Chapter 4
Fiona watches me carefully from several feet away, the wind buffeting her pastel pink locks.
I chew my lip, peering after Viv and the others. “Is everything okay?”
“Don’t worry about it. Like Viv said, Piper has some health issues. But she’ll be fine.”
“Should we…get help? A doctor, or something?”
“No!” Her response is so sudden and harsh that I jump. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. Leave it alone, all right? It’s a personal problem. You don’t know us yet, you know?”
My face warms. She’s right, but I don’t know what else she expects from me. Any normal person would be curious. Or concerned. “Sure. Sorry.”
“Come on, let’s get out of this wind for a minute, okay?” Fiona leads me around the bar area, and we take a narrow staircase down to the main level’s stern deck. It’s quieter here and bathed in shade. Gulls cry overhead as I try to push down my trepidation.
I need this job, I remind myself.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” I say apologetically.
Fiona settles herself into a white deck chair and crosses her legs.
She has two tattoos right above her knees—a beautiful angel and a sexy devil, both rendered in bold black and gray lines with stipple shading.
“You’re fine. Don’t worry about that right now.
We’re trying to get you settled. I know this is probably a big transition. ”
“It was unexpected,” I agree.
“Do you need anything right away?” Fiona asks, gesturing to a chair next to her on the deck.
I gratefully sink into the white wicker. “Probably. But I’m kind of frazzled. I really didn’t think she’d offer me the job right then and there. I don’t have a lot with me.”
“Viv’s like that,” Fiona says, waving it off. “But our stew can get you whatever you need.”
“Stew?”
“Yeah, we have a couple. Mika’s the chief stew, but you won’t see her much since we’re not technically at sea.
She’s in charge of housekeeping and client services.
When we’re ‘docked’ like this, the stews mostly take care of cleaning and provisions.
They make the boat look nice. Decorate. All that stuff. ”
“Does the crew live onboard?” I ask.
Fiona shakes her head, examining a matte black nail. “Not while we’re anchored like this. There are crew quarters beneath the lower level, but Mika said they’re ‘creepy.’”
“Creepy?”
Fiona looks up from a nail, shoots me a weak smile. “Forget I said that. Not creepy. Cramped. Crew quarters aren’t always the comfiest. It’s easier for them to commute.”
I haven’t seen the crew quarters yet, but I’m pretty sure most yachts are designed for the comfort of their passengers, not their employees. It’s probably confined and dingy.
“So, Piper, she’s the sixth influencer, right?”
“Content creator,” Fiona corrects me. I want to tell her they’re the same damn thing, but I bite my tongue. Fiona eyes me up and down. “And yeah. Piper does fashion. What’s your deal? Books, right?”
I do not want to talk about books right now. I haven’t wanted to talk about books for a while, in fact. Ever since Sage announced A Song of Scales and Salt.
I pivot. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool. But first I have to ask you something important.”
“Oh?”
“Can I please use the fucking bathroom? I had a giant iced coffee two hours ago and haven’t had a chance to pee since.”
Fiona lets out a surprised roar of laughter. “Right on, babe. Come on, there’s a day head on this level you can use.”
* * *
As the toilet flushes, I sigh with relief, enjoying a few seconds of blissful alone time before I have to go back out there and perform again.
I examine myself in the mirror—I look tired. And overheated. I need to reapply my makeup too. Sighing, I lean forward to try to fix my blotted mascara with my fingers.
There’s a little pop, and the bathroom goes dark.
The sudden absence of light unbalances me, and I wheel away from the mirror, heart racing. I blunder in the small space, slapping the wall, trying to remember where the light switch is. I finally find it, flicking it rapidly until the overhead lights burst back on.
The beautiful, silver-accented bathroom comes into sharp relief, as does my reflection in the mirror.
Over my shoulder is a swollen face, blue and misshapen, framed by tangled wet hair.
I yelp, whipping around, stumbling backward so that I crash into the sink, knocking over the bottles of hand cream and liquid soap. My chest heaves as I look around wildly.
There’s no one there.
