Page 21 of Going Overboard

It isn’t hard to understand how the cruise ship has so much going on inside – it’s huge – but I still can’t get my head around the vast outside spaces too.

Take this pool (and just this pool, because there are several!), for example.

We’re outside, by the large outdoor pool, and if you couldn’t smell the sea air you could forget you were even on a boat, it’s got more of a vibe of a luxury resort.

To be honest, it just feels like being on the coast, at a stunning hotel – aside from the fact that it’s quite a slow way to travel, I actually prefer it to flying, because it makes the journey part of the destination too.

Not that I can afford these things, or have the time to take long trips, but you take my point.

I should focus on the here and now, rather than getting a head start on my holiday hangover.

The pool is big, surrounded by sunloungers and palm trees in planters that really make you feel like you have your feet on the ground, rather than having miles of ocean beneath you.

The most impressive part is probably the waterslide, a sky-high spiral thing that comes down from one of the higher decks – not that you’ll catch me whizzing down it any time soon.

I’m here for the chill vibe. The cocktails with umbrellas, the sunbathing, breathing in the sea air.

Oh, and playing games with my friends, my ex and my fake boyfriend, of course.

I’m sitting on the edge of Brody’s sunlounger while he lies back, looking like an underwear model, soaking up the rays from behind his sunglasses.

He’s stroking my back, like the doting boyfriend he isn’t, for the benefit of our audience.

He trails the backs of his fingers along my spine, bridging the gap between my bikini top and bottoms, ever so slowly…

almost like he’s not even doing it. Every few seconds he presses a little firmer and it’s just enough to send a weird tingle through my body.

But it’s just crossed wires, mixed messages, my body receiving signals without the bottom line: this isn’t real.

Even if it is fake, there’s no denying he’s great at this.

Playing the boyfriend of my dreams, making me feel like I’m the only woman on the ship – or the only one he has eyes for anyway.

If he’s the top shagger the tabloids make him out to be, well, it’s not hard to imagine, given that he looks like a jacked Roman sculpture, has charm radiating from every buff bit of him, and does a really good job of passing himself off as perfect – even I could fall for this, if I didn’t know we were pretending, obviously.

‘Oi, Jessa,’ Kelsey calls out from her sunlounger. ‘Come here.’

‘Back in a sec,’ I tell Brody, blowing him a kiss.

The floor feels warm beneath my feet, and I feel mostly dry (apart from my hair) from my dip in the pool already.

‘Hey,’ I say, plonking myself down on her sunlounger.

As she takes a long drink from her bright pink straw, she gives me a look that says a thousand words.

‘What?’ I say with a chuckle.

‘He’s different with you,’ she tells me, nodding over toward Brody .

I smile.

‘Yeah, I don’t know, I didn’t know him before, but he’s great,’ I reply. ‘Really great.’

‘Let’s play a game!’ Neil says, clapping his hands together loudly, saving me from the rest of the conversation. ‘They’ve got all these different boardgames. I went straight to the retro ones – they’ve got a Mr & Mrs kind of game. Perfect for us, right?’

I glance at Kelsey. Is this perfect? It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

‘Sounds great,’ she says.

Well, who am I to argue with the bride?

Brody stands up, stretching in a way that should probably be illegal. And then he beckons me over with a grin and… yeah… he’s really good at this.

‘Okay, how do we go about this?’ he asks me in hushed tones.

‘I guess, everyone knows we haven’t been together long, so we’ll lean into that,’ I tell him. ‘We’re still enjoying getting to know each other, finding out new things – we can make a whole lovey-dovey thing of that.’

‘Plus, Neil and I might be old friends, but we haven’t spent much time together lately – just socially, at weddings and stuff, so I don’t know when Nikki would have had the chance to spend time with Todd and get to know him.

I’ve only met him a couple of times and I don’t feel like I know much about him… ’

Which, to me at least, only serves as further proof that something must have been going on between them earlier than they let on.

Neil and Brody are old friends, and Al already knows Brody too – presumably from some kind of freakishly buff man club – Nikki was never part of our friendship circle, and I’d never noticed Brody before, even if we have crossed paths.

Well, I suppose when you’re happy with someone, you don’t look at your friendship circle through that lens, you’re not on the lookout for hot men – although I suppose I should have been, in hindsight.

‘What are you thinking about? You’re blushing,’ Brody says, snapping me from my thoughts.

Shit. I was just thinking that he was hot, in a roundabout way, but there’s no way he can know that, right? And no way I’m blushing, it must just be the sun. I guess some kind of psychic connection could be good for the purpose of the game – but not a thing else.

