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• International

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Beached Wedding

Excerpt

Chapter One

I was stepping onto the curb at International Arrivals of the Honolulu airport when my phone rang. My smile of anticipation fell away.

Izzy. I knew it. My maid-of-honor wasn’t coming.

Not a crisis. My sister was offended that I had asked Izzy instead of her. Whitney was dying to take over, but what was going on with Izzy?

I accepted her call and tried to put a smile in my voice.

“Hi.” I braced the cool petals strung around my neck so I wouldn’t bruise them as I hurried down the sidewalk toward doors where a handful of people with luggage loitered.

“Why am I hearing honking?” Izzy asked.

“I’m at the airport. Traffic is bonkers. I thought I would be late.” My fault. I asked my ride-share driver to stop for leis, thinking it would be romantic. Now I was sweaty and stressed. Pretty much my signature look.

“What are you doing at the airport?” Izzy was scandalized. “Diva the hell out of this week. I would.”

She would. For most of my life, I have been striving to become more like Izzy. Izzy does what she wants and says ‘no’ when she doesn’t want to do something. She makes zero apologies for either.

I’m getting better. It had only taken twenty-six years, but I was finally clawing forward with my own life, getting married in Hawaii to a great guy then moving to Australia with him. No more compromising and settling and doing as I’m told. No more apologizing for everything all the time.

“Sorry, hang on a sec,” I heard myself say as I entered the airport. I could have bitten my tongue in half for the reflexive apology. I read the arrivals screen. “Okay, their flight landed.” I drew a calming breath and moved into a corner to wait.

“I can’t believe you left the beach. I can’t wait to get there.”

“You’re still coming?”

“Of course. Why would you think not?”

Because she had waited until the last second to book and wasn’t arriving until the day before the wedding. Because she was tapping a keyboard right now, and lately seemed to have ten things better to do than give me her full attention.

But anytime I asked if something was wrong, she deflected and blew me off.

“I’m just stressing,” I excused. And gritted me teeth at myself for being less than honest. “My head went to worst-case when I saw you were calling instead of texting.”

“I need my fingers to finish entering these numbers…” More tapping. “But I wanted to know if the resort has a shop where I can buy a bathing suit? That scream you woke up to this morning? That was me trying on my old one.”

Unlikely. Izzy was gorgeous, but, “I did hear that.” I relaxed into the warm wall at my back. The airport was open-air and as hot and humid as the rest of the island. “There’s a shop, but it’s expensive.” The mismatched tops and bottoms started at eighty dollars, but Izzy had a great salary and wasn’t footing the bill on her own wedding. “Now that I’ve seen what a cluster fu…nction—” I smiled and corrected myself as a mom with two kids came to stand near me. “—what a challenge traffic can be, I’ll leave more time when I come back for you.”

“Don’t. Seriously, climb into bed with Shane and send Fox to pick me up.” Izzy’s tone lowered to a smoldering sexiness. “Tell him I can’t wait to see him again.”

I don’t know why it bothered me, but for the last three months, Izzy had been making jokes about rekindling things with Fox and something about it put me off. She was the maid-of-honor. It was practically law that she slam the best man.

I knew Fox a lot better now, though. When Izzy and I had met him and Shane on our first night out after arriving in Sydney, we’d all been looking for a good time, not a long time. Everything about those early days had been pure fun. I didn’t begrudge either of them getting their rocks off, especially if they had nothing better to do while they were here on vacation.

But something in Izzy’s jokes sounded forced. Which made me think she didn’t really want Fox. That made me want to question her motives and made me defensive on his behalf.

Which was not my place. If he was willing to be used by her or anyone else, what business of it was mine? None. They were grownups. They could figure it out.

Maybe I was tired of the chase and thought they should be, too. That’s all this was. I went along with Izzy’s suggestion because that’s what best friends do.

“I’ll see what kind of shape he’s in. They might be jet-lagged or still recovering from the stag party.”

“I thought that was last weekend. Didn’t they go surfing?”

