“Oh, no thank—” I start to say, but Lauren beams at him.
“We’d love one,” she says.
She strikes the practiced pose she knows sets off her best angle. I stand awkwardly a few inches away, hands shoved into the pockets of my vintage sailor shorts, waiting for this to be over.
Lauren grabs my arm and tugs me closer. “Tits up, chin to the side,” she coaches me. “And smile with your eyes.”
I attempt to obey her command as the flash goes off in my face, blinding me.
“Thank you!” Lauren chirps.
As we walk away, the family with the hot son steps forward to take our place.
“Try not to break the lens with the radiance of your poor disposition, Felix,” one of the sisters (I assume they are sisters given they are nearly identical) says.
The boy smiles at her pleasantly. “If you continue to antagonize me Iwillsee to it that you drown.”
They both have British accents.
Oh, God.
Hot andBritish?
I’m the type of Brit Lit nerd who goes weak at the knees for an English accent.
Something inside me lights up for the first time in a very long time.
It takes me a moment to recognize it: attraction.
Lauren elbows me. “Told you.”
Felix
I can’t believe I agreed to this, I think as I step onto the cruise ship that will be home for the next ten days. It has the vibe of a Las Vegas casino crossed with a very posh care home for the elderly.
“We’re on thepenthouselevel,” my younger sister, Pear, says as we all pile into the lift to the staterooms. “Thank you, parents.”
“If ever there was a time to splurge, it’s now,” Mum says. “Daddy and I will only have one fortieth anniversary.”
“And God knows if we’ll make it to fifty,” my father says.
“Stop killing us off, Charles,” Mum says fondly.
Mum and Dad are only sixty-eight, but Dad’s been threatening their imminent demise for at least the last decade.
The lift stops and we emerge onto a plushly carpeted corridor lined with gilded watercolor paintings of the sea.
“We’re this one,” my older sister, Prue, says to Pear, pointing at the second door on the left. The two of them elected to share a room as their respective romantic partners, Eliza and Matty, were “too busy” to join us on holiday.
Clever Eliza and Matty.
“Let’s all have a rest and meet for lunch at one, shall we?” Mum asks.
“See you then,” I say.
I walk farther down the hallway, searching for my room, when two women about my age emerge from around a corner ahead of me.
“Eleven fifty-one,” the taller of them—a willowy blonde with an exaggerated American twang—says. “Ah, here.”
