by Hawke, Jessa
She watched the waves lap languorously over each other, and watching the smooth satin of the water lick itself filled her with a funny feeling—or was that the alcohol?—as if she was the one who was submerged in it instead of the bow of the ship, and she was the one being tongued by a million riotous waves.
Greetings, passengers! A voice came over the sound system. This is your captain speaking. We have set sail and are traveling at twenty-five knots per hour. Weather conditions look favorable, and the temperature is eighty-five degrees. Please enjoy the various activities we have on board and don’t miss our fantastic show tonight! Happy sailing and bon voyage!
Mackie breathed in the cool, conditioned air around her, and sipped some more of her drink. She had wandered into a narrow hallway that seemed rapidly to be filling with people—what was going on? A turn around the end of the hall revealed that she had found the main entrance to the showroom, and the early dinner crowd had finished stuffing down the last of their steaks and baked potatoes. It was five minutes to showtime, and Mackie wanted to make sure that she got a good seat. Smiling slyly to herself, she snuck around the crowd and dipped inside, flashing her ID at the showroom manager. She ignored the loud protests behind her and navigated the sloping floor carefully, making sure she didn’t spill her drink. She found an unobtrusive seat off to the side of the front row, and slowly sucked her drink down to the olives, waiting for the show to begin.
She was not disappointed. The glitz and glamour of the opening act rivaled Broadway, indeed, and she knew she would feel proud in the coming months of being part of such a talented team. After the musical acts were done, Ricky took his designated post as host of the evening at the mic.
“Ladies and gentlemen, King Royal is very pleased to have the next gentleman as part of our act. You’ve seen him on Letterman, you’ve seen him around the globe—he is the number one champion juggler in the world, Adaaaaaam Santiiiiino!”
Mackie felt herself catapulted into the strange world of a three ring circus as Ricky brought out a tall man dressed from head to toe in black. The performer tossed one ball into the air, then two, then four, continuing into a range of objects that left Mackie slightly dizzy. But more than that, she found herself focusing on how absolutely damn attractive Adam Santino was.
Standing at what Mackie estimated to be an even six foot five, he was beautifully built. Strong, broad shoulders tapered into a slim, neat little waist, pectorals sculpted underneath his tight-fitting V-neck black T-shirt, strong upper arms rounding out its sleeves. The long, lean line of his leg did not dare disrupt the press of his pants, and when he turned around mid-trick to catch nine glass balls in succession, Mackie got a front-row view of his cute little butt. The best kind. She realized she had spied Adam earlier, amongst the throng of people at the front of the showroom, but had written him off as a slightly better-dressed version of the typical Texan cruise lounger. Now that she saw him on stage, she drank him in leisurely, the full, sandy-blonde hair, the thick black outline of his appealingly nerdy glasses, and the generous cut of his mouth, which he would sometimes bite down on in concentration.
She was drunk on it, the feeling of watching somebody skilled do what they loved. Almost unconsciously, she was scooping the olives off of their tiny red plastic skewer with her tongue, rolling it in her mouth before biting into it, releasing juice into her mouth just as Adam caught flying objects again and again, bending his body into impossible positions.
And then, he was asking for a volunteer from the audience. Mackie did not stir, although there were parts of her that knew she wanted to be near him, very much. She watched him scan the audience, for jest placing a hand perpendicular to his forehead as if he was a sea captain surveying the horizon for potential storms. And when his eyes landed on her, Mackie knew that something indeed was a-brewin’.
* * *
Mackie could see him respond. Adam Santino stood on stage as if struck by lightning, and his eyes swept almost uncontrollably up her body, taking in the delicate ankles, the splayed pleats of her silk dress, linger momentarily on the pert little breasts rounding out the triangles of her top, and locked on her face.
“The lady in green, please,” Adam intoned.
Mackie cheerfully continued sucking olives off her plastic.
