‘I’m one shade above white,’ I reply, throwing my bag under the desk. ‘Don’t get used to it, I think my UV radiation quota has been met for the next fifty years.’
‘It suits you!’ Kieran replies. ‘I’m just not used to it. You have freckles. You look. . . well. . . lifelike.’
‘Shut up!’ I reply, throwing a pen at him. ‘Don’t you pale shame me. Besides, my mum says I’m beautiful just the way I am.’
I take a seat, instantly feeling like I’ve never been away. I wish I’d taken an extra week.
‘What did I miss?’ I ask him. ‘Anything interesting?’
He looks around before lowering his voice. ‘Rupert and Shelley were fighting. Like fist fighting. It was chaos. I had to pull them apart.’
‘What? Oh my God! Seriously?’
‘Nope. It’s been dull as fuck. Like always.’
I shake my head. ‘You are truly the worst.’
He grunts in agreement. ‘So how was it? What did you do? Just hang out on deck with the rest of the boomers? Fan yourself with an oversized sun hat?’
He calls me a boomer to wind me up because he knows it absolutely winds me up. My mother is a boomer. I’m on the younger side of Gen X. A Xennial, if you will.
‘I did,’ I reply. ‘We all drank advocaat and laughed about the property prices in the eighties.’
‘Thought so.’
‘There were some cool people,’ I inform him, sifting through the pile of paperwork on my desk. ‘We had a group at our assigned inner table. Older couple who owned a B&B, married couple who worked for Nokia, super nice German couple who dressed alike and an Instagram model girl who hated us all.’
‘Excellent.’
‘AndI went to the Amalfi Coast, saw the St Andrew’s Cathedral, went to Pompeii, Pisa, Palamós. . .’
‘With your dinner pals?’
‘No, there was a guy I got on really well with. Ellis. We went on a few excursions together. He convinced me to go parasailing!’
Kieran’s jaw drops. ‘Youwent parasailing? I never thought. . . wait. . . what was that look?’
‘What look?’ I ask. ‘There was no look.’
‘There was definitely a look,’ he insists. He zeros in on my face. ‘You got all dreamy and smiley and shit when you said his name.’
‘I did not! He was nice to hang out with. Funny. There’s nothing more to say.’
‘I’m glad,’ he replies, accepting that sharing time is probably over. ‘Nothing warms my heart more than when two people in their autumn years finally meet the—’
‘Can you just stop talking now.’
Despite my conversations with Mum and Naomi, I have no desire to let him or anyone else know that I fell for someone unavailable. In my forties. On a cruise ship.
I walk over to reception and say hi to Eesha, recounting my travel tales. Shelley hovers around on her mobile phone, looking troubled.
‘Well, it’s nice to have you back!’ Eesha tells me. ‘Really glad it went well. You deserved the break.’
‘Nothingavailable? No, I don’t want Hallie, I don’t trust anyone but Georgio with my hair.’
Eesha and I both look over, watching Shelley pace up and down. Her hair probably could use a trim.
‘Nothing fortwo weeks? Impossible. Get Georgio to call me back himself.’
