Dibs on the captain, p.1
Dibs on the Captain, page 1
Dibs on the Captain
Giselle Harper
Copyright 2022 by Giselle Haper - All rights reserved.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.
All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Contents
Giselle Harper
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
The End.
Other Books By This Author
Dibs on the Bartender
The Billionaire’s Mix Up
Chapter One
The repeated buzzing of the group text woke me up before my alarm could.
Jessie: Are we ready, girls?
Niki: As I’ll ever be.
Heather: I’ve been ready for weeks.
Sarah: Never. But I’m packed.
With a sigh, I fired off my response. If there was one thing I’d learned from years of being friends with Jessie, it was that she wouldn’t quit until she heard from us all.
Me: I’m awake. I’ll be ready soon.
I made my way to the bathroom, wiping the sleep from my eyes. I turned on a hot bath and stood in front of the mirror. My long, red hair was its usual morning mess. My freckles were on full display with no makeup to conceal them and I looked more like my mother than I cared to acknowledge in the moment. She had been an actress who propelled to soap opera fame in the late 80s and early 90s. She had left show business when I was born and settled down with my father, who worked in Hollywood as a stunt coordinator after he retired from the Navy SEALs.
In the late 90s, she’d tried to revive her career, but couldn’t ever quite get her foot back in the door. It didn’t matter, though. She’d already acquired the kind of money that took the sting out of obscurity. At least that’s what she always said.
Sometimes, though, I’d catch her lamenting over the delivery of a line in a movie we watched.
“It should have been read this way,” she’d say, before reciting the line with the inflection she would have chosen. I knew she missed the glamor of celebrity life, but I had always been thankful for a more modest upbringing.
I had never gotten dragged to any red carpets. I had never had to face the paparazzi. I had been free to ride bikes with my friends, participate in after school clubs, and develop my own interests without any external interference. I much preferred the quiet life that mom’s fall from stardom had afforded me.
I had grown up loving animals, so I became a veterinarian. This had come as a shock to all my friends, except Niki, who preferred more wild definitions of “dirty work” than a job that involved performing surgery on a cat or clearing a digestive blockage for a dog. I loved my work, though. So much so, in fact, that when the clinic was closed, I was often at the animal shelter volunteering with socialization training and grooming needs for the animals that were awaiting adoption.
I stripped off my nightgown and stepped into the bath, sinking into the water with a sigh. This was my favorite time of morning and nobody - not even Jessie Chase - was going to get in the way of my final soak before embarking on our long-awaited girls’ trip.
The phone buzzed again.
Jessie: LISSA!! You’re just waking up? Wild night with the old folks?
I rolled my eyes. Jessie loved to tease me for my volunteer work. I didn’t just volunteer at the animal shelter, but also at the Assisted Living Facility in my community. On Friday nights, I’d often call Bingo for them at their Community Hall. It was something I’d enjoyed doing since I was a teenager and had been assigned the task as part of my private school’s community service requirement.
I enjoyed seeing people happy, and it was a small thing I could do to put smiles on the faces of those who needed it.
This was nothing that would have ever resonated with Jessie, though. Her dad had bought her out of the community service requirement by donating sleeping bags to a homeless shelter in her name. She and I had become best friends in the fifth grade and, although we had mostly grown apart as adults, I still felt a certain obligation to maintain the friendship. Despite the “friend” title that I willingly bestowed upon her, though, I had lost any illusion that she was a good person.
She got away with a lot because she was tall, blonde, rail-thin, and beautiful. She’d been Miss Teen California at the age of sixteen. At twenty-six, she still loved to talk about it. She also got away with more than most because her parents had amassed a multi-billion-dollar fortune in the Chase & Matthews sporting goods industry. Those sleeping bags? A tax write-off for the company and an opportunity to spread good news about the brand.
She hadn’t always been vindictive, gossipy, and self-centered, though. In our first year of high school, her parents had faced a lawsuit regarding unfair labor conditions in their factories. She had never been quite the same afterward. I think the negative spotlight had affected her self-esteem and she was still trying to regain it in unhealthy ways. Perhaps it was pity that kept me hanging on to the dying relationship.
Also joining us on the trip were our friends Heather Santos, Sarah Murray, and Niki Gallagher.
Regardless of what Jessie and I might have pretended about being “besties forever,” everyone knew that Heather was her true best friend. Heather was actually more like a shadow. She was an heiress to her mother’s fashion line, so she always dressed to the nines and appeared to have stepped right out of a beauty magazine. Despite seeming to have everything going for her, she still seemed insecure to me. She tried a little too hard to fit in, especially where Jessie was concerned.