“Green silk. Blue? Is that blue, or some new-fangled color the wicked women of the world have invented to terrorize the color-blind?” The audience tittered. “Would the gorgeous black woman in the front row to my right please join me on the stage?” he asked again. Mackie wondered at his insistence, and also at the woman’s seeming reluctance to come up. Some people really are shy, she thought to herself, craning her neck to try and see what she assumed was the only other black woman on the whole ship.
The man sitting behind her tapped her on the shoulder. “I think he’s talking to you,” he whispered loudly, and Mackie realized he was right. The person, the gorgeous woman, Adam Santino was asking for on stage was none other than Mackie herself. She gulped, and then quietly set down her martini glass on the table a little off to her right. Feeling the folds of her dress swirl around her as she stood, Mackie carefully alighted the stage, the familiar harsh cut of the stage lights blinding her.
“Now, isn’t she lovely, folks?” Adam asked, and the audience clapped like a well-trained slew of seals. Mackie cocked an eyebrow at him, and was surprised to find that Adam’s smile held the faintest hint of irony. His eyes, she also noted, were gray and framed by a thick set of dark blond lashes.
“Now, what is your name?”
“Mackie.”
“And what do you do, Mackie?” he asked, scooping up two of the round plastic balls he had used in an earlier trick.
“I’m a ballerina.”
Adam’s mouth formed a round O that seemed genuine despite the fact that he faced the crowd and exclaimed, “A ballerina, ladies and gentlemen! Well, Mackie, you got me—I was NOT expecting that.” Mackie gave a little shrug, feeling a smile curl the edges of her lips. She was willing to play along.
“Do you know how to juggle, pretty Mackie?” Adam asked her, proffering the two plastic balls.
“A little,” Mackie told him, feeling her shoulders arch back in a response she recognized. Adam might be sexy as hell, but he also looked like a man who relished a little competition. Just her type of guy.
Adam began to demonstrate how to juggle the two balls, slowly, catching them with exaggerated motions and bowing a little when the crowd broke out into scattered applause. “Now you try.”
Mackie took the two balls and repeated his motions to the letter, down to the overblown way he had completed the catch, just to make it obvious that she was teasing him. She could see the amusement sparkling in his eyes as he said, “All right, all right, you seem to have a good handle on that. Now, I want you to juggle three—think you can do that?”
“Let’s try five.”
Adam’s eyebrows jumped a little. “Whoa-ho, someone thinks they’re a badass—s’cuse my language, folks. Fine, Mackie, take five. Now, what I want you to do is juggle them twice and then lob them to me. Savvy?”
Mackie knew the trick well. Adam would take each ball from her as she threw them over her shoulder and juggle them himself, anchoring the fifth one with his foot. The fact that he was asking her to juggle them twice herself—well, that was his challenge to her, nothing else. A private little tease just between the two of them.
And so she tossed one ball into the air, two, and three. They rotated and she flipped them, not stumbling even a little when Adam, with a surprised look on his face, tossed her the next two balls. Three he might have been expecting, but there was no way Adam Santino, the best juggler in the world, had been prepared for her to juggle five balls. She tossed him one over her shoulder, then the next, feeling the audience draw in a bated breath at the seamless exchange. Adam was juggling, doing spins and tricks with the four, and motioned to Mackie to toss him the fifth. She did, and watched the audience gasp at his prowess. The
trick ended, Mackie knew, with Adam tossing each one of the five balls to someone waiting in the wings, and it wasn’t long before he started doing just that. One quick motion, however, and Mackie was in between him and that person, catching all four and then, for the final flourish, balancing the fifth one on the back of her foot as she stood on one leg.
Adam turned around and caught sight of what she had done. Watching the handsome juggling master’s jaw unhinge, Mackie gave a little flick with her foot and the ball sailed over her head to land in the crook of her elbows with the rest of them. Handing them off to Adam’s assistant, who was waiting, also slack-jawed in the wings, Mackie strode past Adam and the cheering audience, swinging her slender hips the whole way down.
And the best part?
Adam Santino simply could not take his eyes off her.
