A/N: Okay, so I saw "My Oh Maya" and liked it (although I feel a little like they pulled a "Saved by the Bell," bringing in some sassy New York chick to draw attention away from the fact that legitimate main characters have gone missing from the show...) Maya's not so bad, though, and it was great to see the writers remember that Cody has a brother, so I sat down to write some Maya/Zack. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I can't not write Cailey, you guys!
If you've seen "My Oh Maya," then you know that London spends a good thirty seconds explaining what happened to Bailey (hey, it's more than the Saved by the Bell girls ever got...) and it completely horrified me. I feel like no one was as upset as they should be. I mean, I realize I need to take London's explanation with a grain of salt, but... Bailey got called home from the middle of the ocean to do manual labor because the family tractor broke? A plane ticket to Kansas from who-knows-where doesn't seem like the cheapest alternative unless she is never coming back. Which she is... I think?
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine.
"I have the best news ever: Bailey's going home!"
London's excited shriek was ear-splitting, but that wasn't the reason Cody dropped the towels he'd been folding. "She... what? She's leaving?" he repeated dumbly.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're missing the point: I have my own room again!" London spread her arms in a ta-da gesture, clapping her hands and bouncing with enthusiasm. "Yay me!"
Cody was still having trouble comprehending the situation. "But... why? I... I mean, it's the middle of the school year, and-"
London shrugged. "A tractor fell on her Uncle Clem." she said bluntly.
Cody's eyes widened in horror. "Oh my-... Is he...?"
"Oh, he's fine." London waved off his concern. "But the tractor broke. Now her family needs Bailey to go home and pull the plow. Finally her ox-like shoulders will come in handy!" The heiress giggled, miming pulling a plow.
Cody rolled his eyes at London's put-down. His ex-girlfriend's shoulders were graceful and feminine, just like everything else about her, and while Bailey was certainly strong for her size, there was no way her parents were making her come home to pull the plow. Either Bailey hadn't told London the whole story about why she was going, or, more likely, she had and London just hadn't listened.
"London," he grabbed his friend by the back of her sparkly tank top as she "plowed" away. "When?"
Glaring at him as she fussily smoothed the wrinkles out of her shirt, London glanced at her diamond studded wristwatch. "One of."
"What?" Cody was startled. He'd expected the answer to be in terms of days, not minutes. "One of what?"
"One of the reasons you should get a watch!" London said, slapping her knee and bursting into laughter.
Cody gave her an incredulous look. "I have a watch." He pointed out the obvious. "I know what time it is, I'm asking you when Bailey is leaving."
"Oh." London said, straightening up. "Well, the boat just docked, so... she's probably already gone."
"What?" Cody grabbed the towel counter and leaned on it for support. How could she be gone? How could she have left without even a goodbye?
"ALREADY. GONE." London repeated in a deafening shout. "Don't you understand anything?"
Cody pushed himself off the counter, brushing past London without another word, ignoring the clean towels balled up on the deck, forgetting that he still had forty minutes left in his shift. He yanked open the door to the lower decks, nearly colliding with several passengers as he tore through the corridor leading to the girls' cabins. Reaching Bailey and London's cabin, he banged on the door. "Bailey? Bails!"
Silence inside. There was no answer.
Cody leaned his forehead against the door, finally taking a second to breathe and think about what exactly he was doing, why it had been so important that he see her before she leave. Vaguely, he wondered if she'd told Zack, Marcus, and Woody that she was leaving. Did Miss Tutweiller know? Did Moseby? Why hadn't she said something to him? Did she think that just because they were broken up, she could just disappear and he wouldn't notice?
He sighed, defeated. Even if he had caught her before she'd left, what would he have said to her? It's not like he could ask her not to go- they weren't even dating anymore, what right did he have to do that? Besides, her family needed her, and-
"Cothy?"
Cody's head snapped up at the sound of her voice. She was standing at the end of the hall, a suitcase in each hand. Her room key was between her teeth. Struggling with the heavy cases, she wrestled them down the corridor until she was standing beside him, then dropped them both with a heavy thud. "Whut are oou doin here?" Removing the key from her teeth, she used it to unlock her cabin door. "I mean, what are you doing here?"
Cody followed her into her room, realizing in shock and dismay that her half of the room was completely cleaned out. "Bails... you... you..." he stuttered, turning to her, his gaze pleading for an explanation that it wasn't what it looked like: that she wasn't leaving for good.
"Don't look at me like that." Bailey tucked her hair behind her ear, looking around her empty cabin forlornly. "I'm coming back." she told him self-consciously. "I'm just taking my stuff in case."
"In case of what?" Cody asked through numb lips.
Bailey paused for a long time. "In... case I don't." she finally whispered. Tears were beginning to pool in her eyes.
Cody's heart sank. "But... what? I don't understand."
"We don't have money." Bailey explained, a little bitterly. She blinked and two tears rolled down her face. "If we don't have a tractor, we can't plant corn. If we don't plant, we don't eat. If we have to buy a new tractor... it's hard to afford Seven Seas High."