Heather had a good heart. When she and I were alone or even with other friends away from Jessie, she was one of the sweetest people you could ever imagine. When she got around Jessie, though, they loved to belittle service workers, make fun of less wealthy people on the street, and do just generally nasty things together. I often wondered why Heather stooped to that level. She had so much potential to be a positive force in the world, but was wasting it in her devotion to Jessie.
Sarah was a social media mogul, who had learned everything she knew from her father. He was a part-owner of one of the largest television news networks in the world and had married her mother, a news anchor, in the eighties. Sarah had grown up in a multicultural household. Her dad was a typical white New Yorker. Her mother was a Japanese American and the daughter of first-generation immigrants.
When Sarah grew up, she developed a social media platform geared specifically toward helping immigrants help one another navigate new cultures and legal processes. It became wildly popular and she was heralded a champion for the cause.
Finally, Niki was the youngest and like the baby sister of the group. She was also the one I felt closest to in recent years. Her father was a scientist for a leading pharmaceutical company and her mother had been a supermodel in her younger days. Niki had always been the shy one in our group and had limited interaction with men, despite being gorgeous. She was the spitting image of her mother but didn’t know it. She was always fretting about how she looked in her clothes or if her shoulders were “too blocky.”
She’d been fascinated with her father’s work as a child, and this had led her to explore the medical field for herself as an adult. Niki was now in medical school specializing in pediatrics. Her dream was to someday be able to offer free healthcare for children in underprivileged communities.
I dried off from my bath, dressed, made myself presentable, and grabbed my suitcase. As I waited on the front steps for my Uber, I couldn’t help but feel overcome with a certain existential dread over the upcoming voyage.
This year, Jessie had booked a yacht cruise that would take us to Montego Bay and back. We would spend over a week aboard a luxury yacht with a five-star chef, scuba instructor, and all the alcohol and chocolate five girls could dream of.
I couldn’t help but feel guilty for dreading it so much. I knew it was the kind of vacation that most people only dreamt of. But vacations with my friend group were rarely all they seemed to be. At least not since Jessie had invented the game.
In trips past, I’d refused to play and served only as spectator and judge. This time around, though, I was going to be forced to participate even if I didn’t throw my hat in as a competitor. There were certain factors involved in this trip that would not allow me to sit back and do nothing. The stakes were higher than they’d ever been.
I felt the twist of dread in my stomach and took some deep breaths. The California air warmed my lungs and I felt a calming wave ripple throughout my body.
At least it’s my last year, I thought. I’d already made up my mind.
After this year, I was finished with Jessie Chase, her silly game, and all the foolishness that came from her girl trips. This was going to be the year I finally told her I was done.
Chapter Two
The game had originated five years ago on a trip to Paris. It started with Jessie and Heather placing bets about who would hook up with the hottest guy. Jessie had won, naturally, and Heather had to pay for her part of the trip.
In the years since, the game had evolved to become a little more complex. It had actually become, for lack of a better word, a little raunchy. The trip last year to Sydney had been the worst yet and I felt like it would only continue to get worse the more years we allowed it to go on.
I had already made up my mind that this had to be the final year. As far as I was concerned, the game was about to be over for good. It had never been as complex as it would be this year, though, and I dreaded it.
Niki and I never played the game. We came along on the trips for the experience of having time away with the girls. Also, it made good financial sense for us to sit back and enjoy the show.
Every year, Jessie planned a trip and tallied the price for all five of us to attend. Non-players each pitched in 10% of the total cost of the trip (which was about half the cost of the trip if we had traveled on our own). The players then competed to see who had to pay the entirety of the rest of the bill.
Heather, Sarah, and Jessie had altered the stakes a few times over the years, but the main gist of the game was always the same. She who bed an hard to catch bachelor the most number of times, won.
The parameters of the game were:
It had to be the same man. Sleeping with multiple men was a disqualifier because it was easier to hook up with two strangers than it was to hook up with the same stranger twice. For most men, multiple rendezvous felt too much like a relationship and they weren’t interested.
You could not hook up with the ex of any of the other competitors. (This rule was enacted in Madrid when Jessie’s ex, Alex, just so happened to arrive with his own group of friends at the Running of the Bulls. Personally, I think Jessie used the girls’ trip that year as an opportunity to stalk him.)
Players called “dibs” on their target the first night. This prevented the other girls from winning by running interference.
All targets had to be of legal age and drugs and alcohol could not contribute to the score.
The hook ups had to be obvious to this game: public displays of affection and desire were necessary to ensure all scoring was kept honest.
To hear Jessie and Heather talk, you’d think the game was as sophisticated and high stakes as the Olympics. In my opinion, it was tasteless and cruel. I’d seen a number of men’s hearts broken by the girls’ flippant use of them in competition and I had a hard time understanding how my friends didn’t feel any sense of guilt over it.
