Sweet (2 page)

I fumble in my giant purse for my cell phone. I'm going to do some angry texting to Viv. At least, she could have warned me! She knows I'm shy about stuff like this—weight is private. And, yeah, I could stand to lose five pounds (okay, fifteen) but that's nobody's business but my own.

To be weighed in public seems like a big fine to have to pay to go on the cruise.

Then I hear the deep, raspy, heavily accented voice all of America would recognize. Sabbi Ribiero: the infamous, hard-partying, and Maserati-wrecking Brazilian heiress.

She is talking. To me.

“Can you believe this?”

“No,” I say. “It's so demeaning. It's insulting. I mean, are we to be weighed like cows? Like luggage?”

Sabbi blinks her twenty-inch-long eyelashes, looking at me like I'm speaking a foreign language.

“I haven't
waited in line
since I immigrated to America, when I was six years old,” she says pointedly, like I'm an idiot. To tell you the truth, I kind of act like an idiot because I'm mesmerized by her mouth. She forms each word like it's a little masterpiece. And her voice is like a jaguar purring.

She cocks a perfect eyebrow at me, waiting for a response.

“I wait in line all the time.” I shrug.

One of her groupies laughs, then cuts it short when he sees no one else thinks I'm funny.

Sabbi tosses her hair and turns her back on me, without another word.

When Sabbi is motioned up to the scale, she removes her aqua-colored leather jacket and hands it to one of her people. She's wearing a curve-hugging aqua-colored sweater and aqua pants with a little gold belt. She kicks off her gold stilettos and steps onto the scale. (It could be that her shoes are made of solid gold. That would not surprise me at all.)

Sabbi looks right at me, holding my gaze steadily and proudly, as a lady checks the scale and enters the figures onto a laptop, then swipes Sabbi's ID card and hands it back.

Two uniformed crew members thank Sabbi, help her down, and hold her hands as she slips back on her gold stilettos.

What the hell has Vivika gotten me into?

It's a relief when I get up onto the deck. Some of the people are super-famous, like Sabbi, and then there are the fat wealthy people. Those are pretty much the two categories—young, gorgeous semi-famous people who look like they are probably here for free, and wealthy people who want to lose weight. I guess there's a third category—people like me who don't look like they belong in either category. And jeez! There's a fourth—people serving the passengers. There's an awful lot of them!

Waiters in white jackets are circulating champagne flutes on trays lined with lavender-colored linens. The deck looks like a five-star hotel, tricked out in polished wood, brass, and crystal. There are bouquets of lavender-colored flowers here and there. (What's with all the lavender?)

An elderly man and a frumpy-looking Asian lady are making rounds, shaking hands and welcoming people on board. They must be executives from the Solu Corporation. Standing a few steps behind them is a bald guy with a clipboard who is incredibly muscly, like, about to burst out of his suit. It's like the old guy has Drax the Destroyer for a personal assistant.

I see “Baby Tom-Tom” with a TV crew, over by the railing.

Okay, so I am now looking at my childhood crush, Tom Fiorelli. With my own eyeballs.

Once upon a time, he was the tubby child star of everyone's favorite sitcom,
The Magnificent Andersons.
We all watched him grow up on screen. (By “we all” I mean the entire United States of America.) They canceled the show when he hit fourteen and his voice started cracking. Since then he lost weight and tried to be a serious film star, but his films were bad. Really bad. So bad that I had to leave the theater during
Double Fang.

It was about a gang of teen boys who turn into were-vampires at night. (Yes, werewolves who are also vampires. And the film was not a comedy.) Baby Tom-Tom was their leader. His name in the film was 'Cisor. (The film should have been a comedy.)

Maybe he couldn't make it as a film star because he chose dumb movies to star in, but maybe it was because everyone still calls him Baby Tom-Tom. There's just no way to take that name seriously.

And there was the whole thing with the pop singer Bonnie Lee Finn. That horrible breakup and the leaked voice-mail messages he left her where he sounded really sad and kept telling her that he
did
know how to have fun. He could
learn
to loosen up.

I felt really bad for him.

