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Rainey
“Put your phone away, Rainey!” Marsha growled at me as we stood in line to board the ship.
“I told you I would put it away once the ship set sail, Marsha. We aren’t even on the boat yet.”
She leaned closer to me and whispered, “Yeah, well, you are totally missing out on the merchandise here.”
I doubted that. I glanced over the top of my phone and scanned the area. What merchandise? All I saw were men either with their women, or men wanting to beawayfrom their women. I went back to reading the article that someone had emailed me on eyeless roundworms being able to sense color. It was much more interesting than the people around me.
“You know,” she huffed, “for a geneticist, you sure hate to be around people.”
I frowned at her. “What does my career have to do with anything?”
“You study genetics. You should be looking around at all the people here to see what you can figure out about them.”
“Marsha, I study genetics at the cellular level, not at a population level. I don’t come anywhere near people in my line of work.”
She snorted. “Well, that’s obvious! You need to learn how to socialize and relax, Rainey. You do know that is what this vacation is about, right?”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I was thirty-four now and hadn’t been interested in socializing for, oh, about twenty years. I lost my urge to hang out with people when I was a teenager. You could thank my high school classmates for that.
I also wasn’t one for crowds, and usually, anything over two people—including me—was a crowd. Keeping my nose to the glass of my phone was an attempt to undermine my anxiety—not that it was working at the moment.
Marsha turned her attention elsewhere after giving me a dirty look that I pretended not to notice. I heard her talking a couple of moments later to the couple in front of us, and although I was glad that she wasn’t speaking to me, part of me was annoyed. Not that she was conversing with someone, but because she could do it so effortlessly. To this day, I still struggled to speak to strangers about anything other than my passion—genetics.
Most times, when people asked what I did, I would tell them, and they’d say, oh really, and what do you study about them? I’d start explaining, and they’d get that boggled look in their eye that said they had no clue what I was talking about, and then they would begin to fidget. That was always the sign that they had to get away from me as quickly as possible before I blew their minds or bored them to death. I was used to it. It happened every time I spoke about my work.
The line started to move as our group was finally called to board. I slipped my phone into my purse and shuffled forward with the rest of the cattle. I couldn’t believe that I had let Marsha talk me into this. My idea of a vacation was alone on a beach with medical journals, or maybe a juicy medical mystery.
The only reason I had agreed to this was that Marsha had caught me looking at vacation getaways and talked me into it in a weak moment. It’ll be fun, she said. You’ll meet some great people, she said. Maybe even a handsome man who could whisk you away from your drab life. Blah! Men didn’t come on cruises looking for women. They were usually herewitha woman.
“Get that grim look off your face. You look like you are being punished. This is going to be fun.”
“Yeah, fun. Stuck in the middle of the ocean with three thousand other people. I don’t call that fun, Marsha.”
“Once you get on the boat, you won’t even be able to tell there are that many people there. They are spread out all over the place. You’ll get lots of peace and quiet and have plenty of room to avoid them.” She paused. “Not that I am going to allow you to avoid people.”
“Please don’t push, Marsha. I’m here. Can’t you be happy with that?”
“Ha! Nope!” she roared, and quite a few people glanced our way. I felt my cheeks start to warm as I stared at my feet. “I will not be happy until you have a pina colada in your hand and the ship is shoving off from the pier.”
I sighed, and she rolled her eyes. Quite honestly, I could use a fruity drink with an umbrella in it, maybe a couple. I worked long hours to finish a project before this trip, and I worked late last night to get the final parts done. I’d only gotten a couple of hours of sleep before we had to get up and catch a plane.
I kept my eyes forward as we made our way through security and handed over our boarding passes and passports at the gangway. Before I stepped onto the boat, I paused. If I took this step, I was going to be stuck on there for six nights. Was I going to be able to handle being unplugged from my life for that long?
Marsha reached back and yanked my arm, pulling me onto the boat before I could make my decision. “You are not going anywhere,” she hissed at me, then squealed as she pulled me into the main entryway.
I had to admit that it was glorious. I admired all the sparkling crystal chandeliers and shiny gold trim of the three-story area. The carpets were plush, and the wood was dark and elegant. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. I mean, the placewashuge.
“Come on. I’m starving. Let’s hit the buffet. We can’t be in our room for another hour.”
“Why not?”
“Because they are still cleaning the rooms, and our luggage will take a little while to arrive. Relax, Rainey. We will get lunch, drop off our stuff, and then we can go to the top deck and order a drink so we can say goodbye to the world as we float away.”
I wasn’t sure I was prepared to say goodbye to the world, and I glanced back at the gangway entrance, wondering if I could slip off before she noticed.
Four men stood at the security check-in, all of them laughing, and I squinted. The guy closest to me looked familiar, but I didn’t know why. It wasn’t the first time I felt like I saw someone I knew in a crowd, but I was wrong. It was just another reason I avoided crowds. I didn’t want to see people I knew.
