Page 22 of Total Dreamboat

Hope

The only downside to waking up with a boy you can’t keep your hands off is having to leave him when your alarm goes off at seven a.m.

Felix stirs at the sound of my phone beeping. “What time is it?” His voice is thick with sleep and he has tousled hair and bedroom eyes. It’s one of the better sights I’ve seen in my lifetime.

“Seven,” I tell him.

“Too early. You’re not permitted to get out of bed.” He throws an arm around me and pulls me close. He’s naked, and his body is warm from sleep. All I want to do is nestle up and stay here all day—especially when he starts kissing his way up the side of my neck.

I decide I can spare fifteen minutes. We make good use of it.

“Operation Morning Sex accomplished,” I say.

“Vastly superior to a hangover.”

I flick him. “Thanks for the compliment?”

He kisses me. “Let’s stay in bed all day. You can teach me elevenses sex, teatime sex…”

I gently detach from him. “I have to go get ready. My excursion leaves at eight thirty.”

“Gutting.”

“Surf lessons wait for no man. Think of me while you’re zip-lining?”

“That won’t be a problem. I’ll almost certainly get distracted and crash into a tree.”

“Don’t do that. Your sisters will make fun of you.”

“I will promise to stay safe,” he says, “if you promise we can do this again tonight.”

I give him one last kiss. “Obviously. I’ll text you when I get back.”

“Have fun. Avoid sharks. And Hope?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for last night. I hope I wasn’t too… much.”

He means when he got a little teary the first time.

That was my favorite part.

“You,” I say, “were perfect.”

And I mean it. The sex was amazing in its own right. But it was heightened by how vulnerable he was with me. How honest.

I’m already beginning to be pained by the fact that this bliss is temporary. That in a matter of days, we’ll have to say goodbye.

But the high I’m feeling is no doubt in large part due to the fact that there’s no pressure for this to last. No question of what we are to each other. No time for games or overthinking. Just pure crush jitters and sex endorphins.

It’s the sexual equivalent of staying in a hotel ten times nicer than your apartment.

Lauren is on the veranda in a flowing coral caftan and full makeup when I get back to our room.

“Well hello, my little strumpet,” she says, taking a sip of cold brew.

“Where did you get that?” I ask. I’m dying for caffeine. Felix and I didn’t do much sleeping.

“Saint Crisanto,” she says. “He brought one for you too. And there are almond croissants.” She gestures at a small spread on the patio table and I grab a pastry and wolf it down in three bites.

“Worked up an appetite?” she asks dryly.

“I think I burned more calories last night than I did last year.”

“Sounds X-rated.”

“Oh my God , Lauren. I went, like, full Sonic the Hedgehog on him.”

She snorts. “Don’t make me choke on my coffee.”

“Sorry.”

“Was he a generous lover?” she asks.

“Only you can say ‘generous lover’ with a straight face.”

“Don’t avoid the question.”

“Without getting into details, generous is not an adequate word,” I say, remembering the miracles he performed with his tongue in the middle of the night.

“Good,” she says. “You need a man you can use for his body.”

“I know. And it’s great because we also have a real connection. Like all these honest things just come out of me when I talk to him.”

The cat-who-ate-the-cream look fades from her face. She scrunches up her lips, like she wants to say something and is looking for the right words.

“What?” I ask.

“That’s exactly what you said about Gabe.”

“Gabe lived in the same country as me. This is different.”

“Is it?”

“You’ve already given me this lecture. I’m really not in the mood to hear it again. And anyway, all of this don’t-fall-in-love-on-a-cruise-ship business is a bit rich coming from a girl who’s here to meet a husband.”

“Darling, when’s the last time I got my heart broken? I’m strategic when it comes to men. You’re pure emotion, and you know it.”

“I’m not falling in love, I promise. I only meant that I actually like him, which is the icing on the cake. Like, I could see us being friends after this.”

She sighs. “Oh, Lord.”

This irritates me. But I’m not going to take the bait.

“Anyway, I should get dressed,” I say. “We have to leave for surfing in twenty-five minutes.”

“Um, so about that.”

“Oh God. What now?”

“Colin asked me to go with him on a food tour, so I switched at the last minute.”

I should have known something was suspicious when she wasn’t wearing a designer rash guard.

“Lauren! Surfing was your idea in the first place! You said it would attract fit men with coastal homes.”

“And it will. Felix is probably going. He looks like the type. Did you ask him?”

“He’s zip-lining with his sisters.”

“Shit. Sorry. I would have told you I was changing plans but I didn’t want to interrupt your date.”

