Love on the High Seas

*This story was born from a love of warm, nostalgic romance and the idea of two people trying to hold onto each other despite life's interruptions. Thank you for reading, and I hope you feel the tenderness between Jon and Noelle.*

Day one of the cruise, and I was on the bridge watching us back into the dock at St. Thomas. Sunset docking. The captain likes those for the passengers. It looks good from the lido deck, the whole island going orange behind us.

I did not think it looked good from where I stood.

Rafe had me on the starboard wing calling distances to the pilot boat. Forty years old, my captain, and he still talks to the dock like it can hear him.

"Easy. Easy. Good. Log it, Jon."

I logged it. Twelve minutes late, the whole maneuver. Which mattered, because my dinner reservation with Noelle had been at seven and it was now seven forty.

She found me at eight.

I heard her before I saw her. Heels on the bridge stairs. Then she was in the doorway in a blue dress, arms crossed, and every officer on the bridge suddenly found a reason to study their instruments.

"Hi," she said. Not a friendly hi.

"Noelle. Hey."

"It's eight o'clock, Jon."

"I know."

"You said seven. You said, and I remember the exact words, seven sharp, I'll walk you to the officer's mess myself."

I checked with the second officer that the bridge had us. It did. I walked her out and down two decks to the mess. She kept pace with me but she did not take my arm, and that told me plenty.

"I'm sorry," I said, once we were sitting with coffee and the door was shut. "The docking ran long. Then the port agent wanted paperwork. Then Rafe wanted a debrief."

"You work for a boat, Jon. I knew that when I met you. I booked this cruise eight months ago. You knew I was coming."

"I knew."

"So what happened?"

Here is the part I did not want to say out loud. I got busy and I liked being busy, because being busy is the one thing on this ship I am actually good at. Noelle, thirty-two, graphic designer, took a working vacation specifically to spend seven days with me, and I had already burned most of one evening.

"I messed up," I said. "That's it. No good excuse."

She stirred her coffee. "Okay. Okay. I believe you. Just, tomorrow, can we actually have a day?"

"Tomorrow's a sea day, I've got watches. The day after, St. Maarten, I'm off all day. And Grand Cayman after that, I'm off at two."

"Two."

"Two sharp."

She smiled a little at that. "Sharp. Big word on this ship."

"It's practically a legal term here."

We were actually getting somewhere. She laughed, once, and put her hand on mine on the table, and I thought, see, this is fine, you can do both, the job and the girl.

The mess door banged open. It was Diaz from engineering, still in his coveralls, smelling like the bilge.

"Sorry, sir. Jon, they need you in the main galley. Pipe let go behind the dish line. Water's everywhere and the night baker is standing in it."

"Is anyone hurt?"

"No, sir, but the galley's flooding and Chief wants the second engineer, and the second engineer wants you."

I stood up. Noelle took her hand off the table.

"Go," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"Go, Jon. I'll be here. Maybe."

That maybe stayed with me the rest of the night. The galley was a mess. A fitting behind the dish machine had rusted through and let go, and by the time we shut the isolation valve there was an inch of gray water across the whole floor and the night baker was up on a steel counter with his legs crossed like a kid. We pumped it out. We moved the dry stores. Somewhere in there it became midnight and I got off the radio and realized I had not texted her.

I texted. Sorry. Still working. Sleep well.

She texted back a thumbs up. A thumbs up. Two years together and I got a thumbs up.

* * *

I found her the next morning on the open deck near the pool, before my watch. She was up early, which she never is, with a coffee, watching the water. I sat down next to her on the lounge chair.

"You're up at six," I said.

"You're up at five."

"Fair."

We sat there a minute. The ship was quiet. Just the wake noise and a crew member hosing down the deck two rows over.

"I thought about it last night," she said. "While you were splashing around in a kitchen."

"And?"

"And I was mad at you, but really I was mad at the situation. I did the math. You took this week off, mostly. You can't help the emergencies. A pipe doesn't check your dinner plans."

