Chapter 15
Suddenly Hitched—What a Trip!
Dear Trixie,
It’s me again, and I messed up.
Yesterday my daughter’s ex texted. Long message about how he “misses her” and his new relationship “made him realize what they had.” He wants to meet and “talk about giving things another chance.”
She showed me and asked what I thought. I panicked and told her he sounded scared of being alone, that he had his chance and shouldn’t even respond.
She got quiet.
“You don’t think he genuinely realized he made a mistake?” I said, “Do you really want to marry someone who needed to date someone else to figure out he wanted you?”
She hasn’t really talked to me since.
This morning she mentioned texting him back, and when I started to respond she said, “I know what you think, Mom. I heard you the first time.”
I was trying to protect her!
Was I wrong? Should I have just listened? Helsinki’s tomorrow.
How do I fix this?
—Second-Guessing Everything at Sea
Dear Second-Guessing,
You weren’t wrong—you just delivered a closing argument when she needed a conversation. She asked “what do you think?” not “what should I do?”
You responded as if she’d announced she was joining a cult instead of showing you a mediocre text from a mediocre ex.
Here’s the fix: Apologize. Not for having an opinion. You’re allowed to think her ex is a walking red-flag convention. Apologize for not asking what she was feeling first.
Try this: “I’m sorry I came in hot. What do you want to do?”
Then let her answer. Even if it’s not what you want to hear.
She’s an adult. Maybe she needs to text him back to confirm he’s still the guy who made her call off an engagement.
Sometimes the best way out is through. But if you keep death-gripping the steering wheel of her love life, she’ll stop letting you in the car.
Helsinki’s tomorrow. Apologize. Ask what she wants.
Then let her talk without rebuttal.
—Trixie
P.S. Order room service and share a chocolate lava cake. It won’t fix the tension, but it gives you both something to do with your mouths besides argue.
Day 6: At Sea
A day at sea feels like a vacation all on its own. Or it did, right up until Marina texted me the rigorous schedule the Velvet Viking Book Club has set for itself today.
The list is as ambitious as a toddler’s birthday party planned by a mother with a Pinterest account and a dream.
Sunrise yoga on the lido deck with annotated copies of romance novels tucked beneath the chaise longues.
A themed breakfast where everyone dresses as their favorite fictional villain.
A “judge a book by its cover” scavenger hunt through the ship’s boutiques, where teams race to find real-life versions of romance cover staples—a billowing white shirt, a fur throw, and anything with more laces than sense.
Mimosas and morally gray character debates in the Observation Lounge. A dramatic read-aloud of the steamiest chapter performed with wildly questionable accents. And a sunset deck photo shoot recreating iconic romance covers with the ocean breeze standing in as their wind machine.
And they say I need a hobby.
I missed sunrise yoga, mostly because I was busy enjoying a sunrise tryst with my devastatingly handsome husband.
And I skipped breakfast as my favorite villain because I was teaching a class on painting Swedish vistas in acrylics. If you ask me, dressing as a villain and grading amateur fjord art are closer cousins than anyone wants to admit.
But there is no way on this floating buffet that I’m missing mimosas and morally gray character debates in the Observation Lounge.
In fact, Bess and Nettie aren’t missing it either.
Marina, however, let me know that Tinsley has her busy in the bingo lounge.
Although I’ll admit, a part of me wonders if she volunteered for the assignment to steer clear of me and my prying questions.
I couldn’t blame her if she did, but it makes me sad thinking about it.
Nothing says avoidance quite like volunteering for bingo duty.
I should know. I once signed up to demonstrate towel animals in order to dodge a phone call from my ex-husband.
Heck, I’d have folded the ship’s entire linen inventory into a towel Noah’s ark, two of every species, if it bought me one more Stanton-free afternoon.
The elephants alone would have taken a week.
And it would have been worth it.
The Observation Lounge is an expansive space with floor-to-ceiling windows where you can take in the glorious Baltic at nearly every angle, and the room itself is dripping with opulence.
Emerald carpets patterned with fleurs-de-lis, pink velvet chairs, and creamy marble tables create an elegant yet cozy environment ripe for discussing fictional men’s questionable morality while day-drinking.
The refreshment table is a work of art. Cucumber sandwiches cut into perfect triangles.
Smoked salmon on crackers. Mini quiches that smell of butter and good decisions.