“You are a menace.”

“Just skip it if you don’t want to go.”

“No, the beach is supposed to be amazing. I’ll go alone.”

“Good. And promise you’ll come with me to karaoke tonight.”

I look her dead in the eyes. “Of course we’re going. Together. Do not betray me on this.”

She puts her hand over her heart. “I swear.”

I put on my trusty nip-slip bathing suit, since if it caused a wardrobe malfunction during pool aerobics, how could it go wrong for surfing? I skip makeup, throw on shorts and a T-shirt, and head downstairs to meet the group.

A few people are already there, and most of them are close to my age.

I sit down at a table with the attractive young couple I saw when we were checking in.

As expected, they’re on their honeymoon.

It turns out they are also from New York, so we’re comparing notes on our jobs and neighborhoods when I see it.

See him .

It’s Gabe.

Gabe Newhouse.

My ex-boyfriend.

Standing in the doorway to the room, gazing at me, a hand pressed over his heart.

I lurch to my feet involuntarily.

“Hope,” he says in a voice so loud every single person in the room turns and looks at him.

He bounds over to me and wraps me in a full body hug before I can react.

“I can’t believe this,” he says, squeezing me so tight I cough.

I push him off as firmly as I can without making a scene. “Stop,” I hiss.

He steps back, eyes shining. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m suffocating you. It’s just—my God, what are the odds?”

“What are you doing here?” I ask shakily. “Are you stalking me?”

This is unlikely, given he so callously broke up with me, but it’s no more inconceivable than him being here out of a lust for mass travel to the Caribbean. Gabe is a sailboat-in-Nantucket kind of person, not a cruise ship kind of person.

He laughs. “No, I’m here as a hostage, actually.

” He rolls his eyes in that conspiratorial way he has, like he’s inviting you into a joke.

“It’s Gran’s eighty-fifth birthday. She made me promise I’d take her on a cruise if she lived to see it.

As though there was any question. That woman will outlive us all. ”

This throws me.

“Maeve wanted to go on a cruise?” I ask.

Gabe’s grandmother is an intimidatingly patrician Bostonian from a family so old and rich there are hospital wings and Ivy League buildings named after them. Think the Kennedys, minus the political ambitions and tragedies.

I’d have thought she’d want to celebrate her birthday with gin and tonics at the family estate on Martha’s Vineyard. Not on a boat called the Romance of the Sea .

“She did, oddly,” Gabe says. “Highly out of character, I know. She’ll die to see you.”

“Then I’d better stay away from her,” I hear myself say. I am not conscious of actually thinking up the words because I feel like I am observing this scene from outside my body.

“No, she’s going to demand an audience,” he says. “You know how she is.”

I do. He introduced me to his family within a month of our meeting each other. We spent an entire summer commuting to their place on Martha’s Vineyard for long weekends.

They were surprisingly welcoming for moneyed WASPs.

Probably because they, like me, thought we were going to get married.

“But what are you doing here?” he asks. “I thought you always spent the last two weeks of August in Vermont.”

I am paralyzed between the desire to leap off the boat into the harbor to escape him, and the desire to play it cool so he can’t tell how completely rocked I am that he’s here.

I decide to go with cool.

“My parents are selling the cottage,” I say. “And Lauren is doing a sponsorship with the cruise line, so we decided to take a free vacation.”

He grins. “Classic Lauren.”

He clocks that the couple across from us is looking at us attentively, and because he has perfect manners, he extends his hand graciously to the woman, Nuala.

“Gabe Newhouse,” he says.

He always proactively introduces himself, and always uses his first and last name. It’s a habit that would come off as obnoxious if he weren’t so handsome and friendly.

And he’s certainly that. He has the ability to be both refined and exuberant, dripping charisma without coming on too strong.

And with his golden blond hair and striking brown eyes, not to mention the perfect tailoring of the expensive clothes on his fit six-foot-two frame, people can’t help but be drawn in.

I certainly couldn’t.

“How do you two know each other?” Nuala asks.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Gabe says. “We used to date.”

Nuala glances at me, as if trying to read whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Bad , I telegraph to her with my eyes, as though she can save me.

She can’t.

The only thing that can save me is to make an excuse and leave.

I again perform a mental calculation as to the wisdom of this. If I go, I will spare myself the pain of being around the person who has hurt me the most in my life. On the downside, I will have let him run me off, making me seem pathetic or resentful.

My pride finds the latter unacceptable.

But there’s something else.

Something that horrifies me.