Sam forgot to add on the extra day we lost while we were flying through a dozen time zones, but her card has already been charged, the hotel won’t refund the money, and the excessively unhelpful man behind the counter seems to enjoy assuring us that The DePaul has no rooms available for tonight.
* * *
We head out the door onto the sidewalks of downtown Auckland and for the rest of the afternoon we wander from hotel to hotel, but it’s fashion week and all the hotels are booked. Finally, just as the winter sun is sliding behind the rooftops around five o’clock and the cool air is acquiring a bite, we find a studio with a loft bed at a boutique hotel near the bay.
Sam plunks down her card just as the woman behind the desk says the charge will be five hundred dollars, plus tax.
I snatch Sam’s Visa back fast enough to give the clerk whiplash.
“Thanks, but that’s way over our budget.” I shoot the brunette my most winning smile, the same smile I use to put nervous wives at ease before I take their husbands on camping expeditions where they’ll sleep suspended from ropes anchoring them to the sheer face of a mountain. “Do you have a student discount?”
The woman’s forehead wrinkles sympathetically as she shakes her head. “No, unfortunately, we don’t. On a normal night, I might be able to knock a bit off since you’re renting late in the day, but with it being fashion week…”
“I understand,” I say, smile still in place, grateful that she seems more helpful than the douche who practically kicked us out of the first hotel. “Would you know if there are any youth hostels in the area? Our phones were stolen so we haven’t been able to do an internet search. We just need a place where we can get a bed for the night, even if we can’t find a room.”
The clerk nods. “There’s a YHA about ten minutes from here. Would you want me to call them for you and see if they have beds available?”
“That would be amazing,” Sam pipes up from beside me. “Really. We would appreciate it so much.”
“Of course,” the clerk says as she backs away. “Just let me pop into the office.”
Sam sags against the desk as the brunette disappears around the corner. “I’m so sorry, Danny.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I put my arm around her shoulders and give her a cheer up squeeze. “We’ll find somewhere to sleep, and wake up tomorrow to a new day.”
Sam sighs. “I thought I had everything planned. I can’t believe I forgot about the time change.”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
She looks up at me, but I can’t tell if I’ve made her feel any better. She’s so exhausted her eyes aren’t giving her away the way they usually do. “Well, I promise I won’t make any more. The rest of the trip will be flawless. I’ll double check all the other reservations as soon as we get settled.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her. “Really, Sam, when have you known me to get mad about stuff like this?”
“Never, but I still feel terrible,” she says, biting her lip before she adds in a small voice. “Do you think the fates are against us?”
“No,” I say, as the clerk returns, an encouraging smile on her face.
“You’re in luck,” she says. “They don’t have any private suites available, but there are beds free in both the male and female dorm rooms. They’re holding one for each of you. I told the gentleman at the front desk you’d be over in a few minutes.”
“Thank you so much,” I say, too relieved that Sam and I won’t be sleeping on the street or in the back of our tiny rental car to be too bummed that we won’t get to share a bed.
Sam’s obviously beat anyway. I’m dying to be alone with her, in a place where we’ll have the privacy to talk and finish what we started on the plane, but right now I’m grateful for a sign the universe has decided to have mercy on us.
No matter what I said to Sam, until this scrap of good news I wasn’t sure how the fates were feeling about our trip.
We get directions from the clerk and a paper printout of downtown Auckland to take with us and step back out onto the sidewalk. I take Sam’s pack and swing it over one shoulder—ignoring her protests that she’s not too tired to carry her own bag—hook mine over the other, and we head east, following the route the clerk outlined to the hostel.
The sun has set completely by now, and the streetlights are flickering on along the busy street. People bustle by in large, laughing groups, all of them bundled up in heavy jackets, and all of them in a hurry.
Downtown is coming to life as the office buildings empty out and well-dressed people grab a bite before the fashion shows slated for later tonight. The restaurants and bars Sam and I pass are all crowded, with tables filling up fast and would-be diners overflowing onto the sidewalk. There’s a festive, end-of-the-year holiday feeling in the air, which is strange considering it’s nearly June, but nice.
It reminds me of my first Christmas on Maui, when we took turkey sandwiches down to the beach for dinner on Christmas Day and made snowmen out of sand.
“I bet a lot of people do Christmas at the beach around here,” I say as Sam and I turn the corner onto a narrower street and the upscale restaurants and boutiques give way to bulky looking apartment buildings and smaller Mom and Pop shops. “They wouldn’t think your mom’s mermaid Christmas tree was weird.”
“I don’t know about that,” Sam said. “You saw what she did to it last year, right? With all the sparkly, shirtless mermen hanging at the top.”
I snort. “It looked like a gay underwater strip club.”
“Or the kinkiest Disney film ever,” Sam said, laughing, that low, husky laugh I haven’t heard in what seems like forever.
“I’ve missed your laugh.” I nudge her shoulder with mine. “It’s one of my favorite things.”
Sam smiles but keeps her gaze on the gum-pocked ground in front of us. “Thanks.”
“Really.” I shift closer to the street as we pass a darkened apartment building with overflowing trash cans muscling in on the left side of the sidewalk. “It ranks right up there with your smile and your ass and that place right behind your jaw that smells so good when you get out of the shower.”
She laughs again. “You’re so weird about that place.”
“I’m not weird,” I say, grinning. “I’m a connoisseur.”
“You’re absolutely weird,” Sam says with a wink I almost miss as something moves behind the trash cans, pulling my focus. “That’s one of the reasons—”
She breaks off with a startled cry, but by the time I realize the thing moving behind the trash cans is a rangy teenage kid, he’s already got his arm locked around Sam’s shoulders and the knife in his right hand jabbed against her throat.
The second I see the knife pressing into her pale skin, fear unlike anything I’ve felt since I was a kid trying to hold my shit together the night my sister was kidnapped floods through me, filling my mouth with a poisonous taste.
All I can think is No. No way. No fucking way is this piece of shit going to take Sam away from me, not after everything we’ve been through, not before we’ve made things okay again, not before we’ve had the life we’ve dreamed about, and the adventures and the kids and the grandkids and all the rest of it.