Page 28 of Total Dreamboat

Hope

I would never have predicted that one of the best days of my life would involve a snorkeling trip during a Caribbean cruise.

I wake up naked in Felix’s room. The nudity is convenient, as it allows us to repeat some of the better events of last night.

We part ways to shower and get dressed for our outing, then reconvene to walk down to the lounge where the snorkeling group is meeting.

“Make me a promise,” I say to Felix.

“Anything.”

“Dangerous words.”

“I trust you.”

“If Gabe happens to be going on this trip, let’s just skip it. We can walk into town or something instead.”

After last night, I’m nervous about running into him. I don’t want any more grand gestures.

Especially not in front of Felix.

Kind Felix, who seems willing to let yesterday go. Sexy Felix, who used his body to tell me everything is okay.

“I lied,” Felix says. “I can’t promise that. I want to hang out with him.”

“Felix!”

“Sorry, but I’m fully invested in spending the day with your unhinged ex-boyfriend.”

“Do you want me to text him and personally invite him along?”

“Please.”

I take out my phone and he snatches it away, laughing.

“If he’s there, I solemnly swear I’ll be the first one out the door,” Felix says. “I can’t watch him karaoke-bomb you again before lunch.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. I forgot how much I hated it when he did shit like that.”

Felix raises his eyebrows. “He has a history of serenading you in public?”

“No. First time. But he has this thing about making larger-than-life gestures to express his emotions. It’s like a psychological tic.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, say you have a fight and he feels bad about it later and wants to get you flowers. Instead of just picking some up at the bodega and apologizing, he’ll like make a scavenger hunt leading you to the botanical gardens, where he’s arranged a private after-hours sunset tour.”

“That’s an oddly specific example.”

“Yeah, because he literally did that. He did stuff like that all the time. Like, once I got annoyed with him because he canceled a date to an Italian restaurant last minute. I was pissed because it’s a hard reservation to get and I’d made it weeks before.

The next day, I get to his apartment and the chef is there teaching Gabe how to hand-make pappardelle for cacio e pepe. ”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I think it has something to do with his upbringing. His family are these really reserved WASPs who primarily express affection by starting trust funds for one another, so he, like, craves something more personal, but then overcorrects.”

And overpromises, it occurs to me. Professes love, names your babies, moves you into his apartment. But can’t follow through. Like the gesture is so grand because the emotion behind it is performative. Lacking conviction. A show.

This revelation explains so much. How he’s capable of such romance and such detached withdrawal.

I feel like I understand what happened between us for the first time. I was not responsible for the failure of my relationship because I couldn’t live up to his expectations.

The problem truly was him .

I don’t say this to Felix, because we’ve discussed my ex-boyfriend far too much already. But when I take his hand, I feel lighter. More confident. Like the girl I came on this cruise to get back to being.

We stroll to the tender hand in hand, and yet another couple asks us if we’re honeymooning.

“Yes,” Felix says, squeezing my fingers conspiratorially. It’s clear he loves this game.

“Where are you from?” the woman asks.

“New York and London, respectively,” Felix says.

“Oh! Is it hard to be in a long-distance relationship?”

“We make it work,” he says. “She’s worth it.”

I know he’s kidding, but my mind flashes to a scenario in which that could actually happen. Does his?

“How did you meet?” the woman asks, disrupting my train of thought. “I’m Nancy, by the way, and this is my husband, Tom.”

“Felix. And we met when Hope here threw a crab shell in my hair at a buffet.”

The woman laughs uproariously.

“How did you meet?” I ask her, because I don’t want Felix going so far down the wormhole that he makes up an entire backstory for us.

My heart can’t take it.

She smiles at her husband. “On a cruise, actually.”

“You’re kidding!” I say.

“No,” Tom says. “We were sailing from Australia to Singapore.”

“Wow,” Felix says. “Sounds like an epic trip.”

“It was,” he says. “Three months. We met at the singles table the first day, in Sydney, and by the time we reached Singapore we were engaged to be married.”

