Page 6 of Falling Overboard

When we left the room, I couldn’t help but lean in and whisper into her ear. “He seems pleasant.”

She audibly gulped and then said in a tight, breathy voice, “He’s your stereotypical temperamental culinary genius. And he’s constantly aggravated because the captain won’t allow him to have his parrot in the galley.”

Interesting. Lucky was trying not to respond to me and couldn’t seem to help herself.

“Understandable,” I said with a nod, wanting to make things more comfortable for her. “That would be unsanitary.”

“His parrot is named Preacher, and his favorite sound is a ringtone. He loves when he gets someone to fall for it and come into his cabin. So don’t be fooled.”

She was babbling just a bit. I probably shouldn’t have enjoyed that, especially after the captain had explained the rules. So I tried to change the subject to something more neutral so that I wouldn’t think about the curve of her neck. “Our crew is very international.”

I heard the relief in her voice. “That’s pretty typical for superyachts.”

Lucky showed me the crew mess, where we would eat and the snacks were kept. There was a small living room that the crew shared. She turned to the right and went down a tight hallway and opened a door. “This is our room. You are on the top bunk.”

Our room? That just seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. I was expected to share a room with a beautiful woman that I couldn’t ever be with?

I threw my knapsack onto the top bunk and turned to face her. The room was incredibly small. Like a shoebox. It felt like if I leaned too far to one side my shoulders would hit the wall. We were practically touching just standing here and that was going to make things very difficult for me.

“We’re sharing a room?” I asked. It was like locking a kid in a candy store and telling him he couldn’t have any of it.

She nodded, looking a bit anxious. “I have the only empty bed. Which makes us bunkmates.”

The desire to tease her, to make this not so awkward, returned. I smiled a little. “Bunkmates?” That made it sound like summer camp.

“Like I said, you on top, me on the bottom.”

The image that created was like a swift kick to the gut.

Something she realized a beat later as she rushed to add, “I mean, you are in the top bunk and I’m in the bottom bunk. Separate. Not together. ‘Bunkmates’ doesn’t mean sharing one bunk.”

“Of course.” Such a shame.

Lucky cleared her throat and said, “We share the closet, and the top two drawers are yours. That’s the bathroom. The door locks. So you can have privacy and keep me out.”

I wanted to tease her, ask her if I needed to keep myself safe from her, but sensed now was not the right time. I looked around and said, “I thought you had to be convicted of a crime to be put somewhere like this.”

“It’s not ... ideal,” she said and I wondered what specific part wasn’t ideal for her. “I’ll let you unpack. I’ll be in the laundry room if you need anything.”

She left in a hurry and I let out a small chuckle. The new rule probably existed because of me and my past but Lucky seemed to be taking it personally. Like I was some kind of temptation for her that she wasn’t sure she could resist.

As I began emptying my knapsack, I realized two things.

One, that if she told me she was interested, I suspected that I wouldn’t care about rules.

And two, these were probably going to be the longest and most frustrating six months of my life.

Chapter Three

Lucky

Multiple loads of laundry were running and I grabbed the ironing board, plugging in the iron. I’d always found pressing the guests’ bedsheets had a calming effect on me, with its relaxing, repetitive motion. The feeling of accomplishment I got when the lines went smooth.

It gave me too much time to think, though.

I had told Hunter something I hadn’t shared with anyone else on board, not even Georgia. I’d told him about my mother’s passing. I didn’t know why I had done that—what it was about him that made me want to tell him things.

I needed to figure it out, though. Because we were going to share a space that was approximately the same size as two telephone booths. Sleeping. Changing our clothes.

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