* * *
The audience clapped, but this time, it was not for a handsome man in black giving ordinary objects wings. This time, Mackie knew that it was for her, for her rendition of The Four Seasons, the piece where she embodied the title so passionately that the applause had continued on for five straight minutes after she was done. People stood. It was heartening to see that even if the American Ballet Company thought that cruise ships were not classy enough to uphold their reputation, good ballet was appreciated even by the lowest common denominator.
All right, so she was a bit of a snob.
Mackie chuckled to herself as she toweled the sweat off her brow. She was almost done changing when someone knocked on the dressing room door.
“Is the lovely lady in green ready to be congratulated on her second spectacular performance?” chirped Adam Santino from the door.
A jolt of wakefulness went through Mackie’s body. She stood and crossed the room, unlatching the door to let the juggler in. He entered, pressing a small arrangement of lilacs into her hands. Surprised, Mackie accepted, pressing her face into them. Where could he have gotten lilacs aboard a ship God knows how far from any shoreline? She put them on the table to finish dressing.
“It’s more like pink tonight,” she told him, slipping into a cardigan of the mentioned color.
“Ah pink. The color of how tickled I was by your little trick last night,” Adam told her, his fine body leaning against the wall as he crossed his arms in what was unmistakably a challenging stance.
“Is that what you meant by my second performance?” Mackie asked, feeling light and alive, endorphins from her performance and the nearness of this man filling her.
“Don’t get me wrong, you are a most marvelous dancer,” Adam said, pushing himself off the wall and walking over to where she was sitting on the chair to rest the heels of his hands on the back of it, framing Mackie in the reflection in the mirror. “I enjoyed myself ever so much watching your absolutely incredible body twist and bend like that. But as the foremost juggler pretty much anywhere, you can imagine I am much more interested in your prowess from last night.”
Good God, he was cocky. But charmingly, completely forgivably and excitingly so. Mackie felt a small pulse of adrenaline surge through her. She relished a challenge.
“I’m afraid that’s something that you’ll simply have to file away in your ‘Mysteries of the World’ box,” she said, with an expression of perfect innocence. Adam’s eyes lit up in the mirror; clearly, he was enjoying himself as much as she was.
Slowly and deftly, Adam brought his incredible face down to her ear. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek and neck as he considered their reflection, ivory and coffee, before speaking.
“My favorite thing in the world is solving mysteries, did you know that?”
“And how do you plan to solve this one?” she asked, heart thumping all out of sorts.
“I plan to break you down at dinner tomorrow night. Up to the challenge?”
Mackie’s eyes caught Adam’s gray ones in the mirror. She was filled with a sudden desire to press every available inch of bared flesh against Adam’s muscled forearms. Licking her lips, she said, “If you think you can handle it.”
Adam laughed aloud, caught off guard. With one swift motion, he kissed her cheek, gave a little bow, and exited the dressing room, leaving Mackie with her cheek electrified and her skin singing.
As she got ready for dinner the next day, she couldn’t help but wonder at herself. It was true she had never had much time for men due to her strict schedule as a ballet dancer, so where had she learned to flirt like that? Maybe it was because there was something so likable about Adam, something that was as simple and wonderful as taking this job offer had been. Besides, it was her time to cut loose, wasn’t it? Why not cut loose with a gorgeous man who seemed enthralled by her? The dress she had chosen for the night, dark blue velvet, molded itself to her body more than could possibly be decent. Thin straps formed the extreme V of her neckline, and the velvet clung to her small breasts. Too often, Mackie had noticed all the flaws of her body—the thickness of the muscles of her thighs, her insubstantial breasts, all the qualities that were so appropriate in the dance world that she never thought could be appreciated by men. But yesterday, Adam had looked at her in a way that made her fairly certain he was undressing her, and quickly, in his mind. So why not tease him just a little bit more? Mackie swelled with the power of her own sexuality.
She glanced down at her gold watch. Damn, she was early. She decided to explore the ship a little bit, wandering in and out of the small boutiques that featured pearls, mascaras, and sweatshirts that were all ridiculously overpriced and glittering with the kind of newness that made them seductive. She liked the feeling of anonymity the wandering gave her, even though from time to time, she could hear someone whisper about her, about the ballerina, as she walked by.
