This little piece of fiction is a true story. And to be quite truthfully dishonest, I’m lying.
I rolled my eyes downward as I shuffled my feet and attempted to hide the half-smile that gave away how much I secretly wanted to believe in my mom’s fantasies for me. She was beginning to sound like a broken record: You hang in there, Sunshine, and he’ll come right along. The One is just around the corner. Or my favorite, the belief I held onto at night when there was no one to hold tight to me:
Don’t worry about what blessings everyone else may or may not be getting in their lives. You haven’t received what is meant for you yet because God is building a love for you that will sparkle so bright, the past will fade away like a dimmer switch. It will make every other romance you’ve experienced seem like mere puppy love. He’s saving the best for last, you just wait and see. Then she would smile and wink at me, and I would shake my head, pretending her words floated in one deaf ear and out the other.
But there was something different about today. An enigmatic charge seemed to ripple through the air, pulsing along in time to the waves that lapped below, and settling itself with a delicious tickle just beneath my skin. My eyes perused the crowd of passengers clustered all around me, the eagerness apparent in their faces as they waited, one after another, for their turn to board the massive ship.
“Cheese and rice, it’s hot. Why didn’t I wear shorts?” I complained, changing the subject.
“I’m telling you. I just got this sudden feeling that Mr. Right is on the ship right now,” My mama continued on, ignoring me. “You’re going to walk into the room and his face is going to light up with recognition as this tiny little voice whispers to him, ‘There she is. Now don’t be a dinkus, go talk to her.’”
I smiled in spite of myself, and lazily nudged my heavy tote bag forward a few inches with my foot. Truthfully, I was at war with myself. And if you want to get to the level of truth that usually requires a glass of wine or five, I was constantly finding myself locked in the midst of an internal battle these days.
I was the last person who needed to be sitting in love’s waiting room. If love were Waldo, I was reading the Highlights magazine. My adoring fiancé had decidedly become somewhat disenchanted with the “smile that blooms like a thousand roses; the only love of his life” and had discovered a new garden to weed. In a somewhat fascinating, albeit befuddling twist of a home-wrecking plot, my real trophy of a man had found himself enamored with She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, a braces-clad mother of two, while we were still together. And I found myself needing a break. A break from the tumultuous thunderstorm of life I was currently riding out to seemingly no end. Now, let me guess…this is the point where you stop reading to play a symphony on your thumbtack-sized violin, am I right? Before you roll your eyes in my direction, bear with me. I’m about to stop whining. Because, as Charlie Chaplin once said, “I have many problems in my life, but my lips don’t know that. They always smile.”
If it weren’t for daily laughter with my amazing co-workers, and 3 p.m. coffee, I would soak up the drudgeries of day-to-day life in ever-bustling Orlando like a human sponge. But God had blessed me with abilities that I take confidence in, and so did my boss, because he could see them for what they add up to: talent. I simply needed this cruise because my brain desperately craved an outlet for the thoughts that were swirling around endlessly in my mind. I wanted three things more than anything else in this world: a beach. A pen. A notebook. I needed to write. Mentally, I had already been relaxing on this glorious boat floating majestically beneath me for a week.
Finally, I needed this cruise as an emotional relief from what my friends tried to show me on a daily basis, but I didn’t want to see. I felt it was a dark day when, bowing down under the weight of life’s cruelties, you look up to find that the people closest to you have chosen to forsake your broken heart in order to take the side of the love that has thwarted you. Because they loved him. And what wasn’t to love? He was charming, beautiful, the only blonde guy I’ve ever found attractive besides Devon Sawa (ack! Dating myself), and he had crystal-blue eyes that seemed to melt your soul. And my best girlfriend liked to remind me of what I did not want to miss. The real problem was; I had started to listen.
The four of us had been a happy little group of friends, until this little love-disaster swooped in to destroy our idyllic life, and I found my mind at war with my heart. It would be so easy to just…
He had been my best friend. He had swooped in to save the day when I had needed him most, and I guess that is what I found myself struggling with. I couldn’t reconcile what he had done with the hero I had known him to be. Who everyone knew him to be. And it seemed I was the only one to accept that life had changed. It’s not that they didn’t love me. They would just rather see me take him back, than to uproot from Pleasantville. I remember all too clearly a conversation that tore at my heart:
You can still work things out with him, you know. All you have to do is show him that you still care, and he’ll come back to you. He’s still your man. He talks about you all the time. Melissa chewed eagerly on the end of her ponytail. Any time you come up in the conversation, it’s always him who brings your name up.