I crane my neck to get a better look at him, over the heads of the small crowd gathered around him.

He's only eighteen or nineteen, but he's handling the large crowd like a pro, grinning and jovial. This is what he does now—hosting stuff. He's always on a red carpet or talking about who wore what. He's good at it.

He sure looks like he knows how to have fun, right now.

“Now, lots of people have asked why Solu decided to hold their launch event on a ship. Do you know?” Tom holds the microphone out to a pretty girl in a halter dress. She shakes her head and giggles.

“Anyone?” He offers the mike out.

“Because cruises are awesome?” the girl suggests.

“True! But not just that,” Tom says. He gestures over the edge of the ship.

“Look down here. See those crewmen waiting down there?”

I peer over the side of the boat, with everyone else.

There are two workmen in overalls waiting on a wooden platform that's been lowered down to sit just above the level of the water. They have cans of black paint with them and large rollers.

“Once all the passengers are on board,” Tom continues, “those crewmen are going to paint a line indicating the ship's weight. When we come back to this port, in seven short days, the ship will sit at least ten feet higher in the water! That will indicate a combined weight loss of at least five thousand pounds from the
Extravagance
's five hundred passengers! And it could be even more!”

The people around Tom cheer. He beams at them all.

I sort of want to raise my hand and say, “What about the weight of the food we will eat? What about the fuel? Won't those things affect the weight of the ship?”

But I'm not going to be some kind of lame whistle-blower on their promotional idea.

I have to say, it's weird to look at him.

It's Baby Tom-Tom, grinning that grin we all know so well.

I feel like I can see ghost images of him over his face—there he is as a toddler, as a saucy seven-year-old, as a chunky eleven-year-old wiseass, and then there's the present Tom.

The baby fat's gone now—he has a hard, etched jaw and his body's lean and muscled. You can see his pecs kind of straining at the fabric of his shirt. He's not that tall, but he has an electric charm coming off him. And hotness. (Coming off him in waves.)

Have I mentioned the hotness? Because he is scorching hot.

Then something surprising happens: Someone I can't see says, “Cut,” and the smile drops off Tom's face. One minute, he seems to be having a great time and the next, he's totally serious. Over it. Huh. (Maybe he doesn't actually know how to have fun, after all.)

“Laurel! There you are!” Viv crushes me in a giant hug from behind. “Stop gaping at Baby Tom-Tom like a dork.”

“I wasn't gaping!” I protest.

She drags me away from the little crowd.

“You have to see our room!” Vivika exclaims. “You're going to D-I-E die!”

 

TOM

DAY ONE

HI, I'M TOM FIORELLI
and I'm sweating through my third shirt of the day.

Very classy.

It's hot. I don't know why the heat is taking me by surprise—it's June and we're in Fort Lauderdale. But there's no airflow and I'm kind of sweltering here on the deck.

My producer, Tamara, is checking something off on her iPad, scowling as usual. I like Tamara. No one else treats me as poorly as she does and I like that. She doesn't handle me with a bunch of flattery. I imagine she treats me like she would any one of her seven brothers and sisters.

We've been working together for over a year. She's my producer and also my manager for my hosting gigs. Tamara has big ambitions for me—the VMAs, New Year's Eve,
The Voice.

There are about five girls in bikinis just “hanging around.” I guess they're hoping I'll pick them to interview.

I will. I should. I'm pretty sure they've brought on a bunch of attractive “ringers” for us to use. But I duck back toward the cameraman, Cubby, and take a sip of water. Just taking a break while Tamara's distracted.

“Gotta hydrate,” I say.

Cubby's mopping his head with a handkerchief. Sweat has made dark stripes on his brown T-shirt.

“Heck yeah. Feels like a hundred and ten in the sun. Seems to me like the whole deck's acting like a magnifying glass or something.”

I like Cubby. He's friendly, but not needy. When you're shooting with a one-man crew, you want to like the guy you're working with.

“Maybe once the ship starts moving it'll cool down,” I say.

It's been go-go-go since we boarded. First we did red carpet stuff down on the dock. Now these interviews on deck. We're shooting for another hour or so and then I get to go see my room and hit the gym.

