Breaking news:We Are Not: Carnival Cruise Captain Was Hot

We are not the kind of people who go on cruises. That’s what we told ourselves, over and over, even as we stood in line with our passports, boarding a floating city painted in primary colors. The “Carnival Radiance” loomed like a mall on water, and we smirked at ourselves, stuffed our sarcasm into sunscreen-slick backpacks, and stepped aboard.

The thing is—none of that mattered the second we saw the captain.

Captain Elise Moreno was not what we expected. No mustache, no beer gut, no hokey maritime jokes. She stood tall in a crisp white uniform, dark aviators shielding her eyes, a perfect braid trailing down her back like a rope from a lifeboat. She didn’t smile much, and when she did, it felt like a personal event. Half the ship fell in love with her before we left port. We were among them.

“I thought we weren’t cruise people,” I whispered.

“We’re not,” you said, staring.

Somehow, everything changed after that. We didn’t roll our eyes at the poolside games or scoff at the karaoke nights. We leaned into it. We cheered for trivia winners, danced during the buffet’s 11 p.m. chocolate fountain reveal, and watched the sun set from a deck where the wind stole our words.

Occasionally, Captain Moreno would appear, striding across the bridge or addressing us in announcements that turned mundane updates into poetry. “We’ll be cruising past the coast of Cozumel in approximately two hours,” she said once, and we stared at the speakers like teenagers with a crush.

Maybe it wasn’t about her. Maybe it was. Maybe it was just about letting go.

By day four, we weren’t pretending anymore. We were cruise people—at least for now. The ocean did that to you. It blurred lines. It rocked you until your sarcasm drifted away like foam behind the ship’s wake.

On the last night, we raised our plastic glasses during the captain’s farewell toast. She smiled, and we swore she looked our way. Probably she didn’t. But in that moment, it didn’t matter. We had let ourselves be silly, be swept away. We had become someone new, or maybe just more honest.