Published at 8th of March 2024 7:43 am

Chapter Five

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

I did not see her the next day, though I hadn't intended to lie. I was holed up in my bathroom with some of the worst food poisoning I've experienced since the time I ate some questionable kebab at a fair.

The flood of various fluids from every available orifice did not relent until the end of the third day of the voyage, by which point I was so exhausted that I slept through much of the fourth day. I debated just remaining in the room until we returned back to California to avoid having to awkwardly explain to Alice I was not hiding from her, I had just been shitting constantly for 48 hours. Hey, I know our first not-quite-a-date resulted in me short circuiting my brain and then hiding from you for two days, but other than that it was fun, right? UGH.

In the end I called myself a pussy, which activated some caveman “me not pussy” response and I washed and got dressed. I drank as much water as I could from the mini fridge. I tested what I referred to as my “security routine” which was my 3 second future buffer, saw that it was behaving as it should, and promised myself to stay away from hooch for the rest of the trip/my entire life.

I put on a regular dark button-up short sleeve shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, ran a comb through my hair to get rid of the snarls. I slipped on my shades and crocs and ventured out onto the deck.

I didn't immediately go looking for Alice, as I wasn't that mature and also still feeling not so great. Instead I found my way back to the Deck 2 balcony walkway and enjoyed the sea breeze on my face. The sun was sinking close to the horizon but sunset was still a ways off. The ocean reflected the orange light in a way I found genuinely beautiful, as was the absence of any land. Everywhere I looked that wasn't the ship I was on, was water. It was great.

The sea breeze was doing a lot to revive me and I don't know how long I stood at the railing, save for the fact that I grew worried about the fact that I had forgotten to put on sun screen.

I heard a camera click.

I turned and found Alice lowering her camera. She hadn't been aiming at me, but at the breaching whale about a quarter-mile out. “Oof,” she said by way of greeting, walking over to me. “You look like shit.”

She looked great. She was wearing this weird poncho looking thing made out of a gauzy material that hung off her in such a way that both showed off and hid her curves, coupled with a long, billowy white skirt that waved prettily in the breeze and a pair of white capris.

“Yeah,” I said. “I didn't, uh, wasn't trying to avoid--”

She waved her hand in a vague “doesn't matter” gesture. “I assume you came down with the same bug everyone else did.”

It hadn't occurred to me that anyone else had gotten sick. “Everyone was sick?”

“Well,” she amended. “About half the passengers. Apparently the shrimp was bad or something. How are you feeling?”

I paused for a second to think of my answer. “Wrung-out,” I replied honestly. “But recovering. Being out here is helping a lot, actually.”

She nodded with a smile, then raised her camera and pointed it to where she had last seen the whale. I watched as well, hoping to catch it or them again. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, I could feel her posture change and knew she was about to ask a question I was dreading. Apparently she wasn't the type to beat around the bush.

“So, do you want to talk about it?” She asked.

I didn't, not really. But I liked being around her, and I wanted her to like being around me. And as easy as lying is, I didn't want to lie to her. I went with some half-truths instead.

“Yeah, uh, yeah,” I said, elegantly. “You probably want to know what kinda weirdo you were hanging out with.” I phrased it that way on purpose. Were hanging out with. So if we continued to hang out, it'd be her decision. I dunno if she caught it, but I wanted her to know that I didn't assume everything was cool.

She dipped her camera a bit and gave me a sideways glance. “I wouldn't phrase it quite like that, but you had a—a strange reaction out of no where, and it does make a girl worry.”

I nodded. “Valid, completely valid. So, I guess—I guess—no I don't guess, I have this thing about being touched when I'm not expecting it.” I took a deep breath through my nose to calm down. Talking about this was always difficult. “I was bullied a lot when I was young, and everyone except my mom did nothing about it, and it, er, appears to get worse when I'm drunk. I don't drink, really, not since college.”

I clamped my mouth shut before I started yammering. Took another deep breath. She had lowered her camera and turned to face me fully. I glanced at her and found her green eyes studying my features. I looked back to the ocean.

“I guess I, I dunno, felt vulnerable? And that you seem like a decent person who might offer aid and I just kinda lost my shit for a second and recoiled,” that was as close to the truth as I could get, sadly. “It was the last thing I wanted to do, really, because up until that point I was having the time of my life. And, and—and I'm gunna shut up now before I say anything even more embarrassing.”

She regarded me silently for what felt like an eternity before stepping a bit closer to me. “Can I give you a shoulder bump?” She asked.

It took a bit longer to process the request than what would be considered normal, it was so unexpected, but eventually I nodded. She bumped my shoulder with hers (more like my bicep, but that's what happens when you're part giraffe) and raised her camera to the ocean again. “It's totally fine. I have some... familiarity with, um, mental hangups, as you put it.”

