Cruise Ship Christmas: A Holiday Short

by M. F. Lorson

  “We should get you back to your cabin,” said Baker, ever so gently pushing me forward by placing his hand on the small of my back.

  I wanted to growl at the couple as we passed, ruining my almost kiss was a capital offense. But I didn’t. There were two nights left on my cruise — two more opportunities to forget about the broken-up version of me and enjoy the moment.

  Tonight when I climbed into my tiny twin bed, I would drift off to the gentle rock of the boat and a million cinematic visions of a certain social coordinator pulling me in for a kiss.

  Chapter Seven

  I awoke to Kathy banging on my cabin door with urgency.

  “Open up,” she hollered from the other side. “We’ve already missed pancakes with Santa.”

  I pulled open the door and yawned a mile wide. “Is that supposed to make me feel better or worse about sleeping in?”

  Kathy made a bah humbug face before pushing past me to enter the room. “You could have ignored the Santa bit and just enjoyed the pancakes, you know. And my company,” she added with a little edge.

  My stomach growled. “I regret missing breakfast,” I agreed reluctantly.

  “That’s alright,” said Kathy, the smile returning to her face as she took a seat at the foot of my bed. “We can order room service. It will give us a chance to go over the day’s itinerary and decide on our activities!” I had never met anyone who liked pre-planned activities as much as Kathy. She would have made the perfect addition to the Wonder Crew if she didn’t have a job and a life to go back to.

  She pulled the cruise itinerary off my nightstand and scanned the day’s events. “We already did the massage. Obviously Bingo is out, although,” she said with a grin, “Baker is hosting that one today.”

  I shook my head, no. Even with a stone-cold hottie for a caller, Bingo was not an option.

  “Gingerbread house decorating contest?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Who's hosting that one?”

  Kathy quickly read through the blurb that accompanied the event on today’s timeline. “Cecile,” she answered. “I think she’s the one with the long brown hair.”

  I laughed, “Also known as Baker’s ex.”

  “Yikes,” said Kathy. “Guess we’re skipping that one.”

  “Actually,” I said, a wicked smile spreading across my face. “I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to talk to her.”

  Kathy looked at me like I had just sprouted an extra limb. “There’s a whole story there. I’ll catch you up when breakfast arrives. For now, reserve us a spot in that decorating contest. I’m ready to make little old ladies feel insecure about their cookie skills.”

  “Alright then!”

  An hour and a poor man’s version of Belgian waffles later, Kathy and I took our spot behind table number two of the decorating contest. She scanned the other tables to evaluate our competition.

  “I thought you said it would be little old ladies,” she whispered. “These people look like current Cupcake Wars contestants.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “What do I know?”

  “Hopefully, how to decorate,” she said, looking nervously at the various utensils laid out in front of us.

  We were in the banquet room, directly across from Bingo as my bad luck would have it. Baker gave a little wave from his spot at the front of the room. He was dressed in a Santa hat with no shirt and red suspenders. How anyone was going to keep track of the numbers on their bingo card, I did not know.

  “You could actually be on that side of the room talking to him and not just staring from afar.” Came a voice I recognized from last night. I turned around to face Cecile. It was a relief to see her dressed like a normal person and not an elf in a swimsuit or sexy Mrs. Clause.

  “I don’t do Bingo,” I replied.

  “Traumatic backstory,” offered Kathy, clearly aware that her new role in life was to add that little tidbit every time the word Bingo was uttered in my presence.

  “I see,” said Cecile. “What brings you to the Gingerbread House Decorating Contest. I thought you were anti-Christmas?”

  “Oh, I am,” I answered. “But that doesn’t mean I want to miss out on all of the festivities. I can put my own bitter spin on things.”

  “I like your style,” said Cecile, raising one eyebrow. “But I’m on to you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, it’s not the cookies you're competing for. You’re here to keep the cougars at bay.”

  I laughed. She wasn’t kidding. There were a lot of women in their late forties on this ship currently admiring Baker’s…..well they weren’t admiring his personality, that much was clear.

  “I think he can hold his own,” I replied, watching as he cranked the wheel and pulled out another number. “It was you I was hoping to talk to today.”

  “Me?” asked Cecile.

  Sensing a one on one conversation in the works, Kathy excused herself to orchestrate step two of her ridiculously elaborate Secret Santa plan.

  “From what I gathered at trivia last night, you two go back pretty far?” I questioned.

  “Grade school,” she replied with a sigh. “I thought I had officially rid myself of him when I left for college, but then we both ended up as Wonder Cruise attendants, and now I am strapped indefinitely to my third-grade boyfriend.”

  A table full of ladies cackled as Baker made every Bingo callers corniest joke into the microphone. “B4, what about later?”

  “I was gonna say it can’t be that bad, but then I heard that…”

  Cecile nodded sympathetically. “Mostly, I am kidding. I can’t think of a better person to see the world with.”

  A hard lump formed in the pit of my stomach. “You don’t, you don’t have like, feelings for him, do you?”

  Cecile’s eyes about popped out of her head. “Don’t even joke about that. My husband would go ballistic just hearing that was a rumor.”

