A prison. This boat was a prison. I wanted to be anywhere else in the world except here, but in all directions the water blockaded me, trapping me in this giant floating monument to my own stupidity and humiliation. More than once I considered jumping ship anyway and trying to make a break for the lights that were beginning to click on across the tantalizing shore in the distance. After all, swimming all the way across the Strait of Gibraltar was something that people had done before, so surely I could make half that distance. With the sun about to go down, however I’d be swimming blind in the choppy waters, and even though I kind of felt like I wanted to die I didn't really feel like I wanted to be dead just yet. I considered going to my room and hiding in there for the rest of the night, but decided instead that fresh air was the only thing that had a chance of clearing my head a little. I leaned on the rail of the main deck and stared into the sea, pondering whether in all the history of the world there had ever been a bigger screw-up than Bryson Daley.

When you gamble on long odds you shouldn’t be surprised to lose. The annoying little voice was back. Well why not? If I was going to have the worst day of my life anyway why not go the full distance and add a chastisement by my own mind onto the pile of miserable experiences?

What was your plan anyway? Were you going to walk up to her and say “Hello Alva, I sold you a mattress that one time and then we had a single conversation in a pub, remember? Wanna settle for me so you don’t have to deal with all these much more qualified guys?”

Well, naturally I had never expected Alva to actually get with me. That would be ridiculous.

Then what are you so upset about?

Okay, so maybe in my wildest dreams I might have thought that there was some chance, given the way she had smiled at me. It was a fool’s dream, though, and I was fully aware of that.

In that case why are you here? You knew it was dumb, so why did you take out a loan against your house and travel across the ocean?

I thought the voice was being awfully hypocritical. Hadn’t it been the one pushing me to do this in the first place?

So what, you’re going to shift blame from yourself onto yourself? “I’m sorry your honor, my own internal monologue made me do it?” This is all on you, buddy, so why are you here?

The more I thought about that question, the angrier I became that I couldn’t answer it. I hadn’t realistically expected to win Alva’s heart and I hadn’t realistically expected to cash at this tournament. I had thrown my boring but comfortable life away for no expected gain. Why was I here? Why?

“Hey you! Bryson, or whatever your name was. I have a bone to pick with you!”

That crystalline voice was unmistakable, but I could never have imagined it ringing with such a harsh tone as it did now. I didn’t want to look up. I didn’t want to see her face looking upon me with the anger that I heard in her voice. How much more pain could my heart take? Still, I knew I had no other choice, so I tore my gaze away from the water below me and looked to face Alva Lorensen in the manner of a man looking to face the gallows.

She strode up to me with purpose, her mouth turned downward in a scowl that seemed completely alien to it. If there was one thing I could identify as a reason for my coming here, it was the hope that I’d see Alva smile at me one more time. To receive his expression from her instead was nothing short of cruelty. As if to twist the knife even further she was still wearing that gorgeous bathing suit of hers, showing off every contour of her body before me like a mirage shows water to a man in a desert.

“What are you doing here, Bryson?” Alva demanded, “What on earth are you doing in this tournament?”

“I was just trying to figure that out myself,” I answered truthfully.

“How’d you even get the money to do this? Even some of the seasoned players here had to be sponsored in order to buy in. Where does a mattress store employee come by three hundred thousand dollars?”

“I took out a loan against my house.” I explained. I knew how stupid it made me sound, and rightfully so, but I couldn’t possibly lie to Alva.

“You took a loan against your house?! My God Bryson, I’ve had men do some ridiculous things to try to get in my pants, but this is a level of absurdity I’ve never seen before.” she was only getting more worked up.

“I wasn’t trying to get in your pants. I don’t know… It’s just that I’ve never been happy with the way my life was going and you said you’d felt kind of the same way before you took up poker.”

Alva rubbed her forehead as though listening to this was causing her physical pain. “Yes, Bryson, but I had to claw my way up from the hundred dollar tables to get to where I am today. You expect me to believe that all you wanted was to make a change? You expect me to buy that it had nothing to do with you trying to get to me?”

“No, I don’t,” I admitted, “because it absolutely did have to do with getting to you. It wasn't about anything salacious though, it was more like… after that conversation we had I couldn’t stomach the thought of never getting to see you again.”

“So I was nice to you in a bar one time and you become so obsessed that you had to buy into the most expensive tournament of all time just to get another look at me? I’m nice to everybody Bryson! It wasn’t anything special about you!”

“You think I need to be told I’m nothing special?” I exploded, “You think I don’t know? I know it better than anybody! Somebody like you couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be a guy like me! All I’ve ever had to look forward to was a slow march through a monotonous career until the day I die!”

“What do you mean I don’t know? I never thought I was going to be anything when I was growing up!”

“Oh poor you, you had bad grades and your parents weren’t happy about it. All you ever had to fall back on were world-class looks and talent. You know, some of us never had parents with expectations because there was nothing to expect!” I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, but I pushed on anyway. Who cared if she saw me cry? I would never be anything more than a nuisance to her anyway. “From the day I was born it’s been a given that I’d only ever be just another loser in a sea of losers. Yeah, you were only nice to me in a bar one time, but having a girl like you be nice to a guy like me was the closest I’d ever gotten in my life to having something more than the bland nothing I’d always been promised. Can you really blame me for wanting a taste of that again?”

“Yes! How can you put this kind of evil on me?” she yelled. I could see that her eyes were misting up as well. “Do you think it’s not going to weigh on my conscience that a man ruined himself for my sake? Did you not care how this would affect me? Did you even consider my feelings at all? I always imagined the day I got proposed to would be one of the happiest days of my life, and you just had to show up and…” She broke down entirely. Tears streaming down her face.

Even when she was crying she was beautiful, which made it even more painful to see. I wished more than anything else in the world that I could hold her in my arms and comfort her, but at this point any gesture I could make would only increase her misery. After a few moments she managed to pull herself together a little, wiping the tears from her reddened eyes with one hand.

“I hope you have good luck in the tournament Bryson. I mean it, I really do. Just please… leave me alone.”

With that, she turned and walked away, leaving me there leaning on the railing of the ship. I watched her until she disappeared around a corner, listened until the pat pat of her bare feet hitting the deck no longer reached my ears, then returned my attention to the sea. In the final light of the setting sun, I spotted a visible line in the water, and on either side of this line the waters were slightly different in color. I had heard of this phenomenon that occurred where the Atlantic ocean and Mediterranean Sea met. The higher salt content of the Mediterranean water prevented it from mixing properly with the Atlantic water, and so since time immemorial they had been divided from each other. Two bodies of water, close enough to touch but forever separated. It seemed even the sea was laughing at my misfortune.

I stayed at that railing until the sun finally disappeared entirely over the horizon. Then, without really being sure when I made the decision to do it, I wandered my way over to one of the ship’s bars and began ordering shots as fast as I could. After that my memory became a blur. I remember shouting at the barkeep at some point for cutting me off, after which I have vague recollections of stumbling towards my room and trying to get through several different doors before finally finding the right one. After that, everything went blank.