
Who broke up with who? ’
I shake my head.
‘It doesn’t –’
Tears are running down her cheeks now.
‘Who, Hope?’
‘He broke up with me.’
She laughs, humourlessly.
‘Great. Get out of the way of the door.’
I shake my head.
‘Don’t leave,’ I tell her.
‘Don’t leave like this. ’
‘You owed me!’ she almost shouts.
‘You owed me this information. You owed me an explanation.’
‘I’m trying to give you an explanation! ’
I tell her, my voice thick with tears.
‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re trying to give me an excuse.
You wanted to know what it would be like with a girl and weren’t you lucky there was a girl right here in your bunk while your long-term relationship was falling apart? ’
‘That’s not fair. ’
I don’t know how to make her understand that it wasn’t like that.
That what happened with me and Adam has nothing to do with what happened with me and her.
‘Isn’t it?’ She yanks open the cabin door so hard that it rebounds against the wall.
‘It’s not even the first time you’ve done this, Hope.
What was her name? Charlie? ’
I’m so shocked, so stunned, that I don’t even react when she walks out, pulling the door closed behind her.
‘How are you doing?’ Kelsey asks me the following morning.
She’s standing in my half-open doorway as I pack, her head tilted to one side, her eyes wide in sympathy.
‘Not great,’ I tell her, my own eyes immediately welling with tears.
My face feels tight after crying myself to sleep.
She pulls me into a floral-scented hug.
‘She’ll come round,’ she tells me.
‘Anyone can see she’s really into you. ’
The thought of it makes my heart hurt.
She was. I think she really was.
I don’t know if she is any more.
‘Are you going out there?’ Kelsey asks, releasing me.
‘Where?’ I open another cupboard and lift out a pile of T-shirts, dropping them straight into my case.
‘Barcelona.’
I straighten up and look at her.
‘She’s in Barcelona?
I thought she’d gone home to LA. ’
Kelsey shakes her head.
‘Nope. She sublet her rental place while she was here, so she’s gone back to sort it out.
Going to be there a couple of weeks, I think. ’
‘I don’t have the address,’ I say, my heart a rock in my chest.
‘I do,’ Kelsey says.
‘I probably shouldn’t give it to you.
But she didn’t tell me not to so .
. .’ She shrugs.
She scrolls through her phone and texts me Berry’s contact.
‘The flight’s, like, less than an hour.
From Palma.’
‘I have to go home first,’ I tell her.
‘My mum had a baby.’
‘Oh, cute! Congratulations.’
‘Thanks.’ I can’t quite believe I’m going home.
‘What are you going to do?’ I ask Kelsey.
‘Ah, remember Alvaro? Works at the club? Looks like Jason Momoa?’
I nod.
Once seen, never forgotten.
‘I think I might have underestimated him. I’m going to stay at his place for a while.
See if it could be a thing. ’
I hug her. ‘Good luck. Hope it works out.’
‘Thanks,’ she says.
‘And if it doesn’t, something else will. ’
Once I’ve finished packing, I zip up my case and stand at the door of the cabin.
It doesn’t feel like long ago that I got here.
That Berry came in, pulled off her shirt, that I stared at her tattoos and felt something that changed everything.
I think about Harry’s tarot reading.
About rose-tinted glasses.
About not resisting reality.
Finding out what’s actually true.
He was right about all of it.
But he didn’t tell me how much it would hurt.
Even though I had to sit on my case to close it, I open it again and find the tarot pack Harry gave me when he left.
I shuffle the cards, close my eyes and pull one out.
It’s the Eight of Cups.
‘Time to move on,’ I read in the accompanying booklet .
‘If there’s something missing in your life, you’re not going to find it by keeping everything the same.
To seek means picking a direction and moving on with no guarantees you’ll get a better deal.
Hard, but the alternative is to stay stuck in an old life and an old self forever. ’
Fucking tarot.
I knock on Adam’s door and push it open when he calls out.
The floor and beds are clear of clothes and his backpack is leaning against the closet door.
‘Hey.’ He smiles. ‘You packed?’
I nod.
‘What are you going to do, Ad?’
‘I’m going to go and stay with my dad for a bit.
Probably not a good idea to go back to Liverpool just yet. ’
I nod. I hate that.
Adam loves his family, his friends.
But he’s right – it’s probably for the best.
‘Be nice to spend some time with him,’ I say.
He pulls a face. ‘See how long till we’re at each other’s throats, but I’ll give it a go. ’
We stare at each other and I can see him at sixteen on the back seat of the bus with his mates, all of them jeering as he got up to come and sit with me.
Lying in his room, doing my uni reading while he played FIFA and put his hands up my shirt between matches.
Pushing him up against a palm tree on the way here and thinking this job, this new experience, would change everything.
He holds his arms out and I only hesitate for a second before I step into them, relaxing against him.
He squeezes me. Kisses the top of my head.
‘Keep in touch,’ he says into my hair.
And I nod against his neck.
The only thing I have left to do is see Captain Liz.
She asks how my first season went and I find myself telling her everything – how Adam told me we had to pretend not to be together, how I had no idea about his gambling addiction, how he dumped me because he couldn’t deal with any of it, and how I found myself falling for Berry.
And now she’s gone and I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Tears drip off my chin as she passes me tissue after tissue.
‘I can’t believe he told you to pretend not to be together. ’
She shakes her head, a combination of incredulous and amused.
‘On the course we did, the guy kept saying –’
‘“Don’t screw the crew”,’ she interrupts.
‘Exactly. And so Adam said we shouldn’t tell anyone we were a couple and that made sense to me. ’
She nods. ‘Often programmes actually prefer couples, you know. Established couples.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I tell her.
She smiles. ‘No reason you would. He’s right that there’s a better chance of getting individual jobs when you’re pretending to be single because couple jobs are in demand.
But it’s certainly not unheard of.
And it wouldn’t have been a problem for me. ’
I shake my head.
‘He was so insistent. I didn’t even question it. ’
‘Maybe if you’d done your own research .
. .’ she suggests, gently.
I wince. ‘I know. I should’ve done.
But Adam was so excited .
. . I thought he was keen on the job, you know?
I didn’t know it was because he was kind of desperate. ’
‘I feel for him. It’s easily done.
As for you, I’d be more than happy to have you back next season and I know Louise would too. ’
‘Oh, wow. That’s .
. .’ My stomach flutters at the thought of it.
‘I think I’d really love that.
As a stew or deckhand? ’
‘Which would you prefer?’
My first instinct is deckhand.
I like how strong it made me feel.
But I don’t want to make any sudden decisions.
‘Can I think about it?’
‘Of course. Take some time and let me know. You’re going home? ’
I nod. ‘To see my new baby brother.’
She beams at me.
‘How wonderful! Congratulations. So, yes, do that. Take some time. Have a think. Go and sort things out with Berry. And then give me a call. Like I said, Louise will be back and so will Nico. Having those two as a couple on crew is going to be interesting.’
I laugh.
‘I can’t even imagine it. ’
She pulls me into a hug.
‘Look after yourself.’
I hug her back.
‘Thank you. I will. Are you going home?’
She nods.
‘But first I’m having a holiday with some friends.
I go away with the same group of friends for a week every year.
This year we’re going to the Bahamas. ’
‘Oh, amazing.’
‘It will be, thanks. Enjoy Liverpool.’