Epilogue

Jackson

This month it would be one year since Cory, and I had met. So much had changed, and some things hadn't. "Did you get your bags?" I asked as we waited at the luggage carousel at Miami Airport.

"Yes, sorry, one of them took forever. We can still make the shuttle bus," he said, and we hurried outside the terminal to the now familiar area where the bus would pick us up to take us to the ship. We stood in a line with a big group of people for a short time before the bus arrived and after the driver stowed our luggage underneath the bus, we walked inside and chose our seats.

This had become so routine now that we both knew exactly what to do and when to do it.

"Can you believe it's been a year?" I asked Cory once I was settled in my seat.

"No, I can't. But we have been a little busy." He smiled and kissed my hand. "I'm excited to get back on board, plus this year for Pride Cruise they're going to the Western Caribbean, so it'll be a different route than last year."

"Are you ready to start the new job?" I asked him. "I'm so proud of you, babe." Cory had been promoted to waiter and not just the entry level, he was now a lead waiter and while he had more responsibilities, he was also really good at his job and fell into it easily.

"I can't wait, but I will miss seeing you every time I need to bring a tray of dishes into the kitchen."

"You'll see me." I'd been promoted too. Since I'd worked in the restaurant at my parents' hotel I had more than dishwashing experience, and when Orlando returned to the dishwashing station, they put me in as a sous chef. "Just don't yell at me if your orders are wrong." Just by chance on the last cruise, I'd been forced to the staging position when the person who normally did it was taken out with food poisoning. Or so they said, but I suspected a hangover was more likely.

"I would never," Cory said, but we both knew that wasn't true. He was very easy going, but he also wasn't willing to be walked all over. A lesson that a few other waiters had learned since he'd been promoted.

"Sure," I said, making him laugh.

"I wanted to talk to you about something," he said, still grinning. "My family was talking about going on a cruise together for Christmas. What do you think?"

"How many of them?" When he took me to meet his family, I soon found out Johnny wasn't joking. They were a huge family, and all of them lived close enough to visit all the time. His parents' house had an expansive backyard that was the family meeting place and every week they had a big dinner that everyone was invited to. I loved it and I loved them, and luckily for me, they seemed to love me too. Well, some of them did.

"All of them, I think it would be around forty total. Don't worry, Zane can't go, he gets seasick and said he'd just be miserable."

"Oh, thank god. I mean I don't want to talk bad about your brother, but—"

Cory held his hand up and widened his eyes. "I get it. He's always been hard to be around."

"There's always one," I said. I hadn't had a drink since the day Cory and I met. It just wasn't worth it to me anymore, and I figured I'd already drank enough to last me the rest of my life. Surprisingly I had not missed it one bit.

"So, Mom and Dad wanted to invite your family too." Cory waited for my reaction, and if he had asked me that same question a year ago, I would have said hell no. But I was a different person then, and we were a different family.

When I returned home with Cory, I insisted they all meet him, it was one of the first times my parents and siblings had been together in months. While they were there, I admitted how my drinking had gotten out of control and thanked them for helping me when I was detained on the cruise. I also explained to them how much Cory meant to me, and how I wanted to keep working on for NautiCaribbean.

"You're willing to give up a career in the hotel business to work on a cruise ship?" my father had asked while I held Cory's hand.

"Yes, sir. I know you wanted me to one day work there, but it's not for me. I want to work for the cruise line and see how it goes." They were not happy, and for the next hour tried to talk me out of it, but my mind was made up.

In the end it was my dad who relented. "The captain is an old friend of mine, and he told me you were a hard worker who would go places. I remember when I was younger and everyone said I needed to go to college to start a business, but I worked in the industry instead and that didn't turn out so bad," he said.

"When they detained me, the security guard told me that you knew the captain." I squeezed Cory's leg and was thankful once again for meeting him.

"I skipped college too," Cory said. "I knew I wanted to work in the cruise industry, so I applied and got lucky." My mother and father looked at him and both smiled. Cory was working his charm on them, but even if they didn't like him, it didn't matter.

I was pulled back to the present when I realized he was still waiting for my reply. "Let me ask them," I said and sent a text. That was something else that had changed. I used to go months without speaking to my family but now we regularly kept in touch, and I appreciated it more than I ever had. A text came through almost immediately. "Mom said they're in, she'll need to ask if anyone else can go."

"Great, I'll let Mom and Dad know," Cory said and for a while the two of us were busy answering messages as we drove to the port. We pulled up and everyone stood to get off the bus. Some of the travelers were crew but most were passengers, and once we had our luggage, we walked past the passenger entrance to the crew entrance.

Standing there were Greg and Syd back for another year, and I was sure that if they were lucky enough to have Cory be their waiter while they were here, he'd make sure they had the night of their lives without floating around in the ocean drunk and half naked.

"Come on, babe, we can go on board," Cory said as he hurried along to the crew area.

"Great, I can't wait." And I couldn't.

THE END