The Trouble With Destiny (16 page)

I wake up with a terrible pain in my neck and drool crusted down my chin. But that's not the most horrible thing facing me right now. No, that honor goes to an actual
face.
A tan one, perfectly smooth save for one freckle underneath a blue eye that's partially obscured by a lock of sandy-blond hair.

Russ's face.

I sit up with a start, nearly cracking my head on his chin. He leaps back in surprise, tumbling into the opposite wall of the closet, the other terry-cloth robe falling off the hanger and landing in a puddle on his head.

“Didn't I tell you to leave me alone? What are you doing here?” I yelp, then quickly cover my mouth with both hands, because the words sound weird coming out. Sort of thick and heavy, which is how my tongue feels right now. What is happening?

Russ yanks the robe off his head, leaving his hair standing up from the static, which sends me into a giggle fit I can't control.

“Yup. Heard you loud and clear, boss,” he says, adjusting his oversized frame to the tiny square of floor in the closet. “And I could ask you the same thing.”

I have to stop and think, because the shock of the wake-up and the fog of whatever I took have sent the reason I'm sleeping on the floor of Demi's closet completely out of my mind. I have to close my eyes and block out Russ and the buzzing in my head before it comes back to me. It takes what feels like hours but is probably only a few seconds, but then I recall Huck holding the golden mike, that devious grin on his face.

“Ugh,” I moan, and rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, and I stumble to form any more words.

“Are you drunk?”

“I don't think that was Tylenol” is all I can mutter by way of explanation, but I trip over the word “Tylenol,” and it comes out sounding like “Lylenylenol.”

“Holy crap, you're
stoned
?” There's a look of total disbelief on Russ's face, his eyes wide as he chuckles to himself.

“
No!
Gooooo away,” I say, but the word “go” hangs on for two counts too long, just like Russ's snare roll. In fact, it rolls around in my mouth until I'm sort of howling the word, and I break into another giggle fit.

Russ rolls his eyes and climbs to his feet, bumping his head on the overhead shelf in the closet. He stumbles back out into the bedroom. “I really don't get why your default setting for me is somewhere between suspicious and furious,” he says.

“Because I don't trust you,” I snap at him. I rise to my feet ready to get the hell out of here, but as soon as I'm up, I'm down again, my vision tunneling to black in an intense head rush. I collapse into a heap on the floor of the closet.

“Need a hand?” Russ asks.

“No, I do
not,
” I say. Since standing didn't work out for me, I decide to give crawling an attempt. I rise to my hands and knees and slowly start to ease my way on into the bedroom. But I don't get far before I accidentally stick my hand into a high heel, which sends me tumbling down face-first onto a pile of laundry. When I sit up, there's something bright pink and covered with rhinestones wound around my arm, so I shake it hard to get it off. Whatever it is gets flung over my head. I turn to see Russ coming out of the closet with a heavily padded bra draped over the top of his head. He reaches up and pulls it off, dropping it to the floor, and I dissolve into a hiccuping case of giggles from which I fear I will not recover.

But as my giggles finally wind down to little gasps, I realize that I really can't stand up. And crawling through the ship back to my room isn't going to be an option. In fact, the only option may be standing in front of me, a blood red blush spread across his cheeks as he tries not to look at the rhinestone-adorned bra that was very recently on his face.

“Um, do you think you could maybe—
hiccup
—help me?” I ask.

Russ rolls his eyes and shakes his head, but he steps forward and offers me a hand, which I take. With a surprising amount of muscle, he drags me effortlessly to my feet.

“Ooh!” I groan, dancing from foot to foot, giving my legs a series of hokey-pokey-style shakes. “Pins and needles!”

“Smooth,” he says, unable to suppress a smile.

I mean to tell him to shut up, but I only get as far as “shut” before I sort of lose my train of thought. “Why you here?” I mumble.

“I came to get back my sweatshirt that Demi's been holding hostage since the breakup. Demi wasn't here, but I found this in the door.” He holds up a balled-up piece of masking tape between his thumb and forefinger. He arches an eyebrow at me, as if to say
you wouldn't know anything about this, would you?

A crack of lightning illuminates the dim room, and an epic rumble of thunder follows closely behind it. Through the window, I can see that the sky is covered with a thick coating of heavy gray clouds and the ocean is nearly black, save for the cresting whitecaps. The wind roars, and I feel the boat pitch slightly. Between the sleep still holding me in its clutches and the pins and needles that haven't left my legs, I start to collapse. Russ takes one giant step toward me and catches me before I can land hard on my knees.

He moves to my side, throwing my arm around his shoulder and securing me with one strong arm around my waist. His hand rests right on my hipbone, holding it firmly like a handle, and I'm surprised at how small and delicate he makes me feel.

When he squeezes my hip, I stiffen and try to walk ahead of him, but he tightens his grip around my waist, his other hand reaching up to hold mine around his neck.

“Liza, just relax. Let me help you,” he says. I want to hip-check him into the wall and run away, but the fuzz in my brain is spreading to my legs, so I sink into his side, letting my steps fall in with his. “See? Just like that. Not too bad.”

“Lots of marching practice,” I reply, my eyes drifting closed as I lean into him.

