“I thought it would be a romantic gesture.”
“It’s scary that you think that, Gabe. It’s stalkerish.”
“It was the only way to get time with you. You blocked me. You moved. Lauren wouldn’t tell me anything. You’re not on social media. I just wanted to apologize.”
“So you decided to entrap me on a boat? Do you not understand that that is frightening and insane?”
“Well, out of context, I guess, but—”
“The context is that you literally did that! I want you to leave or I will call the police.”
He holds up his hands. “I will, I will, Jesus,” he says. “But first just let me say one thing: I did it because I love you. I’minlove with you.”
His expression makes it clear that he thinks this declaration will melt me.
It doesn’t.
“I miss your laugh. I miss our road trips to Martha’s Vineyard. I miss reading your stories and seeing you in the morning and taking walks in Prospect Park and cooking big dinners and—”
“Stop!” I interrupt him. “I get it. And I don’t care.”
“I want to get back together,” he says. “That’s all I was trying to communicate by seeing you. I’m sorry if my approach was wrong, but I meant it earnestly.”
“Listen,” I say. “Even if I were dying for a relationship, there are no circumstances under which I would want one with you. You spun this bullshit dream life that you didn’t really want, and then you kicked me out of your apartment and fucked me over. There’s no going back from that.”
“That dream wasn’t bullshit, Hope. We could be so good together. A power couple. You could quit your job and finally write your book.”
“I don’t want your help. I don’t wantyou. What I want is for you to go, and never to contact me again.”
He sighs and lowers his head. “Well, I had to try.”
I want to shake him. “This wasnotthe appropriate way of trying.”
He looks at me sadly. “You know,” he says, “I really do want you to be happy. Even if it’s not with me.”
And then he walks out the door and I lock the deadbolt behind him, ever so grateful that I have become the kind of person on whom this type of thing doesn’t work.
My phone rings. My mother.
Fucking hell.
I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. But I know she’s expecting to hear from me now that the cruise is over, and I don’t want to worry her.
“Hey Mom,” I say brightly, trying not to betray my wrung-out emotional state.
“Hi dear,” she says. “I wanted to hear how the rest of your trip went.”
I consider lying, because the prospect of telling her the whole story exhausts me. But she’ll find out eventually and be hurt that I didn’t tell her.
I decide to edit it down.
“It was a bit of a doozy,” I say.
“A doozy?” she asks. “What do you mean?”
I tell her the abridged story. Felix. Gabe showing up. Getting stranded. I leave out the torrid sex parts and refrain from mentioning that Felix and I briefly reconciled in the Bahamas, and then parted on bitter terms. But even withoutthose details, the whole tale is so absurd that, by the end of it, we’re both laughing in disbelief.
“Well, those are definitely memories that will last a lifetime,” Mom says. “You could write a book about it.”
