Chapter 2 #3
“We’re all terrified when we first start. None of us think we have what it takes. You know what Hugh says: ‘It’s all about
the first chapter. It’s all as simple as getting down that first chapter. Once you’ve got that, you’re nearly there.’”
How many times has Hugh said that to me? A hundred. A thousand.
When are you going to give me what I want, Pip? I want to see that first chapter. It’s all as simple as getting down that
first chapter.
“And that’s where we differ, you and I, Neena,” I say calmly. But it hurts, really. It hurts to have to defend the painful
reality that I so wish were not true. “You actually had talent under that imposter syndrome of yours. I don’t.”
“You know,” Neena says, looking at me with huge, eternally sympathetic eyes, standing beside the welcoming staff member with
his now equally large, sympathetic eyes. “One of these days, I’m just going to break into that laptop of yours and read it
myself.”
I frown. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I absolutely would.”
“Breaking into laptops isn’t really on brand for you, Neena.”
“There’s almost always more to people than meets the eye.”
At a sudden gust of wind, she grabs her floppy hat and pushes it down firmly over her sparkling starfish clip. “Ah,” she says
with a sigh. “The sea. There is nothing quite like the sea.”
The cruise ship is smaller than one of the giant cruise liners, bigger than a ferry boat and capable of taking on the open
seas, but more manageably sized. Quainter. Classy. The hull and main deck are a gorgeous baby blue, the color of hydrangeas
sweeping over Cape Cod porches in summer, the color of stately swinging French doors of old chateaus teeming with life in
the countryside. Everything else is a pearly white, from the ornately designed railings with their graceful swerves and swoops,
to the bow where a figurehead of a woman with an intricate golden crown smiles as she looks with confidence to the glistening
sea. Crisp blue and white bunting banners flap everywhere overhead, stretching across the bow side with the glistening pool
to the stern and the generously sized lounge chairs in striped blue and white on the other. Pagoda-style umbrellas in various
shades of blue and white surround the pool, all with golden tassels shimmying in the breeze.
Waiters in deep blue waistcoats and blue feather bow ties glide around us, arms laden with crystal glasses full of fizzing
amber and pink.
The cruise ship is straight from the twenties. It’s classic glamour in a boat.
And, uncoincidentally, an absolutely perfect choice for the location of The Magnificent Seven’s Inaugural Book Cruise.
I exhale as I watch the first impressions stretch across Jackie and the others’ faces.
Everybody’s thrilled. Everybody is smiling in wonder at something—the waiter in his gorgeous purple-blue feather bow tie who just slipped seamlessly backward between two clusters in his polished black roller skates, the cocktail glasses in his hand not even so much as quaking at the shift.
The slew of people—older women mostly—already stretched out on pool chairs on the sundeck, books (of The Seven, naturally) in hand.
Gleaming white marble side tables stacked with our team’s books can be seen everywhere. (I thought it’d be a nice touch, but
make no mistake, discussing mailing 2,500 books to the liner with express wishes to “thoughtfully set them around” was a more
difficult conversation than one would think. Eventually we landed on a smattering around the ship and a neatly tied bundle
on each person’s pillow.)
The amount of organization and planning that went into this book cruise was heavy, to say it lightly. Over a year went into
planning what I imagined would become our first of many book cruises: seven-to-ten-day excursions to stunning places around
the world where readers could meet and share magical memories alongside their favorite authors. There were reasons behind
this mad plan. Photography and film rights were included in the contracts. I’m hoping to capture so many perfect moments of
the authors with their readers during this trip. There should be enough footage for newsletters, posts, advertising, and website
management to last a year. And readers—of whom there are approximately three hundred on this ship—have been given so many
books as part of this trip package, they’ll be going home with a new library.
A win-win for all.
I round up the troops and announce that we will meet back on deck in thirty minutes to go over the schedule, and then everyone departs for their rooms. Some attendants sail by while I’m not looking and take my bags—so sleekly, in fact, I thought for a moment I had just been robbed.
Honestly, where did they hire these people?
I can absolutely picture the CEO of this cruise liner tasking his underlings to loiter around the Eiffel Tower and find the smoothest pickpockets lifting wallets from tourists for the job.
My room is, in a word, incredible.
For one thing, it smells of lemon drops.
