A Couple On A Cruise [FICTOID]

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked.  “Are you willing?”

She gulped and nodded with a smile.  “I’m willing.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t sound sure.  Are you turning yellow?”

He smiled, more confidently than she did.  “No, I’m okay with it…that is, if you’re okay with it.

“I mean, once we do this, there’s no undoing it.”

“Think you’ll have regrets?” she asked.

“Only if you do.”

“Sure you won’t be jealous?”

He smiled again.  “I’m not the jealous kind.”  A pause, then:  “Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“Are you sure you’re sure?”

She laughed, genuinely this time, not nervously.  “I’m sure I’m sure.  Geeze, you asked me a hundred times back home.”

“Well, it’s one thing when we’re sharing a brew out back, just the two of us.  You always said no then.”

“That’s because I didn’t want some nosy neighbor to find out and broadcast it all over town like a soap opera,” she said.  

“You found the idea interesting?”

“Not at first, no.  But about the thirtieth or fortieth time you brought it up, I started wondering ‘well, what would be so awful about it?’ and about a year ago I thought ‘maybe I should do it just to shut you up on it’ and about three months after that I decided I would if we could find a way of doing it so nobody back home would know.

“Like I said, no soap operas.”

He planted a surprisingly chaste kiss on her forehead.  “I dunno, maybe if we could find a sponsor…”

She poked him in the ribs.

They went up the ship’s main stairwell.  Any passengers who saw them assumed they wore swimsuits under their robes.

They paused outside the cabin door.  “Ready?” he asked.

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him not at all chastely on the lips.  “Ready.”

He knocked.  The door opened.  The man on the other side smiled, looked back inside, and said, “They’re here.”

© Buzz Dixon