Chapter 7
HOLLY
Anna and I enter the grand lobby of the Royal Oceano and the memory of the three of us arriving here eleven years ago slams into me with the force of a hurricane, stopping me dead in my tracks. Hurricane Anna slams into me from behind. “Ouf.” We both grunt.
“A little warning, Hols. What gives?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. I’m lost in time, caught in the frigid blast of air-conditioning and excitement I’d felt from being on my first real vacation with my two best friends.
Fresh out of college, I could barely afford that trip to Cabo.
But Anna had found a can’t-pass-up package deal for air and hotel, and I scrimped and saved from my clerk job in the university bookstore and summers working in childcare.
The three of us had made a pact, and I was not going to break it.
Stained-glass chandeliers hung above us. Marble tiles sparkled below us. And through the arches of the open-air lobby was the bluest water I’d ever seen in my life. The view had taken my breath away, with the scent of coconut and rum clinging to the air.
“Oh my god, you guys, we’re here,” Zoe had said and launched her arms around both me and Anna for a group hug. “I can’t believe we actually made this happen.” She sounded as awed as I felt.
“Of course we made it happen. We are awesome.” Anna squeezed us, bouncing on her toes. Then she squealed, “Carlos!” and rushed to the hotel registration desk.
My ears ringing, I turned to follow Anna and collided with her suitcase. “Anna, your bag,” I called out, but she was already fully engaged in an animated conversation with Carlos. “No worries, I’ve got it.” I smirked at Zoe. “If anything, she’s giving us experience for when we become moms.”
A shadow crossed Zoe’s eyes and she glanced away. It was gone when she turned back to me but there was a tightness in her smile when she said, “No diapers with her, at least.”
I laughed. “Not yet. Wait until we’re all old and sharing a room in a retirement home.”
Zoe’s smile tightened even more. “That’s a picture. We’d better go check in before Anna upgrades us into a suite.”
We caught up to Anna who was now exuberantly waving three room key cards in the air. “Got our room!”
“Let’s get this show on the road before she combusts.” I grabbed my duffle and the handle of Anna’s carry-on.
“This is going to be epic.” Anna grinned at us.
A bellman pushes a cart past us with Anna’s assortment of luggage, bringing me back to the here and now.
A present without Zoe, a trip that is devastatingly different from that epic first time.
I close my eyes and will the memory back, to see Zoe’s expression at Anna’s epic declaration because suddenly, I can’t picture it.
“Lady, may I?” He points at my one bag.
“Sí, thank you,” Anna answers for me. The bellman scoops up my bag, dropping it on top of Anna’s pile and I watch helplessly as my suitcase takes a leisurely ride across the marble-floored lobby.
My dull gray roller looks as out of place next to Anna’s Louis Vuitton suitcases as I feel standing beside her.
My lack of status and wealth never bothered Zoe or Anna.
They were both careful not to plan trips or dinners or shopping excursions that would make me feel less than.
But even with how hard she tried, I always felt a notch below Anna.
Not because of anything she did, but because of who she was.
Anna is effortless, in the way she acts, in the way she dresses, in the way she’s so at ease with the person she is.
“This place is exactly as I remember. Isn’t it fabulous? Let’s check in and get to the pool bar,” Anna says. Before I have the chance to respond, think, or move, she scoots around me and makes her way to the registration desk.
Yes, it’s as I remembered. No, it’s not fabulous.
Zoe isn’t here. And from what we read on the plane, this leg of the trip is just the tip of the iceberg of revelations.
I wish I’d taken the letter from Anna to read again.
But I’d been so shaken that I spent the last part of the flight staring blindly at my emails.
As Anna approaches the registration desk, I’m shoved into motion by the memory from that first trip with the three of us on the king-sized bed, laughing, sharing stories, making promises.
I practically sprint across the lobby, arriving at the desk in time to hear the man clicking away on his keyboard say, “We have you on the third floor, adjoining rooms overlooking the beach. Does that suit you, ladies?”
Oh, thank god. Separate rooms. Tension melts from my shoulders at the same time Anna visibly stiffens.
“Adjoining rooms? Are you sure that’s right?
” she asks, leaning forward in her attempt to peer at the screen.
The lemons on her boobs smoosh against the marble counter.
She appeals to me with an expression to back her up.
But I’m so relieved Zoe isn’t forcing us together more than necessary that I only shrug at Anna and say to Carlos, “That’s great, thank you. ”
“I thought we’d be in the same room.” Anna’s voice is soft, wistful as she takes one of the two envelopes with the room key cards. She sounds so disappointed that for a moment—only the teeniest of seconds, mind you—I have the urge to suggest we cancel one of the rooms after all.
Then I come to my senses.
“Zoe put a lot of thought into this. She has a plan,” I offer as consolation.
