Be Brave With Me

Chapter Nine

"Mornin'."

Aura whispered as she stepped out onto the deck the next day.

Gently. Gingerly.

Her body was in the midst of staging a full-on protest. Her legs demanded a sit-in. Her stomach had gone on strike. Her brain had slammed its doors shut and was playing some pounding hard rock shit against her temples.

Only a strong cup of coffee would have the chance to open up negotiations again.

She carefully lowered herself into her seat next to Jess at the breakfast table - and found her two godparents sitting across from her, smiling far too wide and too happy for this hour in the morning.

"Glad you decided to join us after all, darling."

"It's almost noon. You made it just in time, poppet."

Oh, right. Almost noon. Noon felt more like nine a.m., though.

She had returned to the boat only when the sun had been rising up pink at the horizon. Missing her shoes, and her friends who had all vanished at various points of the night to stay on the island with their respective hook-ups.

Uncle Henry and Aunt Isodora must've returned to the yacht not much later than her. They'd spent the last three days on an excursion of the island and were now peering at her from their sheets of newspapers with warm smiles.

"How was your weekend, poppet? Did you have fun?"

"You look like you had fun, darling."

They traded their sections without missing a beat. Those two.

They had met fifteen years ago on a luxury cruise ship.

Aura had always been a sucker for their meet-cute story, demanding to hear it as her bedtime story when she had still been small enough to be tucked into bed by them every night during her summer stays on the boat.

Uncle Henry, born in London and never married, had spent most of his life earning ridiculous amounts of money in the financial word - until his doctor had ordered him to take a much-needed break if he planned on making it to his 45th birthday. He had opted for a month-long stay on a luxury cruise ship. It'd been the easiest way to spend a good chunk of his money.

Aunt Isodora, her Mom's older sister, had been the main show act on board of said cruise ship. Barely even forty at that time, the fear of seeing herself being replaced by younger versions of herself in the roles she had once originated on Broadway had made her take the well-paid gig on the cruise ship. As the uncontested star of every show, she had performed in front of spell-bound audiences every night.

Until, one night, Henry had sat in the audience, bewitched, too. To this day, Aura refused to believe that there hadn't been some kind of magic involved that night.

At the end of the cruise, Henry had whisked Isodora away. Not on a white horse, but on a white yacht. He had bought them the first Plan B, the predecessor of today's boat with the same name that Aura still remembered from her childhood, to cruise around the rest of the world together. Henry never returned to his job, done with earning money and ready to spend it on his life with the love of his life. Isodora never went back on stage, done with clinging to her past when Henry was her future. And they lived happily ever after. To this day.

Aura had proof. It was sitting across from her, enjoying their retirement and trading newspapers.

She leaned forward and reached for a bagel. Her stomach had put down the megaphone, her brain had turned down the hard rock. Having Henry and Isodora close always soothed her nerves. As if her body remembered those echoes from the past, Henry's British accent in her ear as he read her a fairytale, Isodora's fingers in her hair as she combed through it and hummed her to sleep.