“We make it work,” he says. “She’s worth it.”
I know he’s kidding, but my mind flashes to a scenario in which that could actually happen. Does his?
“How did you meet?” the woman asks, disrupting my train of thought. “I’m Nancy, by the way, and this is my husband, Tom.”
“Felix. And we met when Hope here threw a crab shell in my hair at a buffet.”
The woman laughs uproariously.
“How did you meet?” I ask her, because I don’t want Felix going so far down the wormhole that he makes up an entire backstory for us.
My heart can’t take it.
She smiles at her husband. “On a cruise, actually.”
“You’re kidding!” I say.
“No,” Tom says. “We were sailing from Australia to Singapore.”
“Wow,” Felix says. “Sounds like an epic trip.”
“It was,” he says. “Three months. We met at the singles table the first day, in Sydney, and by the time we reached Singapore we were engaged to be married.”
“Cruising is a great way to meet someone,” Nancy says, putting her hand on her husband’s knee. “You can spend so much time together, get to know each other without distractions.”
Lauren should interview this woman for her TikTok.
But the thing is, she’s not wrong.
I feel like I’ve known Felix for months, and it’s been fewer days than I have fingers.
“What happened when you got off the cruise?” Felix asks Nancy. “Did you live in the same place?”
“No, Tom was in Palm Beach, and I was in Louisville. I moved to Florida. But it doesn’t really matter where we’re based. We cruise most of the year.”
“We did an around-the-world trip last fall,” Tom says proudly. “Thirty-one countries in 126 days.”
“Sounds blissful,” Felix says with a straight face.
They chat to us about their world travels all the way to the catamaran, telling us about the friends they’ve made on their various maritime trips, the sights they’ve seen, the cruise lines they prefer. It seems there is an entire subculture of retired people who live semi-permanently at sea.
I try not to convey my horror.
“That was wild,” Felix says once we’re on the catamaran and out of earshot. “Can you imagine staying on a ship for four months? Ten days is bad enough.”
“Whatever floats your boat.”
He groans. “Good one, Dad.”
“I agree that monthslong cruises sound harrowing,” I say. “But I have to confess that I’m enjoying my sojourn with you.”
This is probably a little too sweet and sincere to have actually said out loud, but Felix breaks into a smile so big I know I’ve genuinely pleased him.
“Are you kidding?” he says softly. “Best holiday of my life.”
This makes me so happy that I have to reset the tone to retain my sanity. So I say, “Unless we die snorkeling.”
“I don’t think you can die snorkeling,” he says.