We stood watching the ocean until the sunlight started to fade, and the deck lights brightened to compensate. Soon she dropped her camera, placing the cap on the lens and let it hang from the strap around her neck. “So,” she said at length, when the ocean turned into a vast, dark pool. “How do we defeat this awkward bubble?”

It was a lifeline I had been hoping for. I glanced around, trying to think. “You know, what with the stomach bug and all, I haven't had much of a chance to explore the ship. Do you think they have shuffleboard?”

“Have you played?” She asked.

“Never,” I replied. “You?”

“A few times,” she replied.

***

“Don't give me this 'ringer' crap!” I said, half joking, half serious.

Turns out, “A few times” was a bit of an understatement. Someone less charitable than I would categorize it as “misleading,” or an “outright lie.”

What I mean to say is that Alice was the Queen of Shuffleboard and we should all fear her prowess.

We were on Deck 1 which held most of the ships entertainment. It wasn't big enough to devote space to those big, floor-based shuffleboard games I've seen on commercials but had the standing ones that you had to doctor up with sand to play on. There were three boards in total, along with an air-hockey table, a trio of pinball machines, one ignored Foosball table and a little snack stand manned by a crew member.

Alice had been steadily kicking my ass for the last three hours and just when I thought I had her beat, she brought out a new rule that apparently when you got a puck in the end scoring area that gave you 4 points, if you did it so your puck hung off they end without falling off, you get five, and it's called a ringer.

Alice was trying and failing not to laugh in my face. “I wouldn't have guessed you were so competitive!”

Truth was, I had forgotten that fact myself. The only people I had interacted with for the last six or seven years had been murderers, a demon, the odd text from my brother and a monthly call to my mom. All other interactions were via online chat to my internet friends.

“Don't change the subject,” I said, pointing my finger at her with comical outrage. “You never mentioned this ringer bullshit before!”

“Sorry! I forgot about it because I don't get them often,” she had abandoned trying to hide her laughter.

I could see how that was true. She had a play style that landed her pucks squarely in the 2-3 point range while also knocking my pucks off the board. The only way I had managed to catch up to her had been to play aggressively as well, doing my best to knock her out while trying to get my pucks in the 3-4 range. My final puck had failed to knock hers out but had edged it just off the end of the board without knocking it completely off.

I held my outraged expression and my pointed finger for 10 more seconds before I deflated and plopped into a deck chair. “I thought I had you that time,” I admitted in defeat.

“To be fair,” she said. “You did tie me, and you are doing incredibly well for your first time playing.”

I was cheating a bit without meaning to. My security routine gave me an unfair advantage cause it let me know with more accuracy when a throw would be bad, and allowed me to make adjustments. “Despite your habit of doing ridiculous victory dances—” she did a little shuffle that made her hips bounce before sitting in the chair next to mine. “You're a good teacher. But I am going to beat you at least once before this cruise is done.”

She squinted at me. “Is that a challenge?”

“The gauntlet is thrown,” I said while miming slapping her face with a glove, without actually reaching toward her. “Pucks at sunset!”

“Accepted!” She said in the same tone of voice. “I'll have to stop going easy on you.”

“Don't try that shit with me,” I said, leaning back in the chair. “I know I had you worried.”

“If that makes you feel better,” she said obliquely.

“The truth often does,” I countered, waggling my eyebrows.

“Oo,” she said, raising and eyebrow appreciatively. “I'm stealing that.”

I tipped my imaginary hat and watched as a couple took up the newly freed table. I glanced around, an evil thought coming into my head. “Come on, I wanna try that Foosball table.”

She brightened. “Oh! I haven't played in a long time,” she said, standing. I followed suit.

“I should warn you, this time,” she continued. “I've also sunk a few hundred hours into Foosball.”

“Maybe I'll have better luck,” I said, hiding my excitement.

***

“MaYbE I'lL HaVe bEtTeR LuCk,” she said in a mocking imitation of my voice, after I won my third game in a row. This time, she had managed to score. Once.

“Consider it just desserts,” I said as I straightened and stretched my back. Foosball tables were always designed for averaged height people and my back was always sore after a few games.

She shook her head and came to join me on my side of the table. “I was SURE you were too tall to have spent any time on this,” she gestured at the table. “It kills my back with just one game.”

I shrugged. “We had a table in the common area in our dorm, in college. There might have been a cute girl that loved the game and was always looking for someone to play against.”

“Ahhh,” she said. “It all makes sense. Did you end up dating?”

I shook my head, spinning one of the bars and banking the ball off the wall into the goal. “Nah, turns out she was gay. But we got along and became friends. Mary and I had a lot in common, and spent a lot of our time co-writing Diablo fan-fiction.” I turned and gave Alice a serious look and said, deadpan: “We were the biggest, nerdiest nerds.”

