Chapter 1: The Suggestion Over Stuffing
The fire crackled in the hearth, sending a shudder of orange light across the ceiling. It was warm, too warm, and the smell of pine needles and roasting turkey felt thick in Kate’s throat. She pushed a mound of mashed potatoes into the lake of gravy on her plate, creating a tiny, edible island.
Across the table, her mother’s knife and fork made a precise, clicking sound against the china. Her father chewed with a slow, thoughtful rhythm. The silence was a living thing, crowded out only by the clatter of dishes from the kitchen where her sister-in-law was ostensibly checking on the pie.
“So,” her mother began, and Kate felt her shoulders tense up to her ears. “The cruise is next week.”
Kate took a large, defiant gulp of pinot noir. “I know, Mom.”
“Non-refundable,” her father added, not looking up from his plate. “Airfare included. A real shame.”
“A real waste,” her mother corrected softly. “All that money. A balcony suite, you said.”
“I know what I said.” Kate’s voice was sharper than she intended. She saw her parents exchange a glance, the kind that had passed between them for thirty years, a whole conversation in a twitch of an eyebrow. Her stomach sank.
Her mother dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “We’ve been thinking. Your brother’s been so… adrift since his own breakup. A change of scenery, some sun… he could really use a pick-me-up.”
Kate froze, the wine glass halfway to her lips. The pieces clicked together with an almost audible snap. The sympathetic looks, the overstuffed stocking they’d still prepared for her as if she were twelve, the way her dad had carefully avoided asking about Jason all night. She slowly set the glass down, the blood rushing in her ears. “No.”
“Hear us out, Katie,” her father said, his voice a low rumble. He reached into the inside pocket of his cardigan, pulled out a familiar blue envelope, and slid it across the tablecloth. It whispered against the linen, a sound like a blade being drawn. The cruise tickets. “Jake could use the distraction. And you yourself said that you can't go alone. It’s not allowed.”
“It’s a couples cruise!” Kate’s laugh was too high, brittle. “They have events for pairs. Dancing. Games. It’ll be wall-to-wall happy lovers. Throwing my brother and me into that? That’s not a pick-me-up, that’s a special circle of hell.”
“Language, Katherine,” her mother murmured, but her eyes were fixed on the envelope.
“It’s practical,” her father insisted. “You get to go, the ticket doesn’t go to waste, and your brother gets a week away from his empty apartment. It’s a family solution.”
The kitchen door swung open and Jake walked in, carrying a platter of rerolled dinner rolls like a sacrificial offering. He caught the tail end of it. “What’s a family solution?”
Kate stared at him—his kind, tired eyes, the new lines around his mouth, the way his sweater hung a little loose. He looked as battered by the year as she felt. A surge of protective guilt twisted inside her, immediately followed by a wave of pure, selfish horror.
“Your father and I,” their mother said, her tone bright and final, “think you should go with Kate on her cruise. Help her enjoy it.”
Jake’s gaze flicked from his mother’s determined face, to Kate’s expression of sheer, unvarnished panic. The platter hit the table with a thud. Several rolls tumbled off.
“You’re joking.”
“It’s decided,” their father said, in that voice that had ended debates about curfews and college majors. “We’ve already called. The names can be switched. There’s a small fee, but we’ll cover it.”
The room seemed to tilt. The twinkling lights on the tree blurred into a string of meaningless color. Kate looked at Jake, really looked at him, and saw the same dawning, awful comprehension in his eyes. They weren’t being given a holiday. They were being deployed. A mission of mutual pity, packaged with sunscreen and a buffet pass. It seemed like their parents were just using this as an excuse to get them both out of the house.
Jake sank into the empty chair next to Kate. He picked up the envelope, pulled out the glossy brochures, the printed itineraries. A photograph of a perfect couple laughing on a pristine beach, cocktails in hand.
“The ‘Enchanted Isles Couples Retreat’,” he read aloud, his voice flat. “Includes a ‘Romance Renewal’ workshop and a ‘Sweethearts’ Gala Night’.”
A hysterical giggle bubbled up in Kate’s chest. She choked it back, taking another fortifying swallow of wine. The silence stretched, punctuated by the pop of the fire.
The silence stretched, punctuated by the pop of the fire.