“Cruising is a great way to meet someone,” Nancy says, putting her hand on her husband’s knee. “You can spend so much time together, get to know each other without distractions.”

Lauren should interview this woman for her TikTok.

But the thing is, she’s not wrong.

I feel like I’ve known Felix for months, and it’s been fewer days than I have fingers.

“What happened when you got off the cruise?” Felix asks Nancy. “Did you live in the same place?”

“No, Tom was in Palm Beach, and I was in Louisville. I moved to Florida. But it doesn’t really matter where we’re based. We cruise most of the year.”

“We did an around-the-world trip last fall,” Tom says proudly. “Thirty-one countries in 126 days.”

“Sounds blissful,” Felix says with a straight face.

They chat to us about their world travels all the way to the catamaran, telling us about the friends they’ve made on their various maritime trips, the sights they’ve seen, the cruise lines they prefer. It seems there is an entire subculture of retired people who live semi-permanently at sea.

I try not to convey my horror.

“That was wild,” Felix says once we’re on the catamaran and out of earshot. “Can you imagine staying on a ship for four months? Ten days is bad enough.”

“Whatever floats your boat.”

He groans. “Good one, Dad.”

“I agree that monthslong cruises sound harrowing,” I say. “But I have to confess that I’m enjoying my sojourn with you.”

This is probably a little too sweet and sincere to have actually said out loud, but Felix breaks into a smile so big I know I’ve genuinely pleased him.

“Are you kidding?” he says softly. “Best holiday of my life.”

This makes me so happy that I have to reset the tone to retain my sanity. So I say, “Unless we die snorkeling.”

“I don’t think you can die snorkeling,” he says.

“It’s actually one of the most deadly vacation activities there is,” I inform him.

“You’re thinking of scuba diving. You can’t get the bends from going two feet underwater.”

“I’m not kidding. People get disoriented and can’t find their way back to the boat and drown. Or they get swept up in undercurrents and become too exhausted to keep swimming. I read a whole article about it. It’s the leading cause of tourist deaths in Hawaii.”

“Good thing we’re not in Hawaii.”

“We’ll have to go there on our next cruise,” I say solemnly.

“Uh-oh. Have you been converted?”

“Afraid so. I’m easily susceptible to cults.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re a Scientologist?” he asks.

“I’m trying to tell you that I’d endure no end of Broadway musicals, turbulent waters, and midnight buffets if it meant getting to do it with you.”

I worry I have once again tiptoed into saccharine town, but he leans in and kisses me.

“Same,” he says.

I’m pleased to report that neither of us dies while snorkeling. We do see an enormous stingray, which Felix finds majestic and I find so terrifying I immediately swim back to the boat.

When the catamaran returns us to port, we’re both hungry and decide to take a taxi into town for lunch.

We ask the driver to take us to a good Caribbean restaurant, and he drops us at a bright turquoise seafood shack with tables on the beach.

We order a feast of grilled grouper, jerk mahi, and spicy curry fritters.

“I’m starving,” I say, licking fritter grease off my fingers. “Who knew snorkeling was so strenuous.”

“You have a pattern of underestimating water sports,” Felix says.

“My toxic trait.”

“Well, if that’s the worst you can do, you’re pretty harmless.”

“What’s yours?”

“Gullibility.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m completely gullible,” he says. “My sisters spent my entire youth tricking me.”

“Like telling you that you were adopted?”

“No, they’re far more Machiavellian than that. Most of their schemes involved absconding with my money.”

He looks so dismayed that I laugh. “Give me an example.”

“Hmm. Okay, here’s one: at primary, Pear convinced me this very unpleasant girl named Jemima in year four was going to tell everyone Pear was a bedwetter if Pear didn’t give her fifty pounds.

She said she couldn’t tell our parents because then Mum would call Jemima’s mother and Jemima would bully her even more for grassing up. ”

“So you gave her the money?”

