“Why on earth would you be on the Elation?” his mother exploded.
Around her, our families had begun conversing hotly. The words “why?” and “not again” and “her fault” were thrown in the air.
“That’s a very good question, Mother. Why don’t you let me get back to you with the answer after I find out for myself?”
With that, he killed the call and turned fully to me. My only consolation was that we were in front of a lot of people, so it was unlikely he was going to throw me overboard.
Yet.
“The Elation,” he said simply. His voice rough and dead and so chilly, a shudder rolled down my spine.
I bit my lower lip. “I remembered something with an E.”
“You remembered.” He strode toward me, cool as a cucumber, but also formidable as Michael Myers. “But you didn’t think to, oh, I don’t know, double-check?”
I stepped backward, retreating toward a raised ramp on which a wet t-shirt contest was taking place, trying to avoid his wrath.
More than stupid, I felt hopeless, because I knew everyone was currently discussing how useless I was. How it was probably a miracle I could even hold a tray and take a pancake order.
“Perfectly capable of booking two tickets to a cruise,” Cruz mimicked my voice and did a good job of it, as he took another step in my direction, like a predator zeroing in on his prey. “That’s what you said at the diner. Should I have specified that I meant OUR FAMILIES’ CRUISE?”
“I…I…I…”
But the excuses died in my throat.
There was no justifying what had happened.
I’d been drunk, flustered with Rob’s return, and made a huge mistake. I’d confused the Elation with the Ecstasy, and now I remembered why: as soon as my parents had told me the Costellos were booking us a cruise, I’d begun researching the different cruise ships.
The Elation was the one I’d kept coming back to, because it seemed the nicest and came highly recommended. Though it didn’t do me much good now that I was sharing it with a man who wanted to drown me.
“Can I have the nice and phony Cruz back?”
I winced when he was so close, I could practically smell him. The tantalizing scent of sandalwood with leather on a moneyed man, and the sharp, potent musk of male.
His body was hard and large and flush with mine, humming with the need to break something. Preferably my bones.
My back was plastered against the raised ramp. Behind me, women were giggling and comparing wet t-shirts. I had nowhere to go.
“No,” he whispered, his minty breath fanning my three-tiered cake beehive. I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe if I didn’t look at him, he’d disappear. “Nice Cruz is dead to you, Turner. Jesus. I can’t believe you’re actually so…fucking…stupid!”
Out of all the offensive things people had said about me along the years, I genuinely thought this was the most cutting.
First of all, because it came from Cruz, a man who was notoriously incapable of hurting a fly, even if the darned thing was me, and who’d specifically dedicated his life and work to making people feel better.
Secondly, because this time, I believed him.
I was stupid.
I looked away, trying hard not to cry, aware we were gathering a small and curious audience. My ability to burst into tears at a moment’s notice was legendary and was becoming a huge liability at the age of twenty-nine.
I tried to keep my voice calm. “I suggest we both go to our rooms to regroup and talk about it when you cool down a little.”
“You do?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Look at me now, Tennessee.”
I dragged my gaze up from the floorboards of the deck, using every ounce of courage in me to do so. He held up our boarding passes in front of my face.
“Does something about this look weird to you?”
I blinked. I couldn’t register anything, the adrenaline was so thick in my bloodstream.
Naturally, I felt even stupider.
I could practically hear his thoughts.
She can’t read. Unbelievable. My brother is marrying a woman whose sister is illiterate.
“What’s the matter?” I huffed, frustrated.
“How many rooms do you see here?”
“One.”
“And how many of us are here?”
“Two.”
“Good girl. Now let those numbers sink in.”
I hung my head in shame. How drunk, exactly, was I when I’d booked those tickets?
Very much, by the looks of it.
I could no longer hold back the tears, and I didn’t want him to see me cry, so I pushed at his chest, turned around, and made a run for it, leaving him right there, surrounded by women in bikinis and wet t-shirts and men who catcalled them to get off the stage and give them some sugar.
My feet still burned, but I was too numb to feel the pain anymore as I wandered aimlessly around the ship. Bear tried to call me back, but I stuffed my phone into my pocket after switching it to silent mode.
I couldn’t face my son with hot tears streaming down my cheeks after screwing up yet another simple task. To be honest, I couldn’t even look him in the eye after the mistake I’d made.
Mom, Dad, and Trinity called, too, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now.
Instead, I kept hiking round and round in circles.
This helplessness, this smallness of my being, felt like a symptom of something bigger.
Of my entire existence.
I couldn’t believe this woman.
She was a goddamn menace in a skimpy dress.
I should’ve never let her handle the ticket-booking. This was the girl who’d infamously gotten knocked up under the bleachers of Fairhope High’s football field, while I spotted for her and Rob, the honorable wingman that I was.
I remembered that scene too well.
Cara Loughlin had been buttering me up, trying to get me to ask her to prom in roundabout ways, and all I could think about was the fact that Rob was taking Tennessee Turner’s virginity not even a few feet away from me.
I heard his feral groans, like he was wrestling a pig, not making love with his high school sweetheart, and one soft sigh from her.
Four months later, Tennessee dropped out of high school and started wearing baggy clothes, and we all knew what it meant.
Didn’t help that Rob broke up with her, and in one drunken moment post-prom, while we were all getting tanked at the gazebo by the library, he climbed onto the white pagoda’s roof and hollered, “I’ve been in Tennessee and it felt hella good, y’all!”
The woman who, when asked what was good at Jerry & Sons, replied, “The restroom. Sometimes. When they get cleaned.”
This was the woman I’d trusted to book us the tickets.
I had no one to blame but myself.
In lieu of plan B, I went to locate our stateroom, which was spacious for a cruise (a low standard) but far too small to avoid a woman with a personality the size of Mississippi.
Next, I retrieved my lifejacket and headed to the muster drill.
Anyone who’s ever been on a cruise knows you have a better chance of becoming the first unicorn astronaut than getting out of muster-drill duty. Their announcements are loud enough to wake the dead, and they call your room and make your existence a living hell until you attend the mandatory exercise.