"No, but I could've texted sooner."

"You could've. But also, I've never done this before, Jon. Any of it. I never had a serious relationship before you. I don't know what normal looks like. Maybe I expected the whole cruise to be like a movie."

"It's a ship, Noelle. It's four thousand people and a hundred things going wrong a day."

"I know." She looked at me. "I still want my movie though. At least one scene of it."

I put my arm along the back of her chair. She leaned into me. Her hair smelled like the shampoo from my cabin, which she had already claimed.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Sure."

"Two years ago, on the bridge tour, you held my elbow the whole time. You barely talked. You just kept pointing at things. Compass, radar, that wheel. And you held my elbow so I wouldn't trip on the steps. I kept thinking, this man doesn't say anything, and I like it."

"I was terrified," I said. "You were a passenger. I wasn't supposed to even flirt."

"I know. You didn't. I had to do all the work. You owe me for that, by the way."

"I know I do."

"So pay some of it back."

I looked at her. She was looking at me, clear as anything, waiting. The deck crew guy had moved on to the next section of deck. Nobody else out here but us and the sea.

"Can I kiss you?" I asked.

"You'd better," she said. "You're two years behind on those too."

So I did. She turned into me and we kissed, slow, her coffee going cold on the deck between our chairs. Her hand came up and held the front of my uniform shirt. I had forgotten, honestly, how good it is, just that. A kiss with no clock on it.

Somewhere behind us a door banged and I ignored it. Good for me. Growth.

Then the PA crackled overhead.

"Medical alert, medical alert, deck nine midship, all available medical response personnel respond."

And then my name. My name, twice, because Rafe knows exactly where his first officer is at seven in the morning.

Noelle pulled back and looked at me.

"You've got to be kidding me," she said.

"I know."

"Go. It's a medical thing. Go."

I hesitated. Two years of duty will train you out of hesitating, but I tried.

"It can wait two minutes," I said. "Somebody else can get there first."

"It's an emergency, Jon."

"It's an old man who feels faint, probably. They page like it's a fire every time. Mary will be there, she's closer, she's always closer."

"Then go be useful and come back."

I went. I jogged up four decks and took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, which turned out not to matter, because when I got to deck nine midship, Mary was already there with two security guys and a wheelchair, and the passenger, a man of maybe seventy from the dining notes, was sitting up fine and arguing with his wife about whether he needed the wheelchair.

"I don't need the chair, Margaret."

"You nearly fainted into the shrimp tray, Gerald."

The ship's doctor arrived two minutes after me, which meant I had run four decks for no reason at all. Mary caught my eye and shrugged.

"You didn't have to come," she said. "I had it."

"Rafe paged me."

"Rafe pages everybody. Go." She smiled. She has worked with me three years and she has seen me leave a coffee halfway through more times than anyone alive. "Go find your girl. I heard she's aboard this week."

"Word travels."

"Mary knows everything. Go."

I went back down and Noelle was still on the deck chair, exactly where I left her, coffee refilled somehow. She watched me come down the stairs.

"Gerald?"

"How do you know his name?"

"PA said a name. I filled in the rest. Old guy, feels faint, doesn't want the wheelchair."

"He nearly fainted into the shrimp tray," I said, sitting back down. "His wife told me so."

Noelle laughed. A real one this time. Then she put her feet up on the rail.

"So. Two sharp in Grand Cayman, day four. I'm holding you to sharp."

"Sharp," I said. "Word of honor."

She took my hand. And then, from somewhere behind the bridge windows four decks up, the ship's whistle went off for no reason I ever found out, and we both jumped, and she laughed so hard she had to put her head on my shoulder.

"One scene of the movie," she said into my shirt. "That's all I'm asking."

* * *

Day three, St. Maarten. I had the whole day off. I wrote it on the crew board myself, in marker, so it was official.

