“Deal.”
My mother saw fit to grab Bear’s phone just then, smiling sunnily at me. By her pink cheeks and margarita the size of a bucket she was holding, I gathered she was lush.
I noticed she went uncharacteristically tame on the necklaces and bracelets, and my heart squeezed that she’d altered her style to fit into Catherine Costello’s neat universe.
“Nessy, honey?” She peered into the phone, as elderly people often did, as though to ensure I wasn’t physically trapped inside the small device. “What’s taking y’all so long? Wyatt and your sister are already here. The Costellos, too.”
“I got held up at work.” I winced.
Mom gave me a look of despair. “Please be here on time, Nessy. You cannot begin to imagine how much it means to your sister.”
“I know,” I said somberly. “We’re doing our best. We’ll be there.”
I hung up, feeling antsy. If we missed this cruise, no one in my family would forgive me. I craned my neck, as if I could see past the windshield.
“Are we there yet?” I asked.
“Almost. We’re rolling into the port right now. That’s the holdup. Parking’s impossible in this place.”
“Hmm,” I said helpfully.
“Bear sounds like a cool kid,” Cruz said, and my heart swelled. Bear was, indeed, the coolest kid on planet Earth. Objectively speaking, of course.
“Naturally. He takes after me.”
“Not in looks.”
There was a brief silence. My brain screamed at me not to broach the subject of Rob. But my big mouth flipped it the finger and moonwalked right into the sticky conversation.
“You know Rob’s back, right?”
Cruz gave half a nod. “It’s a small town.”
“Had a chance to hang out with him?” I asked. “Reminisce about the good ol’ days?”
“Why do you care?”
We were now inside the parking lot area, and Cruz was looking for a parking spot, trailing behind a Buick manned by a ninety-two-year-old woman.
“Because you’re best friends.”
Inseparable during adolescence.
The chosen ones of Fairhope High.
“Were,” he amended. “And I intend to grab a beer with him soon. It’ll be nice. I missed him.”
Of course he would.
They were the same wise guy in different packaging. I had no doubt Cruz would’ve acted the exact same way Rob had if I’d gotten knocked up with his child at sixteen.
Suddenly, I remembered all the reasons I hated Cruz Costello with such a passion.
“Know what?” I sighed. “Pluck it. I can’t do this. I can’t be nice to you.”
“Same. It was good while it lasted, though.”
“Not for me.”
He pulled into a parking spot.
I unbuckled myself. “So you can just stop pretending to be a gentleman around me. I know the truth.”
The truth that got you throat-punched in the first place.
He let out an incredulous chuckle when he got out, rounding his Audi and popping the trunk open. He grabbed my hot pink suitcase and flung it at me, making me stumble back on my high strappy sandals.
He was going to make me wheel my own suitcase, too. SUCH a gentleman.
“Tennessee?”
“Yeah?”
“I strongly advise you to take off your high heels right about now.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re about to make a run for it, and as of five seconds ago, I no longer have the inclination to carry your suitcase and your ass to the ship.”
My feet were burning.
This was not a figure of speech. They were on fire from running barefoot.
Currently, they were the size of the plates at Jerry & Sons and were a nice shade of red, with a few stripes of dead skin that resembled bacon.
I hobbled, shifting my weight from side to side by the checkin desk, in a one-player game of The Floor is Lava. Last week, I’d completed as much of the online checkin process as possible, purchasing an internet and drinks package, ensuring the correct card was on file, and printing and attaching the luggage tags beforehand.
Contrary to popular belief, I was not that messy.
The checkin ticket woman lady （I was too delirious with pain from sprinting through security to decipher what her actual title was） returned our passports, gave us our freshly-taken passenger ID cards （naturally, Cruz looked cover-ready in his, and she’d caught me mid-blink）， and handed us a welcome packet, robotically reciting her lines.
“Thank you so much for choosing Allure of the Ocean cruise line! We sincerely hope you enjoy your stay here. Have a wonderful time!”