‘Nothing,’ I insist quickly. ‘Just how to win.’

‘Thinking about it, we don’t need to win, we only need to do better than Todd and Nikki. If we have to cheat, so be it.’

Well, it doesn’t seem like they were above that…

‘How do we cheat?’ I ask.

‘No idea,’ he replies. ‘But if something comes up, we lean into it.’

‘That’s not very sportsmanlike of you,’ I tease.

‘This isn’t a sport,’ he replies with a smile. ‘It’s a war.’

‘And I suppose they do say all is fair in love and war,’ I reply. ‘Let’s do it.’

We all crowd around a low table at the side of the pool. Neil explains the game to us – it sounds pretty straightforward, and not at all like something Brody and I could be good at given that we hardly know each other.

‘The pens are dry, so we’ll have to play the honesty version,’ Neil tells us. ‘We’re all adults. We can trust everyone will be truthful, right?’

Us lot? Ha.

First up it’s Kelsey and Neil, the nearly-weds, and unsurprisingly, Neil nails Kelsey’s favourite flowers – tulips.

Then Al and Kira – the newly-weds – and they kill it too. They’re still in that phase of romance where they finish each other’s sentences and food and everything. It’s somewhere between cute and sickening – but only the latter because secretly I wish I had someone who was so in sync with me.

Next up, it’s Todd and Nikki. This ought to be good.

‘Okay, Todd, what is Nikki’s favourite snack?’ Neil asks.

‘Easy,’ Todd says confidently. ‘It’s crisps.’

‘Crisps?’ she claps back. ‘Todd, it’s white chocolate buttons – what are you talking about?’

‘You like crisps,’ Todd insists.

‘I like lots of things, Todd, but white chocolate buttons are my favourite.’

Nikki throws back her hair on one side, clearly unable to hide her annoyance that they’ve fallen at the first hurdle.

Luckily my urge to smile is quickly quashed by my nervousness to be going next. I fear we’re going to go the same way…

‘All right, Brody,’ Neil says as he takes another card, ‘what strange food does Jessa love?’

‘Well, that’s easy,’ Brody replies, with an impressive level of fake confidence, given the fact that he can’t possibly know the answer. ‘Pickles.’

My stomach turns just hearing the word, but as I look over at him I notice him widening his eyes at me, ever so subtly, silently urging me to play along.

I muster up a big, bright smile and then I say…

‘Correct!’

‘Bullshit,’ Todd calls out. ‘You hate pickles.’

‘I love pickles,’ I insist.

‘You would always give me your pickles,’ he reminds me – which is true.

Nikki looks furious, I suppose because Todd is talking about when we were together – it was just last month though, to be fair. Hardly ancient history .

‘I love them now,’ I lie. ‘Brody introduced me to them and now I can’t get enough.’

‘Bullshit,’ Todd says again, clearly more bothered by this than anyone ever should be. It’s a board game, it’s not that deep.

Brody wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him, grinning at everyone. ‘I’ve introduced her to a lot of new things that she likes,’ he says, giving me a wink.

There’s an awkward beat where everyone looks uncomfortable (Todd and Nikki) or amused (everyone else), and it is glorious.

‘I’m starting to feel suspicious about when exactly the two of you met, given how much you supposedly know about each other,’ Nikki says, almost under her breath.

Oh, she’s one to talk.

‘We met at Al and Kira’s wedding,’ I remind her. ‘I guess we’re just more interested in each other than we ever have been with anyone else…’

‘Come on, let’s keep playing,’ Neil insists, handing Al a card so that he can read it to him and Kelsey.

Of course, they smash it again, and so do Al and Kira, and then it’s back to Nikki and Todd – and she’s really on the edge of her seat, clearly determined to get this one right.

‘Nikki, what is Todd’s favourite TV show?’ Neil asks her.

‘One of the Star Wars ones – come on, I’m too cool to know the name,’ she insists rather rudely. ‘You’ve got to give me a point for that.’

‘It’s Star Trek ,’ Todd corrects her – offended by the wrong part of her answer.

‘The really old ones,’ I can’t resist chiming in. ‘It’s the only thing he ever wanted to watch.’

‘Like I always tell you – it’s a masterpiece,’ he reminds me, smiling just enough to infuriate Nikki .

‘Anyway, let’s move on,’ Kelsey prompts, sensing trouble at sea.

‘Yeah,’ Neil says, clapping his hands together before grabbing another card. ‘Jessa, what is Brody’s favourite music?’

I mean… it could be anything. And if we’re cheating, it can be anything.

‘Early 2000s pop punk,’ I say with faux confidence.