Chapter 5 The Worst That Could Happen
THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN
It was a sparkling morning in the quiet town of Clara St. Pico.
The sun bounced off the whitewashed houses while a cool breeze gave the morning a fresh and comfortable feel.
The morning market bustled with good-humored locals buying and selling an array of vegetables, cheeses, honey, flowers, hand-crafted wooden toys, and trinkets.
I found a spot in a nearby cafe and ordered a café de olla, sitting under a faded yellow Orangina umbrella and watching the vibrant life of the town.
Old men hummed, women hung their laundry out of the windows, children chased each other through the fountain in the square, cats slept in sun-kissed nooks, bicycles with wicker baskets fastened to the handlebars were loaded with flowers and fresh vegetables and walked them through the streets by people in relaxed conversation.
It was a world away from the resort, or even Merryville.
For the first time since I left, I felt a pang of sadness that I would have to return to both those places.
It was where I belonged. But for now, I enjoyed the feel of the warm sun and crisp air, and the vibrant magic of a different world to my own.
Perhaps I’d finally begun to discover the real magic of travel. The adventure of being in a world unlike your own, even just for a short while. A glimpse into life elsewhere, of what could have been had you just been born and raised somewhere else.
The idyllic hum of the morning was suddenly disturbed by the unmistakable sound of a loud American voice.
“No. Dollars… DOLL-AHS! Si, I give you Ahh-meri-can, okay?”
The man looked so out of place, he may as well have been an alien, passing through from a different planet entirely.
With his white high-top sneakers, gold pants, leopard print sunglasses, and a black hoody pulled over his head, he could not have been less discreet.
It was like seeing graffiti scrawled across a Monet.
As he struggled to negotiate with the unimpressed vendor, the man started to look around for options. I cursed myself for looking away too late as his eyes fell on me.
“Hey! Hey, you speak English, right?” He yelled across the square, drawing even more attention to himself.
I quickly looked down at my coffee, pretending not to have heard and refusing to look back up. Don’t be coming over, don’t be coming over…
Then the warm sun on my skin was replaced by a dark shadow, and when I looked up, he was standing over me.
There wasn’t much to see between the hoodie and dark glasses, but I could see that he was well built, in a lithe kind of way, maybe late-20s, and already annoying as heck.
“Hey! Can you please explain to that woman I want the unicorn floaty?”
I looked back at him blankly, wondering if I could pass myself off as a local who didn’t understand what he was saying.
“C’mon, I’ll pay for your…” He peered into my cup with a look of disgust, “Coffee? What the hell even is that!?”
As he lowered his sunglasses and leaned over to take a better look at the spices floating on my drink, I saw his sparkling blue eyes for the first time.
Wait. I knew those eyes… Didn’t I?
Beneath them, a gold chain hung from his neck, the letters spelling out the word ‘Randy’.
Oh, God. No! Surely not?
His eyes rose to meet mine, and we stared at each other as he waited for my response. I opened my mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say to ward him off. Then, and not for the first time in my life, my politeness got the better of me.
“Okay, fine. I’ll help you.”
A wide grin, one that I had seen many times over the past few weeks, appeared on his face, which seemed even larger in real life.
“Great!” He bellowed as I reluctantly rose to my feet, trying to ignore the attention that was now drawn to us. Red-faced, I brushed past him and toward the stand, hissing at him quietly, “Let’s just get this over with.”
The owner of the stall tutted and looked to the heavens at his return, as if asking why God wanted him to suffer so much.
After trying and failing to find the word for unicorn in my barely passable Spanish vocabulary, I did my best at explaining.
“El estúpido quiere el caballo de fantasía multicolor.”
I received a frown in return, then a lightbulb moment of recognition.
“Unicornio?”
“Sí! Unicornio.”
“Para el hombre estúpido?” She said, motioning her head toward him.
“Sí. Que pague el doble.”
We smiled at each other, and she gave me a knowing wink.
“En dólares, veinticinco.”
He leaned over me and asked, “So, how much is it?”
“If you pay in dollars, it’s sixty,” I told him.
“Sixty! What is it, magical or something?”
“I mean, it is a unicorn, so in a way…”
“Okay, okay. Could you haggle?”
I turned back to the shopkeeper and told her in my best efforts at Spanish, “I lied and said it was sixty dollars, and now he wants me to haggle.”
She laughed back and shook her head.
“She said that now it’s seventy.”
“Holy crap! Okay, look, here’s sixty bucks and we’re done.”
