Page 9 of Date and Switch

Hello to everyone out there on the interwebs! I’m posting this piece of our travelogue from the very cushy confines of the Seafarer. I’m not sure if I’m actually allowed to put the name of our ship on this thing but, fuck it. Guess we’ll all find out together! Our flight from Boston to Miami, though much earlier than I would prefer to fly, was uneventful. We’ve now been processed, shown our room, and are currently unpacking. I will say that looking at all the luggage Bryce brought on board I’m feeling a little unprepared for a seven month around-the-world voyage. Isn’t it usually the opposite? Shouldn’t I have been the one to overpack?

We have our muster drill in about an hour. Our cabin steward, Paolo, came in and showed us where our life preservers are stored (they’re in our main closet in case anyone had a burning desire for that information). We were instructed to walk to our muster stations when we hear the alarm. I’ve never been aboard a cruise ship before so personally I’m low key excited for this drill. Bryce on the other hand doesn’t appear to be very impressed with the suggestion. He has already set up a miniature office space and is rapid fire replying to emails (on a Saturday) before we push off.

There is in room internet. I don’t know why I’m so surprised by this little fact. Like, how does internet get to you in the middle of the ocean? This is probably why I studied music, haha. Tonight’s the fancy captain’s shindig. I’ll take any excuse to put on a fancy dress!

Oh! I hear the alarm for the muster drill. Holy shit that thing is—omg. My poor eardrums! Our first port of call is Mexico on Monday. I guess we’ll be sailing all day tomorrow which gives me plenty of time to explore the ship and dish all the deets. Maybe do an Instagram live. Don’t hold me to that because I still don’t trust this whole having internet in the middle of the ocean thing!

All right over and out ??

Sera

* * *

“What do you plan to wear for the ball tonight?”

The muster drill definitely left something to be desired. All we did was walk to the dining room and hang out for twenty minutes. I had low key hoped we’d get to practice loading into a life raft.

“I hadn’t thought about it yet.”

There’d been too much excitement in the general preparedness to set sail. My suitcases still sat ignored in the corner of the living room. Bryce appeared to be fully settled in. Each empty bag piled by the door awaiting collection by our steward.

“I actually haven’t unpacked yet.” I pointed to my bags, feeling the flush of embarrassment broadcasting across my face and chest. “I didn’t want to impose…”

I let the sentence hang and die off, intentionally. This was his rodeo. I didn’t want to assume anything—even closet space. I’d be perfectly fine living out of a suitcase for seven months if I had to.

“You mean the steward didn’t unpack your things?” He asked, confusion pulling his eyebrows into a deep v that probably shouldn’t make my breath catch.

“I told him not to.”

I shrugged, hoping to disguise how silly I felt. We planned this trip in a whirlwind. Over the last three weeks we had practical conversations like when was your last tetanus shot? To general getting to know you questions like do you prefer a window or an aisle seat or do you eat breakfast in the morning? We never discussed existing in the other’s universe.

“We never really arrived at the conversation of how we’d handle sharing the room. I assumed I was just camping out here on the couch.” I patted the navy-blue fabric of the cushion I presently sat on. “I didn’t know how much information our steward knew. When he asked to unpack me, I wasn’t sure if I’m supposed to be pretending I’m your fiancé out there but when it’s just us we’re nothing more than business associates. Rather get into a super complicated circular conversation with Paolo, I figured I would just tell him to leave my bags and I’d unpack myself.”

I’d been immersed in my anxiety driven monologue I missed when his focus shifted from his iPad to me. He studied me with the most curious gaze. It wasn’t judgmental or annoyed, but it was intense and left me unsettled. Not in a negative way, mind you. In that I felt his gaze as if he’d drilled into the magma of my being and he examined me at a cellular level.

“Have you been in the bedroom since we arrived?”

His lip quirked into a half smile before he placed the iPad on the table and unfolded himself from the chair he sat in. He motioned for me to follow him and crossed our living space to the threshold of the bedroom that I’d yet to poke my head into. The moment I peeked in; a new level of embarrassment spiked my internal temperature to burning with abject mortification. There were two beds in the bedroom suite.

“Granted it will be an interesting dance if we both try to get out of bed at exactly the same time in the morning,” he joked, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed as I explored our bedroom, “but I figured having two beds in here would be more palatable than sleeping on the sofa.”

“I’m perfectly happy on the couch.” I reiterated, running my fingers along the cabinet and dresser combination. I wanted to open it. To inspect the space that Bryce had claimed. See what his existence looked like. Etiquette told me it was impolite. Even if technically, that is where my things would be existing alongside his. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to push myself into his world in such an intimate way.

“I wouldn’t enjoy a second of this trip in a gigantic bed while you slept on that sorry excuse for a couch. Even in the suites, those sleeper sofas are an offense to humanity. Children are probably the only human beings on earth that can tolerate sleeping on them, and that’s because their bodies are still at least half cartridge.”

His statement touched me in the weirdest way. I was a step up from stranger on the subway, yet he didn’t want me to be uncomfortable. That level of consideration wasn’t something I’d expected.

“Would you like me to call the steward again?” He picked up the phone, finger suspended over the call button.

“No it’s fine. I’ll unpack myself. Just point me to which drawers are mine.”

I knew it would take a few days for us to find our groove. To discover a place where we were just Sera and Bryce, and we didn’t dance in this weird space. I felt so self-conscious. I didn’t know how to be me in the polite half existence.

Bryce’s clothing was aligned in the closet with militaristic precision. Whether that was his doing or the steward that unpacked it, I didn’t know. I knew from being me for thirty-four years and eleven months that my space would never exist in the same zip code. Utilitarian lines, minimalistic folding, and sensible placement that took up the least amount of space was not my wheelhouse. Hell, ninety percent of the time I didn’t bother to fold my underwear. Having our lives coexist in the same space with such an obvious dichotomy completely tickled me. I secretly hoped I was in the bedroom whenever Bryce experienced this realization for himself.

“So did you land the plane on what you’ll wear tonight?”

Land the plane. As if the crisp trifold he applied to all of his T-shirts hadn’t been enough of a peek into who Bryce Ellis was, those three words solidified it. Was there a more corporate sounding phrase than land the plane? His whole life must be a series of charts, excel spreadsheets, and to-do items checked off his iPad.

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