Somehow, miraculously, of the forty plus bars that King Royal boasted, Mackie managed to find the same one as from her first night. The bartender handed her the same dirty martini that she had enjoyed so thoroughly then; Mackie took it with surprise, amazed he remembered without her even having to say a word. As she tilted the martini glass back against her lips, the faint strains of ‘ol Blue Eyes came drifting, curling gradually against her ears. On impulse, she decided to follow it; if she was going to be on this ship for so many more weeks, she should know who on the ship enjoyed the classics as much as she did. Grabbing her glass and purse, Mackie set out to adventure.
Only to find that her adventure wound her around the grand staircase to the fairly non-exciting main lobby. She didn’t localize the sound of the music, however, until she rounded the edge of the staircase to find what had to be the ship’s most unassuming lounge. Off to the left, a photographer had set up a tropical backdrop for the photos most of the passengers seemed unbelievably willing to purchase, and he was surrounded by a plethora of white leather couches that were scattered amongst large potted plants. It was from behind one of these plants that a man was playing a creamy baby Grand.
Settling down into one of the white couches and sipping her drink to have something to do with her hands, Mackie watched the man play. Was he Spanish or Greek, she wondered, trying to discreetly catch a better look at his face. He was in his late twenties or early thirties, muscled through the shoulders, which she found unusual for a musician, and playing the steady ease of someone for who such a song is child’s play. He did not even glance at the keys, but would look beyond the edge of the piano from time to time, a clearly fashioned smile touching his face gently as he connected eyes with one of the crew. Mackie liked that he was a people watcher, and quite suddenly, she knew that she wanted him to notice her, as well.
Downing the rest of the drink, she moved to a couch that was directly to the man’s right. It took all her courage, but she willed herself to sit there and not order another drink as pretense that that was her aim. Her aim was to get to know the man with the soft brown hair standing up from his head as if shocked by electricity, so why pretend otherwise? She was a grown woman, for fuck’s sake.
She was a grown woman, Mackie realized slowly,
and when the musician’s eye finally caught hers, she uncrossed and crossed her long, dark legs sensuously, and stroked one finger against the pebbly surface of her evening bag. When she looked back at him, there was a real smile on his face, one that did not come and go this time.
The song ended, and it was followed by another, something from Cage the Elephants, a song with a far harder edge, and the sudden change from classic to rock thrilled her. She associated personality with music, and the loping, rapid beat of the song played on her skin just as surely as the pianist’s smile had. A few minutes later, the song came to a close, and so, apparently, did his work evening. From beneath the piano bench, he pulled a folder full of sheet music and put away the songs he had played that night. He was just sliding the folder into a black messenger bag when Mackie gathered up the boldness to approach him.
“I found myself wondering,” she said to him, leaning on one elbow against the creamy Grand, “what manner of man plays Sinatra and a song that normalizes prostitution in the same breath?” Good Lord, alcohol was liquid courage, indeed.
“And I found myself wondering what manner of woman manages to find the self-assurance to watch a man she doesn’t know so openly,” he answered her, eyes twinkling with humor. His face was not what she expected. It was craggy, as if hewn from rock, with a prominent Roman nose, dipping just a touch in the center. His mouth looked like it was carved from deeply hued quartz, a man’s mouth, a mouth that looked like it enjoyed whiskey and kissing breasts.
“The kind of woman who likes her classical with a hint of badassery,” Mackie replied, enjoying the contours of his face a great deal.
He chuckled, and the sound was deep and engaging; it made her want to take another step closer to him, so she did.
“And what does such a woman do for a living? A photographer, a collector of images?”
“A ballerina.”
His eyebrows spiked. “A ballerina, really?” His warm brown eyes traveled down the length of her body, dancing along the midnight blue velvet, warming her skin. She noted that his accent was different, belonging distinctly to neither country she had guess he was from earlier. She strained to get a look at his nametag, because all King Royal employees had their country of origin printed below their name.
