The Unhoneymooners(10)

I stare at her, and conflict makes my words come out tangled and thick. “I don’t want to leave you. And I also don’t want to be arrested for fraud.” I can tell she isn’t going to let this go. Finally, I give in. “Okay. Just let me call them and see what I can do.”

Twenty minutes later, and I know she’s right: the customer service representative for Aline Voyage Vacations gives zero damns about my sister’s bowels or esophagus. According to Google and a physician the hotel called in who is slowly making the rounds to each guest room, Ami is unlikely to recover by next week, let alone tomorrow.

If she or her designated guest doesn’t take the trip, it’s gone.

“I’m sorry, Ami. This feels monumentally unfair,” I say.

“Look,” she begins, and then dry-heaves a few times, “consider this the moment your luck changes.”

“Two hundred people threw up during Olive’s speech,” Diego reminds us all from the floor.

Ami manages to push herself up, supporting herself against the couch. “I’m serious. You should go, Ollie. You didn’t get sick. You need to celebrate that.”

Something inside me, a tiny kernel of sunshine, peeks out from behind a cloud, and then disappears again.

“I like the idea of good luck better when it isn’t at someone else’s expense,” I tell her.

“Unfortunately,” Ami says, “you don’t get to choose the circumstances. That’s the point of luck: it happens when and where it happens.”

I fetch her a new cup of water and a fresh washcloth and then crouch down beside her. “I’ll think about it,” I say.

But in truth, when I look at her like this—green, clammy, helpless—I know that not only am I not taking her dream vacation, I’m not leaving her side.

? ? ?

I STEP OUT INTO THE hall before remembering that my dress has an enormous tear all down the back. My ass is literally hanging out. On the plus side, it’s suddenly loose enough that I can cover my boobs. Turning back to the suite, I swipe the key card against the door, but the lock flashes red.

I go to try again and the voice of Satan rings out from behind me. “You have to—” An impatient huff. “No, let me show you.”

There is nothing in the world I wanted less in this moment than for Ethan to show up, ready to mansplain how to swipe a hotel key.

He takes the card from me and holds it against the black circle on the door. I stare at him in disbelief, hear the lock disengage, and begin to sarcastically thank him, but he’s already preoccupied with the view of my tan Spanx.

“Your dress ripped,” he says helpfully.

“You have spinach in your teeth.”

He doesn’t, but at least it distracts him enough that I can escape back into the room and close the door in his face.

Unfortunately, he knocks.

“Just a second, I need to get some clothes on.”

His reply is a lazy drawl through the door: “Why start now?”

Aware that no one else in the suite is remotely interested in watching me change, I toss my dress and Spanx onto the couch and reach for my underwear and a pair of jeans in my bag, hopping into them. Tugging on a T-shirt, I move to the door and open it only a crack so he can’t see Ami inside, curled into a ball in her lacy wedding underwear.

“What do you want?”

He frowns. “I need to talk to Ami real quick.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Well, I’m going to have to do, because my sister is barely conscious.”

“Then why are you leaving her?”

“For your information, I was headed downstairs to look for Gatorade,” I say. “Why aren’t you with Dane?”

“Because he hasn’t left the toilet in two hours.”

Gross. “What do you want?”

“I need the info for the honeymoon. Dane told me to call and see if they can get it moved.”

“They can’t,” I tell him. “I already called.”

“Okay.” He exhales long and slow, clawing a hand through hair that is thick and luscious for no good reason. “In that case, I told him I’d go.”

I actually bark out a laugh. “Wow, that is so generous of you.”

“What? He offered it to me.”

I straighten to my full height. “Unfortunately, you’re not her designated guest.”

“She only had to give his last name. Incidentally, it’s the same as mine.”

Damn it. “Well . . . Ami offered it to me, too.” I’m not planning on taking the trip, but I’ll be damned if Ethan is getting it.

He blinks to the side and then back to me. I’ve seen Ethan Thomas blink those lashes and use that dangerously uneven smile to sweet-talk Tía María into bringing him freshly made tamales. I know he can charm when he wants. Clearly he doesn’t want right now, because his tone comes out flat: “Olive, I have vacation time I need to take.”

And now the fire is rising in me. Why does he think he deserves this? Did he have a seventy-four-item wedding to-do list on fancy stationery? No, he did not. And come to think of it, that speech of his was lukewarm. Bet he wrote it in the groom suite while he was chugging back a plastic pitcher of warm Budweiser.