“What else have you been up to?”
She shrugs. “We checked out one of the bars.”
“Really,” he says in mock astonishment, and it’s so unexpected that Greta laughs.
“Drinking rum is good for morale when you’re on a boat,” she informs him, as beside her, Ben gives a professorial nod. “So I’ve heard.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Conrad says. “Though it’s not a boat. It’s a ship.”
“See,” Ben says, turning to Greta with a grin. “Told you so.”
For a second the words hang there between them, harmless and mundane. And then Conrad’s face clouds over as they register. Shit, Greta thinks as she watches him. It only takes a second. Just like that, his eyes drop to the wooden deck and his shoulders tense. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was just moody, the way the warmth has gone out of his eyes when he glances up again. You’d think he was unpredictable.
But Greta knows better.
Her head is still moving too slow, but her heart picks up speed.
“So what are you doing the rest of the day?” she asks him, trying and failing to sound casual, to gloss over it, like a middle schooler whose friends are mad at her and who is desperately trying to make it okay.
His voice, when he answers, is cool: “I already gave you the itinerary.”
“Right,” Greta says, blinking fast. “I’m not sure I’ll make it for dinner, so maybe I’ll just plan to meet you for breakfast tomorrow?”
Conrad is still stone-faced. “Whatever you want,” he says, and then, as he starts to walk off, he adds, “We’ll either see you or we won’t.”
When he’s gone, Ben lets out a low whistle. “So that’s your dad.”
Greta manages a nod.
“You must be ready for that drink now.”
But she’s not. Suddenly, she’s exhausted. And all she wants is to be alone.
“I think I’m gonna head back, actually,” she tells Ben, already walking in the direction of the wooden doors.
“Sure,” he says, trailing after her. “I should probably do the same. I’ve still got some final essays to grade.” She gives him a skeptical look, and he laughs. “After a few cups of coffee.”
Inside, they pass the couple she saw in the elevator this morning, the woman shuffling down the hall one tiny step at a time. “No sunburn,” she says, looking delighted.
“No sunburn,” Greta calls out as they pass her.
Ben looks at her with amusement. “Another fan of yours?”
“Something like that,” she says.
There’s a large crowd waiting for the elevators, everyone talking excitedly about the sea lions. Without discussing it, Greta and Ben turn and start climbing the red-carpeted staircase.
“So can I ask…” he says, looking sideways at her. “What was that back there?”
Greta sighs. “You know that game Taboo, where you try to avoid saying a certain word or phrase?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you said it.”
“Me?” he asks, surprised. “What was it?”
“Told you so.”
He frowns. “You told me…not to say it?”
“No, that’s it. That’s the phrase.”
“I’m confused.”
“It’s the title of one of my songs,” she says, breathing harder as they round another flight of stairs. “My first big hit.”
“Ah,” he says, understanding passing over his face. “And it’s about your dad.”
“Yes.”
“I gather it’s not a love song.”
“Not exactly.”
He nods. “How bad was it?”
“The song or the fallout?”
“The fallout,” he says. “I assume the song is great.”
“It is,” she says with a smile, and decides to leave it at that.
She stops walking when they reach the seventh-floor landing. Ben does too.
“This is me,” she says, nodding down the endless hall of doors.
When they turn to face each other, she realizes how tall he is, and without quite meaning to, she thinks about the logistics of kissing him, whether standing on her toes would be enough, or whether he’d have to meet her partway. It’s true he’s gotten more attractive with each drink—the easy smile, the warmth in his eyes, the way he sits forward when she talks, like he’s not only listening but absorbing everything she says—but it makes no sense because he’s still technically married and she’s still technically a mess, and the only reason this is even crossing her mind is because they’re both drunk and alone in the middle of nowhere. In the real world, on dry land, in the light of day, they’d be completely wrong for each other.
As she stares at his lips, she finds herself thinking of Jason, then of Luke, then of Ben’s wife back home with his two daughters. The boat is tilting beneath her feet, and it’s hard to tell what’s alcohol and what’s the ocean, what’s real and what’s not. She puts a hand on the wall to steady herself, and Ben looks startled by the movement. Something flickers in his eyes, but she’s not sure what it is. He clears his throat.
“I think,” he says slowly, “that Future Ben would be really mad at Current Ben if he didn’t ask if we could hang out again.”
Greta feels a wave of relief, and then, before she can fully examine this, a rush of pleasure. She gives him a bleary nod. “I’ll be around.”
“Good,” he says, taking a few steps backward. “Then I’ll find you.”
“Thanks,” she says, already heading down the hall, and though she knows this is the wrong thing to say, the response not quite matching up to the statement, it’s also true. She’d like very much to be found.
Chapter Ten
Sometime after midnight, the cabin phone rings. Greta’s muddled brain is so convinced it’s the alarm clock that by the time she knocks that to the floor—the red numbers blinking off, the windowless room going inky black—the ringing has stopped.
It starts again a few seconds later, and she picks up this time.
“I’ve been quarantined,” says the voice on the other end, and it takes Greta a few seconds to formulate a question.
“What?”