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Instead, I’m watching the social media superstars in front of me, their duck lips and peace signs in every selfie. There’s an older couple, wrinkled and beaming, posing with the Statue of Liberty behind them as we make our way toward the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Then everyone looks up, making sure we’ll fit, like there’s still a question about whether this behemoth vessel can fit under the bridge it sailed under to get to the terminal where we embarked in the first place.
Spoiler alert: it fits.
I weave through the crowd, eager to get back to the room, to Gram. She wanted to enjoy the sailaway from our balcony because she’s “done this enough times,” and she just wants “to relax and enjoy the views.” And it’s so unlike her, this not wanting to be surrounded by excitement, that I worry for a moment. But she cruises frequently, at least three times a year, and I’ve never joined her until now (not that she hasn’t asked, but because I was full of excuses that I have been too blocked to fabricate recently). Maybe this is her favorite part, this peaceful pulling away from land, this separation from the real world as we prepare to spend a week and a half floating in God’s swimming pool.
Sure enough, Gram’s there, her arms propped on the balcony railing and a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“Hey, you.”
“Hey, yourself,” she says, shifting to let me squeeze in next to her. Not that any squeezing is needed, because our balcony is huge.
“Are you soon ready for dinner? Or did you want to skip the dining room tonight and just hit up the buffet later?”
She shoots me a look that says she thinks I’m crazy. “Gwen, we do not ‘skip’ the dining room on this ship. You can’t even get lobster tails and filet mignon at the buffet, but in the dining room, you can have as many as you want.”
“Sold!” I laugh. I hook a thumb toward the suite’s interior. “I’m going to get changed.”
Gwendolyn
“Well, look who it is.” The words are punctuated with performative surprise as we approach our table in the dining room. The familiar-looking woman already seated there rises and greets us.
“Nancy. Fancy meeting you here!” Gram doesn’t fake it any better than her friend just did.
I greet Nancy, who wraps her arms around me like we’re old friends, despite meeting once, about a year ago. “You look beautiful, dear,” she says, her eyes skimming my navy sheath dress, her brow furrowing slightly. “Didn’t you tell her, Maggie, that she doesn’t need to dress up on the first night?”
Gram and Nancy are both wearing tropical-print tunics over Bermuda shorts, and a quick glance around the dining room shows most people are casually dressed.
“She stopped taking my fashion advice long ago.”
“Yes, when I was twelve, and you took me on a shopping spree that made my Lisa Frank notebook look bland,” I say, smoothing my napkin over my lap, and Gram laughs.
Nancy shifts in her seat across from Gram, craning her neck toward the entrance. On her side of the table there are two glasses full of water, two full of wine. She’s waiting on someone, and I know from Gram’s pen-pal stories that she’s not seeing anyone. So that leaves one guess, and I’m pissed.
“Are you two trying to—”
Gram and Nancy exchange a guilty but unapologetic look. “Set you up, dear? Yes.” Gram’s so forward, so matter-of-fact, like she’s shocked I hadn’t guessed it already.
“You’ll love him, Gwendolyn. He’s such a nice young man.”
“You have to say that. You’re his grandmother.”
Gram snorts in the seat next to me. “We’re also honest to a fault, because we’re old women who don’t care what other people think. Trust me—” she smirks in a way that tells me she’s not afraid to be honest about me, too, “if he were a little shit, she’d tell you.”
Nancy laughs again. “He’s wonderful. After all, he gave up a week of his life to join his grandmother on a cruise, so he can’t be that bad.”
I think about the lesson learned last year—that the handsome bad boy will break your heart—and I consider that maybe it would be nice to meet a “nice young man” for a change. Then my brain is full of that infuriating face from this afternoon, with his brown puppy dog eyes, messy hair, shirt stretched across broad shoulders…
I try to shake the memory loose, but it’s no use. When I open my eyes I still see him, dry this time and in a T-shirt and jeans, with that stupid smile plastered across his lips. I groan, and those lips huff deep laughter into the air. Gram backhands my shoulder, and Nancy looks concerned.
“What’s gotten into you?” Gram asks me before apologizing to the man lowering himself into the seat across from mine. “She’s not normally like this.”
“You sure about that?” he winks in reply, and Gram is smitten.
“I like him.” She could at least whisper. Her approval clearly pleases him, and he gloats as he sips his wine.
Nancy clears her throat. “Gwendolyn, this is my grandson, Sawyer Dawson.”
The way he leans back, stretching an arm to rest a hand on the back of Nancy’s chair, taking up space again, still smirking—this guy is the worst.
