What Not to Do on Vacation

1 Cora

If any part of her day had gone according to plan, Cora Prestly wouldn’t need a toothbrush right now. But it hadn’t, so here

she was.

She sat in her rental car and stared at the CVS entrance as rain came down with an intensity that matched Niagara Falls, because

of course it did. That was the kind of day she was having.

She knew this trip would be a mistake.

In fact, if she recalled correctly—and she did—that was her exact response when her older sister Savannah pitched the absurd

idea that the three Prestly sisters spend a month in Sunnyside, Florida, a small beach town in the Panhandle, to relive their

childhood summers. Then Cora followed the statement with her answer: an emphatic “Absolutely not.”

She didn’t care what sort of optimistic spin Savannah put on it, the trip was a recipe for disaster. They were adults with

jobs and responsibilities. Well, maybe not Bianca, the baby of the family, but that was a different problem. The point was,

they couldn’t just pause their lives and spend the summer at the beach like they did when they were kids.

And even if they could, Cora didn’t want to.

The Prestly sisters didn’t exactly have that kind of relationship anymore. Don’t get her wrong, she (mostly) loved her sisters.

But in light of everything that had gone down, they now had more of a get-together-for-a-long-weekend kind of relationship.

There was a four-day max before things started to get ugly. And last time Cora checked, a month was a lot longer than four

days.

“Next time I stick with no ,” she said to the steering wheel.

Although to be fair, no wasn’t exactly an option.

Savannah had pulled out an unbeatable trump card that forced Cora into coming. This trip wasn’t about them. It was about fulfilling

their mother’s last wish.

Before she passed, Julie Prestly made her three daughters promise her that they would spend one more happy summer on the white

sandy beaches of Sunnyside, the way they did every year when they were growing up. And since their mother had lost her battle

with breast cancer almost a decade ago, granting her wish was long overdue.

Did Cora think the whole idea was ridiculous, even at the time her mother had requested it? Absolutely. There was no way they

could recreate one of those fairy-tale summers because way too much life—and not the good kind—had passed since those blissful

days. But what choice did she have? Cora loved and respected her mother too much to just ignore her final wish.

So, when Savannah had put the wheels in motion for the overdue summer trip, Cora had begrudgingly cleared her calendar for

the month of July and booked a flight to meet her two sisters in the sleepy little beach town of Sunnyside, Florida.

And so far, her prediction of a disastrous summer had been spot-on. She was only twelve hours into the trip and everything

that could’ve gone wrong had . Which was how she wound up here, in the CVS parking lot, trying to judge how wet she would get in the fifty-foot sprint

from her car to the store just to get a dumb toothbrush at 9:30 p.m.

“I think we’ve hit a new low,” she told the steering wheel, as if somehow it was involved in this situation. Then she counted

down from three before she threw open the car door and made a mad dash to the entrance.

The answer to how soaked she would get during a fifty-foot run through a monsoon? Down to her underwear.

This was officially the worst vacation of all time.

She stopped just inside the door to wipe the rain off her face. The clerk, who was filing her nails behind the checkout counter,

temporarily paused her task. With a judgmental eyebrow raised, she gave Cora a once-over.

“Toothbrushes?” Cora asked.

The clerk popped her gum and tilted her head toward the back of the store before returning to her nails.

“Thanks.” Cora sloshed in the general direction the clerk had indicated.

The only reason she needed a toothbrush at all was because her journey to get here had been a complete disaster. What was

supposed to be an easy two-hour flight from Houston had turned into a twelve-hour ordeal. Cora and her fellow passengers had

to deplane and switch aircrafts because of mechanical issues. Twice. Then they were rerouted because of air traffic control,

and had to land and refuel at a nearby airport while they waited out a storm. The fact that they’d arrived at their final

destination, even if it was ten hours late, felt like a miracle.

Her luggage, however, hadn’t shared the same good fortune.

In fact, at the moment the airline wasn’t exactly sure where it was. But of course they would locate it (they wouldn’t use the word find because they insisted it wasn’t lost, simply unaccounted for), and as soon as they did, it would be delivered to her. She

should expect to have it in a couple of days. Three at the most.

So here she was. Replacing things that the airline couldn’t locate.

She trudged through the aisles of the deserted store in the direction of the dental care section, leaving a sort of Hansel-and-Gretel

trail of water behind her.

