Unforgettable cruise

Chapter 17 - (actual chapter 7 continues…)

* *
Leigh finding Clark soon after noon was no accident: she’d sought him out.

It was a complete turning of the tables when she walked up to him seated at one in the Sip And A Wink Pub, nursing a pint. “Clark, I’m very sorry about this morning… what I said.”

“It’s fine” he replied in the same tired, dispassionate tone and overall demeanor as at breakfast.

{Doesn’t sound fine.} “Can I buy you a drink or anything?”

“I’ve got what I need, thank you.”

“I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you truly want.”

“What do you truly want?”

“To sit with you and have lunch. You can watch me eat again” she smiled.

Once more, she saw an upswell in vitality. “Alright.”

“This is my first time. Have you been here before? Maybe had food?”

“I have. Both of those.”

“Any suggestions for a hearty, hopefully flavorful meal?”

More signs of life, and interest. “You want a hearty meal so soon after breakfast?”

“I told you I like to eat. If you want to hear more, please tell me you’ll stay, let me place my order, then come rejoin you.”

“I’ll be here, sipping this. In terms of food here, I can vouch for the lamb pastie as flavorful and filling. Have not had the ploughman’s lunch, though as with pasties traditionally those were meant for hungry workingmen, so it ought to be at least filling.”

“Beer suggestions?”

“Whatever you’re into. Every one of the several I’ve had here has been good.”


* *
A sweeping range of feelings crashed over Clark like an ocean swell, seeing Leigh’s body in sinuous, rippling wave motion (especially her middle body) on her return to his-now-their table.

She didn’t notice, being busy carrying her plate and too preoccupied thinking about how great her lunch would likely taste. The barmaid-du-jour delivered her glistening golden pint seconds after she sat down, again across from Clark. This time it was their own private rectangular table booth as opposed to the more family-style open large table seating at Home Comfort.


Without either of them trying, they wound up making eyes at each other as she tucked into her pastie and he watched, occasionally quaffing from his gradually-dwindling pint.

“Mmmm (munch, munch, swallow), I went non-traditional with the pastie, going for the curried lamb to get more spice.”

“It might be traditional somewhere. Spice success?”

“Not really, which amazes me.” She slid her plate over towards him, “Second opinion, please?”


He took a reasonably generous bite around the thicker middle, to ensure he got a full sample of everything inside. Chewing with focus and contemplating what he was tasting studiously, he slid her plate back over to her.


“I taste the curry for sure, but it’s in no danger of overwhelming me. Yet now I’m feeling some tongue burn.”

“*That’s* what I’m having! Nor am I smelling other food aromas, nor the salt air.”

“That’s what I’ve got: anosmia, as we discussed yesterday over breakfast.”

“What if it’s the start of the novel corona?!”

“That would be a new beer from Mexico, or a novel about it” he teased. “Or a new royal crown, maybe for a Sapphire Prince.”

“Corona*virus*. Better?”

“Yes better. And no, not likely COVID-19 unless you have a fever.”

“Feel me, please?” she asked, standing part-way up to enable her to lean over closer to him.


{Don’t tempt me} he thought during the process of doing another coarse body temperature guesstimate. “Same as this morning.”

“Whew!” She sat back down, relieved.

“Now if you stress on it too much, that’ll depress your immune system, and then you may have reason for concern. Dry cough?”

“No.”

“Then this non-medical professional thinks you’re fine.”

“Thank you.”

Her sincere smile touched him deeper than he wanted to be touched.

“Aren’t you worried about it?”

“COVID-19?”

“What else?!”

“Oh, the world economy tanking, Die-Ann Feinstein and other idiots trying to eviscerate encryption ‘for the children’, stuff I’ve read about shipboard crime on cruise ships—there’s no shortage of stuff to worry about, if one goes that way.”

“But people are dying on this ship!”

“Yeah, and that happens *anyway* throughout life, including on cruise ships, with or without this novel coronavirus! Why do you think they have a morgue on here?”

“*Hhhhhhhh!*”

“They didn’t just install it for present circumstances and worries! People *die*. It happens. And if it happens when a cruise ship is out to sea, sucks for the other 99.9% of the passengers if one croaker requires immediate emergency handling which throws the ship off-course.”