Anna allows a slight smile that doesn’t do her strawberry lipstick justice. “You’re probably right.”
In a flurry of Spanish, Carlos—who I’m still trying to decipher if it’s the same Carlos from the first trip—orders the bellman to take our bags to our rooms. Before I can object, he’s off and I’m left in an awkward what’s next with Anna.
“I’m going to unpack and change. We’re only here two nights and the pool bar is waiting,” Anna says with a flourish of a manicured hand.
“I’m dying for a rum cocktail. Remember the banana ones with the pineapple slices?
They were so good.” She’s off toward the elevators before I can protest, glancing over her shoulder to check I’m following.
Yes, I remember those drinks. I remember—vaguely—ordering a round for the three of us and the three guys we’d met snorkeling earlier that day. There had been several more rounds of drinks that night. And the night after. And on every other trip, until everything exploded in Greece.
“I’m going to pass,” I say, catching up to her. There’s too much to process from that first letter from Zoe. Drinking won’t help. I don’t trust Anna around alcohol. I don’t trust myself around Anna and alcohol.
It had taken three weeks of begging Jack to listen to me after Greece before I was able to convince him that it really hadn’t been what it looked like. Jack is my everything. I could never be unfaithful.
And I will be forever in Liz Park’s debt for going to bat for me with the parents’ association at the school. Liz was the principal at the time and six months pregnant. She’d already announced that she wouldn’t be coming back after maternity leave and I would be taking over as principal.
That picture was pretty damning, even in my eyes, even knowing what had and hadn’t happened. Liz had convinced them to keep me on, and I’ve spent every day since proving myself worthy. I will not allow myself any room for errors in judgment this time.
“Hols, come on. Please?” Her tinted lips pull into a pout, Anna’s secret weapon.
That pout got us out of a number of sticky situations.
Like the time the RA in our dorm caught us with a case of hard seltzers during our freshman year.
Anna had turned on the charm and upped the volume on her signature red-stained lips and our RA gave us a half-hearted warning then walked away with a smile and a shake of his head.
Her pout has also gotten me into a number of sticky situations. Some fun. Some… well, I’ve learned my lesson.
“I want to rest before dinner,” I reply.
Disappointment flashes across Anna’s face, and I feel it deep down in my gut. Zoe would have wanted us to have that drink together, talk about her letter, reminisce about the trip that started our yearly vacations.
The elevator dings and doors open. A cart with the Louis Vuittons and my generic carry-on are the X that marks the spot in front of our rooms.
Anna slips the bellman a hefty tip then turns to me, brows pulled together, voice choked as she implores, “One drink? Please?”
This isn’t the Anna of the past who couldn’t wait to scope out the bar or the guys at the bar. This Anna wears the same heaviness I’m feeling, and I have the momentary urge to pull her in for a hug the way I would have done without a second thought all those years ago.
I swallow roughly, shaking my head. It’s too much, too soon. “I’m tired. I’ll join you for dinner though. The Agave?” I ask.
“Okay,” she whispers, nodding slowly as she turns away.
I escape into my room before my emotions overrule my head and I change my mind.
Flopping on the bed, I stare at the nubby texture of the ceiling, wrecked and overwhelmed, wishing I had Zoe’s letter and could read it again.
Why would she keep something so huge from us?
We shared everything. She and Anna were the first and only people I confided in that one time junior year of college.
Jack and I had been dating four months when I skipped a period.
My cycle was as predictably punctual as the changing of the royal guards at Buckingham Palace.
But Zoe had kept her head when I was in jeopardy of losing mine.
She sat beside me on the edge of the bathtub as we both waited for that second line on the pregnancy test. I wanted to be a mom and already fantasized about marrying Jack and starting a family.
But it was too soon. We were only twenty years old.
Thankfully, that second line never showed.
And Zoe never left my side when I’d been most afraid.
So many times over the years, we huddled on Zoe’s bed, consoling Anna after her parents bailed on her yet again during Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Or the time Zoe didn’t get the job of her dreams, the job with the rounds of interviews we’d spent weeks helping her prep for. We’d always been each other’s person.
But Zoe battled leukemia as a kid. She’d been in remission. She’d lived every day in fear that it would return. And she never shared that with us. Why?
Memories from the past flood me and realization anchors me to the bed. The intermittent darkness skirting across her eyes. The unexplained tears only for her to brush them off and force a smile.
Anger courses through me at the conversations we didn’t have, at the tears we didn’t share, and the promises we were denied making. This is all Anna’s fault. And I don’t, for a minute, buy that she didn’t know. By the end of this trip, I’ll find out the truth of what she’s been hiding.
Then again, if I expect her to be honest with me, I need to be honest with myself.
She and Zoe aren’t the only ones keeping secrets.