Chapter 2
Isabella
Me and my cousin’s son, Beto, sitting side by side in the front seat of our abuelo’s fully-restored, fully-loaded ’57 Thunderbird convertible with ABBA blasting on the radio and the hot sun warming our backs as we drive through beautiful Canadian scenery on our way to win a million dollars!
That’s how I imagined this road trip would look.
But mortals plan, and God laughs.
So does my abuelo…who cackled in our faces when we asked to borrow the car he loves more than all of us combined. So we loaded a month’s worth of stuff into my piece-of-caca Honda Accord instead and hit the road for Ketchikan.
Nineteen-year-old Beto, I quickly learned, doesn’t like driving (if that’s okay with you, bruh?) and instead, prefers sitting in the back seat where he tries, for hour after excruciating hour, to compose music on his guitar. The biggest problem I can see, aside from the fact that he has no natural aptitude for string instruments, is that he’s not a great lyricist.
A few hours ago he asked me: “Hey, cuz, what rhymes with ‘nice tits’?”
I gave him some ideas as a joke, and the fact that he tried to work “lice kits” and “mice clits” into his song has me, frankly, worried.
And that scenery I’d hoped for, which—for some reason I can’t explain—looked a lot more like Thelma and Louise’s southwest than Beto’s and my northwest, is nothing to write home about. We’ve been on BC-1 since we crossed the border into Canada, and it’s been one sleepy town after another on this interminable two-lane highway.
Last night, we got a motel room in Clinton, at a place that made “lice kits” seem less like a shitty song lyric and more like a smart prophylactic. Tonight, we’re stopping in Vanderhoof, whose claim to fame is being the geographical center of British Columbia. And that’s every bit as exciting as it sounds.
When we get to town, I drive around looking for a motel that couldn’t double as the motor inn from Psycho. (Harder than it sounds.) Because the North Land Motel is rated #1 on Tripadvisor, I pull into the parking lot and hope for the best. When we get to our room, I’m pleased to discover that while it isn’t fancy, it appears to be clean. Either that or someone just cleaned up a murder scene because the bathroom reeks of bleach.
As we get our suitcases out of the trunk, I remind Beto that because I’ve driven ten hours to his four, he gets to drive all five hours to Prince Rupert tomorrow. That’s where we’ll catch the ferry to Ketchikan.
“But, bruh!” he groans, twisting his handsome face into a beleaguered grimace worthy of Paul Rudd’s performance in Wet Hot American Summer. “I need time and space to make my tunes. I can’t be your chauffeur!”
“I’m not your bro,” I snap. “And it’s your turn to drive.”
He opens the door to the back seat and reaches for his guitar.
“Do not bring that into the room,” I say. “I’ve had enough music for today, Beto.”
“Enough? But I’m an artist, yo.”
I glance at the motel pool, located adjacent to the parking lot. With a layer of dead leaves and an inch of muddy water on the bottom, it’s a sad sight, but I can’t bear another moment of Beto’s songwriting.
“Go be an artist by the pool.”
“That pool is not inspiring, bruh.”
“Then get your own room, bro.” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “I paid for this one. My room, my rules.”
Under his breath, he calls me a bruja, which means ‘witch’ in Spanish, then throws his suitcase back in the car, grabs his jacket, and mumbles something about how glad he is that the drinking age in Canada is nineteen. I watch him stride across the parking lot toward a local bar, then walk up the outdoor stairs to our second-floor motel room.
I close the door, lie back on one of the two beds, and stare up at a water stain on the ceiling. Blessed silence. Gracias a Dios.
“What a friggin’ disaster.” I sigh, rubbing my tired eyes with the heel of my hand.
Even though Beto and I are cousins—well, first cousins once removed, to be precise—I don’t actually know him that well. He’s my cousin Miguel’s oldest son and seven years younger than me. When he was born, I was in elementary school. When he was in elementary school, I was driving. When he was in middle school, I was in college. We’re from a gigantic family of Mexican Americans whose great-grandparents emigrated from Guadalajara to Washington State via California back in the 1950s. And yes, we see each other regularly at BBQs and anniversary parties, baptisms and weddings, but I’m from a different generation of cousins than Beto is. We’re related, but not close.
That said, when Miguel—Beto’s original teammate and my favorite cousin—was diagnosed with heart problems after Christmas and had to drop out of The Astonishing Race, I couldn’t say no to taking his place. I’m young-ish and unmarried. And everyone in our family knows that as a second-grade teacher, I have my summers free.
Plus, I thought it might be fun…and potentially lucrative.
Beto’s young, big and strong, and he’s worked two seasons on Alaskan crab boats. I’m in good shape, but more importantly, I’m clever and competitive. With his strength and my smarts, I thought we might have a chance to win the million.
