The Ferry Experiment

*This one came from a daydream about competitive flirting on a boat, there's something about the salt air and the promise of a finite horizon that makes people brave. I wanted a story that felt like breathless, giddy discovery, with sex that lands like the real prize: connection. Hope you enjoy the ride.*

The manifest crossed my desk at 6:40 in the morning. I was on my second coffee, first day of the seven-day loop, and I was skimming names the way you do. Hundreds of them. Then one jumped off the page.

Jay Alvarado. Cabin 214.

Jay Alvarado lived two doors down from me. Apartment 4C, our building on Pine Street. Freelance travel writer. Guy who owned a waffle iron and left it in the hallway once with a sticky note that said FREE, TAKE ME.

He was on my ferry.

The Cascadia Queen. My ferry. I run operations on this boat, which is a fancy way of saying I know where every towel and life vest is at all times.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said.

Barrett, our ship's engineer, looked up from his clipboard. He's thirty, married his high school sweetheart five years back, and his hobby in life is watching other people be miserable for entertainment.

"What's got you growling already? It's day one."

"Jay Alvarado. Passenger 214."

"Is that a problem? He seems nice. Brought cookies to the building potluck."

"He's writing a piece. He told me last week he had a story assignment he couldn't talk about. And now he's on a seven-day cruise ferry. My ferry. That's material, Barrett. He's stalking my workplace for content."

Barrett grinned at me in a way I did not care for. "Or maybe he just wants a vacation."

"Nobody vacations on a working ferry loop. There's a stop in Quilcene where the highlight is a bait shop."

"Then go confront him. At the gangway. Like a normal person."

So I did.

* * *

He was easy to spot. Rolled-up sleeves, camera bag, that smug travel-writer posture of a man who thinks everything is a potential paragraph. I marched up as he was taking a photo of the loading ramp. The loading ramp. Come on.

"Alvarado."

"Mackenzie." He lowered the camera and smiled. He's twenty-nine, six foot something, and he knows it. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Fancy my foot. You booked my ferry to write about my ferry. You didn't think to mention that at the mailboxes on Tuesday?"

He laughed. Out loud. Which made it worse, and also made my stomach do a small unauthorized thing.

"Mackenzie. I booked this cruise back in February. You moved into the building in March. I had the ticket before I knew your last name, let alone your job."

I crossed my arms. "Convenient."

"It's the truth. Check the booking date. I'd show you my confirmation email but I left my laptop in the cabin, and also you're being unreasonable on a dock."

"I am not unreasonable. I am observant."

"You're standing there accusing me of stalking your ferry for material." He was still grinning. "Which, okay, if I'd thought of it, it would've been a great idea. But no. This is a coincidence. A funny one."

I squinted at him. He held up his phone and, I swear, showed me the booking confirmation. February 9th. I moved in March 2nd. Dammit.

"Well," I said.

"Well."

"You could've said something at the mailboxes."

"And ruin this moment? No way. This is the best thing that's happened to me in weeks."

I opened my mouth to fire back something clever and instead heard myself say, "Fine. Then let's make it interesting."

His eyebrows went up. That was a mistake on my part, but I'd already started.

"Seven days. We're both on this boat the whole loop. Every day, one of us picks something neither of us has ever done before. Food, activity, whatever. You refuse, you lose. I refuse, I lose."

"Lose what?"

"Dinner. Prix fixe. Captain's table. I get to book it, it comes out of the loser's pocket, and the whole crew watches you eat it."

He thought about it for maybe four seconds. "And the winner?"

"Gets bragging rights and a free fancy dinner. Obviously."

"And who picks first?"

"I'm the operations manager. I say you pick first. Consider it a perk."

He stuck his hand out. "Shake on it."

We shook. His grip was warm and he held on maybe half a second longer than the deal required, and I pretended not to notice, and failed.

"This is gonna be fun," he said.

"It's gonna be you losing, is what it's gonna be."

* * *

Barrett heard about the bet within the hour, because Barrett hears about everything within the hour. He found me in the ops office that afternoon wearing the face of a man who has won a raffle.

"A daily new-experience contest. Between you and 4C."