We make our way through the suite and to the front door. Russ lets go of my hand and pulls the door open, giving a quick glance down either end of the hallway. Then he props the door with his foot and grasps my hand again.

“Ready?”

“Yup,” I reply, but it comes out as more of a hum.

I lean back into Russ as we start down the hall, focusing half on my breathing, and half on my steps. My legs are starting to wake up again, but they're still not ready to deal with what high winds and rolling seas are doing to my balance.

We get about thirty feet when I hear chattering coming down the hall. A short, elderly couple wearing matching souvenir sombreros turns the corner and comes toward us. As soon as they pass us, I reach up and pluck the sombrero off the woman's head and plop it atop my own.

“Cool hat!” I giggle, gazing up at Russ from beneath the brim. I hear a gasp behind me, and Russ looks horrified. He takes the hat off my head and leans me against the wall.

“Wait here,” he says, and I roll my eyes as he turns to chase the couple down the hall and return the hat. But I don't need Russ. No way, I don't need him at all. I need a lot of things right now, but Russ is
definitely
not one of them.

So I push off the wall to make my way, but my legs aren't quite ready to move without assistance. I throw my arm back at the wall to hold myself up, then start moving slowly, one foot in front of the other. I'm going, dammit. Away.

And then my foot crashes into something on the floor. I look down to see a room service tray in the hall. One plate has some strawberry tops on it and a dried river of syrup, along with a stack of forks and knives and various crumbs. But the other has half a belgian waffle. Totally untouched, unless you count the missing half, and that's when I realize that between the nausea and the hula-hooping and the felonies, I haven't eaten. And I'm
starving.

I drop down to my knees and reach for the waffle, my mouth watering as I imagine the crisp vanilla bite I'm about to take.

“Stop!” Russ's voice booms down the hallway, his steps thundering toward me. He grabs me by the elbow and jerks me to my feet. His face is a mask of horror as he glances from me to the discarded plates. “What are you
doing
?”

“I'm hungry,” I whine, giving a little stomp of my foot.

“Okay, well, how about we get you some food that hasn't been, you know,
eaten,
” he says, barely containing the disgust in his voice.

“Hey, don't look at me like that,” I say, the words tripping out of my mouth. “I know you drank an entire cup of queso dip when you joined the football team.”

“Yeah, but no one else had had their fingers in it before I did that,” Russ says, chuckling at the memory of the fairly mild hazing the football players inflict on one another. “Where's your room?”

The question comes at me like a quadratic equation, and I'm no good at math. I squint at the ceiling, and start calling out all the numbers I can think of. “Six…three…two…second floor…eleven…”

A giggle echoes down the hall, and a deep voice follows it. “That sundae bar was really quite impressive. I don't know how you're walking after chocolate, caramel,
and
strawberry sauce.”

“Crap,” Russ mutters, and the fuzz in my brain recedes slightly. Because I recognize that voice, and thanks to my unfortunate run-in down in his stateroom, I recognize the giggle too. It's Holland High's newest couple, Mr. Curtis and Ms. Haddaway.

“They can't ssseee meeee,” I hiss, the tension in my voice scratching at my throat. Unfortunately, even a shot of adrenaline from the fear of confronting a teacher isn't enough to have me walking and talking normally. There's no way I'd get out of that interaction without some kind of punishment.

Russ readjusts his hand around my waist and pulls me close, this time a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, detour time, then.”

We make it to the elevator. When the doors slide open, Russ drags me in and lets me lean against the back wall. I try my best to avoid catching my reflection in the mirrors that make up the entire interior of the elevator box, but the only way to do that is to focus my attention on Russ's reflection instead. He's wearing a pair of khaki cargo shorts that look like they're as old as he is, or at least like they've been through the wash a thousand or so times. They're fraying at the bottom, and there's the beginning of a hole at the corner of each cargo pocket. There are also paint splatters in several different colors at various spots. A loose-fitting red tank top shows off his tan skin as well as the lines of his muscular shoulders and arms, and there's a pair of cheap drugstore sunglasses, black frames with neon-yellow arms, perched atop his head.

His reflection breaks into a grin when he catches me staring, and I quickly move my focus down to the floor, where I count the anchors in the carpet. I'm at forty-seven (or maybe ninety-seven, I lost track) when the elevator stops on our floor, the doors sliding open with a mechanical ding.

Russ scoots back to my side, and when we step out into the hallway, I'm attached to his hip again, his arm holding me upright and close to him. But we're not on my floor. We're back on the upper deck, where the wind is so high that the place is empty. The clouds have dissipated, leaving a scattering of bright, twinkling stars across the inky-black sky. They're so bright and so big I feel like I could reach out and pull one out of the sky, and the sight makes me gasp.

“Liza, are you okay?”

“Wow” is all I can say, a word whispered into the night that disappears on the wind.

Russ leads me toward the edge of the deck, where a slight overhang from some piece of equipment shields us from the wind. There's a pair of wooden lounge chairs with plush blue cushions tied to them, and Russ carefully deposits me on one.

“What are we doing here?” I mutter, sinking back into what might just be the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. Russ disappears for a moment, but when he returns, he sets up a bright yellow Wet Paint sign right at the corner where someone might wander around, hopefully ensuring our privacy.