Chapter 1 #3
He grins, and the expression transforms his whole face. When he actually smiles—not that half-quirk thing but a real, genuine smile—his eyes crinkle at the corners, and there’s this warmth that makes him look younger, less guarded.
Stop it, Chloe. You’re staring.
We turn another corner, and suddenly the port opens up before us, the massive expanse of Port Vell stretching out with sailboats bobbing in their slips, their masts clinking softly in the wind.
The water is blue—unreal blue, like a dream—dotted with white sails and the occasional yacht.
The wooden boardwalk stretches ahead, lined with restaurants and shops.
And there, in the middle of the harbor, is a very large cruise ship.
A very large cruise ship that is moving.
My heart drops into my shoes. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“That.” I point with a shaking finger. “That’s my ship. That’s…it’s leaving.”
The cruise ship is pulling away from the dock, massive and white and utterly indifferent to the fact that I am NOT ON IT. Its horn sounds—a deep, mournful blast that echoes across the water.
And I don’t know why, because there’s no way I’m catching that boat, but suddenly I’m running.
And I can hear Brody calling something behind me, but I’m too busy sprinting toward the pier, weaving between startled tourists and a man selling balloons who yells something as I nearly take out his entire inventory.
The sun is hot on my shoulders. My hair whips across my face. The smell of salt water and diesel fuel from the ship’s engines fills my nose.
I reach the end of the pier just as the ship clears the dock. There’s a gap of water between the ship and the pier—not huge, but definitely too wide to jump unless I’ve suddenly developed superpowers in the last thirty seconds.
Which I haven’t.
I stand there, breathing hard, the rough wooden planks warm under my sandals. The breeze coming off the Mediterranean is cooler here, lifting my hair, carrying the cries of seagulls circling overhead.
And then I see her.
My sister—tall, blonde, perfect even from a distance—standing on the upper deck with the other bridesmaids. They’re all holding colorful drinks with little umbrellas, their dresses fluttering in the wind. She’s waving. As though this is a fun little mishap and not a complete catastrophe.
“CHLOE!” Her voice carries across the water, bright and unconcerned. “We’ll meet you there! Don’t worry!”
Don’t worry?
I slap on my best event-planner smile and wave back as I watch my carefully planned bridal-cation float away, mimosas and all.
“Okay!” I call out, my voice hitting that register that’s way too cheerful to be genuine. “See you in Mallorca!”
The ship keeps moving, its wake spreading out in a V shape that rocks the smaller boats in the harbor. The bridesmaids keep waving—a little cluster of pastel colors against the white railing. Someone’s taking a selfie.
Of course they are.
Brody appears beside me, slightly out of breath. “Did you just—”
“Miss my cruise? Yup.” I lower my hand, letting my arm drop to my side. My shoulder aches from waving. “Watch my sister and her friends leave without me? Also yup.”
“They didn’t seem worried.”
“They’re not.” I turn to face him, and I can feel the weird smile on my face—it’s my people-pleaser smile. “Don’t worry about it. It’s…it’s fine. Super fine. She’s happy, that’s what matters.”
There’s something in his expression that looks almost like…sympathy? Understanding? I can’t tell, and I don’t want to look too closely, because I’m approximately five seconds away from doing something embarrassing, like crying.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, pressing my hands to my warm cheeks. “You were trying to help me get here on time, and I was babbling the whole way, and now I’ve wasted your time—”
“Hey.” His voice is gentle. “This isn’t your fault.”
“It kind of is though—”
“When’s the next stop?”
“What?”
“The cruise ship. When does it stop in Mallorca? There has to be a schedule.”
Oh. Right. Problem-solving. That’s a thing I can do. That’s literally my job.
I pull out my phone—miraculously unstolen, still in its chipped daisy case—and pull up the cruise itinerary. “It gets to Palma de Mallorca tomorrow morning. Around ten.”
“Okay.” Brody nods, like this is a perfectly solvable problem and not the end of my carefully orchestrated plans. “So you need to get to Mallorca by tomorrow morning.”