I took the crumpled bills from him, handed them over, and then watched as the unicorn was delivered to its proud new owner.
As he stood admiring his new treasure, I turned and began walking back to my spot at the cafe, before he quickly caught up with me.
“Hi. I’m… Er… Bobby, by the way.”
“Bobby, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
God, he was a terrible liar. His jaw twitched, his eyes moved nervously, refusing to meet mine, and his shoulders tensed uncomfortably. I knew liars, that’s for sure, and he was painfully bad at it.
“Sure it is, Randy.”
Now he looked terrified and tried to double down on the lie.
“Randy! I said Bobby… Didn’t I?”
“Your necklace says otherwise.”
“Ah… Fuck!” he said, looking down at his own name literally hanging around his neck.
“I’m Lucy. And look, I’m not interested in telling anyone who you are or where you are.”
He considered me for a moment, and whether he could trust me or not. Then decided he might as well.
“I guess I still owe you that coffee, Lucy.”
“I’ll take a beer instead.”
We sat down, and I eyed Randall with intrigue. The Randall Jackson. The man I’d watched being appalling every day. Now, he had stepped out of the TV screen and was sitting opposite me in a tiny Mexican town, clutching his ridiculous unicorn floaty, and ruining my supposed peaceful holiday.
He seemed even more ridiculous in person than he had looked on the television screen.
More clumsy and flustered, with beads of nervous sweat gathering on his forehead.
I mean, I’d probably be stressed too, if everyone wanted to parade me through the streets, violently throwing rotten vegetables at me for my crimes.
The most bothersome thing was that, even though he was clearly an asshole, he was still annoyingly attractive, and I found myself blushing without wanting to when his eyes met mine.
“Hey. Really. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“I’m serious! I’m not ready for all that yet.”
“Well, you kind of deserve what’s coming to you. I saw the show.”
He clicked his teeth dismissively.
“They set me up! I’m really not like that.”
“You actually said girls were basically pets. I mean, seriously?”
“Just because I said it, it doesn’t mean I mean it!”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Randall… Sorry, Bobby. You want to know what I think.”
He eyed me suspiciously, then cautiously nodded.
“I think what really happened is you showed your real side, and it’s only now you’re realizing the world isn’t the same as some sweaty adrenaline-filled, juvenile, hockey locker room.”
“Or… Maybe I was trying to sound edgy and like a… Y’know?”
I chuckled at him. “A bad boy?”
“Yeah, fuck you.” He shot back.
I smiled a little at the satisfaction of having bristled his ego while he looked back at me, annoyed.
“Okay. So, on reflection, I may have come across badly. I’m really not used to that kind of situation. I played it up and thought it would be entertaining, and it worked out horribly. But no one taught me how to act in a situation like that.”
“Oh, so it’s everyone else’s fault?”
“Jeez. That’s cold, Lucy. Why are you here, anyway?”
“I’m on holiday.”
“With…?” Randall looked around, expecting someone else to suddenly show up and blow his cover. My face reddened at the question, embarrassed at the answer.
“Just me.”
“Huh. You came here just by yourself?”
“I did. And what are you doing here? You really don’t fit in, you know?”
“I just searched for private retreats within a couple of hours' flight from that fucking villa. This was the first one that came up that had a gym.”
“So, what? You’re going to live out here in Mexico as a recluse now? Just you and your unicorn floaty. Because you aren’t exactly very incognito, you know?”
As the waiter came over with our drinks, Randall quickly pushed his sunglasses back down across his eyes, completing his ineffective disguise.
“For a few days at least. I have to go back. But they’re going to eat me alive. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
He looked genuinely distraught about it. I nearly softened a little seeing him like that, before I quickly remembered that this man had bought it all on himself and didn’t deserve my, or anyone else’s, sympathy at all.
“From what I saw, you need some proper help. Seriously. How do you even think it’s okay to act like that?”
“Great. Just what I need,” he glared back at me. “And look, the kind of girls I meet, that’s just how you talk to them. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Trust me, that’s not how any girl wants to be talked to.”
He stared at me and then waved his hand dismissively. In return, my jaw opened.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“What don’t I know?”
“How to talk to people, how to show them genuine affection.”
“No one ever really told me any different, okay?”
“Yeah, but you’ve seen movies, right?”
“If it ain’t got explosions in, then it’s very unlikely I’ve seen it. Or spaceships.”
“Harry Met Sally?”
“Did he?”
“No. It’s a movie, Randall. Fucking hell. The Notebook.”