Cameron couldn't sleep. It might have been the choppy sea, or it might have been how dazzled she was by the events of the previous night. House kissed her. She kissed House. Nothing was ever going to be the same. It was terrifying.
At four she gave up and went to the gym. She ran hard, hoping the physical exhaustion would help her clear her mind. When she returned to the room, she showered and ordered breakfast. She watched the sun rise over Sardinia. From the balcony it looked pink, both with stucco and bougainvillea.
At seven breakfast arrived. She ignored it for a while, enjoying the solitude of early morning. Finally, she realized that she was hungry and she lifted the cover. Her order of toast and coffee was there, as well as a plate with a thick slice of brie and three seckel pears. She knew that she didn't order it, but it was welcome none the less. They think of everything.
Finally she felt like she could sleep. She remembered seeing House's newspaper, today an International Herald-Tribune. She wrote him a brief note and stuck it on top of it.
I'll meet you at reception at one for lunch. Ali
House saw her dishes on the balcony and figured that she was already up and out. He read her note. The shore excursions were either golf or shopping. He didn't think that either were her cup of tea, but it was a vacation of sorts, who knows what she found to amuse herself. He was glad for the respite because he had no idea what to do next. He needed counsel and he was thousands of miles away from the only person who could give it to him. He looked at his watch. It was 2:00 AM in New Jersey.
The first tender to shore left at ten. House was the first one on board. "Are you golfing today?" Asked the Cruise Director.
"No, what I really need is to get to a phone." He implored with his eyes. "What do you suggest?"
She smiled, "No problem. At the dock there's a small shopping center. There's a newsstand on the bottom level, they sell phone cards. I think there might be a phone at the supermarket."
"Thanks." He allowed the crewman to help him into the boat and within five minutes he was wandering around what could have a ubiquitous mall anywhere. It was small, but not too small to have a Tommy Hilfiger store and a Benetton. Already the place was crawling with women who wanted nothing more than to have an outfit about which she could say, "This? Oh, I got this at the cutest store in Sardinia."
He found the newsstand and in addition to the phone card he bought some magazines and a London Times. A short climb up some stairs revealed a small supermarket of the sort one might see in a European resort town. The phone was directly in front of the store and all he had to do was slide the card in the slot and dial. Soon he heard the ringing of a phone on the other end.
"Wilson," he long ago had learned that if the phone was ringing before dawn, that it was for him. Julie grumbled and rolled over.
"James, it's Greg. Sorry to wake you."
Wilson sat up, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, but I need your advice." He shifted his weight and tucked the handset under his chin.
Wilson had moved into the hall and sat down at the top of the stairs. "Okay, I'm here. What do you need?"
"I kissed Cameron. She kissed me. Now what?" He felt like a fool, but he was completely out of his depth.
"Ask her to move in with you?" Wilson suggested.
"I don't think you're grasping the subtle intricacies of the situation."
"And I don't think that you're grasping the fact that it's not even five in the morning here." Wilson moved aside so that the dog could get past him.
"I owe you." House agreed.
"You owe me big. So you guys kissed? Is that all? Gee, if you take her to the drive-in, do you think she'll let you get to second?" He teased.
"You're missing the point. There's no half-way with her. She's probably planning our wedding right now."
"Can I be best man?" Wilson tried to take him seriously, but it was impossible.
"You can be ring bearer. Please? You understand women." House shifted ears.
"So what do you want? I don't think you need me to tell you how to get her naked." The dog looked at him expectantly from the foot of the stairs, so he got up to let him out.
"It's all going so fast. How do we go from nothing to wherever we are now? I want to be able to test the water. I want to separate work from romance. I want to be able to stand next to her without feeling like I'm a twelve-year-old with a boner in math class."
"Wow, you've got it bad. Have you tried talking to her? Maybe she's just as freaked out as you are." Wilson stood at the kitchen door and watched as a streak of pink appeared on the horizon.
"I don't think so. Haven't you noticed? She's confident now. For Christ's sake she has three boyfriends. No, she knows exactly what she's doing." If Wilson couldn't come through for him, he might actually have to tell the truth.
"Did you at least see the koala?"
Cameron woke at around eleven feeling much better, if not entirely refreshed. She poured a Coke and tried to form a plan for the day. At one she'd have to see House. Even something as small as kissing House made her tingle all over. She felt like she lost forty IQ points overnight. What she needed was solid advice. She needed to talk to Foreman. She threw on a batik print skirt and a tank top and went took the tender to the shore.