Chocolate-dipped strawberries. Glazed donuts arranged in a pyramid.
Swedish dream cookies that look homemade, and I happen to know for a fact they are.
The pastry team guards that recipe with their lives.
And mimosas, so many mimosas that the champagne flutes form their own small constellation.
I plan on charting every last star personally.
I note that Poppy has taken exactly one strawberry and is holding it the way other people hold a prop, while Sienna has built a small donut skyline on her plate and is dismantling it with the focus of a demolition crew. I knew I liked her.
You can really learn a lot about a person from a buffet.
The room is bustling with bodies, each of them dressed in various stages of leather and lace and velvet that would make a Renaissance fair look understated.
Moody music plays softly in the background, something heavy on the violins and dramatic percussion.
If a cello could smolder, this one is doing it.
Mimosas are flowing like the Nile during flood season, and the energy is electric.
Magnus is here, too, because heaven forbid I enjoy a single mimosa in peace.
He drifts through the crowd, an incorporeal menace on the prowl, sniffing necks and whispering into ears and generally making a nuisance of himself among women with no idea they’re being haunted by a flirtatious Viking ghost.
He pauses behind a woman in a fur stole and growls something about her being “a prize worth three longships and a goat.”
Romance is not dead. It’s just deceased.
Not that I’m complaining too loudly. Irritating as that spectral Romeo is, he’s still my best lead with legs. Transparent legs, but legs.
The spirits are lively. Both the alcoholic kind and the supernatural kind.
The women are all happily chattering away as if one of their own hadn’t been taken out by an opioid overdose two nights ago. Specifically, oxycodone.
It turns out the coroner confirmed that Astrid had a weak heart, and the lethal combination of the drug and her preexisting condition triggered a heart attack that killed her after she passed out. The ice sculpture was dramatic punctuation on an already finished sentence.
Murder, but make it theatrical.
Let’s just say that after last night, Ransom was ready to share every detail he knew about everything he’d ever heard of.
And I made sure to reward him with a repeat performance this morning.
That man would give me the nuclear codes if he had them, and honestly? I’m not above exploiting that weakness.
Bess, Nettie, and I claim three pink velvet chairs near the windows with a perfect view of both the ocean and the book club chaos.
“So,” Nettie says, already eyeing the mimosas with predatory interest. “Which fictional Viking would you marry, murder, or make out with?”
“That’s not how the game works,” Bess points out. “You’re supposed to be given three names to sort.”
“My game, my rules.”
“You’re exhausting.”
“You’re jealous of my creativity.”
“I’m concerned by your creativity. There’s a difference, and it usually involves paperwork.”
Twenty minutes into a book club social and Bess is already threatening documentation. We’re ahead of schedule.
I sweep the room, cataloging faces. Poppy is here, looking effortlessly elegant in a baby-blue sweater with a giant white bow below her neck and tight gray jeans that have a silver sheen when the light hits them, her honey-blonde bob perfect as always.
Freya is near the windows in black leather and dramatic eye makeup, standing by herself and staring out at the ocean.
Sienna hovers near the front of the room with her clipboard, her wild red hair every bit as frazzled as its owner, nervous but determined.
“Okay, but seriously,” Nettie continues, undeterred by Bess’ lack of enthusiasm. “If you had to choose between a Viking who’s emotionally unavailable but has abs you could wash laundry on, or a Viking who writes poetry but cries during sunsets—”
“Neither,” Bess says flatly.
“You have to choose!”
“I choose death.”
“That’s not an option!”
“It absolutely is.”
Considering our current body count, I’d argue it’s the only option with a proven track record on this ship.
I grin. “I choose the one who’s good with an axe and also does the dishes.”
“That Viking doesn’t exist,” Nettie sighs. “Not even in fiction.”
“Tragic, really. There’s an entire genre of men who can knock down a Norse pine in a single swing, and not one of them can locate a dish towel.”
“Some fantasies are too far-fetched,” Nettie agrees. “Even for the paperbacks.”
“A man who wipes down the counter afterward.” Bess shakes her head. “Now that would sell.”
“Although,” Nettie leans in, “I did read one where the Viking hero learned to bake bread and then seduced the heroine with fresh sourdough. Now that was very domestic. And very sexy.”
“How is bread sexy?” Bess asks.
“You’d be surprised what authors can do to make you raise a brow.”
Bess holds up a hand. “I’m not sure I want to know.”