  Relief hit me like a tidal wave. “Sorry, I just had to ask. What’s his story then? Married, seven littles at home?”

  “Ha!” cried Cecile. “Try, spurned by love, running away from his problems at twenty knots per minute.”

  I feigned a dramatic gasp. “Run away from Christmas Valley, who would do such a thing?”

  Cecile rolled her eyes. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Trust me. And Baker, he had a hard time there. You’re not the only one who got on this ship because home was too painful of a place to be,” she warned.

  I barely knew this woman, and already she had me figured out. I wondered if my face somehow read, can’t go home for the holidays, or if more likely, it was the same assumption she had about every single person on the ship.

  “I like you, Emily,” said Cecile, hefting a box of royal icing, food coloring, and a variety of other edible materials onto my table. “You seem like a lot of fun, but if fun is all you’re looking for, he’s not the guy for you. Despite appearances,” she added, shaking her head as Baker made another bad Bingo joke.

  I thought about the day before when Baker told Kathy and me how we had to have a good time to make up for him missing out on Christmas at home. If what Cecile said was true, he hadn’t exactly been honest. I wondered how much pressure he felt to keep all of the guests believing he was happy all the time.

  “I’m not planning to break any hearts,” I assured.

  “I’m sure you’re not,” answered Cecile with a sigh. “But to you, this is a week on a boat with a cute boy. It’s hardly real life.”

  I couldn’t argue. As much as I was loving this escape from reality, I knew full well that in 48 hours, we would dock back in Miami. Maybe there would be some texting when he was on land, an email back and forth on occasion, but there were far too many logistics getting in the way of a happily ever after.

  “I see your point. But it’s the same for him, right? He’s done this before. He knows there’s a clear beginning, middle, and end.”

  Cecile looked across the room at Baker. He held a candy bar in each
hand, waiting for a giggling woman clutching tightly to her daiquiri, to make her prize selection.

  “It’s different,” she said. “I’ve seen him do this before. Get interested in a passenger. Have fun for a week, but usually by the end, he’s ready for them to leave.”

  When I asked if he had done this before, I hadn’t actually expected her to answer yes.

  “Well then, I’m sure this time will be no different,” I replied, a little bitterness slipping into my tone.

  Cecile rolled her eyes, “Okay, Miss Sensitive.”

  “I’m just saying. I can’t hurt him if this is his thing.”

  Cecile sighed. “This is not his thing. You are not his usual thing. If you were, I would have cut this conversation off much earlier.”

  “What makes you so sure?” I asked, aware that I was starting to sound a little bit like a teenager at a sleepover.

  Cecile smiled. “He brought you to trivia.”

  “So?”

  “So...did you notice any other passengers there?”

  “No,” I replied, starting to get the picture.

  “That’s because we don’t bring guests to staff activities. Look,” said Cecile, spotting Kathy making her way back across the ship toward us. “All I’m saying is, if it’s just fun for you, you have to be clear about that, okay?”

  I wanted to ask her more, but the clock at the front of the room warned us that Gingerbread Decorating was supposed to have started five minutes ago. As Cecile explained the rules, I went over our conversation in my head.

  Everything about spending time with Baker had been fun for me. But was fun all it was? Was I as bad as those cougars, whistling every time he called a number?

  Chapter Eight

  I didn’t want to be one of those mean women who asked for advice and then cast it aside when it didn’t fit, but I was doing a really bad job of putting distance between myself and Baker. Instead, I found myself drawn to the areas of the ship I knew he would be.

  Like right now, I could have been tanning on the upper deck, or cracking open one of many gift store romances I’d purchased on my first lonely night abroad, but I wasn’t. I was holed up in the theatre room with half a dozen other cruisers, digging for M&M’s at the bottom of my popcorn bowl.

  “White Christmas, is about Christmas you know,” whispered Baker, leaning so close to my ear that I could feel his breath tickling my skin.

  “No,” I gasped, feigning shock, “Really?”

  We sat toward the back of the room, the projector on Baker’s right, me on his left.

  “I love this movie, actually,” he admitted, reaching into my bowl of popcorn. “The dancing and singing I could do without, but I love the idea of people coming together to save something important.”

  I’d seen White Christmas a half a dozen times if I had seen it once. It wasn’t on my top five favorite Christmas movies. Those spots were reserved for terrible Hallmark films starring Hollywood hasbeens, but I knew what he meant. It gave you all the holiday feels.

  “I would expect nothing less from a man from Christmas Valley,” I replied, tugging my popcorn bowl to the side.

  “The truth,” said Baker, tugging it back. “Is that I loved White Christmas long before what happened in Christmas Valley. Now I like to think that I like it despite Christmas Valley.”

  I looked up at him through my lashes. “Do I get to know what happened?”

  Baker let out a deep breath, his smile sagging at the corners. “I got married too young. Pretty much right after high school, and it ended a lot like yours did.”

  “Darn that Bingo,” I mumbled, then ripped open a second bag of M&M’s to add to our quickly dwindling bowl.

  The couple in front of us whipped around to glare at the sound of my bag crinkling.

  “Sorry,” I mouthed, then waited for them to get wrapped up in the movie again so I could continue our conversation where it left off.