When I suggested we drive to Ketchikan, I was hoping we’d get to know each other better and build a strong camaraderie. I pictured us using the time to find common ground and form ourselves into a strong and competitive team. Instead, we’re annoying the snot out of each other, and it’s only day two. How the hell are we going to spend the next three weeks together completing difficult challenges if we can’t even handle a simple road trip?
Buzz, buzz.
Buzz, buzz.
I jump up and grab my phone from the motel room bureau, feeling my lips slide into a big smile. McKenna’s face lights up my screen. McKenna Cabot Stewart. My best friend in the whole world.
“Ken!”
“Iz!”
“Oh my god, I’m so glad to hear your voice!”
“Are you here? In Alaska?”
“No way, girl,” I say, lying back down on the polyester duvet and hoping disgusting things haven’t taken place on it. “We’re still in British Columbia.”
“How’s it going?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Terrible!”
“Wait! What? Why?”
I tell her all about Beto’s misguided dreams of composing music, how I’m doing all of the driving myself, and that we’re simply not getting along.
“He’s acting like a belligerent teen!”
“Not to point out the obvious, Iz, but he is a teen.”
“Barely,” I mutter. “He’s nineteen acting like thirteen.”
“Don’t get mad at me for asking, but is it possible you’re being a little tough on him?”
“I need to be tough! Filming for this show lasts for twenty-one days, Ken. And it’s going to be intense. Challenges. Physical endurance. Trust exercises. We need to get our act together!”
“More flies with honey than vinegar.”
That was one of her Mimi’s favorite expressions. I roll my eyes.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Isabella Maria Gonzalez.”
I chuckle. No one knows me like McKenna does, and it’s oddly comforting, even when she’s chastising me. “You’re probably right, but he’s so irritating, Ken!”
“It’ll get better.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Actually, I do,” she says. “I’ve been going to your family’s summer BBQ for years. There are always a hundred people there, and even though you’re not close to all of them, you still love them all. You and Beto will figure out how to get this done.”
“You’re right, I guess. I’d hate to let Miguel down.”
“You’ve got this, Iz. Lighten up a little. Give the kid a break.”
“Fine! Now, enough about me,” I say. “How are you doing, married lady?”
“Amaaaaaazing.”
“Blissed out?”
“Totally.”
I love hearing McKenna so happy. She didn’t have a great childhood, and losing her Mimi last summer was a painful blow. She deserves every ounce of happiness that a life with Tanner Stewart can give her.
“Tanner’s a good one.”
“The best.”
“So, do I hear little voices clamoring for ‘Tia Isa’ in my future?”
“Don’t rush us!” says McKenna with a giggle. “We’re still in the honeymoon phase.”
“I hear that the honeymoon phase can lead to the parenting phase pretty quick.”
She gasps softly. “Oh! That reminds me. I have news for you!”
“News that has something to do with sex?”
“If you play your cards right,” she says. “Guess who got a job working on the production crew for The Astonishing Race?”
My heart skips a beat. My mouth goes dry. My body—which doesn’t know whether to be excited or scared—is thrown into a sort of chaos because I know the name she’s going to say before she says it.
“Hunter!” she cries.
Hunter Stewart.I knew it. Shit. Shit shit shit. Why did I have to tell Harper about the race at McKenna’s wedding? Why didn’t I fake a stroke or faint or something?
“What the fu—um…I, um—I mean…how’d that happen?”
“He knows a guy who works at a TV station in Ketchikan.”
“He wanted to be on the show?”
“I’m not positive about the details,” says McKenna. “But I think he said something about networking with some big travel provider? I don’t know. I’m still getting used to the travel business.”
I laugh weakly, my mind buzzing with questions that McKenna can’t answer for me. By unspoken, tacit agreement, Hunter and I never involved McKenna and Tanner in our short, ill-fated, blisteringly-hot relationship. We never asked them to run interference or give us advice. We kept them completely out of our drama, and for that, I’m grateful.
“So! Are you excited to see him again?” McKenna asks with a little purr.
“Sure,” I hedge. “The Stewarts are great.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you two could rekindle things, huh?”
Again, McKenna doesn’t know any details. She doesn’t know, for example, how many times Hunter made me orgasm in the back of his truck under the midnight sun. She doesn’t know how right it felt when he moved inside of me, or how safe I felt falling asleep in his arms. She doesn’t know that Hunter Stewart was the closest I’ve ever come to “falling” in love. And she doesn’t know all the reasons I cut things off at the knees, breaking his heart in the process.
But I do.
So I can guarantee McKenna that Hunter Stewart has zero interest in rekindling anything with me. At her wedding, his hatred for me shined so brightly, I felt it in every cell of my body every time he looked at me.
Rekindle things? No way. If anything, he’s out to destroy me.
