Storms 01 - Family Storms

beneath me.
    Ricky saw it coming and had his arm around my waist again. “Whoa,” he said, and scooped me up to carry me to the sofa.
    “No,” Kiera said, seizing his arm. “She needs to be in the bed.”
    He nodded and carried me to the master stateroom.
    “I’ll get Boyd to slow down. That will help,” he said after he lowered me to the bed.
    I closed my eyes. My stomach was doing flip-flops.
    After he left, Kiera came in.
    “Perfect,” she said, as if I had planned it all out and was pretending. “We’ll wait until the boat is docked.”
    “I’m not fooling,” I said. “I feel sick.”
    “You’ll get over it,” she insisted. “Rest a little.”
    “But you said the pill would prevent this from happening.”
    “Everyone’s different, Sasha. Don’t be silly. I was hoping it would work for you, but I guess it doesn’t. Next time, we’ll get you to wear one of those patches to prevent seasickness. Relax. The best is yet to come.”
    “I don’t want to,” I said. “I don’t feel good.”
    “What are you talking about? We go through all this effort to make it easy for you, and you want to back out now? Relax. You’ll feel lots better after we dock, and that will be the best time for your initiation. Besides, you don’t want to disappoint the girls after they voted to include you, and you especially don’t want to disappoint Ricky,” she added. “I’ll be back in a few.”
    “I think I’m going to throw up.”
    She stood glaring at me for a moment and then sighed and shook her head. “Okay. If you have to throw up, go into the bathroom. I’ll see if Ricky has anything onboard that will help,” she said, and left.
    I closed my eyes and kept my hands on my stomach while I fought back the urge to vomit. No one else was this seasick. I was embarrassed. The feeling didn’t pass. I was about to get up when Ricky and Kiera returned. Kiera was holding a glass of something with a blue tint.
    “We called Ricky’s father, and he told us where this was in the galley,” Kiera said. “You drink it all down as fast as you can.”
    She came to the bed. Ricky helped me sit up, and I took the glass. It didn’t look like anything anyone would want to drink.
    “Drink it fast,” Kiera emphasized, “and you won’t mind the taste.”
    I looked at Ricky. His face was so serious, his eyes intense. Was he that way because he thought that somehow this was his fault and he felt sorry for me?
    “If she has a bad time, I’ll never stop hearing about it from my mother,” Kiera told him.
    I looked at the glass again, took a deep breath, and gulped the contents. Kiera took the glass back immediately, and Ricky lowered me to the pillow again.
    “Just rest. We’re almost at the dock,” he said.
    Kiera was looking down at me in the strangest way. After a moment, they both left. I closed my eyes again and listened to the hum of the engines. I felt the boat slowing down, but I never felt it being docked. I fell asleep, I think, or maybe it would be better described as passing out.
    The first thing I realized when I opened my eyes was that I was naked, and everyone was standing around the bed looking down at me, but their faces were going in and out of focus. Was I dreaming?
    Then I saw the top of Ricky’s head. He was moving between my legs and lifting them at the same time. Faces continued to go in and out and then diminished, as if I were looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope.When I felt him pushing into me, I was sure I heard a soft chanting that sounded like “VA, VA, VA.” I know I cried out. My whole body was shaking.
It’s really happening,
I thought.
This isn’t a dream.
    I don’t know how long it lasted. Minutes seemed to float into each other. I wasn’t even sure how many times Ricky was there. At one point, as if they were all suddenly bored, they filed out, and I was alone with him for a while. Then he left, too.
    When I woke up again, I was dressed. I could feel the boat moving. I sat up. The stateroom spun and then settled. My stomach was still woozy but not as bad as it had been. I called for Kiera. I could hear them all laughing. There was music, too. I struggled to get to my feet and opened the door. Everyone but Ricky was in the salon. They were drinking vodka. I saw the bottle on the table. Deidre noticed me first and called out. They all stopped talking and laughing and looked at me.
    “I hope you’re feeling better, Sasha,” Kiera said. “I can’t bring