by Emily Belden
“Let’s talk more inside” before sealing the quick interaction
with a wink. I forgot that every philanthropic action tonight
isn’t about being nice; it’s about potentially getting laid. It’s like night one of The Bachelorette here and that was this guy’s staged limo exit. In which case, I wish I just gave my molars
a chance to help adhere the damn thing to my wrist instead
of letting the a-little-too-smiley “Jake” think I actually care to talk to him more inside.
Once appropriately tagged and banded, I look up and re-
alize that Casey has already beelined it onto the ship without
me. Although she’s probably at the bar, I don’t want to risk
waltzing into the lion’s den solo, so I take out my phone to
shoot her a text—there’s too much noise for my Apple Watch
to pick up my voice. In doing so, I see that I have one sitting in my inbox from Brian. I must have been too busy fidgeting
with my wristband to have noticed it come in.
Did you decide about the plot? it says.
Crap. The truth is, I—
Haven’t even thought about it? his next text says.
Sry, I say back before further questioning.
It’s fine.
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I imagine the sinking look on his face once he realized I
hadn’t thought about the plot on Grower Street yet. I know
he has to get back to the crypt broker (god, that sounds so
weird) tomorrow, but I just can’t tell my mind to process this
any faster.
Casey grabs my shoulder with one hand and holds a piña
colada with the other. “Thought I lost you,” she says as I cut
my phone to black. “Let’s get inside before I get yelled at for taking my drink off the ship.”
She escorts me onto the boat and I soak it all in. The in-
side of it is like a casino meets hotel lobby meets man-cave.
“So I signed us up for the first round of all-inclusive speed
dating,” Casey says. “It starts in ten minutes.”
“No thanks, I’m good,” I say. She gives me a look like my
answer isn’t the hall pass I think it is.
“What part of ‘I signed us up’ didn’t you understand? We’re
doing it,” she dictates.
“I don’t even know what it is. All-inclusive speed dating?
Does that mean my nausea comes with an actual vomit bag?
Because it would be great if that was the case.”
Just then, I feel the boat jerk forward. We have officially
set sail on the open water. I flag a circling cocktail waitress who looks like she’s been plucked straight out of The Flamingo in Las Vegas to work the event tonight and order a
bourbon and ginger. If anything, the ginger ale will quell my
stomach nerves while the bourbon numbs the mounting fact
that I don’t want to be here. Why couldn’t our first hang sesh
as roommates have been a 3D movie or one of those BYOB
wine painting classes?
“It means it’s guys and girls,” says Casey.
“Isn’t that how all speed dating works?” I question.
“Yes, but with this round, you may be paired with a guy
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for one conversation, and a girl with the next one. Either way, you have sixty seconds with each person.”
“With all due respect, Casey, I think you know by now
that I’m purely into men.”
“So then you’ll make a few friends while on the hunt for
your next lover. I said don’t freak out. Just roll with it, okay?
I’m going to freshen up my makeup in the ladies room. I feel
like I’m very shiny.”
“You’re not,” I assure her.
“Yeah but I feel like I am. Don’t go anywhere, homie.”
With Casey out of sight tending to her phantom sweaty
forehead issues, I neurotically tap my Apple Watch and check
it for messages again. There are no new ones.
I proceed to speak into my watch and fire off a good old-
fashioned Is everything OK? text, but when I do, the message
to Brian gets kicked back as undeliverable. Assuming it’s a
glitch with the watch, I take out my phone and try again. No
dice with that either.
Dear god, I think to myself. It has started—the lack of cell phone reception has officially kicked in as we have made it
far enough away from the coastline to be unable to connect
with the rest of world. Here’s to hoping there are no icebergs
out here.
“Bourbon and ginger?” the cocktail waitress calls out as
she hands me my order.
“Yes, thank you.” I claim it and tip her a dollar. “Hey, can
you tell me the code to the Wi-Fi as well?”
“Wi-Fi? There’s no Wi-Fi, honey.”
“There are stickers all over the ship that say Wi-Fi En-
abled,” I gently point out.
“Yes, but the event organizers had us disconnect it for the
night. Said they want their participants focused on each other, not their phones. Sorry, sweetie. I feel your pain.” She lets
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out a frustrated huff and walks away to deliver the rest of the drinks on her tray.
I’m calling bullshit. They didn’t cut the internet so we could
focus on each other, they cut it—along with deciding to serve
bottom-shelf bourbon, flat ginger ale, and host this thing on
a Sunday night—to save money. Cheap asses.
