Chapter 3: The Rules Discussion
The bed sat between them like an accusation.
Jake finally broke the silence, his voice carefully neutral. “Okay. New new plan.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We are pretending to be a married couple for the public, for the staff, for anyone who might be looking. In this room, we are just us. Siblings. With a really weird logistical problem.”
“Agreed,” Kate said, the word coming out in a relieved rush. She dropped her bag and sat on the very edge of the sofa, as far from the bed as possible. “That kiss at the check-in… that was just part of the act. For the public.”
“Right. Exactly.” Jake nodded, a little too vigorously. He remained standing, leaning against the desk. “It was a… a social-performance kiss. A mistletoe-mandated peck. It’s the same as kissing Aunt Carol at New Year’s. You just do it. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Aunt Carol. Yes.” Kate latched onto the comparison with desperation. “It’s just lips. Skin. A greeting.”
“A weird, pressured greeting with an audience, but yeah.”
They were talking around it, circling the strange heat of it, trying to smother it with clinical analysis. The air in the room felt thin.
“So we need a dividing line,” Jake said, crossing his arms. “For the performance. What’s acceptable for the charade and what’s… not.”
Kate swallowed. “Okay. Well. Closed mouth. Obviously.”
“Obviously. Brief. Like, two-second maximum.”
“Two seconds is long. One second.”
“Fine. One second. And no… no tongue.” The word hung in the air, awkward and juvenile. Jake looked at the ceiling. “That’s the line. That’s the absolute, non-negotiable boundary. That turns it from a performance into… something else.”
“Agreed,” Kate said quickly. “No tongue. Ever. That’s the line.” Saying it out loud made her feel slightly more in control, even as her cheeks warmed.
They both fell quiet for a moment, the unspoken “something else” lingering.
“Sleeping arrangements,” Kate said, forcing the subject forward. She gestured to the bed. “We build a wall.”
Jake pushed off from the desk and opened the tiny closet. Inside were spare pillows and a folded, thin blanket. “Pillwall,” he declared, pulling them out. He started constructing a ridge down the exact center of the mattress, using all four standard pillows and the two decorative ones. It looked absurd, a lumpy, fabric berm.
“It’s not the Great Wall of China,” he admitted, stepping back to survey his work. “But it’s a declaration of intent. Your side, my side. The DMZ. We get more blankets from the steward tomorrow.”
“It works,” Kate said. It had to. “Bathroom.” She stood and walked to the small en-suite door, pushing it open.
It was worse.
The shower was a clear glass cylinder in the corner of the bathroom. Not frosted. Not clouded. Perfectly, impeccably transparent. From the toilet, you’d have a full, unobstructed view of anyone showering. It was a shrine to couples’ intimacy, a blatant design choice that now felt like a personal affront.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jake muttered from behind her.
“We take turns,” Kate said, her voice tight. “And the person in the room waits on the balcony. With the door shut. No exceptions.”
“No exceptions,” Jake echoed.
They unpacked in a tense, efficient silence, stowing clothes in drawers, avoiding looking at the pillwall on the bed. The ship gave a deep, nearly subsonic shudder, and a distant horn blasted once, twice. They were moving.
“You shower first,” Jake said, grabbing his key card. “I’ll… go explore. Find a bar or something. Give you an hour.”
He was out the door before she could respond.
An hour later, Kate stood under the blistering hot spray, trying to scrub the weirdness of the day from her skin. The water pressure was incredible. She washed her hair, the familiar routine calming her nerves. She tried not to think about the clear glass, about the fact that her brother was, at that moment, probably sipping a soda in some lounge, deliberately not being in the room. It was considerate. It was necessary. It was also, in its own way, profoundly strange.
She wrapped herself in a plush white robe and bundled her hair in a towel. “Okay, I’m decent!” she called out, even though she knew the room was empty.
He returned precisely sixty minutes later, his hair slightly ruffled by the sea breeze. “All yours,” she said, scurrying past him in her robe to the balcony.
Jake closed the bathroom door. He stripped off his clothes, the weight of the day settling in his shoulders. He stepped into the shower, the glass fogging slightly at the edges with the steam. He could see the blurry outline of the closed balcony door through the bathroom entrance. Safe.
He was rinsing shampoo from his hair when he heard the balcony door slide open. Then a gasp.
He froze, water streaming down his face. Through the now-clearing patch of glass he’d wiped for visibility, he saw Kate standing frozen just inside the room, one hand over her mouth. She’d come in for her moisturizer, assuming he’d be done. Their eyes met for a single, horrifying second—a full, unmediated view of each other, him naked and soapy, her in just that thin robe—before she spun around, presenting her back.
“Oh my God! Jake, I’m sorry! The door was closed, I thought—”
“It’s fine!” he barked, grabbing for the shower knob. The water shut off with a squeak. “Just… don’t turn around.”
“I’m not! I’m not turning around!”
He yanked a towel off the rack and secured it around his waist, his heart hammering against his ribs. It wasn’t sexual. It was an accident, a stupid, embarrassing collision of bad timing. But the image was seared into his mind: her wide eyes, her startled expression, the way the robe had clung. He pushed the thought away, violently.
“Okay,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m covered.”
She slowly turned. Her face was crimson. “I am so sorry. That was… I didn’t mean to.”
“Forget it. It was an accident.” He brushed past her, needing space. He went to his suitcase, keeping the towel firmly in place, and pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt.
The silence was thick, pulsing with the unsaid. They had both seen. There was no unseeing it.
Kate stood by the balcony door, arms crossed tight over her chest. She finally spoke, her voice small. “Look. We’re adults. We’re both… you know. In shape. We’ve seen people. It’s just a body.”
Jake let out a long, controlled breath, staring at the patterned carpet. “Yeah.”
“I mean, if you weren’t my brother,” she said, the words tumbling out in a rush of forced casualness, “I’d say you’re a good-looking guy. Objectively. That’s all.”
He leaned against the desk, finally looking at her. The robe, the damp hair, the flush still on her skin. He gave a single, stiff nod. “Right. And if you weren’t my sister, I’d say the same. Objectively. You’re… you’re very pretty. It’s just a fact.”
There it was. The admission, hedged with a thousand qualifications, hung in the salty air. A dangerous, factual truth they had now voiced.
“So we agree,” Kate said, her tone trying for finality. “Objectively attractive siblings with a clear glass shower and one bed. This is fine. This is totally normal.”
A faint, strained smile touched Jake’s lips. “The most normal.”
The ship creaked around them, a giant beast settling into its rhythm. From somewhere in the hallway, they heard the sound of another cabin door closing, followed by a woman’s bright, unmistakable laugh.
They both glanced at the pillwall on the bed, a flimsy fortress in the soft, evening light. The rules were set. The lines were drawn. Now they just had to survive the week without crossing them.