Sabotage.
The word fires across my mind, blinking in yellow neon.
“Back off, Ken.” I say these words lightly, but she knows I mean them.
“You’re no fun!”
“I’m fun. But nothing good’s going to come from you sticking your nose in this, and you know it.”
“Got it. Got it,” she says, backing down. “So, tomorrow you get to Prince Rupert?”
“Yeah. We leave here at six and hopefully get to the port by noon. Then it’s seven hours via ferry to Ketchikan.”
“And the race starts…?”
“In three days,” I say. “So we have a night here and a night in Ketchikan and then…”
“You’re off!”
“We’re off,” I confirm, my voice flat and uncertain in my ears.
“It’s going to be okay, Iz,” says McKenna.
Sure. Sure it is.
My cousin and I don’t get along, and now I’ve discovered the new wrinkle of Hunter Stewart’s dubious and vengeful presence on the production crew. Great. Just great.
“If you say so,” I say.
“I do!” she gushes. “And since your fourth stop is Skagway, I get to see you in…ten days!”
Now, that’s true enough and the best news I’ve had since I picked up the phone.
“I can’t wait to see you, Ken,” I tell her.
“Have you figured out your plan for the rest of the summer?” she asks. “Want me to find you a job in Skagway for July and August? You mentioned that, right?”
My original plan was to find a seasonal job somewhere in Alaska, and of course I’d like to be close to McKenna for a couple of weeks, but hearing that Hunter’s sought out a job on the show has thrown me for a loop. Why is he working on the show? If he wanted a business opportunity in TV production, why wouldn’t he choose a different show? Did he choose mine just to mess with me?
Before I decide to spend an additional two months in close proximity to him after the race, I need to figure out what’s going on with him...because McKenna’s wedding left me ice cold where Hunter is concerned.
“Let’s see what happens over the next few weeks, okay?”
She sighs. “Okay.”
“Hey, Ken,” I say. “I love you lots, girl. You know that?”
“I know,” she says. “I love you lots, too.”
We hang up, and I jump in the shower, relieved to find the pressure’s great, and the water’s piping hot. But I can’t relax now. I can’t stop thinking about Hunter and wondering what he’s got planned.
For the record, I didn’t go to Skagway last summer to get involved with him or to break his heart. Tanner contacted me to say that McKenna was feeling down and asked if I’d come north to cheer her up. Of course I said yes. I never expected my best friend’s fake fiancé’s brother to be the hottest, sweetest guy I’d ever met. Our attraction was instantaneous, and he was just as funny as he was cute.
It was one of those singular times when your chemistry with someone is off the charts, when you can’t stop thinking about them for two minutes no matter what you’re doing, when you start imagining dangerous scenarios that involve white picket fences and babies. It’s like a trance or a drug. And it isn’t love—I’m smart enough to know that—but oh my god, it feels like it could be when you’re in the thick of it.
You find yourself wanting to make promises you can’t possibly keep, and agreeing to stay in touch when they live in Alaska, and you live 1,600 miles away.
It was a testament to the force of my attraction to Hunter that I said we could keep in touch when I left Skagway. And for a few weeks, it was amazing…
...until it wasn’t.
Until I realized that I had withdrawn from my life at home in order to make room for him. I’d stopped going to choir rehearsal on Wednesdays, choosing to talk to him on the phone for hours instead. I’d said no to after-work drinks so many times that my friends had stopped inviting me. I even canceled a private lesson with one of my ESL students because I had a call scheduled with him.
When she called me in tears to share that she’d failed her English language exam, I was furious with myself...and I realized how much I’d changed in such a short amount of time. My body was in Seattle, yes. But my attention was focused on Skagway. Somewhere along the way, I’d started falling for Hunter Stewart, a circumstance that was actively threatening my full and happy life in Seattle. Panic set in, and I’d quickly come to my senses: I needed to break things off quick and clean with Hunter, and refocus my attention on my life in Seattle.
Unable to bear a phone conversation with him, I’d cried my eyes out before sending a text message telling him that things were over. He’d tried to convince me to give us another chance—he had no idea how desperately I wished I could—but I was resolute. As I’d shared with him at the Skagway airport, long-distance relationships didn’t work. It had to end. And it did.
Just as it had before.
My mind slides backward, like my finger lingered on the rewind button for a few seconds too long. And suddenly I am sixteen years old, spending my summer in Guadalajara. I am falling head over heels in love for the first time in my young life. I picture Santos’s handsome face—his light-brown skin, amber eyes, and jet-black hair. Santos had swept me away that summer, making me dream of the impossible. I gave him my virginity, and he gave me his. We made plans. We made promises. And when I got home to Seattle, I’d been relentless with my mother, begging her to let me return to him.