The ship is really nice. Tamara said it was world-class and, I have to say, she was right.

This is nothing like the Carnival cruise my mom took me on when I was fourteen. I had always wanted to go on a cruise when I was a kid. It was one of those things my mom would dangle over me when I didn't want to do another take. Then they canceled the show and we went and it was a nightmare. Every time we tried to go to the pool, drunk frat boys would chant “Tom-Tom, Tom-Tom, Tom-Tom!” I spent most of that week in my room playing Xbox.

This is different.

The ship is sweet. White glove. Done right.

Most of the passengers are wealthy people desperate for thinness. I'd say a quarter of the passengers are minor celebrities and attractive “set dressing” party people. There's no one really A level. Luka Harris and Sabbi Ribiero, I guess. And that grub guy from
Survivor.
I'm sure all three of them—possibly all the celebrities—are getting paid to be here.

There is more than a fair share of pretty girls. We haven't even set sail yet and a bunch of them have busted out bikinis. I don't know, maybe they had them on under their clothes.

It's been suggested to me that I use this cruise as a way to remake my image when it comes to girls.

The way Molly, my publicist, put it was that people saw me as a tender heart, but now it was time for me to show them all how cocky and wild I could be.

Tamara, my producer, was less politic. “The thing with Bonnie made you look like a loser. You gotta party on this ship. Flirt. Grab ass. Get laid.”

Cubby elbows me.

“Hey, what are the chances this shit works? The Solu?” Cubby asks, surveying the crowd. He's got a sizable belly. He's probably thinking about becoming a customer. “I'll tell you what I'm going to do,” he tells me. “I'm going to wait a year and then try it. By then we'll know if it works.”

“If it does, I bet they'll give the inventor a medal,” I say.

“A Nobel Peace Prize,” he adds.

“Claire, quit dawdling!” says a bossy lady wearing tons of jewelry and a large, floppy hat. She's dragging along a girl whose on the obese side of obese. The poor girl is wearing a giant nautical striped outfit and looks profoundly miserable.

I tap Cubby on the shoulder, nod toward the girl.

He doesn't quite get my meaning. I guess he thinks I'm telling him to check her out because she's fat.

“It's a shame,” Cubby says, not meeting my eye. He thinks I'm about to say something mean about her.

“No, no,” I say. “That's not it. Tape me.”

Here's why I want to tape her: We should interview the people who Solu might actually, really
help
, not just pretty girls and petty celebrities.

“Excuse me, miss,” I say. I reach out and tap her on the shoulder. “I'd love to hear your thoughts about the cruise.”

The girl's face is polite at first, then goes slack, as she realizes that it's me doing the asking, then she turns beet red.

Cubby has the camera up and is taping.

“Are you excited about the cruise?” I ask her.

Her mother doubles back for her.

“Claire, come on!” she says. Then she sees me and the crew, taping. Her mouth drops, too. “Oh.”

“How would you describe the boat?” I ask Claire.

She's looking at me, then back to her mom, then to me again. I'd put her at around twelve maybe. She's definitely the youngest passenger I've seen so far.

She's quiet for so long I start to regret this. There's an expression on her face that says she thinks I'm screwing with her.

“I really do want to know,” I tell her. I give her a wink, smiling, encouraging.

“I guess … it's amazing!” she says, finally. “All the famous people and the ship's really nice.”

“Do you think Solu is going to deliver on its promises?” I ask.

“God, I hope so,” she says. And it's funny, the way she says it. Makes me laugh.

And she laughs, too.

There's a sparkle in her eye.

I think I just made her day, which makes me feel good. She reminds me of my cousin, Lizette. About the same age and everything.

“Of course Solu will deliver!” says a creaky old guy in a suit. He walks right into our shot.

Tamara is right behind him, mouthing something to me. I can't understand what it is.

“I'm Tom Fiorelli,” I say, extending my hand.

“Timothy Almstead. And this is Dr. Elise Zhang.” He gestures to a cherubic Asian woman with tortoiseshell glasses.