Titanic: True Love Forever

Chapter 5: Betting

Far out to sea, the water near the horizon was golden, while the ship's lights were already on, a pale white glow chasing away the last flashes of red from the setting sun.

After blowing through "My Heart Will Go On," I finally came back to my senses. The few passengers still on deck were gathered around me, among them third-class women holding their children, young men in tweed hats, and two deckhands who had been standing at the third-class entrance. One of them, a young man in khaki suspenders, striped shirt, and blonde hair, with a tattered book in his right hand, came up to me with a look of admiration and inquired, "That's a beautiful tune, what's its name?"

The afterglow imprinted the colors of light and shadow on his young face, as if even time had stopped at this moment.

I looked up at him as if through a glowing movie screen, only to end up back here after traveling through a hundred years. His body was as disheveled as a collapsed statue due to exhaustion, and he was still holding that broken harmonica in his hand. I should have immediately jumped up and grabbed him by the collar, and then take advantage of the boat is still moored in Cherbourg, connected to the response to the boat do not even need to jump into the water directly to swim ashore, here the water temperature is not the icebergs of the cold current, you in the water as long as you can toss and turn. And all of this presupposes that the guy in front of you has to believe that the ship will sink.

I finally whispered a reply, "My Heart Will Go On."

"Good name, I'm Jack Dawson, hello." Jack flashes his signature smile, his forehead pinching a few forehead lines from the inertia of his grin. His fingers were stained with some gray marks, and his fingertips sometimes rubbed against each other a few times quite noticeably, which must have been a habit he picked up over time while painting.

"Hello, Emily. " casually blurting out the English name he had picked up in college in a play with a classmate. I looked at him face-palmed, looking him up and down. Then a little hesitantly, I extended my hand, as hesitant as a coy little girl, and God knows the coy thing had gotten away from me centuries earlier.

I was just hesitant that it was so easy for me to find the leading man. If knowing a movie theme song was all it took to drag Jack out, then I'd been starving and running around a busy dock for over two hours even shouting my voice out for nothing. And surprisingly my first reaction to seeing him was to hesitate to ask him for an autograph. If I had gotten another autograph from the heroine before getting off the ship, the trip across would have been perfect.

Jack gave a clean, firm handshake and when he let go he smiled and said, "Don't you have any shoes? I'll give you a pair." With that, he bent over to unlace his own leather boots, jumping to his feet as he took them off, "I've seen you, and you're the last passenger. But don't you have any company? Are you going to New York, too?"

I never intended to take a grave to New York, and from the second I set foot on the Titanic I spent almost every hour waiting for tomorrow's docking and a complete escape.

Grabbing a piece of my coat, I wiped my harmonica, then smiled and said, "Yes, I think America will bring me the life I want, after all, in England I may have to walk barefoot for the rest of my life."

"Walk barefoot?" Jack quickly grabbed off his own shoes with his hands, he was the first to hand one over and humorously raised his eyebrows with a friendly smile and said, "Now you won't have to walk barefoot, as a ...... pretty girl you'll also need a hat with big ribbons all over it, flowers, or maybe you'll also need a dress."

What kind of eyes did he have to see that I was a "pretty girl", I guess the magic mirror couldn't even see my face behind all the black smudges. I didn't take the shoes he was holding, they were probably the only pair of shoes this desperately poor protagonist had, and it wasn't the shoes I wanted more than anything else right now, it was the reason to get him off the boat.

I put myself in Jack's shoes, and there was a homeless woman who suddenly wanted me off the boat. And the boat ticket is so expensive that I may never be able to afford it later. The ship's destination is my hometown, and my hometown is doing pretty well right now, and you have a chance to become a millionaire by going over there. Well, it's true that Wall Street in the United States right now hasn't reached the Great Depression of twenty-nine, so it looks just that much better than the immobile Wall Street of a hundred years from now, when there was a financial meltdown.

The important thing is that you can't possibly expect the ship to sink in four days.