Jake let the brochure fall. It fluttered onto the gravy-stained tablecloth. “A ‘Sweethearts’ Gala.’ Mom. Dad. This is clinically insane.”
“It’s a solution,” their father repeated, his jaw set.
Kate finally found her voice. It came out quiet, steely. “It’s a floating nightmare. I was going to let the tickets expire. I’d rather lose the money than… than this.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Katherine.” Her mother stood, beginning to clear the plates with a brisk, final efficiency. “It’s a beautiful ship. You can ask for separate beds. You can avoid the… themed events. Lie by the pool. Read. It’s a free vacation.”
“With my brother.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Jake muttered.
Their parents retreated to the kitchen, a tactical withdrawal, leaving the radioactive envelope between them. The door swung shut. The living room felt vast and suddenly cold despite the fire.
Jake picked up his wine glass, drained it, and refilled it from the bottle. He slid Kate’s glass toward him and topped hers off without asking.
“Okay,” he said, after a long swallow. “Talk me off the ledge. How bad is this, really?”
Kate grabbed her glass, the stem slippery in her fingers. “It’s a couples cruise, Jake. The entire social structure is built around the ‘couple’ as the fundamental unit. The dining room seats twos. The games are for pairs. The dance lessons, the mixers—all of it. We’ll be a societal freak show. The ‘sibling anomaly.’ We’ll get pity stares from old married people and confused glances from everyone else.”
“We could tell people that we're in a spat,” he said, his face utterly deadpan. “It would explain the lack of chemistry.”
A snort escaped Kate before she could stop it. “Oh my god. No.”
“What? We’d get points for being avant-garde. We could make up a story. We run a small artisanal pickle farm together. The strain of the harvest season has driven us apart.”
“Stop it.” She pressed her fingers to her temples, but a smile was threatening. That was Jake’s superpower. He could defuse any bomb with sheer, ridiculous awkwardness. “This isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny. From a cosmic, punishing-us-for-our-past-sins perspective.” He picked up the itinerary again. “Look. ‘Day two: Mixology class for two, followed by the ‘Lovebirds’ Trivia Challenge’.” He looked at her, his eyes wide with mock horror. “My knowledge of 90s R&B love ballads is non-existent. You’ll have to carry us.”
“I’m not doing ‘Lovebirds’ Trivia with you.”
“What if we win? What’s the prize? A couple’s massage?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “That could be… bonding.”
She threw a dinner roll at him. It bounced off his forehead. “You’re impossible.”
He caught the roll as it fell into his lap. “And you’re desperate. Admit it. A tiny part of you doesn’t want this ticket to go to waste. You were looking forward to the sun. The fancy drinks. The all-you-can-eat shrimp, or whatever.”
She was. That was the worst part. Since her ex, Jason, had dropped the bomb, she’d oscillated between fury and despair, but a stubborn, shiny part of her had still fantasized about turquoise water and novel-length novels read on a private balcony. She’d packed her suitcase in her head a dozen times.
She sagged in her chair. “The balcony is supposed to be incredible.”
“See?” Jake said softly. He broke the roll in half, offering a piece back to her. “So, here’s the deal. We go. We establish rules.”
“Rules.” She took the bread, picking at it.
“Rule one: We pretend to be in a spat or a fight. We are definitely not siblings on a deeply weird, compensatory family vacation. We tell anyone who asks the mortifying truth.”
“Agreed.”
“Rule two: We each get to go and do whatever we want. No questions asked. You go to the spa. I go to the… engine room tour. Or whatever.”
“Deal.”
“Rule three: We are each other’s alibi, not each other’s anchor. If you meet some tanned gastroenterologist from Florida, I will vanish. Poof. I am a ghost. Similarly, if I happen to connect with a recently divorced librarian who appreciates my knowledge of… I don’t know, Byzantine pottery… you will develop a sudden and powerful need for solitude.”
Kate stared into the fire. The idea was so absurd it started to morph into something else. A challenge. A bizarre adventure. A story they’d tell later, when the sting of all this had faded. “What about the ‘Sweethearts’ Gala?’”
Jake sighed, a long, suffering sound. “We get room service that night. We watch a movie. We order two entire desserts.”
The kitchen door opened a crack. Their mother’s concerned face appeared in the slit. “Everything alright in there?”
Jake looked at Kate. A silent question passed between them, the same one they’d used since childhood when deciding whether to surrender or form a united front against parental decrees.
