“Geez, you scared the crap outta me.”
So much for being alert and aware of her surroundings!
“Sorry. That wasn’t my intent. Quite the opposite, actually. I was calling out to make sure you knew I was here before I got closer. What are you doing up here all by yourself?”
“I couldn’t sleep, and after a few hours of lying there staring at the ceiling, I figured I’d stare at the stars instead.”
He looked up at the sky and grinned. “Plenty of them out tonight, for sure. Did you see the moon?” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the front of the ship on the other side.
She turned in that direction and couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the moon as she was geeking out over the sky. It was almost full and likely would be before the end of their cruise.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. How did I not see that? I guess I never looked in that direction.” She walked over to the rail to get a better look and then she gasped at the reflection of the moon dancing across the waves. “Look! Wow. That’s beautiful.”
Ben nodded, his hands in his pockets and his arms held tight against his ribs. “Yeah. When the moon’s full, I love to go over to the beach and watch it rise. To see how the colors shift and fade and bleed into each other as the sun disappears behind you and the moon rises to take its place. I never get tired of seeing the moonlight on the water.”
He shivered a bit, and she realized she was wearing his jacket.
“Oh, my gosh. I have your coat. I’m so sorry. I tried to open the closet, but it was loud, and I didn’t want to wake you. I planned to be back before you needed it.”
She started unzipping it to take it off, but he motioned for her to stop.
“It’s okay, keep it on. I don’t need it. I’m wearing jeans. You’re the one in shorts, so you’re probably colder than me.”
“Yeah, well, the shorts were the first thing I found in the dark.”
“Makes sense. I take it the bed wasn't very comfortable, huh?”
“No, it’s fine.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “I just have so much on my mind. I couldn't seem to shut everything down and sleep. Did I wake you when I left? Why are you up?”
Shrugging, he said, “I have no idea what woke me. It could just be that my body still thinks it's in Barcelona. Six hours ahead, so I’d already be at the gallery and on my 2nd cup of coffee by now. But instead, I stumbled out of bed and eased the curtain open to the go to the restroom, and it was only on my way back to bed that I realized you weren’t even there. Startled me, to be honest. Figured I should come look for you.”
“Sorry. I should have left a note or something. I've been meaning to ask you what you’re doing in Barcelona. Maya said you've been there for a month? I take it you’re working at a gallery there?”
"Yes. I was selected for a residency program in conjunction with a small museum that houses an art gallery and studio on its grounds.” He leaned his hip against the railing as he talked.” They offer me free room and board and art supplies, and in return, I help out in the gallery and give occasional tours of the museum. And of course, I spend a lot of time touring around the area, finding inspiration.”
“That sounds amazing. How long will you be there?”
"Probably three more months, if I don't decide to extend. It's a beautiful city, and the people at the gallery are lovely. So, I may stay, I don't know yet.”
“Do you travel around a lot then?”
“Yeah, I’d say I’ve done my fair share the last few years. It’s starting to wear on me a bit. I don’t think I’d ever give it up completely, but I am starting to miss my own bed and my own studio. I may shove my passport in a drawer and stay home for a while. At least until I get the itch to go again.”
“Where’s home?”
“Oh, Cocoa Beach. I have a house there, not too far from Maya’s. If you don’t mind my saying, you seem to be shivering an awful lot. Do you want to go back inside?”
“Yes but no. I don’t know. I am cold, but I don’t want to go back in yet. It’s just so surreal being up here, just the two of us with the sky, the moon, and the stars. It’s very other-worldly.”
“It is. Might I suggest that we retreat to that lounger over there? The dome lid might at least help to block the wind.”
“Yeah, I started to sit there before, but I was worried about someone coming up behind me and me not hearing them.” She rolled her eyes. “Clearly, I should have been a little more diligent about that.”
“We could probably turn it and have it face this way. That way we could see anyone who comes back here, and we could also see the moon.”
“Great idea!”
Once they’d gotten the lounger situated where they wanted it, they crawled inside it, and then Ben looked at her with his hands outstretched. “I don't wanna be presumptuous or anything, but would you like to huddle together? You know, sit close to combine our body heat and shut out the cold? I swear I’ll be honorable.”