Plush pearly carpet looks like it was installed yesterday. Tendrils of gold are woven into the grasscloth wallpaper. The king-size
bed overtakes the room, stuffed with a dozen plump white pillows of various sizes beneath a large, gilded oil painting of
a water scene. What I expected from online searches was a head-shaped porthole. What I’ve received, however, and what makes
up for the small space, are four floor-to-ceiling glass panels that take up the length of the room.
I pull open the door and immediately am washed in a breeze of warm, sea-salt air.
I step out to the little terrace, look down, immediately regret just how far down the tiny waves lap against the ship below, and step back inside.
Making a mental note here: Good to know. Avoid the patio.
When I step back inside, I notice for the first time my suitcase was somehow magically placed in my room.
How did they . . . ?
How did the staff know who I was when they took my bags? Or that I was in this room?
This is next-level hospitality stuff.
I gasp in shock when I lift the suitcase and feel it’s empty. I audibly say, “Wow,” to the gilded wallpaper when I pull out a dresser drawer and see all of my belongings inside. Crisply folded. Down to the
shaggy sweatshirt I wear at night with the gaping hole in the armpit.
Okay, I love this place.
I, even with terrifying balconies leaving nothing but a three-inch steel bar between me and certain death, am meant for a
life at sea.
I jump in the shower to scrub off the sea salt and the airplane-travel memories of the day and put on a pair of black leggings
and a sensible I’m-working-not-relaxing-here cream blouse. I don’t have time to do anything but wind my hair into a wet bun,
but at least I braid it first, then wind it round and round until it’s one gigantic Celtic pancake at the back of my neck.
Sensible.
Little bit prudish.
Could easily come off as a cross schoolmaster at an all-girls school, but I probably need to look it after the day I’ve had.
I’m the first to get back on deck, and as I wait, I scroll through work emails and text messages that have piled up over the
day. All of the family messages that have been coming in waves in the past six weeks since everything with Michael went down.
An electric bill to be paid. Thirty-seven spam emails swiftly trashed.
There is one text thread that my finger keeps swiping over to as I sit perched on a creamy stool by a marble top, one plain
black flat hooked on the lower rung, swiveling me slowly back and forth as a live band plays an old Sinatra tune. Why hasn’t
he responded yet? Where is he?
Hurry up.
He was supposed to be here an hour ago.
It feels like the day has dragged to a lifetime.
A new, most terrible thought occurs and my heart plunges into my stomach. What if he missed it?
What. If. He. Missed. The. Boat?
Sweat prickles over my body like an army of soldiers called to action by my hypothalamus commander.
Surely not.
Surely they wouldn’t leave one of The Magnificent Seven.
And specifically him of all of them.
I’m about to break into a full sweat and commence running about, grabbing ropes and throwing anchors over ledges and full-on
dragging us back to shore, when the bartender steps forward.
“For the lady.”
I raise my head at the sight of a drink slid beneath my nose.
“Oh, no thank you, I—” I begin.
“Rhubarb and Rosewater Fizz Mocktail,” he announces. “Very nice choice. It was new to me; I’ll have to add it to the list.
Recipe compliments of the man over there.”
He points somewhere over my shoulder, but he doesn’t need to.
I knew as soon as he said rhubarb that he was here.
How can you put into words exactly what it feels like knowing your coworker / favorite friend / person you’ve been fully allowed
to enjoy interacting with during work hours / person who is your person for the proverbial nine-to-five but then erases into memory once the day is done and the weekend has come, or (as
in this case) goes off-grid for a series of months, has just returned?
Elated doesn’t do it.
More like . . . like a mother who loses sight of her kid at a playground and anxiously scans the area knowing everything is probably fine, it has to be fine, surely it is fine, and then—pop—there he is hopping out of the bottom of the slide and you find you can breathe again.
Seeing Nash, well, it’s like I can breathe again.
And I didn’t even know I had been holding my breath.
The hours of exhausting emotional strain and physical travel slip away as I push off the barstool.
Nash heads toward me, cowboy hat and jeans and all, making his way through a cluster of women. His eyes are linked on mine,
but even so, he tips his hat toward the ladies in one of those endearing little ways that makes women swoon, because oh, isn’t he so charming and dashing and brave—and he smells just like sunlit dew resting on a fresh hay bale.
And to be honest, he does smell like that.
It’s the jeans.