Slowly, I turn around, gazing into the mirror again. My expression is stark, and my skin is paler than normal, but the only things reflected behind me are the hand towels and the porcelain top of the toilet.
“It was nothing,” I croak, shaking my head, fixing my pixie cut. “I’m exhausted. I need sleep. That’s all.”
Remembering the meditation account I followed over the summer, I take a few ragged breaths, holding my inhales at the top for two seconds before releasing. After a few more rounds of deep breathing, my body settles.
Everything is fine. It was just your imagination.
When I come out of the bathroom, I’ve calmed down.
Fiona is hovering by the kitchen island with a fresh beer in hand. She stands with her head tilted toward the ceiling, air-conditioning breezing on her perfect face.
“Whoa, you look pale,” she notes as I approach her.
“Bathroom lights quit on me,” I reply, trying to smile. “Freaked me out.”
“Oh,” she laughs. “Sure. They do that sometimes.”
My pulse settles at her words.
See? Nothing to worry about. There was no face.
“Want one?” she asks, lifting her beer bottle. “I never got to finish my other one.”
“I’m good.” I shouldn’t pry, but curiosity gets the best of me, and I need a distraction. “What was that thing with Viv and the beer when we were downstairs?”
Fiona’s lips twist. “Oh, nothing. Viv worries about our health. She thinks beer is the least healthy of all booze. Even though I tell her that it’s all poison, so who cares which type of poison I drink?”
“She’s one of those chicks who only drinks clear liquors, huh?”
Fiona relaxes as she giggles. “Oh, definitely. But she means well, she really does. I think I get sensitive ’cause I’m the only big girl on Empress, so I assume she’s coming for my weight even though I know she’s not.”
I don’t know what to say to that, mostly because I’m not entirely sure Fiona is right—what if Viv was coming for her weight?
The way she had looked at the beer bottle was…
pointed. But it’s not any of my business.
And if I’m going to have this job, live on this yacht, I might as well try to make friends.
That part of the job is genuinely appealing. I’ve been so lonely since the whole thing happened with Sage. I think part of me hoped she’d come around. Do the right thing. Admit the truth and work hard to make it up to me so we could one day be friends again.
What a fucking joke.
Don’t, I warn myself. Don’t think about her. Don’t think about the book. Don’t think about the accident.
Thinking about Sage too much is probably why I’m seeing things. I need to keep myself occupied. Focus on this new job.
“I don’t understand how we’re…out here like this,” I say to Fiona, gesturing at the space around us and nodding to the ocean beyond the glass windows. “You’re not worried about those pillars snapping in half and plunging you into the sea?”
“Oh,” Fiona laughs. “Yeah, Viv loves marketing Empress, but she’s not the greatest at explaining how it actually works.
Those pillar things, they’re actually caissons that are filled with concrete and sunk into the ocean floor.
They hold up the yacht frame, and there’s all kinds of fancy engineering technology that keeps us stable.
Don’t ask me to explain that part, I flunked physics.
But Empress is pretty eco-friendly; we use the solar panels for the majority of our electricity, and the anchoring system is noninvasive so if and when Empress gets moved, it won’t fuck up the ocean below. ”
I wonder how much of that is true. I can’t see a structure as big and as opulent as Empress having no negative effect on the ocean’s ecosystem, especially off a private island that has been, up until a year ago, untouched by people.
“And what about fresh water?”
“There’s like two thousand gallons of it belowdecks,” Fiona explains. “We have scheduled refills to keep it from getting low.”
I wander over to the window on the other side of the kitchen island and stare at the rolling green waves below us. “I’m glad it’s on struts. I’d be afraid of getting seasick.”
“Oh, totally. But you should see the water on a clearer day. It’s all silty and filled with seaweed today, but sometimes it’s so crystal clear you can see straight through to the bottom.”
I remember the face I thought I saw floating in the water earlier and shake the memory away. “Sounds pretty. How far down is it?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Charlie.”
I pull back slightly, reeling in the version of myself that isn’t the easygoing, flexible, social media Charlie. “Yeah, sorry, I’m curious. Nerd things, you know?”