On the dock stood woman with a clipboard, "Welcome to Sardinia."
Cameron pushed her sunglasses on top of her head, "I need to make a phone call to the United States, where can I do that?"
The woman turned around and pointed to a group of shops, "the newsstand sells phone cards."
Cameron found the public phone outside the supermarket. After a couple of false starts she got a dial tone and figured out how to dial New Jersey. The phone only rang once, "Foreman."
"Eric, it's Allison. Did I wake you?"
"No, I just got back from the gym. So how's the cruise? What have you seen so far?" He had just poured the milk on his Frosted Flakes so he held the mouthpiece up in the air while he chewed.
"It's amazing. Gorgeous. I can't wait to show you the pictures. I kissed House." She waited for the explosion.
Foreman swallowed and took a sip of coffee. "You kissed House? Why?"
"Well, he kissed me first. It started out as a game and now…"
"You were never playing a game. So what's the problem? Isn't this what you wanted? Are you going to name your first child after me? You can call her Erica if it's a girl." He sipped more coffee.
"I can't think straight. Everything is upside-down. I can't sleep. I'm scared to see him again. What if he pretends that nothing happened? What if he thinks it was a huge mistake?" She noticed that there was a chip in her manicure.
"Calm down. Damn, don't call me after you sleep with him. How drunk was he?" Eric decided not to drink the milk out of the bowl; the slurping would be too loud.
"He wasn't drunk."
"How high was he?" Eric leafed through a two-month-old copy of Men's Health.
"He wasn't high. We were just sitting in my room after dinner and it happened." She saw a woman come out of the supermarket with three bottles of champagne; suddenly she had an incredible urge for a Kir Royale.
"And that's all that happened? You kissed? Then he left and slept in his own bed?" He got to the page in the fashion editorial that he had dog-eared. He had always wanted a leather jacket like that.
"Should I have jumped on him? Did I blow my chance? Don't answer that. I sound like an idiot."
"Don't be so hard on yourself. House is not the kind of guy you jump on. You're fine. Just stay cool." Foreman had moved into the closet, he pulled out a pair of pants and a shirt. He opened a drawer to get a tie.
"I'm meeting him in a half-hour. What do I do? What do I say? How do I act?" Cameron smiled at a guy who was obviously checking her out. Then she turned towards the phone.
"Simple. Act like you're going out on a second date. Last night was your first date." He wished that she'd get some girlfriends.
"Technically it was our second." She reminded him.
"Do you really want the first one to count?" He pulled off his shoes in preparation for getting showered.
"Actually, if you count the monster truck thing, it was our third date." She was in stream of consciousness mode now.
"Do you know how crazy you sound? You need to do two things. The first is calm down. The second is masturbate."
"ERIC!" She shrieked.
"Oh come on, that's not the first time you've heard that. Guys do it all the time. Take the edge off. You are so torqued up right now that you're going to come across as a stalker instead of the mother of his children. Where are you anyway?" He needed to get her off the phone or else he was going to be late to work.
"I'm at some supermarket in Italy." She needed to get going if she was going to meet House on time.
"Okay, I'm going to let you go. It's time to leave the nest. House is just a guy. You are a hot, sexy woman. Remember that." He waited.
"You're right. Thank you for letting me babble at you. I'll bring you back something nice. I've got to catch the next tender back to the boat. Bye!" She hung up and nearly skipped back to the dock.
Foreman stepped into the shower shaking his head, "House doesn't stand a chance."
House sat in a chair just to the right of the reception desk. His right hand was on the handle of his cane. His left hand was obscured by the curve of the chair. He watched as couples paraded back and forth from the elevators to various parts of the ship. It wasn't quite one, but he had a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach that after everything that had happened that she might have packed up and tried to catch a flight home, rather than deal with the inevitable awkwardness.
She lit up like Christmas when she saw him. Compared to the shrink-wrapped women on the ship she had a fresh-faced beauty that they couldn't even appreciate, let alone duplicate. It looked as though she got some color too; her shoulders were red from the sun.
He stood up and offered her a bouquet of spring flowers. "It's nice to see you."