“Well, considering that I'm wearing your jacket, I guess the least I could do is sit close enough to share it with you.”
She took the jacket off as he sat back against dome, and then he lifted his arm for her to sit next to him. She nestled into him as he spread the jacket over them, and then she pulled her knees to her chest so her legs could be covered as well.
The moon was directly in front of them, giving them their own personal planetarium show.
“I’ve always wanted to travel,” she said once they were settled in and starting to feel warmer.
“Then, I'm sure you will someday.”
“I don’t know. Kind of hard to travel without a job or a paycheck.”
“Unless you find a job that allows you to travel and work at the same time. Which is what I did.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing next. My whole life, I’ve had a grand plan. And now? I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Do you know what you want to do?”
“I want to write, but for reasons we’ve already discussed and other economic ones, that’s not a viable possibility. Not right now, anyway.” She leaned her head back to look up at him. “Did you really quit law school to become an artist? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I don’t. But no, I didn’t give up law to become an artist. That’s already who I was. I just decided to stop being who I wasn’t.”
She laid her head against his chest as she considered that. It sounded like a noble concept, but she would have to figure out who she was before she could determine who she wasn’t.
“Is that what made your mom angry with you?” she asked, wary of broaching the subject, but eager to know why Lydia was so nasty to Ben. She’d heard her mention something about addicts when she was coming out of the bathroom. She’d gotten the idea it was regarding Ben dating someone Lydia didn’t approve of, but Ben had said it happened when he was nineteen. Twelve years was a long time to be angry about your son’s ex-girlfriend.
“My mom is angry with me for many reasons, and I’ve had to accept that there isn’t really anything I can do about any of them. There’s not anything I’m willing to do, anyway. But you can believe me when I say I tried.”
“I do.” She wanted to know more, but it seemed like a sensitive subject, so she’d do for him what he’d done for her and leave it alone. So instead, she broached another possibly sensitive subject she was curious about. “How much of what you told your family about the night we met was true? Did you really sit at my table on purpose?”
“Yes, I did. I sat next to you, in fact.”
“What? No way.”
“Way. I shared my nachos with you. You kept flicking the olives over to my side.”
She sat up, knocking the jacket from them as she twisted to face him. “That was you? Oh my god. No way. But you had, like, a massive beard. It was braided, right? And your hair was long and tangly, and you had some kind of thing wrapped around your head.”
“Yeah,” he said, chuckling. “I’d just gotten back from spending three months in the Alaskan wilderness, and I was still holding onto a bit of that. Not quite ready to let the experience go, I guess. I went in for a shave and a haircut not long after that night, but you were already back in New York by then.”
“I can’t believe that was you. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t remember you, but now that I know you looked completely different, it makes a little more sense. Did we talk a lot? Did we have any meaningful conversations?”
Ben shook his head, laughing. “No. To be honest, I was a little shell-shocked that night. It was the first time I’d been around that many people in a while. And I also think I was a little bit in awe of you. Feeling kind of shy and fully realizing I wasn’t presenting as my most attractive self. So, I hung back and let the other guys talk, but I listened to everything you had to say. And I shared my nachos. Not that I had a choice. They got delivered and you just started eating them. I think you thought they were for the table, so I didn’t correct you. And I didn’t mind. It gave me a reason to interact with you between Paul being a pompous jerk and Michael being all smarmy.”
“Ah, yes, I do remember Michael. And yes, smarmy is the perfect word for him. But I feel bad that I mooched your nachos. I’m sorry. Can I make it up to you somehow? Do they serve nachos anywhere on the ship?”
He smiled, shaking his head as he rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t know. It’s fine. I’m having a conversation with you all alone with no other guys around, so I’d say this is payback enough.”
Their gazes locked, and that heat blossomed inside her again. He must feel it. He had to. He was telling her he was interested, wasn’t he? But he wasn’t making any move to kiss her, even though they were all alone and snuggled into a secluded chair with their faces only inches apart.
Thinking of the kiss took her back to the one they’d shared.
“Were you shocked when I kissed you?”