"It's a bet, not a contest."

"Same thing, with more consequences. What's he pick first?"

"I don't know yet. He said he needs the evening."

"Mackenzie." He leaned on my doorframe. "You do realize you invented a game that forces you two to spend every day together doing slightly risky things, and then invents a scenario where one of you buys the other a romantic dinner."

"It's the captain's table. It has assigned seating and a dessert cart. There's nothing romantic about a dessert cart."

"Sure."

"Shut up, Barrett."

* * *

Day one. Jay announced his pick at breakfast in the mess hall, all ceremony, like he was unveiling a monument.

"Line dancing lessons. With the cruise director. This evening. Sun deck, 1900 hours."

I put my fork down. "That's what the cruise director does?"

"On this boat, apparently. There's a flyer. I saw it near the pool."

"You've never line danced?"

"Never. You?"

"...No."

"Perfect. That's the pick. Both virgins. Metaphorically." He raised his coffee at me. "1900 hours. Don't be late."

"I run this boat. I'm never late."

"So you say."

The thing about line dancing lessons on a cruise ferry is that they happen on the sun deck with maybe fifteen passengers, a Bluetooth speaker, and a cruise director named Penny who is twenty-six and has the energy of a wind turbine.

"Okay, everybody!" Penny clapped her hands. "Grapevine first! Three steps to the side and a stomp! Who's ready?"

Nobody was ready. Especially not us.

Jay went left when everyone went right. I stomped on my own foot. A woman in a sunhat near us was genuinely good and kept shooting us encouraging looks like we were a lost cause she'd adopted.

"Three steps and a stomp," Jay muttered. "How is this hard. It's three steps."

"You're on the wrong foot."

"I don't have feet. I have liabilities."

"Grapevine," Penny called. "Again. And kick."

We kicked. We clipped each other's heels. The sunhat lady laughed so hard she had to sit down.

But consider this. Somewhere around the third sequence, we stopped being terrible separately and started being terrible together. Same wrong foot. Same beat late. It synced up by accident, the way it does, and then Penny called for the partnered part, which the flyer had definitely not mentioned.

"Grab a neighbor. Elbow swing."

Jay stuck his elbow out at me, eyebrows up. Asking. That's the part I keep thinking about later. He didn't just grab. He offered.

I took it.

We swung. Once, fine. Twice, we both leaned the wrong way at the same time, and his hand caught mine to keep us upright, and then the spin just kept going, two full rotations, fingers laced, both of us laughing like idiots while the sunhat lady applauded.

"You're a hazard," I said when we finally stopped.

"Pot. Kettle."

"That was your elbow's fault."

"My elbow takes full responsibility." He was still holding my hand. I noticed. He noticed me noticing. He let go, sort of slow, and said, "So. Day one survived. You're not bowing out?"

"Not a chance. You?"

"I'm gonna be sore tomorrow, so no."

Penny clapped again. "Great job, everyone. Same time next week."

There would be no next week for us. Six more days, though. Six more picks.

Barrett was waiting by the galley door when we came down, arms crossed, looking like Christmas morning.

"How was dancing?"

"Humiliating," I said.

"Character-building," Jay said at the same time.

They looked at each other. Barrett turned to me with the slowest smile in maritime history.

"Day two's yours," Jay said. "Mackenzie. Do your worst."

"Oh, I'm already stretched. You have no idea what's coming."

"I genuinely don't. That's the whole point."

He said goodnight at the deck stairwell, and I stood there for a second longer than I needed to, telling myself the flutter in my chest was the stairs. Day one of seven. I'd invented a game to beat a travel writer at something.

It hadn't occurred to me yet that I'd also invented a game I might not want to win.

Day two was mine.

I'd been planning it since the sun deck. Not the dancing. The follow-up.

I found Jay at breakfast, two tables over from the tour group from Tacoma, and sat down across from him with the confidence of a woman holding a winning hand.

"Karaoke," I said.

He looked up from his eggs. "What?"

"Tonight. The lounge by the bar. It's listed on the daily sheet. Eight o'clock. The pick is a duet, sung in front of the bar, no hiding by the pool table."

