Elise smiled and leaned against Harper. It was only for a second, but it was long enough for Harper to feel like the world had suddenly gotten just a little brighter, a little more together.
For a while, they didn’t say anything. Elise kept her eyes glued to the horizon like it was the only thing keeping her from sliding straight back to the bathroom. In time, the queasy green tint around her face eased, and her shoulders un-hunched.
“Are you feeling any better?” Harper asked, turning to her. Then she realized the crew member with the yellow top hadn’t shown up with the ginger. She glanced back toward the galley. “You never got that ginger, should I go—”
“Why me?” Elise interrupted.
“What do you mean?” Harper asked, blinking. She was pretty sure Elise didn’t mean why me, as in why am I seasick? The question felt a little more loaded than that.
Elise looked down at her hands resting in her lap. Her nails were short, and a thin silver bracelet sat loosely around her slender wrist. Harper couldn’t see the tiny pendant, but she knew it was a tiny ladder. Elise’s motto was:never stop climbing toward success.
“You came out of the closet,” she said, still looking down at her lap. “You got divorced. I’m sure London is loaded with hot single lesbians who can admit they’re lesbian without having some sort of existential crisis. So why not one of them?” She swallowed hard, and Harper instinctively raised a hand to gather Elise’s curls in case it meant she was going to vomit, but then she didn’t. She just said, “It’s been ten years since that night in Sesriem. So much has happened since then. We’ve both changed.”
Harper didn’t answer immediately. She wasn’t sure if Elise would understand if she tried to explain it to her. Hell, even Harper didn’t quite understand how those little feelings she had developed for Elise all those years ago had never really died out, how they’d stayed there, simmering under the surface until one near-death scare had blown them back into something so hot it was undeniable. Elise was her soulmate. Which was funnybecause she’d once thought that title had belonged to Harry. Oh, how terribly wrong she was.
“Is that really what you’ve been thinking about this whole time?”
“Not the whole time,” Elise said, pulling a face. “Maybe just for the last five minutes.”
Harper smiled, even though she knew that wasn’t the whole truth, and nudged Elise with her shoulder. “Have you ever heard of the titi monkeys in the Amazon forest?”
Elise groaned. “Oh, please,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Not another one of your expedition stories.” But she was smiling, staring at Harper with a spark in her eye she hadn’t noticed before. Either that, or her eyes were glossy from all the retching.
“Well,” Harper said. “I don’t think one can ever hear too many expedition stories, so let me educate you.” She didn’t wait for Elise to reply, but she didn’t have to because Elise leaned her head against Harper’s shoulder. “The titi monkeys typically leave their birth group as juveniles and find a mate through mutual choice. Once paired, they form a strong lifelong bond and can even become distressed when separated. They stay together exclusively, grooming each other, sharing food, and when they sleep, their tails curl.”
“Alright, ladies!” the captain called, his voice booming behind Harper like a party speaker. “We’re wrapping up snorkeling in five minutes.”
Elise sat up straighter and dragged her arms weakly over her knees to the teak, like she was going to push herself up. She winced.
“No,” Harper said, already on her feet. “You stay here and keep looking at the horizon. I’ll take over your duties for the rest of the day.”
“But you don’t know what to do,” Elise said, looking slightly panicked. Which was completely justified. Elise was right. Harper had no idea what to do. But seriously, how hard could it actually be?
“It’s a reality TV show about fake love… I’ll wing it,” she said, then winked.
Chapter Sixteen
Elise woke to the soft swish, swish of someone moving around her bedroom. Which would’ve been concerning, especially since the last thing she remembered was climbing into her bed last night, alone. But it wasn’t. In fact, she didn’t even have to wait for her eyes to finally un-blur to know Harper was shuffling around her bedroom.
“Morning,” Elise muttered. Her head felt cottony, but not terrible. A mild rolling in her stomach reminded her that she’d spent most of yesterday with either her head in the toilet bowl or trying to look at the horizon.
“You’re awake,” Harper said, catching her eye. She was standing at the end of the bed, bent over and fussing with a tray.
“Well, I’m not dead,” Elise said, sitting up. Her body felt like a truck had run over her a few times. “Not yet anyway.”
Harper placed the tray on Elise’s lap and a glass of water with a slice of lemon floating in it on the bedside table. Elise looked down and felt her heart swell a few sizes. The toast was cut into perfect halves. A tiny bowl of strawberries sat beside three slices of deliciously ripe-looking melon, and there was a handful of macadamia nuts in a small ceramic bowl.
“How’s your stomach?”
“Like someone took it out of my body, placed it through a grinder and shoved it back in place again,” Elise said, running a hand through her curls. They were knotted beyond the capabilities of her fingers. She needed a leave-in conditioner and a detangling brush ASAP to fix the bramble patch that was her hair.
Harper laughed. It was warm and breezy, and if Elise hadn’t already been feeling better, she probably would have right then and there.
“Well, you look a million times better,” Harper said. “Yesterday you were the same color as two-month-old feta.”
Elise lifted a limp hand toward the tray. “Where did you find all this?”
“I made a little pit stop at the villa kitchen,” Harper replied. “Ursula cooked up a storm. I could’ve gotten you a truffled goat cheese omelet, but I thought it might be a little too rich for your stomach.”