| |
––––––––
Because I’d been planning this honeymoon ever since I worked at the travel agency every other weekend, I knew the entire layout of the ship. Including where the nurse’s station was. Annabelle would sometimes quiz me with the map inside the brochure and marvel at how well I knew the layout. Never did I think I’d need the location of the nurses’ station for this purpose. If anything, I assumed I’d be going there for Dwayne’s hypochondriac nature.
My mind was racing with a million different scenarios. None of them played out well in my head. Because I was so distracted by my thoughts, I rounded the corner without paying attention to my surroundings, and I nearly collided with another woman.
“Oh, dear,” a familiar voice said.
I looked up and saw Shirley, the cruise director, standing in front of me. From her expression, I could tell I must look like shit. I could feel the puffiness of my eyes as salty tears dripped down my face. It was at moments like this I longed for the years when I had long hair. There was no hiding away your emotions with a pixie cut.
“Bad day?” Shirley asked.
“A bad day? Try a bad life. And there isn’t a place where a girl can break down and cry on a boat this crowded,” I said, wiping away the tears.
“What’s wrong with your cabin—wait, never mind. I think I understand. You told your sexy fake husband how you feel about him, and he didn’t reciprocate?”
I let out a small hysterical laugh. “I sort of skipped that part and went right to having sex with him.”
“Oh, well, that doesn’t sound like a bad day,” she said. “Unless it was bad? Is he a bad lover? Wait. Did he hurt you?” Her face scrunched up in discomfort for me.
Shaking my head, I wiped away a tear. “No, no,” I assured her. “He didn’t hurt me. The sex was amazing. The condom breaking...not so much.”
“Ah. I see.”
I pulled my arms tight around my waist. “Yeah. Realizing I might be pregnant by some guy I’ve only known for two days? Not an ideal situation.” The tears fell freely; the will to cage them crumbled.
Shirley looked over her shoulder as though to shield me from any onlookers. “Come on, darling. Let’s get you to a place you can cry it all out without an audience.”
“I thought maybe I’d jump into the ocean. Get it over with.”
“The sharks would love you for that.”
Unable to laugh at her joke, I let her lead me to the elevator. Mercifully, the car was empty. She inserted a key from a lanyard around her neck and pushed a button. We descended past the floors where passengers had cabins and went deeper into the underbelly of the boat.
“I’d always wondered what the crew cabins looked like.” I sniffed. “Not really the way I thought I’d find out, though.”
“Well, they’re basically the same as yours are. Maybe a few less frills, but they get the job done.” She brought me to a room and stopped. Using that same key, she opened the door.
“Go on in,” she said.
“Whose room is this?”
“It’s mine. Well, it’s mine for the nights the captain, my husband, and I would prefer to sleep apart.”
I pinched my eyebrows together, confused.
“Wait. If you’re married, why would you—”
“Ever want to be apart?” She laughed. “Look, when you live and work together in quarters this small, you need some alone time. Trust me. Which, luckily for you isn’t tonight.” She winked at me and then placed a hand on my shoulder. “My room is yours. Take all the time you need. Pull yourself together, and I’ll check back in with you later. I’d love to be able to stay and chat, but I need to go inform a couple that they cannot be nude on the patio deck no matter what the rules in their country say.”
She sighed.
“It will be all right, peanut. Things will work themselves out. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but that’s because you’re in the eye of the storm, but soon, those waters will be calm again, and you’ll see your way to where you need to be.”
“That might be a problem. I don’t weather storms well. I tend to drift aimlessly without a life jacket,” I muttered. She gave me a kind smile and then gestured again for me to go inside.
“Get some rest. Things might look different in the morning. It’s Bahama day. Things are always better on docking days. We’ll be in for a treat. Our sister line will also be docked, though they leave a few hours earlier than us, so do be sure and get back on the right boat.” She gave me a wink, but I wasn’t in the mood for a pep talk. I wasn’t even sure I’d want to go to the beach now. Everything was such a mess. How had things started so magically and turned so sour?
The sound of the door closing behind Shirley was all my body needed to finally fall apart. Sinking to my knees, I cried. I cried for a million different reasons. For screwing up what could have been a good thing with Shawn by running out on him, for potentially screwing up the life that might be inside me by all the booze I’d drank yesterday. And the more complex issue: like how I managed to destroy every romantic relationship I’d ever had. Maybe the guys weren’t the problem? The truth of the matter was that the common denominator was me. I was the issue. I’d get dumped, then immediately find someone new, never taking any time to mourn the loss of the one before. Because to do that, I’d have to feel. I’d have to process. I’d have to grieve. And I didn’t know how to do any of that. I didn’t know how to self-soothe, because I never let myself be alone for long enough to figure it out. I didn’t allow myself to feel lonely or unloved. I made it someone else’s job to take the pain away.
And that was exactly what I was doing with Shawn. I was bouncing from the pain of being left at the altar and transferring it into something another person had to hold onto for me. I made Shawn the one responsible for making me forget reality. To maintain the mirage of being okay. But I wasn’t. I was hurt. And I didn’t know how to fix it.
This whole thing was making me have dangerous thoughts. Like, when Dwayne ran down the aisle with Emma, it should have gutted me. Left me devastated. Heartbroken. But instead, there was a profound sense of relief that I had dodged a bullet. While Dwayne was a perfectly stable, sensible, and logical choice for someone like me, he never got through my defenses. He never saw the real me. None of them did. To let them see me would risk too much.
Shawn had been the only one to come close. He saw through my first line of defense: being malleable. Like what they like. Do what they want. Shawn had been the first to challenge me. To ask me what I wanted. What I needed.
So, maybe that was why the end of this relationship felt so different. I’d let him see a tiny bit of me. And now, without him...it was like I was drowning. Oh my God. Was this it? Was this what the heartache I’d strived so long to avoid felt like?
If that were true, then there was a damn good reason I’d moved on so fast. Because this? This feeling? I never wanted to experience it again.
