Savage Revenge on the High Seas

So there I was, cabin 712 on the Stella Atlantica, ten days of paid work between Lisbon and Rio, thinking I had the world's best luck. Fresh start, right? New contract, new ocean, new me. I'm Kelly Yoshida, thirty-four years old, yoga and wellness instructor, and I had a whole speech ready in my head about moving on.

Then I saw him at boarding.

Dante Addams. Forty now. Six years older than me and somehow still built like a shipping brochure. He was standing at the rail with a suitcase the size of a coffin, sunglasses on, looking like he owned the ocean. Which, knowing him, he probably had thoughts about.

I ducked behind a towel cart like a professional adult.

"Why me?" I said out loud, to nobody. "Of every ship in every fleet on this entire planet!"

Here's the background, because you need it. I dated Dante for six months when I was thirty-one. He was thirty-seven. Six months of fun and then he clammed up the second I said the word future. Not just once. Every time. I finally walked, and I walked mad, and I told myself for three years that I was over it.

Three years! That's a long time. That's a whole certification renewal. That's ninety-one cruises worth of not thinking about a guy.

And now he was on my ship. For ten days. At sea. No exits.

"Okay," I told the mirror in my cabin that night. "You are a professional. He is cargo. You teach downward dog, he drinks overpriced cocktails, and you will never be in the same room."

Reader, we were in the same room by eight o'clock.

The pool bar on the first evening is where every single passenger drifts eventually, because it's lit up pretty and the bartender, whose name tag said RUI, makes a caipirinha that could dissolve a friendship. I was off the clock. Class ended at seven. I had earned a drink, and I was wearing a nice yellow dress and zero thoughts about my ex.

"Kelly."

That voice. You'd know it anywhere. Low, calm, amused, like he'd rehearsed being surprised to see me.

I turned around slow. "Dante. Wow. Of all the ships!"

"Of all the ships," he agreed, and slid onto the stool next to mine like he owned it. "Ten days to Rio. What are the odds?"

"Apparently one hundred percent," I said. "What are you even doing on a cruise? Don't you have containers to yell at?"

He laughed. He has a good laugh, which is honestly the most annoying thing about him. "I have exactly ten days of vacation saved and a sister who said I'd forgotten how to relax. So. Here I am. What about you? Last I heard you were landlocked in Miami."

"Teaching at a studio. Doing okay. Then this contract came up and I thought, ten days of ocean air, why not?"

"Why not," he repeated, and ordered something with rum in it. Rui looked between us like he was reading a menu of trouble. Smart man, Rui.

I sipped my drink and did breathing exercises that had nothing to do with yoga. He looked good. I hate that he looked good. Forty suits him the way forty suits almost nobody. And he kept glancing at me sideways with that exact half-smile that used to make me forget my own middle name.

"So," I said. "Three years."

"Three years," he said. "You look great."

"Thanks. You look old."

He laughed again, louder this time. "There she is. I was worried the cruise ship version of you would be all serenity and lavender oil."

"Oh, I'm plenty serene. I'm extremely serene. I'm so serene I forgave you a year ago. Old news, Dante. Water under a very big bridge."

"Mm." He stirred his drink. "That's a lot of serene for one sentence."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. It means you look well. I'm being friendly. Is friendly against ship rules?"

Was friendly against ship rules? Honestly, maybe it should have been. I turned on my stool to face him properly, because if we were going to do this for ten days then we were going to establish the ground rules on night one like adults.

"Here are the rules," I said. "We're civil. We say hi if we pass. You don't sit in on my sunrise classes out of spite. I don't ask about your love life. You don't ask about mine. Done."

"Done," he said easily. "That all?"

"That's plenty."

"Okay. One question though." He leaned an elbow on the bar, and I knew, I knew, whatever came next was going to be insufferable. "If you're completely over me. Why did you hide behind the pool towels at boarding?"

My mouth fell open. "I did not hide behind... you saw that?"

"Kelly. You're wearing a yellow dress. You crouched behind a towel cart like it was a bunker. It was the best thing I've seen all year."

"I was checking the towels!" I hissed. "Quality control. It's literally part of my contract."

"You inventory towels now?"

"I could, I'm very thorough," I flagged Rui down. "Another one, please, and make it strong, my evening just got complicated."

Dante was grinning into his glass as if he had won a raffle. I wanted to throw him over the rail. I also, and this is the part I'm not proud of, wanted him to keep looking at me the way he was looking at me.

"Admit it," he said. "You saw me and you panicked."

"I did not panic."

"You panicked so hard you forgot your own facial expressions."

"Dante."

"Three years of serenity, gone in one towel cart. It's okay. It's human. But don't sell me rules about civility when you're clearly not over..."

"I am over you," I said, and my voice came out lower than I planned. "Completely."

"Prove it."

The bar went quiet around us. Or maybe it didn't and I just stopped hearing it. "Excuse me?"

