On A Trip I Never Planned For Never Expected
Following college I decided to take a gap year before looking for a full time job. I got a job as a bartender on a cruise ship mainly doing weeklong cruises in the Gulf of Mexico. On one trip, I was off and eating alone in the self serve dining room, a man with a tray asked if he could sit at my table. He asked question after question, I felt trapped, I couldn't leave. During that half hour he learned where and when I worked, where I went to college, what motivated me to take a gap year, my love life or lack of it. Like a skilled interrogator he teased information out of me.
He pushed his cabin key over to me before he left. That night he showed up at the bar where I worked, he spoke to me, he expected me to keep his bed warm that night. I answered that I would not be there. He answered that he expected me, don't disappoint him. He also let me know why he was on board, it was his daughter's engagement. I walked by his cabin, back and forth, before going down to my cabin.
The next day he spotted me and I went the other way. The night before we docked in the morning he put a note on the counter at the bar, 'name, number, where did I live'. I left my name, a made up number, and an apartment complex I lived in in college. He stared at me, until I scratched out the lies and left him my number and where I lived. Immediately I knew I had made a huge mistake, but it was too late. I knew immediately that I was going to end up with him.
He asked me to give up the cruise business, keep his bed warm, and show him genuine affection. I did what he asked, I quit the cruise line, kept his bed warm, and showered him with affection. His daughter got married, two years older than I was. When she told me her husband had hit dead center I cringed, I was also pregnant.
I found a job, babysitting his granddaughter while I babysat my daughter. I agreed to get married for the sake of my daughter. With babies in the house I went maternal, and my affections went with it. I'm the daughter's best friend, her babysitter, she talks about the sister she never had, but I'm her stepmother. We have a cruise planned for when the 'girls' turn five. Even if there are other siblings.
