A grin splits across his face. He leans down, hands gripping the backs of my legs, and he hoists me up.
He finishes the tour of the apartment like that: me in his arms, legs wrapped around his waist, one of his strong hands pressed against my back.
He shows me our bedroom—it’s just a mattress in the middle of the floor, he still technically lives with the team captain, and he will until I move—but it might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
A mattress with crisp navy sheets and a haphazardly pulled-up duvet.
It’s where he lays me down.
It’s where he undresses me with a sort of kind, gentle precision that could only ever belong to him.
It’s where he makes my body react and makes me feel things that I’ve never felt before and I don’t think I ever will again.
It’s where we sit, wrapped up in sheets and eating Chinese takeout from containers.
It’s where we play Candy Land all night.
It’s where we say I love you long after the sun sets, casting shadows through all those giant windows, and even though it’s not even close to the first time we’ve said the only three words that really matter, it feels a bit like it is.
When looking back, I’d say it’s also where we start the rest of our lives.
Bohdan
To no one’s surprise, the tour ended in the helm of the ship so we could see the control room.
But to Talon’s surprise, the wheel of the ship was for show, not to steer.
He insisted on taking photos with it anyway. He posted one of the three of us online, him stretched out along the floor in the front, pointing up at it, Jay crouching down and ruffling his hair, and me leaning against the control board, foot kicked up, and looking at Talon, generally displeased.
The caption—“the only line to ever exist” made it out of the group chat—seemed to be an annoying hit with the sports fans of the internet.
People still talk about us, and they still love us all these years later.
There hasn’t been a line like us since, and the competitive part of me hopes there never will be. That there’s this one, glowing thing on the sunset of my career.
I had to mute my phone because the constant vibrating from the onslaught of notifications and texts as the cell service went in and out was starting to grate on me, including another text from Shay, asking if I’d given any thought to the offer.
I told her before we boarded that I wasn’t buying the Wi-Fi package and to expect to hear from me only sparingly. But her tenacity was one of the reasons having her in my corner as my agent had gotten me all sorts of deals other rookies and players could only dream of. But now she was asking me if I’d given any more thought to doing this thing that felt like going on live television, digging my own hands through my chest, and peeling back my rib cage for the world to get a look at all my failures up close.
The answer was probably no before I stepped on this ship, and it’s leaning even more that way since I laid eyes on Sloan and had a face-to-face reminder of what my inability to be candid about my own mental health cost me.
But it’s not like the notifications were keeping me from riveting conversation.
Sloan hid back under her sun hat, linked arms with Tia, and didn’t say a word until we reached activity number two on the itinerary: drinks and sunbathing on the entertainment deck.
“Oh. No. Sorry.” Sloan gives a tiny shake of her head. “We can’t sit here.”
“And why not?” Talon asks, swinging his legs over the edge of a lounge chair he spotted from across the deck of the ship and sprinted towards, practically shoving more than one child with floaties strapped around their waist out of the way, somehow avoiding spilling any of his drink.
“Sun exposure.”
Talon pushes his glasses down his nose, lip pulling back. “You’re half Italian, Sloan. Isn’t your dad from Sicily?”
Her grandfather. But I don’t correct him.
She waves a hand in the air. “Skin cancer is a threat to us all.”
But her eyes flick to me, and they land on the wave of hair I tugged down over my forehead to hide the scar.