She smiled and the tension in her face faded. "Oh. Thank you, they're beautiful." They stood smiling at each other. Cameron licked her lips, "So we're just going with this then?"
"Works for me." He replied, "Hungry?"
"Can we get a drink first? I've got the biggest craving for champagne." She steered him towards the lounge.
It was deserted, save for the bartender. House sipped scotch and she watched the bubbles in her glass. The bartender had put her flowers in a highball glass and set them on the table next to the piano.
House stood and opened it. "Is it okay for me to…?" he indicated the keys. The bartender nodded and continued to chop fruit garnishes.
He sat down and closed his eyes. Soon Cole Porter's I Get a Kick Out of You played. Cameron blushed and sipped her drink. When he finished he moved on to Roger's and Hart's Where or When. He was about to do another when he realized that they needed to be in a seminar in an hour.
He drained his glass and stood, "Come on. Let's see what kind of Reuben sandwich they make on this tub."
She laughed, "You aren't really…"
"I never know what I'm going to do until I do it. I'm madcap that way." He grabbed her flowers off the table and gave them to the bartender. "See that these get to her cabin." He gave him the number and a five dollar bill.
"That was very smooth." She said as they walked towards the restaurant.
"The piano or the other thing?" They were seated at a window facing open water.
"Both. Actually…everything you've done so far has been smooth. You haven't been grumpy or crabby this whole time. And you've had reason to be." She thought back to the people at the seminar, the ship was full of awful people. Smug, suburban couples with more money than sense.
"Oh, I'm normally a wooly baa-lamb. It's Chase. He puts me in a bad mood." They reached the restaurant and were seated out on the deck. A soft breeze blew and ruffled the tablecloth.
She ignored him. "This sunshine is delicious." Cameron leaned back and turned her face up to the light.
The sun shone on her and created a halo. He looked over at the table next to him and two women were discussing their morning's shopping. "I could have got it at the Paramus Mall, but I figured, I'm here, it's here, I want it, so what the hell?" He looked away. The contrast was too stark.
She leaned in, so as not to be overheard, "Still think I'd make a better doctor's wife than a doctor?"
"You know, if we're going to date, you're going to have to work on your memory." He turned his attention to the menu.
"Date? Memory?" She skipped over the first idea, "Do you deny that you told me once that I must be damaged because I was beautiful enough not to have to go to medical school?"
"That's my point. You're going to have to forget some of the things I've said to you. In cases like this a good memory is unforgivable." He took a sip of water.
"So we're dating?" She finished off her drink and played with the lemon twist.
"Are you always this much of a pain in the ass?"
"You know I am." She replied.
"Just don't tell Cuddy. She'll be in a jealous rage." He placed his order with the waiter. He settled for a cheeseburger.
"So what's the deal there? Foreman thinks you were once lovers." She ordered a Shrimp Louis.
"Foreman has no imagination. Cuddy has actually been involved with Adams for years." He toyed with a breadstick.
"Adams? Isn't he that guy in Radiology? Isn't he like, a hundred years-old?" She shook her head, "You're avoiding the question. But it's none of my business. So if you don't want to tell me, that's fine."
"One of these days, if we're still speaking after this cruise, we'll sit down and disclose everything about our past. I'll tell you about my fraternity days, you'll tell me about that stint you did in prison. We'll sit by the fire and bore each other long into the night with our war stories. Failed love. Tragic love. All of it. The unabridged version. But let's save that for when we're really desperate for conversation. Right now I could just look at you and not say anything." To prove his point he focused his eyes on her face.
"One of these days you'll take me seriously." She stared right back at him.
"You're already as serious as death eating crackers."
The afternoon session ran long and most people didn't start dinner until well after eight. House bribed the maitre'd and got them a table alone, away from the rest of the diners. It was nearly midnight when they got back to the cabin.
Cameron paused at her door and asked, "Are you coming in?"
He didn't say anything; he just walked through the door. She took a moment to kick off her shoes. She had changed into a short cotton sundress for dinner. The bed had been turned down and more chocolate had been left for her on the pillow. She put it in a stack on the nightstand, with the other pillow chocolates from previous nights.
She patted the place next to her on the bed for him to sit.
House leaned back and accidentally turned off all the lights. "I can't see anything."
"Do you need to see something?" She slid her hand along his thigh and kissed him on the cheek.
"Actually, I'd like to see that koala."
"Let's start with feeling the koala."