"That's terrifying."

"That's the point of the game. Neither of us has ever done karaoke. Check?"

He pushed his eggs around. "I sang at a wedding once."

"Did you sign up? On a mic? In front of strangers?"

"...No. It was a group thing. We all shouted Free Fallin'."

"That's not karaoke. That's a noise complaint with a melody. Karaoke it is."

He pointed his fork at me. "You're enjoying this."

"I'm an operations manager, Jay. Enjoying other people's mild suffering is basically my job description."

* * *

The lounge was small, dim, and about forty percent full, which for karaoke purposes is a sold-out stadium. Penny was hosting again. Of course she was. She had a sparkly mic and the enthusiasm of a woman who gets paid by the decibel.

"Welcome to Karaoke Night aboard the Cascadia Queen," she yelled. "Who's brave?"

We were brave. Technically.

The song book was a laminated binder the size of a phone directory. Jay flipped through it with the focus of a man defusing... no, with the focus of a man choosing a weapon.

"We need a duet," he said. "Something with two parts."

"Something short."

"Something we know."

"Something with a melody simple enough that two people who can't sing can fake it."

He turned a page. Then another. Then he stopped, and I saw it happen, the exact moment his face went bad.

"No," I said.

"Islands in the Stream."

"Absolutely not."

"It's a duet. It's famous. It's about a hundred seconds of actual singing."

"It's a country song about love, sung by two people who were famously just friends."

"That's why it's perfect. It's ironic."

"It's not ironic, it's a trap."

"Kenzie." He leaned in. "It's the pick or I pick something worse, and I promise you there's worse in this binder. I've seen it."

I looked at the binder. He was right. Page 112 alone had three songs that would end my career on this boat.

"Fine. Islands in the Stream. But if anyone films this, I know where every towel and life vest on this ship is stashed, and I also know where the bilge is."

"Noted."

Penny announced us with more fanfare than the song deserved. "Next up, Jay and Mackenzie, crew and neighbor, doing a classic."

The opening notes came out of the speaker. Kenny's part first. Jay took it, and I will say this for the man: he committed. Full chest. No irony left in his body.

"Baby, when I met you there was peace on earth."

He was off-key. Genuinely, structurally off-key. It didn't matter. The bar crowd, mostly retirees and one bachelorette party, loved him instantly.

Then it was Dolly's part. Mine. I opened my mouth and something came out that was in the correct general neighborhood of the melody, like a dog that knows the word walk but not the schedule.

"Islands in the stream," we sang together, "that is what we are."

We were not islands. We were more like two ships that keep colliding in the same harbor. But the chorus hit and the bachelorette party started singing along and Penny was conducting us with both arms like an orchestra of two disasters, and I was laughing so hard I missed my next line entirely, and Jay just sang it for me, both parts, terrible and loud.

The song ended. The room applauded. Real applause, not pity applause. The sunhat lady from line dancing was there and gave us a standing ovation from her stool.

We walked back to our table like conquering heroes. Because we were, sort of.

"That was the worst thing I've ever done in public," Jay said.

"And you've line danced."

"On purpose. This was worse. My ears are ringing."

"Mine too. Mostly from you."

He laughed. Then he reached across the table for the drink list, and his hand landed on mine instead, on the laminate, and stayed there a second while he was reading. Absent. Not a grab. Just resting.

And then, and I don't know how to explain this part without sounding like a lunatic, his thumb moved. Just once. A small circle on my palm, slow, like he was checking the grain of the wood under my skin.

I looked at his face. He was still reading the drink list. Totally normal expression. Thumb still going.

"You're doing that on purpose," I said.

"Doing what?"

"The thumb thing."

"What thumb thing?" But he stopped, and the corner of his mouth said he knew exactly what thumb thing.

I pulled my hand back and ordered two beers, and spent the rest of the night very interested in the drink list myself.

Barrett found me on my next break, naturally.

"So I heard you two sang a love song together."

"It was a bet pick."

"Islands in the Stream is a love song, Mackenzie."

"It's a logistics challenge. Two people, one melody, limited talent."