It was definitely Jack Dawson's decision to get off the ship only when his brain was knocked out.

I found that when I found the hero, the dire situation remained unchanged. Luckily he hasn't met his destined goddess yet, otherwise his only reason for staying on the ship becomes that he's in love, and even though he knows the ship will sink in four days, he's going to stick around to live with the girl of his dreams.

Rose, Rose, I had to curb my urge to rush to the upper class cabin to try to see the heroine. It's a sobering shame that I got on the Titanic and didn't get to see the hero and heroine together in the bow against the wind, but unfortunately I'll never make it in time for that picture.

Jack put down one shoe and started to take off the other, he hopped back two steps on one not so smooth foot, as he did so he said, '"You don't sound very British, I hope you don't mind, is it possible that you're from the United States as well."

I'm from China, shall I say a few words in Chinese for you.

"Not sure, I might just be a bum." I said absentmindedly, scrutinizing Jack's inability to keep his balance with a less than friendly gaze, as if my demanding dance teacher was scolding behind me with a whip for nitpicking.

"Tramp?" Jack stood up in his bare feet as he placed his shoes next to me and leaned against the white railing. The wind blew from behind him, and I saw his eyes look distantly toward the Titanic's massive smokestacks. "So am I. Maybe today I'm wandering on a ship, and a week from now I'll be continuing to wander the streets of New York. Who knows what you'll encounter in life next, and if I hadn't gotten on the Titanic, maybe I'd be in Belfast right now, continuing to wander around England."

You might as well keep wandering around England France or Germany, if you really miss the United States of America so much, try to work hard for a few weeks and buy a ticket for a cruise on the Crown Towers side of the country, the White Star family ships are cursed, not many of them end up well.

"Like someone said, the next second of your life comes in a box, and if you don't undo the ribbons of time, you'll never see what's inside." I put the harmonica next to those shoes, the portrait in my pocket reminding me at all times that it was time to get off the ship, and that was the next second in the box.

"That analogy sounds like it makes sense, saying it is the same as not saying it." Jack smiled and glanced at me, his gaze equal in gentleness and his manner seeming kind and easygoing.

"Of course, nonsense always needs some ornamentation to seem to strike a chord. You must be wondering how I got on the Titanic, I don't look like I have a sub on me." I spread my hands, tattered jacket and bare feet, it was almost unbelievable to appear on the deck of a luxury liner looking like this.

"I'm not much richer than you, I have ...... well, only a few coins in my pockets." Jack dug into his pockets if anything, he said with a serious look on his face, "I've got about a dollar and sixty cents worth of possessions left, plus a coat, and a pair of shoes ...... No, I'm a barefoot man now too, and the shoes are yours."

The shoes are still yours, and if I can t persuade you to get off the boat, are you going to go after my former goddess barefoot?

"I actually made a bet with someone and I won a ticket to the boat." I look down, reaching up to scratch the stains on the back of my foot, while trying to put on an excited tone to make this lie sound professional.

"A bet? You won a boat ticket to the Titanic?" Jack asked, raising his voice in surprise, then he said, pleasantly and incredulously, "Me too, won a bet, two in all. We're going to America, Emily."

"What a lucky man." I exclaimed in fake admiration, desperate to press the i***t who had lost the tickets to the bottom of the Titanic's liner.

"Lucky guy." Jack gave a thumbs up, practically the perfect spokesperson for the optimist.

"Why don't you and I make a bet?" I asked suddenly, my tone a little offhandedly jocular.

"A bet?" Jack repeated doubtfully, then laughter flooded out of his eyes; he was familiar with these things. "Is that what you call never knowing what you're going to meet next? I didn't think I could bet a beautiful young lady on what? Poker." Jack grinned broadly, he didn't care at all about this little trick of mine, maybe he could already tell I was nervous, but he went along with my words to ease my raw lies.

I wasn't going to thank him for his kindness, because it would be his turn to thank me in a few days.