A choice, a trap, and a necklace.

By HectorBidon. Listen to the
Podcast at Steamy
Stories.

The next morning's sun found its way in through our porthole
once again. We had sorted ourselves out somewhat during the night. I was on my
side, tangled in a bit of sheet. She was on her side, tangled in a bit of
blanket. I could just make out the pale tan lines on her bottom and her back.

We'd become cabin buddies of a different order. At the
Jack-and-Ciara level. That's probably what most people would have assumed all
along, but I certainly hadn't, and I didn't think that she had either.

And yet, here we were.

I waited a while for her to wake up, but she didn't. So I
finally got up myself.

We'd just passed through the entrance in the seawall at
Ensenada and were coming up to our docking site. The pilot, or maybe it was the
captain himself, was standing on a little deck that jutted out from the side of
the ship to joy-stick our massive vessel precisely up to the pier.

Molly was still in bed when I got back. She smiled and went
to the bathroom, a little embarrassed to be still naked while I was already
dressed. Her pubic hair, I noticed, was trim and attractive.

She came out wearing a towel and had her coffee. We checked
the day's schedule. She was delighted to discover that they'd transferred Mrs.
Pendergast's excursion ticket to me.

A little later that morning we went ashore. It was a strange
sensation, stepping off the gangway into a foreign country. Somehow I expected
every little thing to be different and exotic, but the first thing we
encountered, sprouting up through a crack in the pavement, was a little tuft of
grass. Nothing exotic at all, just plain old grass.

Our excursion van was heralded by a woman with a clipboard,
a younger, more boisterous, Mexican Denise. There were three other couples in
our group and a single unaccompanied woman about Ciara's age. I took a seat
next to the window with Molly beside me with the unaccompanied woman next to
her. Her name was Meryl. This was her first real vacation since her divorce.
She was really excited to be having such an adventure.

We drove through the streets of Ensenada, our guide giving us
a bit of local color in her prettily accented English. The scene was at once
familiar and strange: traffic and lane markings and stop lights just exactly
like at home, but unintelligible store signs in unlikely colors painted
directly on pastel stucco walls. Beyond the city were dusty, cactus-strewn
hills not unlike the Catalina hinterland.

Our destination was a site called the Bufadora, a cleft in
the rocky sea cliff where ocean waves sent up enormous geyser-like sprays. The
sprays were so high that we got wet even at our vantage point fifty feet above
the water.

The path back from the observation point was lined with
gaudy souvenir shops, like the midway of a county fair. Meryl had tagged along
with Molly and me. We stopped at one of the taco stands for lunch.

"So how did you guys meet?"

Molly didn't volunteer an answer.

 "Just here on the cruise, actually," I said.

"Really? See, aren't cruises great?" Molly gushed.

After lunch we went into one of the souvenir shops and Meryl
asked our opinion about all the little nick-nacks she wanted to buy. When we
got back to the van, I ended up sitting in the middle.

"The nicest thing." she said. "is that every
day you make new friends."

We drove back through town, then out into the desert in a
different direction to a picturesque winery. We sat around a table on a
palm-shaded patio and sampled the different vintages. Meryl chatted on about
Simi Valley and the cruise and her ex and the weather and the ship and the
people she'd met. She got me to go into the little gift shop with her to help
pick out a couple bottles.

Molly was quiet at dinner. I had to remind her that we'd
made plans to see the comedy show with Meryl.

"I've got a bit of a headache," she said. "I
think I'll go back to the room."

Meryl was waiting in the forward theatre. She was sorry to
hear about Molly's headache and put her hand on my arm to convey her concern.
The show turned out to be pretty adult-rated, pretty raunchy in fact. Meryl
yucked it up

After the show she suggested we take a spin about the deck.
The ship had set sail again and we were just passing the exposed wreck that
lies up against the sea wall. Somehow Meryl managed to tuck herself inside my
arm.

"Wouldn't you just love to go dancing?" she cooed.

"I, uh,  Actually, I've kind of got to go
now."

"But the night is still young.” Meryl rebutted. “Let's
at least stop by my room first."

"I've got to check on Molly." I insisted

"We can open one of the tequilas."

"Thanks, but,”

"It's just that, I was kind of hoping to get lucky
tonight."

Christ Almighty. A guy tries to be a gentleman. I didn't
need an etiquette book for this one. I finally managed to pry myself away,

When I got back to the room, Molly was in her pajamas,
watching TV.

"Is your headache any better?" I asked.

She didn't look up from the screen.

I sat on the chair and twisted around to see what she was
watching. A travelogue of some sort.

"You didn't miss much," I said. "The show was
kind of,"

But she leaned in closer to the screen to make it clear that
I was interrupting her program. Something about the way the locals made their
tortillas.

OK. I got the message. She didn't like the fact that I'd
gone to the show with Meryl. I went into the bathroom to pee. I'd only been
trying to be polite to a fellow cruise member. Was that a crime? Molly had been
there when we'd made the plans. I thought that she'd been trying to be friendly
too. That we'd sort of taken Meryl under our wing.

I came out of the bathroom a minute later, and sat down on the
chair again. The secret to the tortillas, apparently, had something to do with
lime juice.

"I didn't expect to see you back here tonight,"
Molly said. In a sarcastic tone of voice. As if my presence was an imposition.
As if she was sorry she'd ever offered to share the room in the first place.

I didn't even bother to answer. I got undressed, then
crawled up onto my side of the bed. Where else was I supposed to go? I got
under the blanket and turned toward the bulkhead. A guy tries to be a
gentleman. And this is what he gets.

I woke up first again, the next morning. I went up on deck.
Did she really think that I'd found Meryl even the least bit attractive? She
was a fellow shipmate, nothing more. I'd thought that we'd both been trying to
be polite to her. Was that a crime?

I brought back coffee and a croissant, but Molly was still
asleep. Or pretending to be. I banged around a little, but she didn't budge.
Finally I got fed up and left.

So here I was again, back to my usual routine, wandering
down empty corridors, drifting up little-used gangways, poking around lonely
corners where nobody else much ever cared to go. Doing what I probably would
have been doing if I'd gotten my single in the first place.

I came back to the room around lunch time, but Molly wasn't
there. I wandered up to the pool. Denise was there, chatting with some people.
She waved. Meryl was there, stalking about, but I managed to slip away before
she saw me. But no Molly.

It was a long day. The ship had parked itself out in the
middle of the ocean somewhere. Or maybe the rest of the world really had blown
itself up and they just hadn't told us. I eventually ended up back in the
little coffee shop at the tail end of the ship. The sky seemed a lot flatter
though, the seagulls a lot more listless, my algorithms a lot less interesting.
Finally I got up again and trudged back down in