I left my private deck and walked out to the main deck, which was down a flight of stairs that were closed off, and toward the girl's suite. I kept a close eye on the clothing-optional pool, hoping I might catch them sunbathing again. Just like I had that first day. Not that I had a lot of hope of that, given how close we were to port.
I wasn't surprised when I didn't see them, so, I walked inside and toward their suite.
Standing before their suite door, I knocked loudly and waited. I strained my ears to listen, hoping to catch some sound, but I heard not a peep came from inside. I knocked again, louder this time. I waited a few moments and still, there was nothing. With only about an hour until we hit San Diego, I knew I was running out of time to find her. I bent down and slipped an envelope underneath the door. It was a note with my business card inside.
I let out a frustrated breath, knowing they could be anywhere on this massive ship. And I knew that with each passing minute, my chances of finding her grew slimmer and slimmer.
“Dammit,” I muttered to myself. “Goddammit.”
Chapter Nine
Josie
Two months later
“Lila, we need to talk,” I said into my phone as I exited the hospital and climbed into my car. “I'm coming over right now, so you better be there.”
My heart raced as I disconnected the call. My mom's chemo treatments were done, and the cancer was in remission—for now, anyway. The chances of it coming back, though, were fairly high. We were looking at another surgery in the next coming months, which meant she'd need someone to stay home with her during the day.
That led me to make the decision to drop out of school for the time being to be her full-time caregiver. Not that I really had a lot of choice in the matter. Finding an outside one was too expensive, making it non-starter. And there was nobody but me who could do it.
That, however, was the least of my worries. As I drove over to Lila's house, I prayed that I was just under a lot of stress, given everything going on. Stress could most definitely help explain the lack of my period since the cruise. I was a month late—a whole freaking month!
A few days was one thing, but four weeks was just way too much, and I'd just been too busy to take care of it. Now, though, I had no choice. I had a couple pregnancy tests in a bag on the passenger's seat of my car as I raced over to her house. I was scared to death and I needed my best friend's support to sit with me as I took them.
My phone rang just as I was pulling up outside her house.
“What's wrong, Josie?” Lila asked, her tone genuinely concerned.
“I can't talk about it over the phone,” I said, my voice shaking. “Please, I just need you.”
“Come on over, sweetie,” she said.
I heard her talking to someone in the background as she muffled the phone.
“I'm, uh—I'm already outside your place,” I said.
“Wow. That was fast,” she said. “Alright, come on in.”
I felt tears well up in my eyes and my heart racing. Adrenaline flowed through my body and I was trembling. This couldn't be happening. Not to me. It just couldn't. I'd always been so good, never sleeping around. Hell, I'd had sex once. Once! Sure, it was unprotected, but what were the odds that the one time I have sex, I get knocked up?
Call me naive, but I assumed I'd be safe. I'd looked at ovulation cycles afterward and things looked fine. I wasn't worried about it. Not at first. But, as the days went by and I still hadn't gotten my period, I grew more and more concerned. I knew I should have gone in for the morning after pill once we got back from the cruise, just to be 100 percent sure, but life got in the way as it always seemed to do. And now, because of life getting in the way, I had to deal with—this.
I climbed out of the car and walked up to her front door just as Lila’s boyfriend walked out. I waved, he waved back, but I still couldn’t look him in the eye after seeing his bare ass on the cruise. I’d thought it was a one-time performance and that Lila wasn’t going to see him again. Obviously, I’d been wrong. I’d apparently been wrong about a lot of things regarding that damn cruise.
“Hey, Josie,” he said.
“Hey, Jason,” I muttered back.
We passed each other by, and Lila greeted me at the door, her face a mask of worry.
“Come in,” she said.
Her hair was ruffled, and her clothes were ragged, which meant that she and Jason were probably in the middle of having sex. And I’d interrupted. Again. Go figure. Back on the ship, she’d sworn the two of them wouldn’t see each other again, but apparently, he’d found her on Facebook and the rest was, as they say, hi
story.
Me, I hadn’t heard a peep from Gavin. Not that I had ever really expected to. He didn’t seem like the type who’d search me out on Facebook. I reminded myself for the millionth time that it had just been a fling. A one-night thing. A one time, never to be repeated performance. I went into it knowing that. I couldn’t blame him for it, because he’d never pretended to be anything but a one-nighter for me.