He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shrug.
Kate took a deep breath. She turned to the door. “We’re fine, Mom.” She reached out, took the tickets from the table, and slid them toward herself. “We’re going.”
The relief on her mother’s face was instantaneous and radiant. “Oh, wonderful! You’ll have such a lovely time! You’ll see!”
The door closed again.
Jake leaned forward, his voice a low whisper. “We’re going to need a secret signal. For when it gets too much. When the couple-ness is suffocating.”
“What signal?”
“I don’t know. I’ll scratch my left ear. You say the word ‘pickle’. Something. We abort to the balcony immediately.”
“Pickle is good,” Kate said, a real smile breaking through for the first time all evening. It felt strange on her face. “Simple. Unassuming.”
“The second you say ‘pickle,’ I will manufacture a marital emergency so compelling we’ll be excused from anything,” Jake confirmed, nodding gravely. “I’ll spill a drink on myself. I’ll develop a sudden, selective deafness.”
The fire had died to a bed of pulsating coals. The remnants of dinner sat between them, a landscape of crumbs and congealing gravy. The decision, absurd as it was, had been made. The weight in Kate’s chest shifted from a solid block of dread to something lighter, more fluttery. Apprehension, maybe. The kind you felt at the top of a roller coaster.
“We should probably try to sleep,” Jake said, rubbing his eyes. “Big day of pretending to be miserable together tomorrow. Gotta pack our best fake-fighting energy.”
He pushed back from the table, the legs of his chair scraping against the hardwood floor. The sound was final. Kate stood too, gathering their wine glasses. They moved through the familiar routine of a late-night kitchen clean-up in the silent, sleeping house. The only sounds were the rush of water in the sink and the clink of glass.
Upstairs, the hallway was dark, illuminated only by the nightlight plugged in near the bathroom, a habit from when they were kids. Jake paused outside the door to his old room.
“You’re sure you’re okay with the couch?” Kate whispered. Her old room was now a guest room/sewing closet, but it still had a bed.
“The couch is a monument to Dad’s afternoon naps. It’s more comfortable than it looks.” He gave her a tired smirk. “Don’t worry about me. Just dream of… what do people do on cruises? Deck chairs. Umbrellas. Those little paper parasols in drinks.”
“Shuffleboard,” she offered.
“Right. Dream of aggressive shuffleboard.”
He turned to go, then stopped. “Hey. For what it’s worth… thanks. For not making me beg.”
The unexpected gratitude caught her off guard. She saw it then, not just his breakyp, but the loneliness that had settled into the fabric of his clothes, the slump of his posture. This wasn’t just a pity mission for her. It was a lifeline for him, too, and he was trying to grasp it with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said softly. “You haven’t seen my vacation wardrobe. It’s a cry for help.”
“I can handle it.” He yawned, a wide, unselfconscious gape. “Pickle.”
“Pickle,” she affirmed.
He disappeared into the dark living room. Kate slipped into the cool, slightly musty silence of her old bedroom. The moonlight filtered through the lace curtains, casting a faint silver pattern on the stacked plastic bins of fabric and old yearbooks. She changed into an old t-shirt, the sheets cold against her skin.
She lay there, listening to the house settle. The faint groan of a pipe. The distant hum of the refrigerator. Her mind replayed the evening on a frantic loop—her mother’s tactical suggestion, her father’s implacable slide of the envelope, Jake’s horrified understanding mirroring her own.
But underneath the embarrassment and the sheer weirdness of it all, a tiny, stubborn spark had been lit. It was no longer a cancelled dream. It was a bizarre, compromised, utterly ridiculous version of it. They had a plan. They had a signal. They had each other’s backs, even if they were now each other’s bizarrely assigned plus-ones.
She stared at the faint shapes of floral wallpaper she’d hated as a teenager. A week from now, she’d be staring at the ocean. The thought was so immense, so alien, it finally overwhelmed the circular anxiety. The spark glowed a little brighter.
Downstairs, Jake lay on the creaking sofa, one arm flung over his eyes. A faint, wry smile touched his lips. A couples cruise. It was the worst idea in the history of terrible ideas. But it was an idea. It was a destination. And for the first time in months, the endless, empty stretch of days ahead of him had a definite, if laughable, end point.
In the quiet dark, they both finally slept.