Kate Chastain - Lucky Charming

Copyright 2015 by Kate Chastain

All rights reserved.

Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 978-1540840264

This book is dedicated to Cha Cha, my favorite Lucy to Ethel with.

Although there is no absolute

road map to happiness, I believe every major fork

on the highway of life

is preceded by a sign.

And that the difference between

success and failure,

or fulfillment and emptiness,

often boils down to our ability

to read these signs

and follow their direction

in the right direction.

I needed a sign.

I was just two weeks away from college graduation, and thus, two weeks away from my idea of hella responsible and mediocre adult life.

College life was grand. I had classes a few days a week and tended bar at an upscale lounge a couple of nights a week. I was the poor mans Paris Hilton, or at least I thought I wasblonde and thin, with a small dog and a big social life. I considered myself to be down to earth because I had recently traded in my Jaguar for a Jeep Wrangler.

Was I spoiled? Absolutely.

Did I realize it? Not at all.

I was too preoccupied with being highlighted, groomed, and generally adored to pay any attention to the morals I never thought Id have to worry about.

Ignorance was bliss, and I was euphoric.

Life revolved around instant gratification. I didnt have to pay rent or any utility bills, and I was under my parents health insurance. I didnt fret about savings accounts, and I felt rich, as long as my checking account had enough money for a new weekend outfit and cocktails. But this was all acceptable because I was a student.

Unfortunately, the sand in my coddled student hourglass was about to run out. With graduation looming, I knew that I would have to soon trade my oh-so comfortable Beachside Barbie lifestyle for a starting position in the rat race, and I was not looking forward to it.

Where should I work? Where should I live? And what was this strange French word budget that all my nine-to-five friends had kept saying?

If I made the wrong choice, I would be locked in a prison of leases, bills, and contracts, trying to make ends meet and working for the weekends. There had to be something else, something better, something to parole me from a death sentence by day job.

I had fallen victim to the unspoken depression that so many of my peers also battled withthe Quarter-Life Crisis. The QLC is that horrible feeling that everybody except you has this whole adult-life thing figured out, This enemy of the twenty-something usually preys upon students at what should be one of the happiest times of their lives. Just when its expected that earning a degree will result in feelings of accomplishment and pride, the Quarter-Life Crisis parasite latches on to the soon-to-be graduate, sucking up all the joy and leaving the student feeling scared and insecure.

Up until this point, I had always had a professor dictating which chapters to read and what courses to take next. However, once I got out of school, I was going to have to start a new chapter and navigate my own course. Yikes.

I was staring over the edge of a cliff, an abrupt drop off from care free living to the unforgiving real world that was adulthood just waiting to gobble me up and spit me out at age sixty-five or retirement, whichever would come first. My Quarter-Life Crisis hit me hard and left me with a hangover of Now what?! While I didnt exactly know what the answer was, I knew that getting a studio apartment and an entry-level job in a cubicle wasnt it.

One escape route that had been percolating in the back of my mind was to get lost at sea. When I was growing up, a cousin of mine had worked as a stewardess on private yachts, and I was always in awe of all the postcards she would send our family from around the world. Seeing this as a possible detour from the highway of life, I found a book on the Internet titled The Insiders Guide to Becoming a Yacht Stewardess by Julie Perry, and three business days later, it was delivered to my doorstep.

I read it from cover to cover, and while the glamour of traveling the world with the rich and famous was alluring, I also realized it would be a very difficult and different way of life for me. I would be living as an indentured servant and working in remarkably small spaces with fellow crew members of varying nationalities.

Being a beach-blonde party girl whose version of work was simply dressing up and flirtatiously pouring martinis for lonely older men, the switch to a uniformed, captive, lifestyle would be an extreme change and challenge. On the other hand, the idea of having days off in glamorous European ports did sound right up my alley.

I had always daydreamed that I was destined for bigger things than my small hometown in Florida was able to offer. To my credit, I knew that I should not live the shallow and wonderfully irresponsible way I was for much longer, and if I really wanted to live life on a bigger scale, a few changes would have to be made.

I considered that one year of working on yachts might be like a finishing school for me. I was excited (and nervous) to put myself in an adverse situation to see what I might evolve into. I would travel the ocean depths, searching for a deeper life, in a world of rules and discipline that I could hardly fathom. I would learn the much-needed housekeeping skills I had never had to hone all while seeing amazing places, and then one year later, I would come back home with a bank account full of money, allowing me to ease into adult life on my own terms. Working on yachts probably wouldnt be the easiest thing Id ever done, but in the end, I would be a better person for it.

I just needed a sign.

One day, I was watching Sex and the City reruns when I should have been studying for finals. Glamorous fashion was so much more interesting than accounting. Sarah Jessica Parkers character was wearing a diamond horseshoe-shaped pendant in this particular episode, and I suddenly remembered that, years ago, a boyfriend had given me the exact necklace, stating he was lucky to have me. The boyfriend was long gone, but I went to see if I could find the old horseshoe charm, so I could wear it just like my TV style idol, Carrie Bradshaw.

After rummaging around my jewelry box, a glittering graveyard of relationships past, I found the necklace in a tangled mess. I began to slowly untangle the knots in the delicate chain, but it was so badly knotted that it would take a few days.