You’d have thought I’d learned this lesson eons ago, yet here I was, reaping everything I’d sown.
Painfully.
Too many shots of tequila combined with too few hours of recovery made for a deadly combination.
I knew better than to drink the way I had the night before, even if I did have a laundry list of valid excuses to do so.
Unfortunately for me, this never worked out well. I had never been the kind of person who could drown their sorrows at the bottom of a bottle, though I envied those that did. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to remedy the mess I was. Not to mention I had shit tolerance and wasn’t remotely attractive when I got drunk.
Some girls had the ability to be cute while intoxicated. I became the equivalent of a dying fish searching for water…with a hint of newborn calf. Ugh. The thought of consuming even a single drop more of treacherous ethanol made me disgustingly nauseated.
I’d brushed my teeth—twice—and could still taste it.
While getting drunk off my ass may not have been the healthiest way to go about dealing with my mental and emotional turmoil, it had kept my sanity intact. That had to count for something.
Although, it would be comical if liquor were the spark of me completely losing the plot, all things considered. My odds of making it through life entirely sane had the same probability of a coin toss. Heads, I’d be like my father’s side of the family. Tails, I would take after my mother’s. I had yet to determine which was worse when it came to those crazy fuckers.
I weaved around a couple walking through the lobby of the resort, readjusting my shades and tightening my grip on my suitcase.
“I think I’m dying. Hangovers are so underrated,” Melantha grumbled from beside me, tugging her beanie down further.
“I haven’t felt this shitty since that party we attended the day we graduated high-school,” Gracelyn agreed.
Both of those statements resonated with me. Deeply. I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed unless it was to sit around butt naked, stuff my face with a fry-up, and chug gallons of Powerade. That sounded like pure heaven right about now, but we had a flight to catch.
Feeling a soft vibration against my thigh, I pulled my cell from my pocket and swiped down to see the text. I was expecting it to be one of my parents or my abuelo. Weirdly, there wasn’t any number displayed.
Even weirder was the text itself.
Unknown: Something wicked this way comes…
I stopped walking, brows furrowing as I read the message two more times before typing out a quick reply.
L: Who is this?
Almost immediately, a box popped up. Sender Unknown.
Message cannot be sent.
“You okay?” Mel called back to me.
“Yeah. Sorry.” I fixed my face into a smile and started walking again, slipping my cell back into my pocket.
“To hell we go,” Mel sighed, shouldering open one of the doors that led outside.
“Can we at least be on the plane before you start being all negative?”
“Is there a difference between doing it now or later? You know exactly how things are going to be when we get back.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Gracelyn refuted.
“I know we’re well overdue for our ‘precious’ societal debuts. We’re going to be dragged into the corporate office so our parents can explain exactly how they’ve mapped out our futures. They probably married us off to some deranged arrogant assholes already. The ones who organize their drawers and ties by color.”
That sounded overdramatic, but sadly, she was right. It was the way things worked in our world. However, I couldn’t openly agree. That would open the door to a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. We’d attempted that already, which was how we’d wound up in our current condition.
Talking about it led to thinking. Thoughts came with feelings, most of which were bitter, angry, and conflicted—for various reasons. My new plan was to immerse myself in denial until we were back home. “Let’s just wait and see what they have to say, and then we can go from there.”
She ignored me.
“Do you think they’ll offer us pamphlets or use a full-blown PowerPoint to really get their message across and explain all the ways they ruined our lives?”
My lips twitched as I fought a smile. “There’s a deadly disease that causes people to only see the bad side of things. My abuelo likes to refer to this as pessimism.”
“Your grandfather is the ringleader of this whole ordeal. And I’m not a pessimist.”
“She’s a realist,” Gracelyn joked, forcing her voice to be deep and masculine.
I started to laugh, the sound coming from my throat akin to an angry toad’s battle cry. “Shut up.” I playfully swatted her arm.
“Ow.” She poked out her lip and feigned being hurt, making her hazel eyes go big and round.
“I can’t take you bitches anywhere,” Mel chastised, laughing quietly. “There’s our shuttle.” She pointed to a sleek white bus idling nearby.
We approached at the same time two older women did, allowing them to go ahead of us.
As we waited, the sun continued to sink lower in the sky, slowly draining the light.
I glanced back at the resort and withheld a sigh. This would be our last time traveling leisurely. Indefinitely. I could count on one hand the number of times trips were taken for luxury versus ‘business.’
Melantha began climbing onto the shuttle. I followed, and Gracelyn brought up the rear.
“Sit anywhere you’d like,” the driver instructed in an upbeat tone, his bushy mustache lifting as he smiled.
I thanked him with a small one in return and then skimmed the interior. The seating was set for two per row, and there were already a few people up front.
Ignoring the stares aimed at her colorful hair, Mel breezed by all of them, wholly unbothered.
It was always done in one fun color or another. This time she’d gone with a deep violet, peacock blue, and white ombre bangs. She was one of the few individuals I knew who could rock it.
Mel could pull off anything, really. She had a classic kind of beauty. She’d always reminded me of those retro pin-up girls, complete with a small diamond Monroe piercing.
She wound up claiming three seats that were midway from the back. Directly to the right of them were a cluster of four guys that, with a passing glance, appeared to be in their early twenties, so around our age. Behind them, sitting by her lonesome, was a pretty redhead with ear-pods in.
Not the biggest fan of confined spaces, I placed my suitcase in the baggage cubby and then claimed the seat nearest to the aisle.
Gracelyn squeezed past me and sat by the window, leaving Mel no choice but to sit behind us.
“How long does it take to get to the airport?” Grace asked.
“Thirty minutes?” I guessed, pushing my sunglasses up to rest atop my head.
“For future reference, I was going to ask if you needed help, but you looked like you had it,” a husky voice snaked across the aisle.
“Huh?” I glanced over, nearly doing a double take as I got my first real look at who was beside us. If life were a cartoon, my jaw would have dropped through the floor. Somewhere in the back of my mind the Weather Girls began to sing about raining men.
“Your bag,” the guy closest to me said, nodding his head towards the luggage cubby.