Did she need more than a toothbrush? Probably. All she had was what she was wearing and a camera case full of her professional

camera equipment. Knowing what she knew now, she’d made the right call to carry on the heavy camera case and check her clothes.

Photography wasn’t just her profession (which she’d be doing during her stay because the commercial photography industry didn’t

pause for ridiculous family obligations). It was her passion. But her luggage choice did leave her in a bit of a predicament.

She was on a four-week beach vacation without anything to wear to the actual beach.

She paused in front of a rack of cover-ups. “I probably need one of these,” she said out loud.

Squinting slightly with serious consideration, she studied the options. Neon palm tree or the bedazzled option emblazoned with Sun, Sand & Surf ?

“Palm tree,” she decided and draped the find over her arm. The endcap next to it had flip-flops in bright coordinating colors,

so she grabbed a pair of those, too. After all, one couldn’t exactly go to the beach without flip-flops, could they?

With her beach outfit taken care of, she cruised back to the wall of toothbrushes. Wiping some of the dripping rainwater off

her face, she scanned the options. She was reaching for one when a deep voice interrupted her.

“I wouldn’t go with that one, if I were you.”

The voice made her jump, mostly because she hadn’t realized there was anyone else in the store besides the gum-popping clerk.

With her hand still reaching for the toothbrush, she did a quick sweep of the store to see if there was anyone else she’d

missed before settling her gaze on the man standing next to her. Where had he come from?

He was tall and had an athletic build that, although she hated to admit it, looked good in jeans. His dark wavy hair had the

unmistakable mix of good genes and an expensive haircut, and his deep blue eyes twinkled. He reminded her of Gatsby, all charm

and confidence with a healthy dose of swagger. It was the kind of thing most people probably found attractive.

Cora did not.

“I’m sorry?” Her tone was less asking him to repeat himself and more encouraging him to check himself, although he appeared

to hear the former.

“Toothbrushes,” he clarified, gesturing to the product her hand was now touching. “You really should go with the two pack.

Extra soft. It’s the better choice.”

Cora was a thirty-one-year-old successful business owner.

She might look like a wet mess at the moment, and maybe she had arrived at the point in a particularly bad day where she was narrating her life to stay sane, but that didn’t mean she needed some random dude to mansplain a toothbrush selection to her. Who did he think he was?

“And what? You’re, like, a toothbrush expert?”

Was the comment uncalled for? Probably. But keeping her opinions to herself had never really been Cora’s thing. It was something

she probably should work on, but she didn’t want to. Not if there were guys like this still floating around.

Gatsby flashed a half-hitched grin, which he probably used to make people swoon. “More of a connoisseur, really.”

She didn’t mean to roll her eyes, they just sort of did it on their own. “I, along with everyone else with an olfactory sense,

thank you for that choice.”

His grin widened with amusement. “You’re not even going to ask me why?”

“Why you made the bold decision to brush your teeth regularly?”

He gave a slight shrug. “A combination of respect for the people around me and a healthy fear of prolonged exposure to the

dentist chair.”

“Good to know.” If the heavy dose of sarcasm wasn’t enough of a signal that she was finished with the conversation, she turned

her back to him and refocused on the wall of toothbrushes.

“I meant why you should go with the two pack.”

Cora let out a heavy, annoyed sigh. “The only question I’m asking is, ‘Why am I still standing here?’”

Once again, her snark didn’t faze him. “Because I’ve found that it’s nice to have a spare. You know, in a backpack or a purse

or something.” He grabbed the product in question and held it up as an example. “For the times when life throws you a curveball.

Which happens a lot more than you’d expect.”

“And yet, even with all that knowledge, here you are. In the middle of a rainstorm. Having to buy another one.”

Again with the amused, half-hitched grin. “Touché.”

“Thanks for your opinion, but I think I’m good.

” This time she made sure to add an extra dose of annoyance to her voice so he wouldn’t mistake her choice of words for actual appreciation.

“Besides, the situation that landed me here will never happen again.” Because if she were traveling for any reason other than to fulfill her mother’s final wish, she would’ve bailed

out of this travel day long before now.

“Never say never.” He tossed her the two-pack, which she had to struggle to catch with her arms full of beachwear. Then with