The Unsinkable Greta James(30)

Greta and Ben make their way along the pier, not quite walking in a straight line.

He looks at her sideways. “That was fun.”

“It was,” she agrees.

“Like, really fun.” He stops and scratches at his chin. He looks handsome right then, even with his ridiculously practical hiking boots and the still-soggy guidebook sticking out of the pocket of his rain jacket. “The most fun I’ve had in a while. Which must sound pathetic.”

She smiles. “I had a good time too.”

“It’s only eight-fifteen,” he says, glancing at his watch. “The night is still young.”

She nods toward the end of the boardwalk. “We have to catch the last tender.”

Ben tips his head back and peers at the sky. “Love me tender,” he warbles a little too loudly, a little bit drunkenly, “love me sweet.”

An older couple looks over reproachfully as they walk by, but Ben doesn’t notice. He’s still singing off-key, turning in an uneven circle, and when he stops, he’s only a few inches from Greta. Part of her wants to roll her eyes at him, while another part of her—a part she’s too drunk to fully examine right now—wants nothing more than to kiss him.

He squints at her, his eyes taking a second to focus.

“Hi,” he says with a bleary grin.

She laughs. “Hi.”

The air is thick with brine, and the way he’s looking at her makes her head light. He frowns and takes a small step closer.

“Hi,” he says again, though this time, his face is serious.

“Hi,” she says, her heart beating a bit too fast.

There’s a flower petal in his hair, small and pink and inexplicable, but just as she reaches for it, just as he leans toward her, they’re both startled by the sudden sound of a duck quacking. They draw back, each looking around with equally puzzled expressions, until something registers on Ben’s face and he lets out a laugh.

Greta watches in confusion as he fishes the phone from his pocket. “That’s your ringtone?”

“What do you have against ducks?” he says with a grin. By now, the quacking has stopped, but as soon as he focuses on the screen, his face falls.

“Shit,” he says, sounding instantly sober.

“What?”

“It’s my wife…my ex-wife…my…” He looks completely lost. “Maybe I should…you know…”

“Of course,” Greta says, watching as he punches a button. But instead of the blond woman whose picture she saw online, a small round face appears on the screen. Even at a glance, Greta can see that she looks like Ben: the inquisitive brown eyes and the gently sloping nose. She sits up anxiously, jostling the phone, her hair mussed from sleep.

“Daddy,” she says with a grin, revealing a huge gap where her front teeth should be. “Guess what just happened?”

Ben laughs. “I can’t believe it,” he says as he turns slightly away from Greta. “You’re keeping the tooth fairy pretty busy these days.”

Greta walks up the boardwalk a little way to give him some privacy. She checks her own phone and finds a text from Asher: Have you killed each other yet?

No, she writes back, but that’s only because he’s locked up in his room. She pauses, then adds: (I swear I didn’t do it.)

Yeah, Asher responds. He woke me up at 4 am to tell me after I’d been up all night with the twins.

It’s tough being the favorite, she writes, and he sends her back an eye roll emoji.

There’s also a text from Mary, a few hours old and in the kind of punctuation-free jumble that’s all her own: back on board will be in dining room at 7 join us if you want hope you had a good day!!!

When Greta looks up again, it’s to see Ben standing alone on the boardwalk, the phone now at his side. He’s staring out at the water with an unreadable expression.

“Everything okay?” she asks, walking back over.

He nods, though he looks distracted. “Avery lost a tooth in the middle of the night and wanted to tell me about it.”

“That’s sweet,” Greta says, and Ben glances over like he forgot she was there.

“I hate missing stuff like that,” he says quietly. “It’s happening so much more these days, between the travel and the separation, and sometimes I don’t know whether it’s…” He stops and shakes his head. “Sorry. You don’t need to hear about this.”

“I don’t mind,” Greta says, and he offers a small smile. But still, she can feel it: the way the air has gone out of the night.

Neither says anything for what feels like a long time. Instead, they both look off toward the ship, which is sitting out in the bay, checkered with lights. A moment ago, it had looked sparkly in the evening mist. But now the fog has thickened, making everything dull and distant.

“We should probably get back,” Greta says eventually, and Ben nods.

This time, they leave space between them as they walk, carrying the awkward silence with them onto the motorboat and across the small stretch of darkening water, over the gangway and into the ship’s elevator, all the way up to the sixth floor, where Ben steps off ahead of her and—just before disappearing—manages only a quiet, disappointingly formal good night.