Alice was amused. “Diablo? Like the videogame?”

“The very same,” I popped another ball on the table and dribbled it between the goalie and the defenders. “It has, like, incredibly—and I use this word with the fulsome knowledge that it makes me sound like a dweeb—dope lore.”

She sniggered. “A bit.” She admitted. “So hit me; what's some 'dope' lore?”

“Well, the part that I liked the best was that the existence of humanity was just a colossal fuck-up resulting from demons and angels knocking boots and creating a thing that was neither, and greater than both,” I let go of the handles and straightened, stretching my back again. “And then they went 'ah fuck' and tried to fix it and turned the resulting offspring into what we know of as humanity.”

She nodded, her face making the “not bad” expression. “Okay, yeah, that's pretty 'dope.'”

I grinned and met her eyes. “I'm giving you this opportunity to change the subject, or the only thing I'll be talking about for the rest of the night will be how awesome Tyrael is and how pissed I am that they made him a boring dude in the third game.”

She nodded with mock seriousness. “I will admit to some curiosity about this Tyrael fellow and how he became a boring dude, but I will take your advice. So: hit me. Ask me something.”

“You play any videogames?” I asked, since we were on the topic.

“Sometimes,” she said. “I have a... Switch? I think? Nintendo thing. I play Animal Crossing on it when I wanna relax. But otherwise no. I don't stick my nose up at them like some people, but I didn't grow up with them so I just, I dunno, never got the appeal.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Aside from cruises and tricking handsome men into playing shuffleboard for the first time with you, what do you do for fun?”

She pointed a finger at me and looked like she was about to poke my chest, but stopped herself before I had to pull away. “Hey! That is unfair, I did no trickery, the shuffleboard was your idea.”

I waved my hand like I was clearing smoke. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, we'll let the courts decide. Answer the question or I'll have to treat you like a hostile witness.”

She snorted, leaned against the Foosball table, frowned at it when she discovered it was a very uncomfortable thing to lean against. “Let's go sit down,” she suggested, to which I nodded my reply. As we crossed to a little seating area with chairs and small tables for drinks, she continued. “As to your question; I like to walk around a lot and take pictures.” She lifted her camera for emphasis. “When I'm not doing that, I'm usually with friends, watching shows—you know, the normal things people do to kill time.”

I snapped my fingers in the “aw shucks” manner. “Damn, here I thought you were a secret agent or something, but your cover story checks out.”

She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Phew, I thought you had seen through me. I mean, yeah! Yeah, totally normal person here.”

We continued chatting late into the night, the way you do when you meet someone who you just instantly get along with. I hadn't met anyone like that since Mary, and unlike Mary I was pretty sure Alice was a little bit attracted to me. Or at least, had been until I flipped out the other day. Even if I was no longer dating material in her eyes, making another friend was always welcome.

There was a lull in conversation, as we both yawned long and loud. We checked our phones and discovered it was after 2 am. “Holy shit, it got late,” I said.

She nodded, reaching up to rub her eyes and then stopping herself, in what I guessed to be an effort not to rub mascara all over her face. “Yeah, I got to get to bed. I have a poker tournament at ten tomorrow and I want to get enough sleep to be alert.”

“AM?” I asked. She nodded. “Yeah, we're cutting it close.”

We straightened out of our chairs and stood for a pregnant moment, wondering at each other how we wanted to end the night. The moment stretched to a minute, and I finally grew the courage to look her in the eye. “Look, after how the last time ended, I think I wanna end the night simply and with as little awkwardness as possible.”

She suddenly grinned. God, she was a knockout. “I like that,” she said.

“So, with that in mind,” I gave her a little bow. “Good night and good luck in your tourney tomorrow.”

She returned the bow. “Thank you. You have a good night too.”

She turned and headed for the stairs for the smaller passenger cabins under the main deck and I headed for the stairway that would take me to my cabin. I replayed the night in my head, happy with the day. Extremely happy. Our last words kept popping in my head.

“Good luck,” I said thoughtfully as I closed the door to my cabin behind me.

You know, I have infernal and magical forces at my disposal. I never do anything fun with them. I have never even actually used them for anything other than investigation, security or for my random flights of fancy.

As I undressed for bed, I set my alarm for 7 AM. Three hours should be enough time to find what I need before the tourney. I stood with my phone in my hand, my thumb hovering over the time. Well, let's be safe and make it 6 AM. It'll mean I'll be getting slightly less than four hours of sleep (assuming I fall asleep as soon as I get into bed, which is a terrible assumption), but I've done more with less. I placed the phone on the nightstand and flopped into bed. Despite my habit of struggling to sleep due to planning, I was out within moments, thinking of where I could possible get a rabbit's foot on the ship.

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