  “If you are trying to tell me I shouldn’t let my Bingo tragedy get in the way of my love of the holidays, I wish you would give up.”

  I folded my arms over my chest and smiled smugly, “Hating an entire season has been really good for me. My bank account is much happier, and no trees have died this year just to make my small corner of the world more decorative.”

  Baker smiled sadly. “Your bank account may be happier, but are you happier? Has giving up Christmas really made it easier for you to move on?”

  I frowned. I much preferred the happy-go-lucky version of Baker to the version I was seeing now.

  “You keep your common sense to yourself,” I muttered. “I’m here for the digital remastering, not a theatre seating, therapy session.”

  Baker grinned, raising the arm rest between the two of us and placing his hand in mine. “You can keep ignoring your past Emily, but eventually you’re going to realize you missed out on your future in an effort to weed out a handful of uncomfortable moments.”

  I wanted to tell him he sounded like a fortune cookie that had vastly exceeded its allowed number of characters, but I didn’t. Instead, I rested my head on his shoulder and tried not to focus too hard on the fact that Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney fell for one another because neither one had the ability to escape.

  You know, kinda like if you were on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

  Chapter Nine

  After five days of sailing, a whole lot of holiday music, and one gingerbread decorating contest I was still trying to erase from my memory, the ship dropped its anchor for the first and only onshore excursion. I, however, wasn’t participating. I couldn’t get Cecile’s words out of my head. “You are not his usual thing.” A strangely familiar warmth crept up in me every time I thought about Baker. It felt a lot like feelings, and since there was nowhere to put those after the cruise, it seemed like I shouldn’t go out of my way to spend time with him.

  “Are you sure I can’t talk you into going?” asked Kathy. She was leaning against the door to my cabin; her wild red hair pulled back in a smart-looking bun. She wore a green velvet dress and pretty black pumps. If it were 1994, she would have really been killing it. Looking at her all adorably out of style only bummed me out further. My real life was seriously lacking when it came to characters like Baker and Kathy.

  “Nope,” I answered, grabbing a paperback off my nightstand. “Tonight, I will read the book I bought before I knew I would like you and waste all of my good reading time telling you stupid stories.”

  “For what it’s worth,” said Kathy. “I very much enjoyed you not reading.”

  “Get out of here,” I replied, making a shooing motion with my free hand. “You’re Secret Santa recipient awaits.”

  Kathy waggled her eyebrows up and down. Her gift-giving skills had paid off in a big way because she and her Secret Santa left Snow Globe City arm and arm for the onshore excursion.

  I was twenty pages into my book when a knock pulled me away from the story. I hopped up from the bed, anticipating a covered dish of lackluster ravioli. Eating in the dining hall while the rest of the ship partied on the beach was too depressing, so I had called in-room service for dinner.

  Room service, however, was not who stood on the other side of my cabin door.

  “You didn’t really think I was going to let you skip the excursion, did you?” Baker stood at my threshold in the Caribbean's version of holiday attire. His white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt was adorned with a gold bow tie. He wore red dress shorts and gel in his dark, wavy hair. I had a very hard time not just staring at him.

  “Emily?”

  Okay I failed, and was in fact, just staring at him.

  “I’m in for the night,” I said, attempting to break free of the pretty boy stupor I was currently under.

  Baker sighed dramatically. “Unfortunately, as the official social coordinator of this Wonder Cruise, I can’t let a passenger skip the excursion.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “That’s an official employee mandate, eh?”

  “Sup
er official. And, I don’t want to make this awkward, but I have to escort you to the event….and supervise you all night.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “We just take these things really seriously.”

  I shook my head like I was irritated, but a little part of me was jumping up and down just thinking about another evening together. I shoved the door closed and threw on a black sparkly number I’d brought in case the ship really was a husband factory, as I had told my mother.

  “Wow,” said Baker when I reappeared on the other side of the door. “There’s really a lot of wow about you right now.”

  I bit my bottom lip. That warm feeling was rising from my feet to my head, leaving me too fuzzy to know whether I should slip my hand into his or put a two-foot gap between us. I didn’t get a chance to decide, because Baker wrapped his arm around my shoulder and tipped his head toward mine.

  “Let’s just have fun tonight. Reality is a problem we can deal with tomorrow.”

  I nodded, allowing him to lead me down the hallway. Warning signals fired left and right inside my head, but there were other things firing around too, and at the moment the lusty things were winning.

  All week I had done things that felt distinctly un-Emily-like. I’d worn a red and white, polka dot bikini, ordered lobster and steak at the same time, befriended someone I had nothing in common with, and talked to a man I would have once considered completely out of my league. I could be cautious and risk nothing, the way Cecile suggested, the way Emily on land would, or I could be bold.

  I leaned closer to Baker, stepping off the ship and into the soft, cool sand below.

  Chapter Ten

  It was dark on the beach, but a long row of lanterns illuminated a path from the water up to the wide stretch of sand where the Wonder Cruise guests gathered.

  “Is that seriously a real Christmas tree?” I asked, amazed to see a noble fir perched in the middle of a Carribean island, it’s stump lodged deep in the sand below.