Page 37 of Wish Lists and Road Trips

There was a stiff-looking couch, one of those modern, boxy things, across from the foot of the bed and he started unpacking a few of his toiletries there, preparing his den. “If you were going to overpay for something, you could have bought yourself a real meal instead of all this pizza and candy.”

“You bought the candy, and did it ever occur to you that you shouldn’t comment on a woman’s diet? You know, given your enviable body-fat percentage.”

He raked his eyes over me and scoffed. “It’s hardly done you any harm, all the chips and chocolate.”

I didn’t have time to react to his confusingly cranky compliment. His phone buzzed from his pocket, and I watched the color drain from his face when he looked at the screen. He marched to the bathroom to answer it, closing the door with a solid thunk behind him.

“Weirdo,” I whispered.

I couldn’t tell if it was the utter extravagance Nick was uncomfortable with, or the fact that he was sharing it with me. This place was way out of my league, and I imagined his. Sure, my parents had money, and Sean did extremely well for his relatively young age (not entirely because he was engaged to the boss’s daughter) but he always made an excuse for me not to come with him when he traveled. I’d be bored, he’d tell me. Or he needed to use his room to work.Lies.

A lump tried to work its way into my throat, the memory of a receipt from a hotel just like this on our kitchen counter when I got home from wedding dress shopping. My mother had taken me to New York for the weekend in a completely out-of-character gesture of maternal interest.

I’d been putting off wedding activities for months, making carefully planned excuses for why I couldn’t attend to whatever item was next on her checklist. But when she’d suggested the trip, the idea that she might genuinely want to spend time with me had been too big of a pull to sabotage with a fake mall makeup-counter emergency.

Sure, she made the usual comments about my taste.The ruffles are a bit much. I believe floor-length is the tradition for civilized people. Bows are for little girls, darling.But it didn’t matter because I knew I was never going to wear whatever dress I let her pick. It was the laughter and afternoon champagne that I did it for. Like I was living someone else’s life.

It must have been the magic of that life that tricked me into believing Sean when he told me he was going golfing with his brother for the weekend. We got home the same morning, and as I pulled into the driveway, he was getting out of his car in slacks and a rumpled dress shirt, his tie in his hand. His face had registered the tiniest surprise, then he’d kissed me on the cheek and helped me with my garment bag, making zero excuses for his blown cover.

He carried my wedding dress into our house smelling like perfume from another woman, and he didn’t give a damn. When he’d emptied his pockets, he’d left the receipt face up on the kitchen island, and I’d always thought maybe it was his way of saying “Hey, at least I didn’t bring her here.”

Small kindness, I suppose.

Nick’s muffled voice kicked up a notch and I flipped onto my belly, craning my neck closer. I couldn’t hear much behind the heavy bathroom door, but it didn’t sound like a pleasant conversation. Nick’s default setting seemed to be Stress-Case regardless of our current set of travel woes. At least it wasn’t just me that made him that way.

When he finally came out, his face was stone.

“Everything okay?”

“Yep.”

I deflated at his one-word answer and the way he avoided my eyes. Between Nick’s expression and the sinking feeling in my chest from the memories I’d just been dredging up, we’d both already tainted the energy in this room. And we still had all night to sit in it.

“We should go out,” I blurted, the idea coming to me in a flash of excitement.

Nick moved to the fridge, uncapping an eight-dollar bottle of water. “That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“Why? It’s early. Let’s make a drink from the minibar and go check out the nightlife. When will you be back here again? That’s what travel buddies are for. So you can explore without looking like an anti-social loner.”

“Or in your case, without getting trafficked and sold into sex-slavery.”

“That’s not funny.” Though, he’d just unwittingly reminded me of his kryptonite—his complete and utter lack of faith in me as a human who could maintain Status: Alive without his assistance. He’d never let me go alone.

I reached into his backpack and pulled out the bag of gummy bears from Target, then ran a finger along the bottles of booze on the bar. “I suppose you can stay here if you want,” I said, uncapping a bottle of white rum and sniffing it. I emptied the bag of gummy bears into the ice bucket.

“What are you doing?”

“Pre-gaming.” I may not have spent much time on campus in my undergrad days, but I picked things up here and there.

I tipped the bottle, watching as it chugged out into the bucket, covering the candy.

Nick looked like I’d punched him in the stomach. “That was a seventy-five-dollar bottle of rum.”

I ignored him. “I’ll send you some pictures of the club I pick, so you can list them under ‘last seen at’ on my missing posters.”

“That’snot funny. And you aren’t going to a club by yourself, Brit.”

I popped a Rummy Bear into my mouth, coughing at the burn. They probably needed to sit a while. “So, you’ll come?”

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