“Shocked? Yeah. Of course. It came out of nowhere. But I’m not one to refuse a gift, you know?”
“Do you think your mom bought it? Like, do you think your family believes that we’re head over heels in love?”
“I don’t know. Obviously, I haven’t been alone with any of them to hear what they think.”
“We really should have planned out a backstory. We should have come up with the most fabulous first meeting and first date. Something incredibly romantic.”
“More romantic than nachos and debates about bodice rippers?”
She laughed as she settled back in against his chest, pulling the jacket up over them again.
“Who would we be? How did we meet?”
His shoulder shrugged beneath her head. “I don’t know. You’re the writer.”
“Don’t say that. You know I can’t write right now. So, help a girl out. How’d we meet? Pretend us, not real us.”
“Maybe I got into your car, thinking it was an Uber,” Ben said.
“Ugh. It’s already been done. Maybe we both had golden retrievers and we met at a dog park.”
“Do they shed? I have allergies.”
She leaned back and looked up at him again. “Just because you have allergies doesn’t mean Pretend Ben has allergies. Pretend Ben can be any way you want him to be. That’s the beauty of fiction.”
“Okay well, I think it’s best if we keep the pretend version as close to the real ones as possible. What if we’re pretending and someone brings a dog, and then I start sneezing? It would blow our cover.” He paused and then looked down at her. “Wait...I’m confused. Are we going to pretend to be these versions of ourselves? Or are we just coming up with a backstory for fun?”
“Fun. If it doesn't have to be believable, it can be much more interesting.”
Adjusting his legs and shifting his back against the seat, he hugged her closer to him. “Okay. Let’s see. I think I want to be a spy.”
“It’s a cruise ship. What would you be spying on?"
“You said it doesn’t have to be believable.”
“True. Okay. You’re a spy, and I’m an assassin. We’re both targeting the same international arms dealer, and he happens to be on this cruise. Being the diligent and observant people we are, we noticed that we were both following him, and we confronted each other and fell in love.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Okay,” he said.
They sat there snuggled together for a few more minutes in silence, enjoying the solitude, the warmth, and the closeness.
Then Katie said. “I don’t know that I’m really cut out to be an assassin. All the killing and the blood. Maybe we should be something more low-key. More ordinary. But still romantic.”
“Maybe we’re on our honeymoon. We just got married on the beach in Cocoa, and we drove to Miami the morning after the wedding and set sail.”
“Hmm…too ordinary. How about this? We were high school sweethearts who went to separate out of state colleges, and our lives grew apart. But then we ended up sitting next to each other in the same row on the same airplane, and we discover that we both live in the same city now.”
“I feel like something like that has been done before.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Is it just me, or is it getting colder?” She yawned and wriggled even closer.
Wrapping his other arm around her, he tucked his chin over her head. “It is a little colder. You ready to head back inside? At some point, you need to get some sleep.”
“Yeah, but I want to figure this out first. Maybe you were painting in a courtyard at a small boutique hotel in Italy. I’d gone there to write, and it was my first day in the village. I stopped you and asked for directions, and my Italian was horrible, so we laughed when we discovered we were both American. We ended up going to dinner together and sharing a pasta dish—I asked this time if it was okay that we share. We were both there for the next month, so we spent every moment together. And at the end of the month, I’d written you into my book as the hero, and you’d painted me into your courtyard.”
“Did I propose in the courtyard?” Ben whispered.
“No. It was too soon, and because we’d met each other while we were traveling and living under idyllic circumstances, we decided it was impossible to know if it would work in the context of our real lives.”
“But we’re still together. We’re on a cruise. So, we made it work? Right?”
“Yeah, of course. It’s not a romance without a happy ending.”
“Whew,” Ben exhaled. “I feel better knowing we were able to make it work. Love should always conquer all.”
He moved to stand, and then he offered her his hand to pull her up with him. “C’mon. Let’s get you back inside before you turn into a popsicle.”
Katie felt a pang of disappointment. She’d gotten so wrapped up in the story that she’d been expecting a kiss, but the story was Pretend Ben and Pretend Katie. And it wasn’t real life.