Below Deck

Holding my hand up to stop her, she pauses, putting her hands on her hips and thrusting her chest out, like the power of her tits is going to make me drop to my knees and agree to whatever this shit is she’s offering.

“I’m flattered, Mrs. Drake-Swanson-Armstrong,” I tell her, stressing the string of names she made a point to correct me on, swallowing back the bile that rises in my throat. “I don’t know what exactly you heard, but I don’t own a boat. I can barely afford a canoe, let alone a multi-million-dollar yacht.”

I laugh good-naturedly, expecting her to laugh right along with me at her mistake and make up some sort of excuse about how she was just teasing me, but she doesn’t. Her seductive smile turns into a lip-curling sneer of disgust and she crosses her arms across her chest.

“Don’t be flattered, I was just taking pity on you and trying to make you feel better after what my stepdaughter has done to you,” she scoffs with a roll of her eyes.

At the mention of Mackenzie, all the politeness and professionalism I’d been holding onto vanishes in the blink of an eye.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She laughs, shaking her head at me.

“You poor, gullible man. Do you have any idea how many vacation flings that girl has had, and how many men, just like you, she’s left in her wake? It’s pathetic, really. The way they fall all over her and fall for her lies.”

I refuse to let myself believe her words. She’s a bitch, and even an idiot could see that she and Mackenzie don’t get along. There’s no way Mackenzie did this before. There’s no way she’d lie to me about something like that.

You’ve known her less than two weeks. Do you really think you know her all that well?

I ignore my conscience and the rapid beat of my heart as Allyson keeps going, sticking the knife in a little deeper.

“I bet she told you she’d never had a vacation fling before. Started off by telling you she wanted to do something fun to take her mind off of all her little problems, how she wasn’t looking for a white picket fence or for you to throw away all your hopes and dreams over someone you just met,” she says, clasping her hands together by her heart and talking in a dreamy voice like she’s reading a fairytale in a children’s book.

I’d be annoyed and disgusted with Allyson’s behavior if the things she’s saying weren’t the EXACT same things Mackenzie had said to me the day I took her out on the jet ski to the coral reef. I want to tell Allyson to shut the fuck up, but I can’t move, I can’t think, and I can’t fucking speak as she takes the knife she’s lodged in my chest and turns it.

“And then things changed,” Allyson continues, dropping her hands to her sides. “She stuck her claws in deep, made you want more, and made you think she wanted more. She showed interest in those hopes and dreams of yours and made you think she wanted to be a part of them.”

Allyson throws her head back and laughs while I continue standing in front of her, holding onto the wooden handle of the mop so tightly that it’s seconds away from snapping in half.

“I’ve been telling my husband for months he needs to get a handle on that girl, but he doesn’t listen. He just lets her run wild, breaking hearts all over the place, and it looks like she just did it again going by the look on your face.”

She makes a tsk’ing sound with her tongue, shaking her head at me.

“But honestly, do you have any idea how much her father is worth? Did you really think you had a shot?”

Allyson studies me for a few quiet seconds while I clench my teeth so hard that I wait for one of them to crack.

“Oh, my God. You did!” she laughs again. “You actually thought you had a shot with Mark Armstrong’s little princess. The one who will inherit EVERYTHING he owns. The one who can get anything her little heart desires with just the snap of her fingers. She’s got men lined up back in New York just waiting for her to come home and finally pick one and put them out of their misery. Men her father handpicked, with pedigrees, college educations, and money in the bank. They can give her things like security and stability. What exactly can you give her, other than life on a stupid little boat, that you don’t even own?”

I can physically feel my heart cracking in half, sending a shooting pain through my chest that robs the breath from my lungs and makes my knees want to give out, but I hold my head up high and push everything back, refusing to let this woman see that her words have hit their desired target.

“I’m sorry you fell for that little innocent, ‘I’m just a regular girl’ act of hers. When you’re ready for a real woman, you know where to find me.”

With that, Allyson turns and waltzes away, taking my fucking broken heart with her as she goes.

I’m a pussy and a fucking coward. Instead of confronting Mackenzie as soon as Allyson walked away from me earlier, I spent the day avoiding her and letting everything her stepmother said stew and fester until I was analyzing every word Mackenzie had ever said to me and every minute we’d spent together. She seemed so honest, so sweet and so real, but now I can’t stop thinking that it was all an act. I can’t stop wondering if everything Allyson said was the truth and everything Mackenzie said was a lie. I want to trust Mackenzie and trust what I feel for her, but I can’t stop reminding myself that I barely know her. I’ve spent less than two weeks with her. Now that the idea has been planted, all I can think about are those men waiting for her back home. Men who are better than me, men with more money than me, men who can give her the security and stability I’ll never be able to, and it’s eating me up inside.