The Good Life

Jack

Planning Alex's birthday party should have been simple if I were doing it the way he said to. He said it didn't have to be too fancy just something simple but of course I had to do the opposite. Now I was sitting in the living room with Izzy trying to plan and rent everything at once. Alex was with Oli trying to find a birthday outfit at the mall.

The boat was the most important thing... well yacht I should say. I saw the perfect one I wanted to rent. It was huge with two swimming pools and a Jacuzzi. It had a pool heater so we wouldn't freeze to death trying to swim in the winter. It could house twenty people for the night and food and crew would be provided for twenty-four hours service. I guess that's why it cost $61,428 to rent for a day. We would all be staying overnight instead of a few hours. The price was really reasonable when you looked at all the other activities we could do also. There was an open bar for the entire duration of our stay and live entertainment. I couldn't think of any other way to make this any more special for Alex.

"I have to get this one!" I told Izzy.

"Daddy would love it. He wouldn't be too happy with the amount you're spending on him, but he would be happy nonetheless." She said.

"Yeah let's not tell him about the price, but I'm definitely getting this one." I opened the inquiry so I could email the business to see if I could get it for this Saturday. I know it was kind of short notice and I was prepared to pay more to get it just in case.

"I hope they get back to me quickly. I'm going to be really bummed out if we can't get it." I sighed.

"I'm sure there's another one like it somewhere." Izzy assured me. Nothing would seem as perfect as thing one to me.

I was reading more details when I saw one that Izzy wasn't going to like. "Oh I have bad news." I said.

"What?" She asked.

"You have to be twenty-one or older to stay on it." I told her.

"Noooo that's not fair!" She pouted.

"I'm sorry, Babe. You and Evan can stay here and spend time together." I said, but she continued to pout.

"Can I get a fake I.D?" She asked hopefully.

"No." I said and she went back to pouting.

"I'm too young to do anything." She complained.

"You're not too young to drive." I said and she glared at me.

My computer dinged from an email notification. I quickly went to my email to see if it was the yacht company. I was disappointed to find that it was just an email for twenty percent off at Kohl's.
"Was it them?" Izzy asked.

"No." I sighed.

"If they don't email back by tomorrow you should probably start asking around some more since you only have four days left." She said.

"Yeah I will. I like this deal because it does everything for me like I don't have to find a cater or activities to keep us busy." I said.

"While you guys are having fun on the boat, I'll be here eating pizza and feeling sorry for myself."
"I promise you'll live."

I got another notification on my computer from my email twenty minutes later. This time I wasn't so eager to check it. The address line said it was from the yacht company. I prepped up and opened it. It said that they could rent the yacht to me this Saturday but I would have to pay a ten-thousand dollar safety deposit on the boat. They also invited me to come look at it any time before five since they needed my license to perform a credit check on me.

I cheered and emailed them back saying I was on my way. It was a fifteen minute drive to the dock they were located at and it was almost four so I needed to leave now.

"I can get it! Do you want to go look at it with me?" I asked Izzy.

"Yeah this will probably be the only time I get to see the inside." She said.

We got in my car and I drove us there. The boat was even bigger than it looked in its pictures. With one look Alex was going to be able to tell this thing cost a lot. He would probably get so drunk he wouldn't care after a while though.

We went inside the office so we could talk to someone about the boat. There was a nice looking guy in a suit sitting at a desk when we walked in.

"Hi I'm here to see about renting a yacht." I told him.

"Yes hi Mr. Barakat! I should have someone here in a few seconds to take you on a tour of the yacht. In the meantime, may I have your license please?" He asked. I still used Barakat for somethings like my business email, banking/credit cards, and for my business because it was too confusing to change. I handed him my license so he could do a credit check on me to make sure they could actually trust me to pay them.

We waited a few minutes for our tour guide, Anthony, to come give us the tour. We started on the deck which is where one of the pools were located. Pool side tables and couches were randomly spread out up there and they had candles and lanterns all around, I couldn't imagine how beautiful this place would look at night time. There was also a small stage were the entertainers would perform.

"This is the deck where you all will probably spend most of the night. Open bar is over there to the right and it will come with a twenty-four hour bartender just in case some decides they could use a martini at three am." Anthony joked. "We will provide a local performer from your genre choice to come play on the stage you see right here in front of the pool. If you don't like any of the choices we have you can feel free to invite another preformed of your choice, but you would have to pay for them in that case. We would just knock off some of the asking price. I've seen some pretty big names on this boat from Lady Gaga to Kevin Hart."

"I think it's too late for me to find someone to perform. I wish I would have planned this way earlier." I complained.

"Yeah you could have got that old band that you and Daddy like the one that starts with a B." Izzy said. I knew which one she meant.

"Blink-182." I said and she nodded.

"No worries, Sir. Like I said we'll be more than happy to provide a performer for you. We also have a karaoke machine up there too if you're all into that." He reassured me.

He lead the way to the next part of the boat which are the bed rooms were located. There was ten bedrooms and each one was meant for two people. Most of the rooms were set up the same just decorated differently so he was only going to show us one of them.

"This room is a little bit bigger than the rest of the rooms and in the bathroom there's a jetted bathtub and a standing shower whereas the other ones just have a shower/bathtub mix. I assume you would want this one for the birthday boy." He said.

"Yes! This room is perfect!" I exclaimed. It looked like a hotel suite with a king size bed and living room area with two couches and a huge flat screen TV on the wall. I wish we could stay more than a day.

"Now I'm really jealous that I can't stay. Look at how beautiful this place is." Izzy said.

"Oh are you under twenty-one?" Anthony asked.

"Yeah I'm sixteen." She grumbled.

"Yeah we have to have an age restriction to keep from losing our liquor license since some parents would let their kid’s underage drink or not watch them close enough to make sure they don’t fall off the boat. We also do it for insurance reasons." He told us.

"That's understandable." I said and Izzy huffed. We concluded the tour after he showed us the dining hall, mini movie theater, and the back of the boat where the other pool and Jacuzzi. He also showed us the jet skis and parasails we could use. Anthony said that some people rented the yachts for days at a time which is why there was so many options to pick from.

We made our way back to the office and Anthony left us with the first guy that greeted us. "So Mr. Barakat everything came up good on your credit check. Did decide if you would like to rent our yacht for sure?" The man politely asked me.

"Yes! I was sure the second I stepped on!"

Notes