Fiona smiles and waves me off. “Don’t apologize, I think it’s cute. I wish some of the other girls asked these questions before posting on @WeAreEmpress. If I see one more ‘That view though,’ caption I’m gonna lose it.”
I can’t help cracking a smile at that. I allow a note of sarcasm to creep into my voice. “I mean, the view is nice.”
“And apparently is the only noteworthy thing about this baby.” Fiona matches my tone. “But seriously, ask away. The more you know about Empress, the easier it is to market it. We’re selling something, after all.”
“Which is?”
“Luxury, of course. Look at this thing. We’re not selling a ridiculous houseboat yacht. We’re selling lifestyle porn.”
I decide I like Fiona. “How long have you been a content creator?”
Fiona sips her beer and thinks. “Oh, a while now. I’ve been on Empress nearly since the beginning.
Viv found me when I was working as a coat-check girl at a club in Miami.
Do you know how terrible that job is, Charlie?
A coat-check girl. In Miami. Florida.” She rolls her eyes.
“The only things I was ‘checking’ were purses full of coke and the occasional suit jacket.”
I laugh. “How’d you end up there?”
“Dropped out of college,” Fiona says, grimacing.
“It wasn’t my thing. My parents were so mad, they said I had to find a way to support myself.
Makeup always came easily and naturally to me, but I didn’t want to be a makeup artist either, you know?
They work awful hours. I’m not a morning person.
” She drinks again, shrugging. “I ended up at the club, working for pennies. I was like, seconds away from being evicted from my apartment when Viv hired me.”
“I can relate to that.” And I can. Deeply. Fiona and I might be more alike than I realized. “Well, this is a step up for both of us, I guess.”
Fiona nods. Her lipstick isn’t getting on her beer like mine would.
Maybe I should watch some of her tutorials.
“I was super broke. My makeup influencer page was doing well, but it was Viv who helped me make real money from it. Brand partnerships and sponsored posts and all that. Empress isn’t perfect, but I owe it everything.
And Viv. Like, I have legit money now. I could never go back. ”
A bead of hope forms in my chest and beats alongside my heart. This experience might be off to a peculiar start, but Fiona is soothing me. Maybe in a year I can be like her: comfortable in my niche, making real money, helping onboard a newbie.
Inspired, I continue asking questions. “Viv said Empress can move?”
Fiona nods furiously. “Oh, yeah, that’s a selling point for these things.
You can invite all your rich friends for a yacht trip and settle down when you find a nice enough place.
On a real yacht, anchors can drag, you always need a captain onboard, yadda yadda.
Empress is self-sufficient.” Fiona gives me a look, perfectly plucked brows raised.
Her voice drops a few octaves, and she glances around once to make sure we’re alone before continuing, “Of course, we don’t talk about how big of a production it is to set up or retract the caissons.
You need a whole other boat to help with installation and takedown.
But we don’t mention that much. Not in the ‘brand vibe.’ ”
For the first time, I wonder if this job aligns with my morals.
And then I decide I don’t get to pretend I have morals.
It’s not like I am being entirely honest here.
They don’t know everything that went down with Sage and me.
They don’t know I’ve struggled to give a shit about my account in the past six months.
“You should go get settled,” Fiona tells me, sipping again from her beer.
Her tone is casual, but I notice her quick glance up, toward the top level.
She wants to check on them, I can tell. “Take a beat. Relax, unpack. Then we can have some drinks with the whole fam later, okay? Do a proper welcome for you.”
I’m not in the inner circle yet, I realize. Viv hired me, but they don’t trust me.
“Yeah, that sounds good. I could definitely use a shower.”
“Go on then, girl. I’ll come grab you in a little bit.”
“Sure. Thanks.” I can’t help it. I add, “I hope everything’s okay up there.”
“Me too,” Fiona says absently before realizing what she’s said. She quickly smiles to cover up the crease of her expression. “Like I said, it’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
They’re all lying to me. Whatever is happening with Piper clearly isn’t “okay.” But I can’t blame them for keeping secrets.
After all, I’m a liar too.