We took the ferry over to the other side of the island. Noelle had read about a beach with a bar that let you sit in the water with your drink. She wanted that. I wanted that too, honestly. I had my phone off for the first hour and a half and it felt like holding my breath.

The water was warm. The drinks came in plastic cups. Noelle sat beside me with her knees up and her sunglasses on and didn't say anything for a while, which I should have read as a warning.

"You checked your phone four times," she said.

"Twice."

"Six times. I counted."

I put it face down in my sandal. "Happy?"

"Not even a little." She pulled her sunglasses down. "Jon. Can we talk? For real?"

That's never a good sentence. "Sure."

"You promised me day one. Dinner, seven o'clock, you booked it eight months ago and you still put it on the books. Then midnight, you're fixing a pipe. Day two, I get thirty minutes before the whistle and the pager and whatever else. And now you're sitting here on our one full day off, in paradise, with your phone in your sandal like it's a hostage."

"It's off."

"It's not about the phone, Jon."

I knew that. "Okay."

"Tell me what you think I'm upset about."

I hate that game. I played anyway. "You think the ship comes first."

"Do I think it, or do you do it?"

"Those aren't different things."

"Yes they are." She sat up straighter. Water dripped off her shoulder. "Here's what I see. You're good at your job. Really good. Rafe trusts you. Mary trusts you. Passengers who faint near shrimp trust you. And you like being trusted. It's easier than this."

"Than what?"

"Than sitting still with me. With somebody who wants you and not your badge."

I looked out at the water. A jet ski went by, too loud. "I sat still with you yesterday. Six a.m., coffee, the whole thing."

"Until Gerald."

"He was fine."

"I know he was fine. I figured that out from the PA. But you went. You always go. And I'm not saying don't go. Somebody's got to go. I'm saying I waited two years for this week. I booked this cruise eight months ago. Eight months, Jon. I put it on a calendar like a launch date."

She does deadlines for a living. I should have known better than to argue calendars.

"So what do you want," I said. "Quit my job?"

"I didn't say that."

"You're close to it."

"No." She took her sunglasses off all the way and looked at me, and her eyes were doing the thing they do when she's mad and sad at the same time. "I want to be first sometimes. Not always. I know what I signed up for. Two years, I knew what the job was. I'm not asking you to be somebody else. I'm asking you to be here when you're here."

"I am here."

"You were here yesterday for forty minutes. You were here today for an hour and a half before you started twitching."

"I wasn't twitching."

"Your leg was."

My leg had been, a little.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I know. That's the problem. You're always sorry and the ship's always sorry and I always get the apology instead of the evening." She put her hand flat on my chest. "I don't want the apology, Jon. I want the time. That's it. That's the whole thing."

I didn't say anything for a bit. A wave came in and knocked both our cups over and we watched them roll.

"Tomorrow," I said. "Grand Cayman. I'm off at two. Two sharp. That's still on."

"Is it?"

"Yes. I'll tell Rafe myself. I'm drawing a line around it."

She studied me like I was a layout she was checking for kerning. "Okay," she said finally. "Okay. Two sharp. But if you're late again I'm not going to be mad. I'm just going to know."

"Know what?"

"That I came second. Again."

That one sat in my chest the whole ferry ride back.

* * *

That evening I found Rafe on the bridge, drinking coffee out of the mug he's had since before I was born, it looks like.

"Captain. Tomorrow. Two to whenever. I need the time."

He looked at the chart, then at me. "Grand Cayman?"

"Yes sir."

"Noelle's aboard."

"Yes sir."

He turned a page on the chart table. "Approved. Two o'clock. Go be a person for an afternoon. God knows what you're like at work when you're not."

"Thank you, sir."

"Jon." He took a sip. "The ship will not sink without you. It hasn't yet."

That's Rafe for supportive.

I found Noelle in the officer's mess after that. We planned the whole thing over the bad coffee. She wanted the turtle place. I wanted the fish fry. We compromised on