The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(3)
“And I’m not a jerk to people I just met,” I hiss.
“Apparently,” he mutters, “you don’t remember the day we met all that clearly.”
My jaw tightens. I didn’t ask him if he’d finished high school. I didn’t suggest to my mother that he might steal the silver.
“Put your head between your legs,” he says. “And don’t throw up on my pants.”
I bend my body over and put my head down, just as Dr. Bedside Manner suggested.
So far, Hawaii is proving more exhausting than my real life.
2
JOSH
It’s a lesson I should have learned from children’s television programming: every lie, even lies of omission, even lies meant to spare someone, will come back to bite you in the ass eventually. I just never thought they’d all bite me in the ass at the same time.
Mere hours ago, I was at the end of a very long flight, looking forward to some time with my family in Hawaii. Well, looking forward to time with my mother, anyway. I expected to find her with her health restored—that last round of chemo behind her—and my father by her side, pretending to be a decent human being, while my brother drank too much and acted like the selfish prick he is.
But only my father is living up to expectations so far, because my mother is clearly not well and my brother couldn’t even bother to show up. I’m starting to wish I’d never stepped off the plane.
The van arrives at the hotel at last. By some small miracle, my brother’s diva girlfriend has managed not to vomit, but I climb out as fast as possible anyway and head to the Halekulani’s open-air lobby.
The place radiates serenity, all bleached stone and quiet elegance, the kind of hotel where no one speaks loudly and it’s as if you’re the only guest. There are no lines at check-in, no nonsense. In under a minute, we are being led (quietly) through a maze of well-kept gardens and gently gurgling fountains to the elevator in our wing of the hotel. My mother has reserved us three rooms, side by side, on the fifth floor. She wants maximum togetherness at all times.
“Let’s meet down by the bar at six,” she says when we reach our respective rooms. “They do a sunset show.”
I open the door to our suite, which consists of a bedroom with a plush king-sized bed, a living room spacious enough for a table, a desk and a couch, and a long balcony overlooking Diamond Head. In Dooha, I sleep in a tent barely tall enough to stand in. Simply having a bathroom nearby would be a luxury…and here there are two, complete with Japanese toilets that do everything but pull your pants down for you.
I can’t begrudge my mother a single thing. She wanted this trip to be perfect and I suspect I know why. I just wish it wasn’t…so much. There are kids at the refugee camp using wheelchairs constructed of bike tires and hospital chairs. How much equipment could we have purchased with the money this is costing? How much food?
“You really had no idea,” Sloane says. She isn’t talking about the room. She’s not even noticing the room. She’s only thinking of this—us, when “us” wasn’t even a thing until two hours ago.
I run a hand through my hair. Jesus, what a fucking mess. “No,” I say, forcing my mouth to move into a smile. “But it’s great to see you.”
It’s not all that great, really.
My mother’s decision to surprise me by inviting her was…definitely a surprise. Sloane and I were a fling, nothing more, and then she left Somalia, which fortuitously brought things to an end. Now I’ve got to pretend I wasn’t relieved, on top of everything else I’m pretending.
She folds her arms across her chest. Somewhere between the airport and here, she’s put together what’s happened. “Why did you let your mother think we weren’t over,” she asks coolly, “if you thought we were?”
I shove my hands in my pockets. It’s hard to explain how hung up my mother is on the idea of Joel or me settling down. I think she blames her screwed-up marriage for our aversion to relationships, and she isn’t entirely wrong. “I didn’t want to upset her right before she went through chemo,” I reply. I thought I’d gracefully exited the thing with Sloane, gracefully sidestepped the conversation with my mother. And now I’m back in the middle of both.
The bellman enters and we fall silent while he sets each suitcase on the bench at the foot of the bed. When he leaves, she crosses the room and unzips it, saying nothing. The inside of her bag looks like it’s been styled for a photo shoot. Everything is pressed, perfectly folded. That’s Sloane to a T. Neat, precise, methodical.
By contrast, Drew’s bag is probably bursting at the seams. I picture frilly panties and bras and negligees exploding like confetti from a cannon when she opens it. I have no clue why I’m picturing Drew’s panties, or why I picture them all being sheer and extremely non-functional, but it’s a troubling development.
Sloane opens a drawer and then closes it. “Is this going to be okay? That I’m here?”
No, I think. There is so much that is not okay at this moment that I feel like I can barely take a deep breath. “Of course,” I tell her, because the only option is to say Hey, not really, would you mind flying back to Atlanta instead?
Her lips press tight. “Then do me a favor: please don’t spend the entire trip fawning over your brother’s girlfriend.”