Page 3 of Total Dreamboat

Hope

Imagine being invited to join your best friend on an all-expenses-paid, ten-day tropical vacation.

Picture visiting Caribbean islands, frolicking on white-sand beaches, enjoying luxury spa treatments, eating gourmet meals, sleeping in a sumptuous oceanside suite, and doing it all while your every whim is catered to by a personal staff.

Sounds dreamy, right?

Except there’s a catch.

This trip will take place on a cruise ship.

And, you see, I am not a cruise ship person.

I’m terrified of norovirus, buffets put me on edge, and I really, really hate water slides.

And yet, here I am, in a taxi pulling into a port lined with gleaming white ships the size of New York City avenues.

Don’t be negative , I coach myself. You are going to fill your creative well with sunshine and luxury and bonding time with your best friend. You’re going to stop thinking about Gabe. And then you are going to go home and mount your fucking comeback.

“What cruise line?” our taxi driver asks.

“ Romance of the Sea ,” Lauren, my best friend, says.

I cringe involuntarily, like I do every time she says the name of the boat out loud.

“Stop that,” she says. “The name is cute. And oh my stars, look! There she is!” She gestures at the boat towering above us, its side emblazoned with a crest of two dolphins facing each other in the shape of a heart.

“Adorable,” I say.

Lauren proceeds to whip out her phone and take a video of herself oohing and aahing over the ship—B-roll, I assume, for the fawning TikToks she’s contractually obligated to make in exchange for our passage.

I paste a smile on my face and try not to think of the Titanic .

The cab stops at a sign for passenger check-in and a porter swoops in to help with our bags before we’ve even gotten out of the car.

“Thank you so much,” I say, as he effortlessly lifts my beat-up suitcase and Lauren’s three enormous Louis Vuitton trunks onto a cart.

“What did you pack in there?” I ask Lauren under my breath. “Your couch?”

“Mostly caftans and ball gowns,” she says. “And, of course, camera equipment. Can’t go anywhere without my ring light!”

“Naturally,” I say.

“Is that an arch tone I detect, Miss Lanover? I thought we agreed you were going to impersonate a basic ass bitch and have fun drinking margs and rotting in the sun with your boobs out.”

“Sorry,” I say. “You’re right. I am hereby excited and bubbly.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that.”

We make our way through security and are greeted by a man with a European accent and mannerisms so gracious you’d think he was greeting members of the royal family rather than a social media influencer and her plus-one.

He inspects our documents and tells us what a fabulous time we will have, and how happy he and the rest of the crew are to host us for what he hopes will be the first of many trips.

Unlikely.

We are then escorted to a seating area to await our turn to board the ship. I gaze out at a sea of silver.

Hair, that is.

“Everyone here is like minimum sixty years old,” I whisper to Lauren.

“Yes, darling. That’s the point.”

Lauren is here for a tactical reason. The Romance of the Sea has a new solo package for singles and she’s doing a sponsored series on it.

“Think about it,” she explained to me when she pitched the idea of us going.

“You’re trapped on a ship for two weeks with eligible men.

It’s so smart. I’ll probably meet my husband. ”

“Won’t that put you out of business?” I ask.

Attempting to meet a husband—a rich husband—is, after all, her entire career.

Lauren Rose Mathison, @LaurenLuvRose to her fans, got her start starring in Man of My Dreams , a reality TV dating show in which female contestants submit a list of criteria for their ideal husbands, and are then marooned on an island with “matches” handpicked by producers.

The catch? None of the girls know who among the corresponding suitors is their supposed soul mate.

Lauren did not choose correctly, but she did become the breakout star of the first season, after attesting in her charming Texas accent that her soul mate must be “hung like a horse and rich as hell.” She parlayed her notoriety into influencer fame, posting tutorials on how to flirt and dress for maximum seductiveness and going on elaborate “missions” to find and fall in love with a wealthy bachelor.

Her schemes have included taking lessons at luxury golf courses, moonlighting as a private jet flight attendant, attending crypto-currency conferences, and infiltrating a high-stakes poker ring.

Before you call Gloria Steinem to complain about the death of feminism, please note that Lauren’s schtick is tongue in cheek. Her videos have the breathless style of a reporter embedding herself into a high-stakes investigation and are performed with a wink.

“Oh stop,” Lauren says to me. “I do want a husband, and anyway, not everyone is old.” She subtly nods at a thirtyish Black couple in expensive-looking resort wear who radiate the glow of honeymoon bliss, and then at a pair of stylish white gay men who look about forty and have a toddler in a stroller.