But, I don’t want him anymore, I lied. I held to the belief that if I pronounced it loudly and long enough to the world, and anyone who would listen, I would one day wake up to find it was true. I’ve had him, and I want better. God didn’t rescue me from the fire pit just so I can struggle out of his protective arms and take a nose-dive back in again. I. Deserve. Better. I reminded myself out loud to Melissa. He’s her problem now.
But…she’s so annoying. I can’t stand her. She’s like a child. And, she never talks to me. You need to just steal him back and make her go away. It’s no fun hanging out with the two of them. I mean, there’s this other girl that he’s brought to karaoke night before, but they’re just friends. I keep thinking, if you don’t take him back, then he should date this other girl, she’s pretty fun. You’d like her. I could see being friends with her. But he doesn’t like her like that, so you need to take him back. Matt thinks the two of you are just being stupid, and that you’re perfect for each other.
Liss…he cheated.
Well, it is kind of your fault that he cheated. If you think about it. I mean, if you hadn’t gotten mad and stopped paying attention to him that one night, he wouldn’t have felt like he had to run to her.
I love her so much. But sometimes she had a way of smacking me in the face with my feelings, and at that moment, my best friend’s words hit right on my breaking point. Three weeks later I packed my bags, grabbed my mom, and drove to Port Canaveral like a bat out of he-…well, Orlando. Same thing. For me, anyway, because life was seriously bananas, as Gwen Stefani would say. Since I am, let’s face it, “This shtuff is bananas, I say B-A-N-A-N-A-S” years old. And at that uplifting reminder of my ever-increasing age, I jolt back to the present. Or to the re-telling of the present past. I mean to the fictional land of the sea and sun, remember? Because this is a truthful story of fiction. Ahem. Carry on:
“Seriously. I live in Florida for goodness’ sakes, you’d think I’d know that there’s a chance August would be slightly warm.” I yanked on the collar of my shirt as my mom steered me toward the sliding glass doors of the all-you-can-eat heart attack.
“Well, it’s nearing four, so they should be delivering our bags to the room before too long. Why don’t we get a bite to eat and sit out on the deck while we wait?”
The cool rush of air that greeted me was like a welcome smack to the face. I tugged on the waistband of my jeans to give my suffering legs a taste of the sweet breeze. Dabbing at the sweat forming on my brow, I followed my mom in the direction of the growing buffet line, snaking past the dining room and beginning to crowd the breezeway. I began to make my way in search of the end of the line, when I was stopped momentarily by a hand on my arm. I glanced into the dark eyes of a handsome young attendant with curling hair black as night.
“Miss I help you, j’yes?”
“Um…the buffet line. I’m just headed to get, um, you know, food.” I managed, smiling shyly.
“J’yes okay. J’yes.”
“Um…I am going the right way, right?” I tried to bat my eyes in that coquettish way that women are taught to flirt, but instead, I ended up blinking so hard that my mascara temporarily glued my eyelashes together.
“J’yes, okay. J’yes.”
Great. I smiled politely and motioned that I would be moving on now, without his help. Shaking my head, I turned back toward the buffet line and glanced up.
Okay. So, by some hypothetically crazy notion, let’s say Mom’s right, I thought to myself, catching my breath. If that’s the case, the man for me is either going to be the exotic Fabio of a cabana boy who doesn’t speak English…or the man walking toward me right now, who is smiling at me in a way I have never seen before, but that I feel with everything coursing through me at this moment, I have to see again. And again.
Accompanied by two guys, the tall man with the commanding presence and jovial smile made his way toward the door leading to the deck, his face lighting all the way up to his chocolate brown eyes that met mine as he passed by. An odd sort of tingling settled into my stomach, which turned into a twinge of anxiety that I couldn’t explain as I watched him walk out the door. I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to see that smile again.
What the heck, bro. I didn’t know a darn thing about this man besides the fact that he wore a baby blue t-shirt that clung nicely to his muscles. His strong, nicely bronzed muscles. Well done, Lord. I like that one. I shook my head, trying to shake the nameless man out of my mind as I compiled my plate of food, and met back up with my mom.
But, still. He stuck with me.
“Where would you like to sit?” Mom asked, glancing around at the surrounding tables, already crowded with screaming children and parents looking as if they clearly needed this vacation.
“How about we go out on the deck?” I suggested.
“But aren’t you hot?”
“Eh, I’ll be fine.” I said.
Mom looked at me quizzically as she followed me out the doorway to the deck. I set my tray down on the first empty table I saw, nearly dumping my stale-in-another-five-minutes pizza, my attention focused on scanning the small crowd to no avail.
He was gone.
Stories with soul. Strategy with spine. 