Chapter Five - The Cruise That Sold Me Nothing

CHAPTER FIVE

The Cruise That Sold Me Nothing

MAN, I WAS so excited for that cruise.

You have to understand, I didn’t grow up taking vacations. I wasn’t flying to new places. I didn’t hop on planes or see the ocean or get the summer getaway life. That wasn’t my world. So this was huge. My first real trip. My first flight. My first cruise.

I was beyond hyped.

The night before, me and Zack were hanging with some girls at the apartment, just messing around, killing time. Then 3 a.m. hits and his stepdad pulls up to take us to the airport. That was it. We were gone. Bags packed, eyes half-closed, hearts wide open.

We flew down to Miami on a connecting flight. I actually enjoyed the plane, that was new for me. Everything about it felt like the start of something. The trip. The job. The transformation. I was leaving my old life behind.

And then the weirdest coincidence of all time happened.

So Dylan, who had moved back to Florida at this point, he was from Marco Island, which is nowhere near Miami. But before he left Dayton, he had this guy named Felix come up and stay with us. I hadn’t seen either of them in a minute.

We land in Miami… and they’re there. They’re there. Dylan and Felix are just there somehow, right next to the airport. They picked us up and saved us a $40 Uber. Like the universe dropped in an inside joke just for us.

That was probably the highlight.

Because then we got on the boat.

And that’s when I learned: cruises are hell.

If you’ve never been on one, good. Don’t. Even this “free” cruise turned out to be a mess.

First off: no hot girls. Zero. None. Just older folks. The whole ship was like a retirement home on water. And they wouldn’t even let us into our rooms right away. We were wiped. No sleep, two planes, dragging ourselves onto this floating disappointment, and we had to just sit there. Me, Zack, and this other dude named Arsh, all just waiting.

The whole vibe was off.

The drinks were a scam. You had to buy some ridiculous package just to get access, and I only drank once the whole time thanks to peer pressure. The Wi-Fi was extortion. The food was free, but it was closest to a middle school cafeteria. I'm not gonna name the cruise line, but let’s just say it’s cousins with Festival.

The only real win was the fact that it took us to the Bahamas. Nassau, specifically. But even there, we didn’t get to do much. The company had scheduled a bunch of events like team activities, but none of us really got to attend. Nobody knew what was going on half the time. Everything was disorganized. It felt like a sales pitch that never got started.

And the people I actually wanted to talk to?

Nowhere.

Connor wasn’t even on the cruise. Tyler was, technically, but we only saw him once at breakfast right before we got off the ship. It was a nothing interaction. Brief conversation. No meeting of the minds.

Just eggs and silence.

In the end, it wasn’t worth it.

Sure, I ate a lot of food. But in hindsight? I could’ve just hit up Golden Corral a few times and called it a vacation. For all the hype and the “free cruise” talk, it was mid. Like, aggressively mid.

And the worst part?

This cruise was part of what sold me on the dream. This was supposed to be the prize. The kickoff. The motivational rocket fuel.

But now I was starting to wonder what I’d actually signed up for.