I sit there. Waiting. Looking around. Trying to hold back the tears, my throat swelling, my brothers won’t shut up – Treyon going on about the oatmeal, ram-bling on about it needing sugar. Talil arguing in a smart aleck I-don’t-give-a-care tone.

“Then why get it?” he asks. And I wish they’d just disappear.

Everyone and everything annoys me. I can’t focus. I walk around pretending to get more creamy, salty grits from the buffet. Actually any food in sight. But in reality – I’m looking, looking for the face my heart cries out for.

I know this is stupid. Why can’t I just get over him? I mean, it’s not like I even know him that well. Yet the moments we spent together feel like a lifetime.

***

I keep picturing those big blue eyes – bright as the sky on a summer’s day, his tall slender body like a long silver pole. And his smile – that golden smile with braces closed like metal gates but giving me the feeling I’m the only on he’s invited in.

Why can’t I get over those nights we spent on the top deck looking out into the pitch black sky, talking about our lives and futures and where we came from and where we hope to go? We talked about track: I run the 800. He’s a 2-miler.

Why can’t I get over that moment we spent for a split second, smiling awkwardly at each other as if he and I both had a piece of lettuce caught in our teeth?

Why can’t I get over how weird he is for not liking Coke or Dr Pepper or at least orange soda? How can you not like any kind of soda? I mean that’s just not American.

I know what I have to do. I have to get over it.

Get over the moment we spent in the hot tub on our stomachs looking out across the deck of the ship toward the horizon as if of all the 10 or 12 people in the hot tub, we were only two there together.

Get over him thrusting high up in the air his hand as if he were trying to pluck an apple from the top of a tree when I asked, “Who wants to be my partner for Charades?”

So, how do I get over it?

Over the brief moments when our hands brushed while we were playing a game of Twister.

Over the time I took his room-key pass as he chased me, trying to snatch it back from me.

Over the fact that the last moment we spent together, I chased him around trying to get my new pink flower sandals.

***

My parents approach me and my brothers. “Let’s go, chldr’n,” my stepdad drawls in his Billy Ray Cyrus thick as molasses southern accent.
I take one last look. Then we leave the ship.

I twist my neck around trying to see his face one more time. But he’s not there.

I follow my family to pick up the rest of our luggage. And I struggle to hold back the tears.

I can’t believe we’re leaving. It’s until not after we strapped the luggage back to top of the white Escalade, drive away from sunny Long Beach, California, check into our hotel in Hollywood, unpack, climb into my bed and start remembering that it hits me. I’m not going to see him again any time soon. Maybe never. My eyes swell and redden, and a tears rolls down my cheek, and I remember I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

I keep picturing those big blue eyes – bright as the sky on a summer’s day, his tall slender body like a long silver.