Page 20 of Without a Clue
I stayed up, piddling around online mostly. Posting an edit here. Reviewing PowerPoints for various sessions there. Texting my sister about how things are going. Thinking about Hugh. Worrying over little nothings.
I checked my phone a few (hundred) times.
For a while I just flipped it over and took quick peeks as I focused on my work, but eventually I gave up and flipped the phone face up as I sat crisscrossed on my bed, typing—one eye ever on the time.
Maybe Nash wasn’t even going to go. He was pretty raw at dinner; I wouldn’t be surprised if he fell asleep and forgot about the whole thing.
Didn’t matter, though, did it?
I was here to see the sky show, not him, great companion though he may be.
At two o’clock on the dot, I swing my legs over the four-poster bed, slip my feet into my furry loafers, and make my way up deck. It’s quiet in the halls. The sconce lights are dim, and perhaps I’m imagining it, but I feel the tiniest sway of the cruise ship as the wallpaper goes up and down.
The sailor in the oil painting stares at me, and I stare back as I take the elevator up, my thoughts wandering.
When I reach the deck, Nash is standing beside a column, alone.
The moment he spots me his face does that little tilty smile of his and I smile back, like we’re two kids at camp who agreed to sneak to the dock of a lake and watch the stars. It does feel oddly “not allowed” up here, all alone. But I mentally note his posture is an expectant one; he clearly didn’t overthink any of this like I had.
To him? We agreed to meet. Watch a shower. Enjoy the moment. Nothing more.
“You ready?” he says, and before I can even answer, he pulls on a cord.
The rows of incandescent bulbs hanging overhead go off in an instant, leaving us surrounded by nothing but the tiny glow of floor lights at the pool stairs behind.
I blink a few times, my eyes trying to adjust.
Everything is shadows. The lounge chairs blobs. The pool glowing a peaceful Mediterranean blue. It’s hard to distinguish just where the tasseled umbrellas end and the sky begins. I take a couple messy steps forward.
He meets me, his gait infinitely steadier than mine. “I’ve had them off for a while. I’ve adjusted,” he explains to my wordless question.
I take a couple of shuffling steps, slow as molasses, watching the ground.
“Want a hand?” Nash asks.
There’s a hesitancy in his question, as if to imply he’s offering out of respect, not as a romantic gesture.
The way he always asks, with that border around his actions to say, “We are friends, nothing more.”
“Sure,” I say with a breathy little chuckle, to show just how silly this is (but also yes-most-definitely-please).
I feel his rough, calloused hand slipping into mine. A hand that just very casually pulled a rattler from his boot, held the reins of a horse, made his own fire, and went on to write beautiful, emotional sonnets inside a big, beautiful head.
No big deal. Just ordinary things ordinary men do.
“We both know if you break your shins on one of these concrete things, they’ll all be after me.”
“Oh, they absolutely would.”
Hugh and Neena and the lot of them would get after Nash relentlessly for turning the lights off and having me break my leg and fall into the pool and spend the rest of the week hobbling around. I can just see motherly Neena now, tsking with her arm wrapped around me, saying, “And to think she just went through that incredibly awful and embarrassing mental breakdown in front of the whole universe . . . Oh, you didn’t hear about it, Nash? I believe Ricky caught the whole thing on camera, hang on . . .”
“They look like they bought out a dying ornamental garden store.”
“I have wondered what this does to the weight capacity of the ship,” I say.
By the time we’ve reached where he’s landed himself, my eyes have adjusted and I can see he has indeed been here awhile, since leaving the parlor this evening is my guess.
His belongings are strewn across a pool chair beneath one of the umbrellas to our right. Closed laptop. Coffee cup. Discarded leather bag. Hat.