We made our way onto the yacht and to our single rooms. Each room was stylishly designed with wall-to-wall plush white carpet and a king-size bed. A 42” flat screen tv hung on the wall, though I wasn’t sure what good it would be. Nobody ever boarded a yacht to watch movies. The private bathrooms were small but functional, with a stand-up shower, toilet, and full vanity. We each also had a walk-in closet to hang up our clothes - a necessity considering we had each been asked to bring a formal gown for an upcoming event night. There were a few other small groups of travelers aboard the yacht, but we reserved the best rooms.
I flopped down on my bed with a heavy sigh, leaving my luggage on the floor beside the bed. I kicked off my shoes and spread out. After spending the last two hours listening to Jessie chatter about parties and purses, the silence of the cabin was welcome relief. I could hear the other girls giggle as they ran down the hallway between our cabin doors.
“Are you changing into your bikini yet?” Heather yelled.
“Are you kidding?” Jessie responded. “It’s time to get this party started, isn’t it?”
“Nobody go up-deck without me!” Sarah yelled. “Niki! Play with us!”
“No thanks,” Niki said. “I think I’ll grab a nap.”
I smirked at Niki’s casual shirking of the game. I wished I could be so carefree under the circumstances.
I couldn’t stay, though. I knew the girls would already be on the prowl for their “Bed the Bachelor'' game targets. This year, the cost of the trip was a ridiculous extravagance leaving the loser paying quite a fortune after mine and Niki’s nonparticipant fees. I also knew that one of the prospective targets came with extra complications.
The captain of the yacht was my dad’s lifelong best friend, Kevin Drake. I had made a dire mistake a year ago when I received an email from my dad asking me to check out the new website for the yacht rental company that Kevin had founded. We had just returned from Sydney, Australia where Jessie had won the game and she had already been itching to start on our next big adventure. She had seen the luxury yachts on my laptop screen - and the handsome captain - and this entire adventure had been planned out in a week.
Kevin and my dad were close; therefore, he’d been a huge part of my life growing up. Although it was never talked about much, my mom had once told me that Kevin saved my dad’s life.
He’d stepped up for my family many times over the years. When my dad had gotten hurt at work when I was a teenager, Kevin had come and stayed with us to make sure things ran smoothly at home. That was the summer I’d decided to learn to drive, and it was Kevin who had taught me. Whenever I thought of the best events in my life, Kevin was an ever-present part of the happiness I felt.
But Kevin had his own struggles, too. I never could quite put my finger on it. Maybe it had been trauma from whatever he’d been through during his time in the military. But there was an undercurrent to Kevin’s energy that always struck me as sad.
He was a very important person to me, and I felt a need to protect him at all costs from anything that might hurt him.
Jessie Chase, if given the opportunity, would hurt her own mother to win the game. She had become that obsessed with it over the years. The predicament I now found myself in was that I couldn’t even call Kevin an “off limits” target in the game because the whole point of the game was to find the most “off limits” partner.
So, when Jessie saw his photo on my laptop that day and said, “This is the next girl trip and he’s my next target,” I’d felt a flash of anger run through me. I had always hated the game, but I never hated it more than I did in the moment I knew it posed a threat to someone I loved so dearly.
I didn’t yet know how I’d stop Jessie from pursuing Kevin on the yacht trip. I just knew that I had to and that I would figure out a way to protect him.
I was just getting comfortable in my bed and was almost ready to drift off to sleep, myself, when Jessie once again disrupted the peace.
My phone buzzed.
Jessie: So, when are you introducing me to this sexy captain friend of yours?
I let out a heavy sigh. There was nothing about this trip that I would find enjoyable, I could already tell. I wondered if there was enough time left to grab my bags and run back to shore.
The phone buzzed again.
Jessie: Don’t tell me you’re sleeping AGAIN.
I took another deep breath, careful to calm myself before responding. We were stuck together out at sea now for several days. I couldn’t let things get hostile. At least not yet. I paused, trying to come up with the perfect response.
When the phone buzzed a third time, I almost lost my cool anyway. I looked again.
Kevin: Saw you board. Don’t be a stranger. Come up and see me when you can.
My stomach churned. This was going to get messy.
Chapter Three
I’ve always been too shy to get involved in things like the game. Even on “girls night outs,” I was never one to hook up with someone I’d never met or go home for one-nighters. Maybe it had something to do with the way I was raised. My father had been pretty strict with me when I was growing up and my mother had her own disillusions with beauty and sexuality.
Her fall from stardom after she had me is what did it, I think. She’d risen to fame when she was young and beautiful. Then she had me and took a break. When she returned, slightly older with a mother’s physique, her career hadn’t taken off in the way she had hoped. She was recast in her ridiculous soap opera as the same character she’d played before.
