Chapter 39
Last night had been, without question, the worst one of Daniel’s life.
Worse than the night in the hospital after he broke his arm when he was nine years old, and the painkillers had stopped working and he couldn’t even cry because Dad had told him to “be tough.”
Worse than the drive back from the movie theater after he hadn’t slept with Peggy, sitting in the passenger seat while she wouldn’t look at him and he imagined every insult he’d hear from the guys at school if they ever found out.
Worse than the night Nora closed the door behind her and never came back.
It was the worst because Leanne had no idea what was in his heart. Because she’d believed him yesterday when he told her he was just overwhelmed by the Dolphin Experience, and it was hard to put into words how he felt. And because that was completely true and completely dishonest at the same time.
How could he do this for another three days? Or even three hours? He already felt nauseous; how much worse would he be when it was finally time to tell her the truth?
The ship was docked this morning in Nassau, and they hadn’t scheduled an excursion. Leanne wanted to just walk around the town. It would just be them, with no distractions, no group around them, nothing to concentrate on except each other.
She was already dressed, in an orange sundress that looked fantastic on her.
And she was just radiating excitement. “It’s supposed to be beautiful,” she said.
“And everyone says the shopping is great—tons of bargains.” She took his hand and opened the cabin door.
“And I get you all to myself, all day. How lucky can a girl be?”
He had to calm down, get control of himself. One conversation at a time. One hour at a time. One minute at a time. He could do that. He could try to be the man she thought he’d been all along, just a little bit longer.
Nora , a little later
Last night had been horrible.
Nora already felt guilty enough, but Greg made it a thousand times worse with his repeated apologies for backing out of the Dolphin Experience.
She’d almost laughed at one point, because he actually should have been sorry—but he had no way to know why.
If he hadn’t backed out, there would only have been one space left in her group rather than two.
And when Daniel had walked up to the edge of the water, without Leanne, and seen her there holding hands with Greg, he’d have let the brunette in the red swimsuit have his place.
She wouldn’t have shared that time with Daniel, and maybe—just maybe, if nothing else happened to screw up their system of notes—they’d have both been able to avoid each other the rest of the cruise.
Both of them might have been able to salvage their relationships.
Or at least keep them going past the last day of the cruise and, if they still had to end, it would have been cleaner and easier.
“Nora?” She looked up from her thoughts, and her omelet, to catch Greg’s eye. She noticed her fork was midway between the plate and her mouth; how long had it been there, frozen in midair?
They were at a table by themselves in the Main Dining Room; she’d have preferred one of the big circular tables with strangers to talk to and keep her from getting lost in her thoughts, but Greg—again, he couldn’t know—had picked a table for two.
“Sorry. I was just—you know I get lost sometimes.”
He was about to apologize yet again. It had to stop. And she had to stop rationalizing her own choices. She had no right to blame her cowardice, or how little she knew her own heart, on him.
“Greg, please. You didn’t do anything wrong yesterday. Let’s just concentrate on today. We’ll finish breakfast, go back to the room and freshen up, and then it’ll be time to go ashore and do the pirate ship thing.”
That had been his choice. It sounded silly, but fun. Ridiculous costumes, swordfights and plenty of “Arrgs!” and “Ahoy, mateys!” and “You scurvy dogs!”
Considering what she was going to do to him in a couple of days, he deserved all the silliness and fun and scurvy dogs she could give him today.
Daniel , shortly after lunch
They’d been in a dozen shops already, or at least Daniel’s body had, and he was carrying the bags to prove it. His mind, however, was a couple of miles away, picturing what Nora was doing on the pirate ship adventure she and her boyfriend had chosen for today.
Leanne was starting to notice. “You have to have an opinion, Daniel!” She didn’t manage to keep the impatience out of her voice. “Blue or red?” He blinked, tried to clear his thoughts and focus on what she was asking.
“Right, sorry.” Leanne was holding up a red blouse in one hand and a blue one in the other. Which one did she want him to pick? She looked good in both colors—not that he’d ever see her wearing whichever one she picked out.
Back when they’d been together, and he’d been in a store with Nora, he’d never hesitated. If she asked him what he liked, he told her what he actually thought.
“Daniel!”
“The blue one. I think it goes better with those jeans you love to wear.” That wasn’t so difficult, was it? He had to keep focusing on her, that was all. Not Nora, and not what he’d have to tell her the last night of the cruise.
It was the right answer; she forgot her impatience and leaned in to give him a quick kiss. “Thank you. I know this is boring for you.”
“It’s not. I guess I’m still feeling a little off, that’s all.
” That had been his excuse for going to sleep early last night, and shying away from her touch when she climbed into the bed with him.
He’d blamed it on too much sun, and too much excitement with the dolphins and the salmon at dinner not tasting quite right.
“We’ll find someplace to sit down, get you some water and a nice, safe snack,” she said. Always the nurse, always looking out for him.
He followed Leanne out of the shop and onto the cobblestoned side street. The sun hit him full-force; it wasn’t just a convenient lie, it actually was bothering him. He’d probably been outdoors more during the five days and change of this cruise than he had in the last year.
“I thought I saw a café a little while ago,” he said. Four shops and five hundred dollars ago, but Leanne deserved it. Even if he wasn’t going to break her heart in a couple of days, she’d have deserved it anyway.
They started off in the direction Daniel thought he remembered seeing the café, but they only got a few steps. “Can you help a fella down on his luck?”
The luckless man sounded American, and Daniel guessed he was in his thirties, although he’d always been terrible with that.
The man wore ratty pants, and a shirt that looked—and smelled—like it could have stood up and walked away by itself.
He took an involuntary step backwards, but Leanne didn’t.