Regardless, no service and no Wi-Fi mean no way to deal
with the ominous It’s fine text Brian sent me. I dread the
thought that he may assume I’m ignoring him when some-
thing is clearly on his mind. This is the worst possible situa-
tion right now.
“Alright, Char-Char. It’s our turn to hit the speed dating
tables,” Casey says as she sneaks up behind me.
Wait, no. Maybe that’s the worst possible situation right now.
“Do you know there’s no internet on this ship?” I ask as
she ushers me to a row of ten bistro-sized tables, each with
two chairs at them.
“Who cares?”
“I do. It’s like we’re in some sort of a black hole!”
“Relax. Your Tinder account will still be there when this
thing ends. Just sit down before there are no seats left.”
The joke would be on Casey if only she realized that I
haven’t really checked Tinder since Decker came back. I guess
your new-husband priorities just kind of fall the wayside when
your old husband returns. But regardless, I find the one open
seat on the “stationary” side of the speed dating table, which
means every sixty seconds when the whistle blows, I will not
move but rather someone new will be sitting across from me.
Casey is sitting on the rotating side, her face looking like it has more white powder on it than a frosted beignet. Somehow, it
works for her. A guy who looks like a young Tom Hanks is
the first to sit down across from me.
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“Hi, I’m Liam,” h
e says, shaking my hand. His palm is cold
and sweaty. “I guess you’re my first ‘date’ of the evening?”
“Charlotte,” I say with a forced smile as I return the shake
like my hand is a dead fish.
“Sixty seconds are on the clock… GO!” shouts the mod-
erator for this event.
“So, what do you do for a living?” I robotically ask as I take
a sip of my now watered-down bourbon and ginger.
“I’m a hedge fund manager. And I also collect classic cars.
I have about eight in my garage right now.”
“Wow, very cool,” I say, noting that hedge funds and clas-
sic cars might not actually be such a bad combo.
“Are you more of a Mustang girl or are you into Corvettes?”
“Corvettes,” I say, as if I really have an opinion on the mat-
ter. “How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-six. You?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Right on. My little sister…”
Liam trails off about something related to his younger sib-
ling while I maintain eye contact but feel around as discreetly as I can in my bag for a pen. Sixty seconds isn’t much time to
work with, but the fact that he is a hedge fund manager and
car collector is worth some extra exploration for the sake of
the app. Even though there is no cell service on this godfor-
saken boat and I can’t plug these data points into my app right now, I just need ten seconds to jot down Liam’s info on the
back of a cocktail napkin before the next round starts. It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to do.
“So, what kind of a guy are you looking for?” he asks just
as the whistle to the next round blows. “Dang, that went by
fast. Here’s my card. Get in touch if you’d like.”
I note that he says the word “dang” when frustrated—as
opposed to “damn”—as my next date settles in across from
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me. It’s a woman. And not just any woman, it happens to be
Gemma from WeHot. It’s a little foreign seeing my client here
at a dating event. It’s like spotting your teacher out shopping for groceries. But that’s the risk I ran going to an event like this. You never know who’s spending their free time and disposable income on a singles cruise. For all I know, maybe her roommate dragged her here as well. That said, the fact that I
somewhat know her will make telling her I’m not romanti-
cally interested in women slightly less awkward than having
to break that news to a total stranger.
“Well, hello, hello,” I say to Gemma.
“Charlotte. So funny seeing you here.”
“Same to you. Well, I’m not sure how to put this, but I’m
here for the boys,” I spew out.
“Me too. But happy to play along and go through the get-
ting-to-know-you motions. So…what’s your last name, Charlotte?”
I smile at this more relaxed version of my uptight client
before telling her, “It’s Rosen. You?”
“Sutherland. I’m born and raised in LA. How about your-
self?”
“New York City. Brooklyn.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. And you’re not in show busi-
ness obviously, so how’d you find yourself all the way in
sunny SoCal?”
She’s right. Hollywood is what brings most everyone here
and I’m not an exception, even though she thinks I am. I could
skip over that part of my life, or I can try dabbling in some-
thing new: being honest about my past.
“Actually, I started my career in casting and craft services.
That’s where I met my husband. I was married, but I’m a
widow now. My husband was born and raised in LA like you.