“Por favor, Mama,” I’d begged my mother through a rage of tears. “Please let me move to Mexico! I can live with Tia Dominga.”
“No, mi hija. No es possible. Necesitas—”
“The only thing I need is Santos! I love him! I can’t live without him! Please, Mama. Please understand!”
“Te comprendo, mi hija,” she’d said, her eyes heavy with sympathy as she sat on the edge of my bed. “I know you think you love him—”
“I do love him!” I’d cried, picturing him waiting for me in the wrought iron gazebo in the center of the Plaza de Armas, arms outstretched, a gorgeous smile on his beautiful face. “I love him more than you! More than Papa! More than anything else in my life!”
“I know it feels like that,” she’d said, trying to pull me into a hug. “But I promise, you will get over him with time.”
“I don’t want to get over him!” I’d screamed, pushing her away. “You don’t understand! You don’t understand anything! It was magic! It is love! We are in love, and if you keep us apart, that makes you an assassin of love!”
I’d withdrawn for weeks, lying in my bed, glued to WhatsApp, trying to keep the magic Santos and I had shared alive. In their great wisdom, my parents gave me the time and space to process my feelings and heal from my first great love. Sure enough, little by little, his vibrancy faded. My girlfriends, McKenna especially, cajoled me from my bedroom to the movies, to the beach, to the mall. I’d miss a call from Santos and promise myself I would call him back in the morning. But he’d already be at work, so I’d text instead, and he wouldn’t write back until the next day. We lost closeness. We lost touch. Our love started the journey from vibrantly alive to faded memory.
By the time I started my junior year in high school that September, I was mostly over Santos. Sure, part of me would always love him, but I’d let him go. And in the end, even I had to admit it was probably for the best.
But most importantly of all, I’d learned some life lessons that would protect my heart in the future.
The first was that if something felt like “magic?” Beware. It wasn’t magic. Magic didn’t exist. Attraction existed. Heat existed. Great sex existed. And all encouraged the mirage of “true love.” But, if you gave the illusions of magic and true love enough time, they were like silver left out in a storm. They tarnished. They lost their sparkle. They became dull, soft metal, useless and sad.
I’d also learned something seminal about long-distance relationships: no matter how captivating and possible a long-distance relationship may seem when you’re physically with the other person, they’re rarely viable once you’re apart. You must build the road that leads to your happy ending where you live. Not in Mexico and certainly not in Alaska. If you make your life where you live, you’ll be a much happier—and much less disappointed—human.
The lessons I’d learned with Santos had played a decisive role in my decision to break up with Hunter last August. Except...I didn’t forget Hunter as quickly as I forgot Santos. I expected to. I wanted to. But I didn’t.
With tons of friends demanding to set me up, and a dozen interfering aunties all trying to marry me off to a nice Mexican American boy, I went on a bunch of dates throughout the fall and into the winter. But after each, I’d find myself comparing them to Hunter; their senses of humor, their conversation, the way they looked at me, and how they made me feel. None of them could hold a candle to Hunter.
I went to McKenna’s wedding at Christmastime believing—or at least hoping—that my attraction to Hunter had become fantasized and inflated over time. I fervently prayed that the second I saw him, I’d know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that whatever we’d shared last summer had been a one-time fling, and I’d made the right decision by letting him go. But that isn’t what happened.
If anything, being near him, but not able to have him, was incredibly painful, compounded by the fact that his disdain for me was so sharp and acidic, I could practically taste his scorn when I was near him.
I’d dumped Hunter Stewart, and he hated me for it, but by some brutal twist of fate, my interest in him was stronger than ever.
A weekend of wedding festivities gave me a front row seat to the dynamics of the Stewart family, and reminded me of how funny he was, and how devoted to his family. He was a good man—smart and kind and devastatingly handsome. I watched the way other women stared at him, wanting to punch their lights out, and couldn’t help but wonder if a choice I’d made on the grounds of ‘smart and sound,’ would turn out to be the worst decision I’d ever made.
My body is strawberry-red from the pounding hot water, so I turn off the shower and wrap myself in a thin, scratchy motel towel. Stepping into the quiet bedroom, I note that Beto isn’t back yet, but I figure the last thing he needs is for me to mother-hen him home from a bar.
Putting on my pajamas, I try watching TV, but my heart isn’t into it. I turn off the lights and stare up at the water stain on the ceiling that vaguely resembles the face of a woman with regrets.
I feel you, sister.
My heart swells with complicated feelings when I remind myself that I’m going to see Hunter again in two days. McKenna mentioned that the show was a business opportunity for the Stewarts, but I can’t help but wonder if he signed onto the show just to be near me. I hate how much the possibility excites me...because I’m positive that Hunter Stewart has nothing good planned for me, but I want to see him all the same.