"Prove it." He shrugged, all casual, like he hadn't just thrown down a gauntlet with a cocktail umbrella in it. "Hang out with me. Talk to me. Sit here right now and finish your drink without your heart rate spiking, and I'll believe every word. If you can't, then maybe the rules are for you and not for me."

"That is the dumbest dare I have ever heard in my life."

"Probably. Are you taking it?"

I should have said no. I want that noted somewhere, that the smart move was standing up, smiling like a wellness professional, and walking back to cabin 712 forever. That was the move. Anybody sane takes that move.

I picked up my drink instead.

"Watch me," I said, and took a long, calm, extremely serene sip.

Rui wiped a glass and pretended not to be watching. Somewhere behind us the pool lights turned on, all gold and stupid and romantic, and the band started up something slow from the deck above. Dante raised his glass to me like we were toasting a business deal.

"To civility," he said.

"To never sitting in on your sunrise classes," I shot back.

"That was your rule, not mine. For the record, I'd enjoy a sunrise class."

"You'd enjoy anything that annoys me."

"True," he agreed, and it was so honest I almost laughed into my caipirinha. Almost. I held it in. Barely.

We talked for an hour after that. Two, maybe. Mostly safe stuff, his sister, my studio, the terrible ship coffee. But every so often the conversation would dip a toe somewhere unsafe, an old joke, a look that lasted one beat too long, and I'd steer it back to the middle of the channel like a pilot who knew these waters had rocks in them.

At eleven he stood, finished his drink, and put some bills on the bar before I could argue about splitting it.

"Goodnight, Kelly. Same stool tomorrow?"

"Absolutely not."

"Okay. See you around the ship, then." He paused at the edge of the light. "For what it's worth, I'm glad it's you on this boat."

And then he was gone, and I was sitting there with half a drink and a heart rate I will never admit to.

I walked back to cabin 712 and had a long talk with the mirror.

"So that's the plan," I told her. "He thinks I'm not over him. Fine. New plan. I prove I can have him, any night I want, on my terms, and then I walk off in Rio like he's a souvenir I didn't buy."

The mirror said nothing, but her eyes said uh huh, sure.

"Ten days," I said. "I've got this."

I did not entirely have this. But I was going to have it, or go down trying, and either way the Atlantic was going to earn its name.

Day two, I stuck to my plan, which was to have no plan and also to avoid him completely. That worked right up until sunset, when I walked into the observation lounge to steal one of the good chairs by the windows and found Dante already in the other good chair, like a deposit I'd forgotten I made.

"Are you following me?" I asked.

"You walked into my lounge."

"Your lounge?"

"I've been sitting here since four. I have seniority. There was a crossword."

I should have gone and found a deck chair somewhere else. Instead I sat down two seats over, because the whole point of the new plan was proving things, and you can't prove anything from the buffet.

The observation lounge is the best room on the Stella Atlantica, and I'll die on that hill. Floor to ceiling windows, the ocean going orange and then bruise-colored, a guy at a piano playing whatever the sheet music says. There was a couple from Toronto doing a puzzle at the next table and ignoring everybody, which I respected deeply.

"You know what I found out today?" Dante said, not looking up from the sea. "The ship's library has a whole shelf of books about shipping. Obviously I looked. There's one about container ports. I read forty pages."

"Wow. You went on vacation and did homework."

"It was a good book."

"Sure it was."

"I'm just saying, I booked this cruise for the relaxation, and the relaxation is not going great."

And there it was, the opening, sitting there like a dropped wallet. I looked at him. He looked at the ocean. Then he looked at me, and I could tell he knew he'd said too much, and he decided to lean in anyway, because that's Dante in a nutshell.

"I checked the crew manifest," he said. "Before I booked."

I put my drink down very slowly, because if I didn't put it down I was going to throw it.

"You checked the manifest."

"Your name was on it. Kelly Yoshida, wellness instructor, ten-day contract, Lisbon to Rio. It's not exactly hard information to get, it's a public sailing list."

"You booked a ten-day cruise because I was going to be working on it."

"Yes."

"That is the pettiest thing I have ever heard in my life. You spent how much on a suite? To what, spite me? What was the actual goal here, walk past my yoga class smugly?"

"Deck seven, eight a.m., apparently. And there was no goal. My sister said take a vacation, I looked at the sailing list, I saw your name, and I bought the ticket in about four minutes. Call it pettiness. I've been calling it a coincidence with extra steps."

"It's stalking with a boarding pass."

"It's a big ship, Kelly. Two thousand passengers. You could've gone ten days without ever seeing me. I'd have eaten at the late buffet and minded my business."

"You bought a ticket to my boat."

"Your boat." He said it like he was tasting the phrase. "Okay. Sure. Your boat. I'm a guest on your boat. You want me to write a letter of apology to the towel cart?"