“Right. Which means I need to…” I scroll through my phone, squinting at the screen in the bright sunlight. “I need to figure out how to get there. There has to be a ferry or a flight or—”
“Or you could stay here tonight.”
I look up from my phone. “What?”
“In Barcelona. You’re already here. The ship doesn’t get to Mallorca until tomorrow morning, which means you have”—he checks his watch—“about eighteen hours. You could get a hotel room, catch a flight or ferry tomorrow, meet up with your sister.”
“I…guess?” My brain is trying to process this, but it’s still stuck on the image of that ship disappearing into the distance.
“That makes sense. Logistically. I should probably…” I walk over to the port authority booth—a small white structure with a faded blue awning and a bored-looking attendant inside, visible through the smudged window.
The booth smells like stale coffee and cigarette smoke.
I knock on the glass.
The attendant looks up from his phone, his expression suggesting I’ve just interrupted something very important. “?Sí?”
“Hi—hola—do you speak English?”
“Yes.” And he sounds thrilled about it.
“Great. Um, I just missed that cruise ship.” I point at the rapidly shrinking vessel, now just a white speck against the blue horizon. “When’s the next boat to Mallorca?”
“Tomorrow morning. Ferry departs at seven, arrives at ten thirty.”
“Perfect. Can I buy a ticket?”
“Not here. You buy online or at the ferry terminal.” He gestures vaguely in a direction that could be anywhere from here to Portugal.
“Okay. And where’s the ferry terminal?”
He gives me an address in rapid Spanish that I immediately forget, then goes back to his phone.
Right. Super helpful.
I turn back to Brody, who’s leaning against the railing, the sun turning his hair almost gold at the edges. Behind him, the harbor is alive with activity—boats coming and going, tourists strolling along the boardwalk, a street performer juggling near a fountain.
I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, there could be worse places to get stranded. Maybe this won’t be a disaster so much as a…handsome—I mean, scenic—detour.
“So,” I say, walking back over. “Ferry tomorrow morning. I just need to find a hotel, figure out where the ferry terminal is, not lose my purse again—”
“What if I showed you Barcelona?”
I stare at him. “What?”
“You’re stuck here for the night anyway.” He shrugs, but there’s something in his gray-blue eyes that makes my heart do that fluttery thing again. “I know the city pretty well. I could show you around. Make sure you actually make it to the ferry terminal tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you have somewhere to be? Something to do? A life that doesn’t involve escorting tourists around?”
He pulls out his phone, and I see the screen light up with what looks like a dozen notifications—texts, probably, from whoever’s been trying to reach him all afternoon. He looks at the screen for a long moment, his jaw tightening slightly.
Then he deliberately puts the phone away.
“Nothing that can’t wait,” he says.
I should say no. I should absolutely say no. I don’t know this guy. He could be anyone. And I have a business to run, a sister to catch up with, a very carefully planned schedule that’s already in shambles.
But he’s looking at me with those eyes, and he just chased down a thief for me, and he walked me all the way to the port even though he clearly has somewhere else to be, and—
“Okay,” I hear myself say.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean—” I laugh, running a hand through my wind-tangled hair. “Why not? I’ve already missed my cruise and given my sister a great story to tell at family gatherings for the next decade. Might as well make the most of it.”
His smile, that real, full smile, appears again, and something in my chest does a little flip. So…maybe it’s not just the adrenaline.
“All right, then.” Brody turns and gestures back down the dock. “After you.”
Brody falls into step beside me, and I’m hyperaware of everything—the way he adjusts his stride to match mine, the way his hand almost brushes mine and then doesn’t, the way he’s actually here, present, not distracted or checking his phone or rushing ahead.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel…noticed.
Not invisible. Not like the sister who gets left behind or the planner who works behind the scenes.
Just…seen.
“So,” I say, glancing up at him. “What’s the first stop on this impromptu Barcelona tour?”
“Patience,” he says, but he’s smiling. “You’ll see.”
And despite everything—the missed cruise, the disrupted plans, the fact that I’m wandering through a foreign city with a man whose last name I don’t know—I find myself smiling back.
This is definitely not the sort of thing that happens to girls like me. But maybe, just for today, it is.