Page 61 of Viking Vengeance Cruise

I was trying to protect her!

Was I wrong? Should I have just listened? Helsinki’s tomorrow.

How do I fix this?

—Second-Guessing Everything at Sea

Dear Second-Guessing,

You weren’t wrong—you just delivered a closing argument when she needed a conversation. She asked “what do you think?” not “what should I do?”

You responded as if she’d announced she was joining a cult instead of showing you a mediocre text from a mediocre ex.

Here’s the fix: Apologize. Not for having an opinion. You’re allowed to think her ex is a walking red-flag convention. Apologize for not asking what she was feeling first.

Try this: “I’m sorry I came in hot. What do you want to do?”

Then let her answer. Even if it’s not what you want to hear. She’s an adult. Maybe she needs to text him back to confirm he’s still the guy who made her call off an engagement. Sometimes the best way out is through. But if you keep death-gripping the steering wheel of her love life, she’ll stop letting you in the car.

Helsinki’s tomorrow. Apologize. Ask what she wants.

Then let her talk without rebuttal.

—Trixie

P.S. Order room service and share a chocolate lava cake. It won’t fix the tension, but it gives you both something to do with your mouths besides argue.

Day 6: At Sea

A day at sea feels like a vacation all on its own. Or it did, right up until Marina texted me the rigorous schedule the Velvet Viking Book Club has set for itself today.

The list is as ambitious as a toddler’s birthday party planned by a mother with a Pinterest account and a dream.

Sunrise yoga on the lido deck with annotated copies of romance novels tucked beneath the chaise longues. A themed breakfast where everyone dresses as their favorite fictional villain. A “judge a book by its cover” scavenger hunt through the ship’s boutiques, where teams race to find real-life versions of romance cover staples—a billowing white shirt, a fur throw, and anything with more laces than sense.

Mimosas and morally gray character debates in the Observation Lounge. A dramatic read-aloud of the steamiest chapter performed with wildly questionable accents. And a sunset deck photo shoot recreating iconic romance covers with the ocean breeze standing in as their wind machine.

And they say I need a hobby.

I missed sunrise yoga, mostly because I was busy enjoying a sunrise tryst with my devastatingly handsome husband.

And I skipped breakfast as my favorite villain because I was teaching a class on painting Swedish vistas in acrylics. If you ask me, dressing as a villain and grading amateur fjord art are closer cousins than anyone wants to admit.

But there is no way on this floating buffet that I’m missing mimosas and morally gray character debates in the Observation Lounge. In fact, Bess and Nettie aren’t missing it either. Marina, however, let me know that Tinsley has her busy in the bingo lounge. Although I’ll admit, a part of me wonders if she volunteered for the assignment to steer clear of me and my prying questions. I couldn’t blame her if she did, but it makes me sad thinking about it.

Nothing says avoidance quite like volunteering for bingo duty. I should know. I once signed up to demonstrate towel animals in order to dodge a phone call from my ex-husband. Heck, I’d have folded the ship’s entire linen inventory into a towel Noah’s ark, two of every species, if it bought me one more Stanton-free afternoon. The elephants alone would have taken a week.

And it would have been worth it.

The Observation Lounge is an expansive space with floor-to-ceiling windows where you can take in the glorious Baltic at nearly every angle, and the room itself is dripping with opulence.

Emerald carpets patterned with fleurs-de-lis, pink velvet chairs, and creamy marble tables create an elegant yet cozy environment ripe for discussing fictional men’s questionable morality while day-drinking.

The refreshment table is a work of art. Cucumber sandwiches cut into perfect triangles. Smoked salmon on crackers. Mini quiches that smell of butter and good decisions. Chocolate-dipped strawberries. Glazed donuts arranged in a pyramid. Swedish dream cookies that look homemade, and I happen to know for a fact they are. The pastry team guards that recipe with their lives. And mimosas, so many mimosas that the champagne flutes form their own small constellation.

I plan on charting every last star personally.

I note that Poppy has taken exactly one strawberry and is holding it the way other people hold a prop, while Sienna has built a small donut skyline on her plate and is dismantling it with the focus of a demolition crew. I knew I liked her.