“Of course. Fancied myself quite the hero. Until I found out there was no Jemima in grade four.”

“Poor boy.”

“Tragic, I know,” he says. “And of course, to this day it hasn’t stopped.”

“Dare I ask?”

“Two months ago Prue was pestering me to come to hers for a dinner party. She wanted to set me up with a woman from her book club. I told her I wasn’t looking to date, and in any case I had a private event at the pub that night and wouldn’t be able to make it—all true.”

“Uh-oh.”

“The night of the party Pear called me in hysterics saying Prue had been taken to A&E with appendicitis and she was picking me up right away so we could get to hospital. I, of course, left the pub and went with her. Whereupon she drove halfway there before informing me with great glee we were actually going to Prue’s house for supper. ”

“My God!”

“I know,” he says ruefully. “They’re wicked. But you’d think after thirty-odd goes around the sun I’d be on to them.”

“Did you at least like the woman from the book club?”

“I was in far too bad a temper to make proper conversation. Though I must admit she was gorgeous.”

I become briefly, ludicrously jealous that this woman has earned such a compliment. I need to cool my jets.

“Well, maybe Prue will trick you into going to another party and you’ll get a second chance,” I say lightly.

“No need. I’m decidedly single.” He pauses, and smiles at me shyly. “Unless of course you decide to move to England, and I change my mind.”

My jets are decidedly not cool. He’s just flirting , I remind myself. But it scares me how much I light up at these words.

My enthusiasm comes burbling out before I can stop it. “That’s actually always been my dream,” I say.

“To move to London?”

“No, not London. I have this fantasy about living in the English countryside. Buying one of those rambling old stone cottages with a beautiful garden full of roses and fruit trees where I can spend my days writing novels.” I shake my head at myself, embarrassed.

“You know. The full Jane Austen experience.”

“Have you looked into moving?” he asks.

“Oh God no, it’s just a fantasy. I read lots of Regency romance novels to scratch the itch.”

He frowns at me. “It’s not silly to have dreams, Hope.”

He’s right.

And maybe I need to say mine out loud more often.

“What’s your dream life?” I ask.

“Not so far from yours, actually,” he says. “I’ve been toying with the idea of opening a pub with rooms in the country. Somewhere on the coast, maybe. Cornwall, or Devon. Eventually get married. Raise a family there.”

I cannot help imagining myself as the woman he builds this life with.

“What about your businesses in London?” I ask, hoping he won’t see the wistfulness that’s overtaken me.

“Let my sisters sell them to Pizza Express.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“No. But I’m sure I could run them remotely. Pop in twice a month. I don’t give her enough credit, but my food and bev manager is brilliant. She could probably take over operations, with some training.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“Fear,” he says flatly.

“Fear of what?”

“My whole life is structured around my routines. Work, gym, AA, meditation, sleep. I truly believe it’s saved me from relapse. Opening something new would blow that all up. I’m not ready.”

“But you might do it someday?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready. My sobriety is the most important thing to me. I’m not willing to do anything that would threaten it.”

His eyes have gone rather far away and his jaw is set. He looks… grim.

“It’s good that you know what you need,” I say, worried I’ve led him into something he isn’t ready to talk about.

“Anyway,” he says. “No one needs to hear me prattle on about my boring life. Let’s talk about something more interesting.”

We settle on books. He says his favorite Jane Austen novel is Sense and Sensibility , while I profess mine is Persuasion .

“That makes sense,” he says.

“Why?”

“It’s about unfulfilled dreams of having a home of one’s own in the English countryside.”

“Well, she wants it with one specific person,” I say. “That part’s kind of important.”

“Do you want it with another person?” he asks.

So much for light territory. It’s hard to talk casually about dreams with someone who is rapidly, unwisely, becoming one of them.

“I’d be open to that,” I say as breezily as possible.

I leave out the part where a handsome British man I adore, and who loves me beyond reason, shares my rambling cottage with me.

And maybe, just maybe, he owns a pub with rooms.