Went to USC, did the whole lacrosse thing. Anyway, after he
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died, I just ended up getting a job here that I really loved and decided to stick around ever since. I don’t think I could handle an East Coast winter again, to be honest,” I joke.
Yes, that whole exchange was clunky. But it felt amaz-
ing and empowering to just rattle the awkward truth off to a
person I hardly know and who’s about to shift seats in three,
two…
“And, rotate!” says the moderator.
“What was your married name?” she asks. I know we need
to change partners, but I like this follow-up question over
the other possibilities, such as…how did he die? When did
he die? etc.
“Austin,” I indulge her before she moves.
“Go around me,” Gemma says to the suitor who was sup-
posed to take the seat in front of me next.
“Are you for real right now?” he says. “This isn’t how
speed dating works, lady. You get one minute. It’s my turn
with her now.”
She flicks her hand at him like she’s shooing away a fly.
Clearly, she’s not budging, so he shakes his head and skips
over a seat, leaving me forever wondering if the guy, a young
Denzel Washington lookalike, could have been my soulmate.
“And begin!” shouts the stopwatch-wielding moderator
from a distance.
“What are you doing, Gemma? You have to rotate.” I can’t
believe I’m voluntarily policing this event.
“You look so different,” she says. “Your hair. It was blond
back then.”
“Excuse me?”
“And short. Wasn’t it? It was a pixie cut, in that picture of
you I saw five years ago.”
“Okay, you’re actually freaking me out right now. What are you even talking about?”
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Emily Belden
“Are you sure the name Gemma Sutherland doesn’t mean
anything to you?”
“You’re a client of The Influencer Firm,” I announce mat-
ter-of-factly.
“That’s it?”
“You’re a valued client of The Inf luencer Firm? I don’t know what you want me to say right now, Gemma. But I really don’t want to get in trouble by the lady with the whistle, so could you please—”
“Christ. I fucking knew it,” she huffs to no one in par-
ticular and looks to the sky as she bites the tips of her French manicure. If she were a man, these nervous ticks would be key
body language data points for me. But for now, she just looks
like she can’t follow the rules of a simple round of speed dat-
ing. She leans in like she’s about to tell me my underwear is
showing and whispers, “Look, I’m not sure who all I’m going
to piss off by telling you this, but I really don’t care anymore.
Enough time has gone by and I was promised that they told you; that you knew.” Just then the whistle blows on this round
of speed dating.
Gemma doesn’t break eye contact with me. Instead she just
puts her hand out to block the next guy from trying to take
the turn that is rightfully his. He rolls his eyes and obliges.
Another potential soulmate, down.
Gemma mumbles to herself then says: “Decker—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a sec. How do you know who
Decker is?”
“�
��has a son,” she blurts out.
“Gemma, I don’t know what is going here, but clearly we
are blurring some sort of client relationship boundaries here.
I’m going.”
I get up from the stationary side of the table and she reaches
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across, putting her hand on my arm and directing me back
into the chair.
“He has a son with me.”
My concern for this woman’s stability and sobriety is rap-
idly growing. It’s my turn to lean in and whisper.
“I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about,”
I say, stirring the melting ice in my otherwise empty cock-
tail glass on the table. “But this is not appropriate, and I am leaving.”
“I know you don’t know what I’m talking about, which
is precisely the problem. I was told that you knew about our
son and that you wanted to be involved in his life, but you
just needed some temporary distance since it was so soon after
Decker had passed. And I understood that—I, I accepted that.
But then years went by and you never contacted me, nobody
brought you up, and I couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t
want to be part of Decker’s son’s life. So, clearly someone lied and I’m not going to play into that anymore. I’m done.”
“What are you talking about? Who lied?”
She just shakes her head as if I was asking her a yes or no
question.
“Who lied, Gemma? You better start naming some names
if you want me to keep taking you seriously.”
The truth is I haven’t started to take her seriously, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“I know it looks like I have my life together. And I do now,
somewhat. But even after the money, the secrets are still chok-
ing me and have been for the last five years. I just don’t think I can be the one who pieces this whole thing together for you,”
she says as she gets up to leave the speed dating table. I drive my fingernails into her forearm the way Casey did when she
dragged me onto this cursed boat.
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“Sit down,” I demand. “We’re not done here. Not even
close.”
“Is there a problem over here?” the woman with the stop-
watch approaches the two of us. “The flow seems to be getting
clogged up over here, and it’s very important all our patrons
