Entangled In You

Holiday Cruise

Lilah POV

“Soooooo,” Liv wiggled in her seat across from me at the café. Her long blonde hair swayed with every movement, and her charcoal-rimmed eyes and glittery pink gloss were too perfect for this early in the morning.

Olivia Walker has been my best friend since middle school. I’d spent endless hours at her house with her and her dad in an attempt to escape the doom and gloom of my own home. She was the jelly to my peanut butter. The popular that balanced out my awkwardness. She and I were an odd pair, but we worked.

I loved her like a sister.

She’d texted me to meet her for an urgent meeting, that had to happen ‘like right now’ her text read, and I’d begrudgingly pulled myself from the bed, ignoring the brain fog from the anxiety pill I’d taken last night.

I assumed that she’d forced me out of the house to get my brain on anything but the accident, but the longer we sat there, the more I felt as if she'd forgotten today was the anniversary of my attempted murder.

“Soooo,” I repeated her, glancing at my phone for the umpteenth time this morning.

Something didn’t sit right after my messages with CK last night, and I was beginning to overthink our short conversation. I’d texted him when I woke up, but I didn’t know if he was awake. Maybe he was in a different time zone, and it was the middle of the night now for him, and I was panicking over nothing.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” she started, still fidgeting in her seat.

“Spit it out, Liv. Whatever it is, I can take it.”

Liv blew out a breath, her lips making a raspberry sound, “I want to go on a cruise. I think it would really boost my travel blog.”

My brows pinched together as I stared at her, waiting for the punchline I knew was coming.

“I want you to go with me,” she rushed out, her chocolate brown eyes glittering like a puppy begging for scraps.

Of all the days for her to ask me to go out on the water, it was today.

“Liv,” I whispered, feeling panic settle beneath my skin like poison.

“Come on, Lilah. It’s been five years. You’ve got to get back in the water sometime, and this is the perfect opportunity. You can bring Issac, and we’ll do it together. In baby steps,” she crisscrossed her fingers, bringing them to her mouth.

“Baby steps would be staring at a bridge, Liv. Not going onto a boat in the open ocean.”

I hadn’t been over a bridge in years. I went to the beach once in the summertime, but I had to check that the water would be calm, and even then, I didn’t go in. I couldn’t even go near it.

My knees curled to my chest as I sat on the towel and watched Liv and Issac play chicken with a few of his friends.

“I need you to go,” she reached over, grasping my hand into hers, “You’re my best friend, and I’m launching my internet career. I want to celebrate it with you and Issac. Please. Please. Please,” she begged again, “You’ll be in a giant vessel where, if you don’t want to see the water, you can stay near the middle of the boat and never even see it.”

I hated what my mother did to me. What she turned me into… I used to love the beach, or walking across the bridge in the fall. The trees along the coast of the bay turned the prettiest shades of orange and red that I’d ever seen, but it’s been over five years since I’ve been able to see them from that bridge.

They were all dead and void of color when I went over the side.

But I didn’t want to be afraid anymore. Everyone keeps saying it’s been five years, it’s been four years, it’s been all this time and you’re not even taking baby steps to get better.

My therapist once told me that forcing myself to be put into uncomfortable situations would be the key to unlocking my true healing potential. She said it could be as simple as sitting in a bathtub full of water, staring at a photo of a river. Or standing on a balance beam, and closing my eyes, imagining myself walking across that bridge.

Both situations were safe, and I knew that in my head, but both times I’d attempted them, I’d had a panic attack.

But I hadn’t tried in years, and I didn’t know if that made me a coward or if I was too damaged to repair.

“I don’t think so,” I whispered to Liv, wiping my sweaty palms against my leggings.

My phone screen lit up, and I stared at the orange notification on the screen.

“Go and break your own rules today, IQ. Whether it be eating a dozen donuts by yourself or standing beside the Ocean; We are all worthy of breaking free of the chains that hold us back,” he added a saluting emoji, poking fun at a post I’d posted on my page when I first started writing poems and quotes.

I’d lamely posted that quote to my page, thinking by saying it, I would feel it, and by feeling it, I would act on it. Yada. Yada. Yada.

I was as much a joke then as I am now.

But his text made me pause, and I read the first line over and over again.

Go and break your own rules today.

“Where are we going?” I choked out purely on the tiny, itty bitty ounce of confidence CK had given me.

Liv cheered, practically leaping across the tabletop to squeeze me in a death grip hug, “YESSSSSS,” she squealed.

“I might back out,” I coughed, and she patted my back, releasing me.

“I believe in you,” she chirped, sliding her hot pink manicured finger across her phone with ease.

“How do you do anything in those?” I stared at her nearly inch-long manicure. Then I glanced at my slightly chewed-on, chipping black nails, causing me to move mine to my lap and out of view.

She held up her hand, “Easy peasy. Now,” she slid her phone across the table, “This cruise line stops at twelve destinations. And get this,” she reaches over, swiping a few times, “It’s a Holiday Cruise.”

She took over swiping, each photo showing different activities or amenities. Even some of the destinations the ship would be stopping at. It looked like it stretched from the nineteenth of December to January second.

“You,” I pointed at her and narrowed my eyes, “Want to take a cruise that spans over your two favorite holidays?”

“People love holidays, and I had,” she paused, swallowing, “Some research done. No one in these other vlogs does the holidays like this. They all take their kids to Disney or visit the ice-skating rink at the Rockafella. It’s boring!”

“Let me know how much I owe you.”

She jumped out of her chair, rushing around to my side, and squeezing me once again, “You are doing me a huge favor. You don’t owe me a thing,” Liv pulled away, blowing me an air kiss, “I’ll send you the deets!”

The frizzy end of my long dark, purple braid had faded to a lavender color, and I fake snipped the dead ends with my finger before glancing back at my phone.

I grabbed it from the tabletop, walked to the counter, and ordered a cold brew with extra espresso and a donut, because I think I needed to break two rules.

Looping my middle finger through the hole in the donut, I snapped a quick picture while I waited for my coffee, cropping out everything but my hand and the donut and sent it to CK.

“Damn, that’s a lucky donut,” he responded.

“Congrats on being adventurous. I’m rotting in a far too small bed for me and staying for the day because I don’t feel like moving. I’ll trade you. A donut for your rot?” Another came through.

I snorted, grabbing my fresh coffee from the counter and began typing, “Rot all day. I know I’ll have regrets.”

“Life is too short to have regrets,” he shot off another, incredibly lame post I’d made.

“I hate you.”

CK: “At least you don’t regret me (wink emoji)”

I blushed, staring at the phone in my hand. This guy was funny. He also killed a man, but I consider it justifiable, and quite frankly, he’s a hero. Some people don’t allow excuses for murder, as all lives are supposedly redeemable. And then there is me, who calls a random internet man a hero for killing his father.

Probably the mentally f****d up woman who survived her own mother trying to kill her. It makes sense to me.

IQ: “Don’t count your chickens too early.”

He sent a GIF, this time of a man dramatically falling over while holding his chest.

I left our conversation there as I made the quick walk back to my apartment, moaning as I took a bite of the donut. I have to admit, despite my aversion to most sweet foods, this was pretty damn good.

Time to lock myself inside for the day and decompress by watching my favorite kids movies in my underwear and Chinese takeout.