Of course she didn’t; at the hospital, she saw—and smelled—worse every day.
Daniel did his best to hold his breath, and stepped in front of Leanne, handing the bags from his left hand off to her.
It was an automatic response, and he’d probably have laughed about it if he’d been in a better frame of mind.
She was almost certainly better equipped to defend herself than he was; she’d told him all about the self-defense class all the nurses at the hospital had to take, which had sounded very thorough.
And he knew she carried pepper spray in her purse.
He stood in front of her anyway. “I don’t think we can help you,” he told the man.
“Don’t be like that. I just want to get back to Florida. Been saving up, but times are hard down here.”
No. He knew a scam when he heard one. He wasn’t a New York City boy for nothing. But before he could say anything, he felt Leanne’s hand on his back and heard her—it was almost like a growl; there was no other way to describe it.
“Back off!” It came out sharp and piercing, loud enough to hurt his ears. But it wasn’t directed at the man in front of him.
Then he heard footsteps behind him—fast, retreating—and realized what she already knew.
The first guy wasn’t a beggar. He was bait.
He wasn’t really asking for money, he was just a distraction so the guy behind him—the one Leanne had just scared off—could pick his pocket or grab her purse.
How had he not realized that? How had he let himself get so lost in thought that he forgot basic rules of safety?
How—God, he was doing it again, right now!
“We can’t help you,” Daniel said, surprising himself with the venom he heard in his voice.
But it was satisfying to let out some of the horrible churning feelings he’d been holding inside.
“Leave us alone or we go to the police.” That, combined with his accomplice running for the hills, got the smelly “Florida” man out of their way.
“Maybe we should forget the café and go back to the ship,” Daniel said, once they were alone again.
Leanne nodded her agreement. She didn’t seem disappointed, even though she probably would have preferred another couple of hours of shopping. “Yeah. I was having a good time, but it’s kind of ruined now.”
Not as ruined as it was going to be, unfortunately.
Nora , around the same time
It turned out that going to see The Princess Bride seven times the fall of her senior year of high school hadn’t been a huge waste of time and money, like her father and all her friends said it was.
Thanks to her memories of the movie, Nora was the best fake swordfighter of anyone on their tour group.
She had just “defeated” Blackbeard, and he handed her his hat.
She waved it in the air, then put it on her head.
Blackbeard shouted out, “All hail Nora the Blue, Queen of the Caribbean!” Nora the Blue didn’t sound all that intimidating, but she’d had to think of something on the spur of the moment, and her blouse was blue.
A second later, everyone else—the rest of her tour group, and all the actors playing Blackbeard’s crew, echoed it, and she took the hat back off and gave them a deep bow.
She probably should have curtsied, but she’d never learned how to do that properly. Besides, a pirate Queen could do whatever she wanted, right?
The only person on the deck of the ship who hadn’t shouted out their allegiance to her was Greg. He hadn’t enjoyed this at all—and it had been his choice. She’d tried to encourage him to challenge Blackbeard, but he wouldn’t do it. He’d stayed quiet, at the back of their group, the whole time.
“I’ll need the hat back, my Queen,” Blackbeard said to her as the tour group headed belowdecks to leave the ship. “They’ll give you a replica outside.” He grinned at her. “These costumes are more expensive than you’d think.”
She didn’t want the poor guy to get in trouble—losing part of his costume might earn him a walk off the plank. So she handed the hat back to him, and jogged off to catch up with Greg.
He was already back on the dock. “Here, they gave me this for you.” He handed her the replica hat she’d been promised, and she put it on.
“I think I’ll wear it the rest of the day. You think the Captain would let me on the bridge, since I’m Queen and everything now?”
Greg gave her a half-hearted chuckle. “Probably not,” he said.
Why was he so—whatever he was right now? Did he already somehow know what she was going to tell him before they got back to Baltimore? She wanted to give him a few more good days before that, but that didn’t seem likely. “Greg, what’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”
He shook his head as they headed into town.
They hadn’t discussed what they’d do after the pirate adventure; they’d just started walking without any particular direction in mind.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t expect—that’s not what I thought it was going to be.
I wasn’t prepared for audience participation. ”
That was fair, she supposed. But she hadn’t been prepared for it either, and now she was a pirate Queen with a hat and everything.
Daniel might have held back, too—for the first five minutes, but he would have let her drag him into things, and by the end he would have had as much fun as she had.
They’d have been King and Queen of the Caribbean.
No. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t do this. It wasn’t fair to Greg. He didn’t deserve criticism just because he enjoyed different things, or because he didn’t roll with surprises as quickly as she did.
And he also didn’t deserve her hamming it up and becoming the center of attention when he was obviously uncomfortable. What kind of rotten person did that to someone they were supposed to care about?
“I understand,” she told him, putting an arm around him. “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it. I guess I should have read the brochure more closely. Now we know for next time.”
Not that there would be a next time. Lightning should have come out of the clear blue sky and struck her down for that comment.
But it didn’t, and she took a deep breath and went on.
“You want to head back to the ship? We’ve still got that third fancy meal to use.
” They were on the cobblestoned streets of the oldest part of Nassau now, on the main shopping street.
“You know what? Let’s go in there first,” she pointed to a leather goods shop across the street. “I’ll buy you whatever you want.”
He didn’t say yes, but he let her steer him into the shop, and fifteen minutes later they emerged with a new wallet for him.
She’d given Daniel the most beautiful necklace, something she had taken weeks to design, and that she helped make with her own hands. Greg got a leather—hopefully it was real leather—wallet he could probably have bought at J.C. Penney’s for half the price.
Maybe he wouldn’t be heartbroken at all when she told him. Maybe he’d be lucky to be rid of her.