“Token millennials,” I say. “The exception that proves the rule.”

“Oh look,” she says. “Incoming, ten o’clock.”

I follow her gaze to a group of four trim men in their fifties or sixties.

“No women with them, and they look moneyed,” Lauren says. “And that one in the blue sport coat is super handsome. Maybe you should go for him.”

“He’s dressed like Thurston Howell III.”

“Who?”

“The millionaire from Gilligan’s Island .”

“You say that like it’s bad. That’s our ideal target!”

“Speak for yourself. I’m here for the free shrimp cocktail.”

“At least set your sights on lobster, sweetheart. This is a luxury cruise. And maybe you’ll meet someone. A fling is just what you need to forget about Gabe.”

“I’m very over Gabe,” I lie.

“You’re very not,” she says. “You haven’t gone on a single date since the breakup, and that was eight months ago.”

Well, that’s what happens when you fall madly in love with someone who wants to name your future babies on the third date, and then he breaks up with you two weeks after you move in together because he “realized he’s not ready.”

This type of behavior does not make a girl eager to race back to Bumble.

How do you cauterize a wound that goes so deep? Is it really so unnatural to miss someone you thought would be the father of your children, even if he hurt you?

I am moving on. It’s just taking longer than Lauren would like.

The bigger problem is that ever since the breakup, I’ve felt flat. Uncreative. Unmotivated. Unsexual.

And my parents getting divorced is not helping.

But I’m ready to leave that behind. It’s time to shake off my depression over my failed relationship and flagging career.

This trip is about recentering myself, powering up, and reminding myself I’m the kind of person who knows how to go for broke.

“I concede a fling might be good for me,” I say. “But I’m not trying to canoodle with someone whose diapers I’ll have to change in ten years.”

“The kind of gentleman we’re going for will be able to afford a private nurse for that,” Lauren says. “And you’d be surprised at how well a seasoned man knows his way under the covers.”

“Um… Noted, I guess.”

Lauren scans the crowd for other potential suitors, identifying a well-heeled sexagenarian with twinkly blue eyes, a duo of middle-aged guys dressed in head-to-toe golf paraphernalia, and a strikingly handsome gentleman in stylish horn-rimmed glasses walking with an admittedly elegant cane.

And then she gasps.

“Oh my God, look,” she whispers, gesturing with her chin toward the check-in desk. I follow her gaze to a middle-aged couple with two very attractive young blond women.

“Uh-oh,” I say. “Competition?”

“Not them,” she says in a low voice. “ Him .”

One of the girls steps aside, revealing a man who looks to be in his early thirties. He’s medium-tall and wiry, with a mop of dark, wavy brown hair. His white T-shirt sets off the muscles of his shoulders and reveals rather artful line-drawn tattoos on his forearms.

He glances over his shoulder and catches me blatantly staring at him. I all but fling my eyeballs out of my head looking away and blush so hard my face stings.

Before Lauren can mock me further, a woman in a pressed white crew uniform walks toward us, smiling.

“Miss Mathison and Miss Lanover,” she says. “It’s my pleasure to invite you to board. Follow me.” She gestures at the gangway, where a photographer is waiting by a step-and-repeat with the ship’s cheesy logo.

“Would you like a complimentary portrait?” he asks as we approach.

“Oh, no thank—” I start to say, but Lauren beams at him.

“We’d love one,” she says.

She strikes the practiced pose she knows sets off her best angle. I stand awkwardly a few inches away, hands shoved into the pockets of my vintage sailor shorts, waiting for this to be over.

Lauren grabs my arm and tugs me closer. “Tits up, chin to the side,” she coaches me. “And smile with your eyes.”

I attempt to obey her command as the flash goes off in my face, blinding me.

“Thank you!” Lauren chirps.

As we walk away, the family with the hot son steps forward to take our place.

“Try not to break the lens with the radiance of your poor disposition, Felix,” one of the sisters (I assume they are sisters given they are nearly identical) says.

The boy smiles at her pleasantly. “If you continue to antagonize me I will see to it that you drown.”

They both have British accents.

Oh, God.

Hot and British ?

I’m the type of Brit Lit nerd who goes weak at the knees for an English accent.

Something inside me lights up for the first time in a very long time.

It takes me a moment to recognize it: attraction.

Lauren elbows me. “Told you.”