“They have medivac helicopters! I’ve heard them!”

“Yes, and they *want* cruisers alive and healthy, and they’ll *get* people the medical attention they need when it goes beyond the on-ship infirmary. To answer your question and hopefully get this depressing topic behind us, I am rationally concerned about COVID-19, but not worried about it.”

“Wow.”

“Worry depresses the immune system as I just noted, making it more likely a person will fall ill and/or that their illness will be a more severe variant that might lead to pneumonia and possibly death. May we please change the subject now?”

“Yeah, we better. This is nearly making me lose my appetite. Any suggestions?”

“I’d love to hear more about how you like to eat. At suitably convenient points between bites, of course.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but when I first saw you on board, I felt like my entire vacation was ruined.”

“Jeez Leigh! I know I’m tact-challenged and have to keep apologizing for it, but my mere *presence* is trashing your vacation?!”

“Lemme explain, lemme explain. I like to eat, more than my body needs. Can’t help it; have always been this way, as far back as I can remember. In my normal life, it’s important to me to be amongst the average-sized part of humanity, hence I have to carefully moderate my food intake. For me this cruise is all about *no one knowing me*, and likely no one else ever crossing paths with me again in the future, so I can feel free eating freely and plentifully. Spending time in the gym and walking on shore and so on to stay in shape and burn off some of the excess, sure, but we both know by looking at me that there’s more gain from the eating than loss from the exercise.”

{Not much evidence on your upper half where I can see you now, but yeah.}

“So at first it upset me that you would be here as a witness, given our past and what I thought I knew of you. But… I’ve been getting the sense that you don’t mind my thickening, and might not judge me harshly.”

“I’m truly sorry if you feel I’ve been judging you harshly, no matter what I do or do not think. I strive not to be that sort of asshole… or any other sort of asshole, for that matter. It’s absolutely none of my business, and I hope you’ll please resume doing what you want same as if I wasn’t here.”

“Hmmm, but….”

“Yes, you have a nice one.”

{*Finally* a full smile!} “Thank you! Will I be wrecking your viewing if I park it next to you?”

“No.” {Wish I knew why the hell you’re so flirty all of a sudden.}


She slid her plate and pint glass over first, then moved herself out and back in on his side. Her generous seated soft fat hip spread along with the size of the booth’s bench seat(s) required her to sit intimately next to, and slightly on top of, him.

“That’s very dangerous, what you’re doing.”

“How so?”

“Stirring my desires, after my having so mindfully shut that part of me down, to avoid more romance fails.”

“What romance fails? Seems to me I’m always seeing you leaving Club Troposphere holding hands with someone of the squishy feminine persuasion.”

“If always equals twice by your definition, then that’s correct. And it doesn’t last. And it doesn’t end well. Remind you of anything?”

“We were at a trade show and passions flared and there may have been misunderstandings and things didn’t work out” she ended with a sigh.

“No they didn’t. For me with you then, and on this cruise with two other amazing women.”

“Third one has the charms” she flirted.

“How do you people turn your eye sparkles on and off like that?”

“Which ‘you people’? Chunky women?”

“With all due respect, I don’t go for the half-hearted chunksters. Needs to be an all-out *chonky* woman to make it worth my while.”

Leigh’s eyebrows went up. So did her left thigh lifted by her leg muscles plus her left hip fat lifted by her left hand, towards the goal of scooting slightly closer to him. “Is a chonky woman anything like a ***fat*** woman?” she asked with a cheeky grin, dropping her left hip and thigh fat atop his right thigh.

“Yes” he replied with a sultry half-smile, studying her expression and her farther below. “How would you feel about my arm around you?”

“Favorably.”


The mutual passions neither could fully suppress reignited.

Leigh couldn’t help leaning into him and nuzzling him affectionately. “Am I chonky enough for you?”

“I’ll have to feel you to answer that question.”

“Let’s plan on that, a little later. Right now I want to chonk up with the rest of this lunch and my ale.”


Neither of them wanted to fight losing themselves to loving one another. It was too delicious and comforting a feeling, even if being with the other didn’t truly make sense to either of them on most rational levels.