"Bailey..." Cody didn't know what to say. He knew how much Bailey loved living on the ship- the challenge of the accelerated academics program, the once-in-a-lifetime chance to travel the world.
Bailey quickly dried her stray tears. "But, hey, maybe we'll get the tractor fixed, and I'll be back before I know it." She bent and removed something from the trash can beside her desk. "I, uh, almost forgot this."
Cody recognized it- it was a scrapbook Bailey had made of her time on the S.S. Tipton. It was full of pictures of the countries they had visited, the landmarks they had seen, and the fun times they had had with their friends. At one point there had been a section devoted to her relationship with Cody, full of photos of the two of them together, hand in hand, smiling at the camera from cities like Dublin, Honolulu, Sydney... Cody wondered if she'd kept it the way it was after they'd broken up.
"I was angry." she explained sadly, smoothing out the album's wrinkled pages with a loving hand. "But I can't leave this behind."
She stopped at a photo that was taken in London, England. Woody, Marcus, and Zack were standing to Bailey's left, Zack leaning casually on a croquet mallet, while on Bailey's right, London was posing artfully for the camera. Bailey was grinning widely and leaning back against Cody, clad in his tweed cape and deerstalker hat, who was standing behind her, arms wound around her waist. Mr. Moseby stood to the extreme right, eying the young people with an mixture of fondness and exasperation apparent on his face.
Wistfully, Bailey traced the edge on the photo with one finger. "I'm going to miss you guys." Giving a small snort at her own sentimentality, she shut the scrapbook, tucking it inside one of her already-crammed suitcases. Picking up her bags, she took a step towards the door. Cody blocked her.
"Why didn't you tell us you were leaving?"
Bailey shook her head. "I just found out yesterday." she said. "I had to pack and everything..." She tried to go around Cody, but he continued to block her way. "Cody, I have to get off the ship. I have a plane to catch later."
"We would have helped you pack." Cody pointed out, upset. "Why didn't you tell us? We're supposed to be your friends! You're leaving, and you might not be coming back, and you didn't even give us a chance to say goodbye!"
Bailey dropped her bags again. "I know..." she whispered, her wavering voice indicating that she was on the verge of tears again. "I thought it would be too hard. I didn't even tell London until this morning..." she mustered a watery smile that almost broke Cody's heart. "She'd just assumed I was packing away all my stuff because it was so ugly..." She ended the sentence with something halfway between a laugh and a sob.
"She'll miss you." Cody told her in a soft voice. "We all will." Their eyes met and held, and Bailey favored him with a warm smile, the kind she used to give him, before Paris.
"Thanks." She sniffled, taking a deep breath to compose herself. "Well, it looks like this is your chance to say goodbye." she reminded him quietly.
Cody looked at the floor. A chance to say goodbye- wasn't this what he had come for? And yet, at this moment, he couldn't think of any words that would even come close to telling her what she'd meant to him. Perhaps because he wasn't even close to being ready to say goodbye.
"I..." What did you say when this could be the last time you ever saw the first girl you ever loved? The girl he still loved, despite all the anger, awkwardness, and misunderstandings between them. "Bails..."
The girl who stood by him, even when he was embarrassing himself.
The girl who was worth sneaking out after curfew, risking detention, just to see.
The girl who made his heart beat fast just by reciting useless facts, and beat faster by looking into his eyes and saying nothing at all.
He couldn't do it. "Email me to let me know you got home safe, okay?" When she nodded, so did he. "I'll see you in a few weeks, Bails."
"Take notes for me?" she requested in the same light tone of voice. "So I can catch up in class when I get back?"
"Of course." Cody promised. The longer they had this conversation, the less it felt like she was actually coming back. "I guess I should let you go." he said after a long moment.
"I guess..." Bailey seemed as loathe to leave as he was to let her.
She hefted her bags once more and Cody stepped forward to stop her. "Wait, let me get those." When he leaned in to wrap his hands around the suitcase handles, he kissed her on the mouth. He hadn't planned on doing it, but the need to touch her, the need to convey how he felt about her, the need to say a real goodbye, had been too strong for him.
Her eyes widened in surprise at first, but she didn't pull away, releasing the suitcases into his capable hands and bringing her own hands up to press against his chest. He kept it short, but both teens could feel how the other was affected. "Cody..." she murmured as he straightened up.
"I know." he whispered into her hair. This wasn't the time to talk about their relationship, and perhaps there would never be another one. This was goodbye, plain and simple, the best they knew how.
He walked her to the gangplank just as the last call was made for disembarking passengers. They faced each other. "Say goodbye to Zack for me, would you?" Bailey asked at the last minute. "And Woody and Marcus."
"You got it." Cody promised. He held her suitcases out to her. "Good luck with the tractor."
"Thanks." She wrapped her hands around his and he savored that last contact before he pulled his fingers away, leaving her supporting the bags on her own. "See ya, Cody."
"Bye, Bailey." She headed down the gangplank, looking back every few seconds, and Cody waited by the rail until she was standing on the ground, looking up at her floating home from dry land. The plank was raised, and then there was nothing to bridge the gap between them at all.