“They had a do-over. Quite a piss-up, sounds like. I got a text from Shane last night that he and Fox were taking a taxi to the airport because they were still drunk. That’s why I decided to meet them here. They’re renting a car and I wasn’t sure they’d be sober enough to drive it. This way I’ll be on the paperwork and can come back for you.”

“Are you listening to yourself? That’s way too much micro-managing for a bride.”

“I know, but…” Normally I would trust Fox to sort it, but the stakes were really high. My mother was dying to find fault with my groom. I didn’t expect everything to be perfect this week, but I would do whatever necessary so things ran smoothly.

“When I get there, I want to see you in a bikini, a wedding dress, then a bikini,” Izzy stated. “That’s it.”

“Aw.” I layered my voice with a sentimental pang. “You sound like Shane.”

“That guy has gone three months without sex. Good luck wearing anything.”

I chuckled, but it came out weak. I wasn’t like Izzy in that way either, inclined to overshare about what went on in the bedroom. Shane and I were fine in the sack, but we didn’t exactly tear each other’s clothes off. I wasn’t convinced anyone ever felt as porny and horny as books and movies made out.

Was I suffering FOMO over those who did? Sure. But I’d been raised to keep my expectations low. Focus on needs, not wants, so there was less room for disappointment.

And I was marrying a gorgeous surfy-dude who had great parents and a growing business. He was giving me an excuse to move to Australia. I had no reason to be greedy.

I glanced up as a swell of travelers began streaming past me. They were mostly Asian so it was probably a different flight. Shane and Fox were coming straight from Sydney.

“Seriously, I— Oh, hang on, Ash.” Izzy muffled the phone while she spoke to someone.

I bit back a sigh, wondering if she even wanted to see me. We’d been best friends growing up, but she barely talked to me in the three months that I’d been back in Canada.

Granted she was four hours away from our home town, working at a demanding job in Winnipeg, living it up with all her city friends, but her parents still lived near me. She hadn’t come back once to see them or me. Every time I had suggested coming to stay with her in the Peg, Izzy had had other plans. She often took days to respond to a text. I felt like I was an unwelcome reminder that we came from a dot on the map that was more of a zit in the armpit of the country.

I genuinely hadn’t expected her to accept maid-of-honor duty. I asked because she was the one who had coaxed me to go to Australia with her last year, something I wouldn’t have done on my own. Then she drew me into meeting Shane after chatting up Fox. Everything about that trip had started out fantastic.

Within the week, however, Izzy abruptly went back to Canada, ditching me for the bank job she currently held.

It was a really good job. I couldn’t blame her. And her abandonment had turned out fine for me, obviously, but given how easily she had left me alone in a strange country, I had been expecting a regretful excuse the entire time I’d been planning this wedding.

Izzy came back on the line. “That was a hot-goss alert about a mat leave. They want me to apply to cover it. Guess I can’t marry Fox and move to Oz after all. Do you think he’d move here?”

“The market for surf shops in Manitoba is wide open.”

“Right? It’s one of those things you don’t know you need until it’s here.”

“Ask him when you see him. They’ve talked about expanding into California, since Fox is American, but with the price of real estate there— Oh. I just heard someone say ‘G’day.’ Might be their flight. I’ll hang up.”

“’kay. See you in forty-eight hours plus traffic.”

“Can’t wait. Travel safe.”

I pushed off the wall and dropped my phone into my bag, bouncing on my toes in my excitement to see the man who was changing my life.

Chapter Two

I detoured into the men’s room and dry-heaved until my lungs threatened to squeeze out of me like toothpaste. As I did, my sunglasses dropped off the collar of my shirt and hit the water in the bowl. Brilliant. At least they floated as advertised so I had that going for me.

Plucking the glasses from the toilet, I leaned against the wall, wishing it was colder, but the airport was open to the elements. No A/C. I ought to be used to the heat and most days I could stand it, but not today. Not with this humidity.

Not with this hangover.

I was shaking and lived inside each of my next three breaths, waiting for the nausea to pass. When I was pretty sure I could move without retching, I swiped my wrist across my mouth and opened the door of the stall. I braced there and met the reflected gaze of the man washing his hands.

“Rough flight?”

“Yeah.” The whole plane had listened to me alternately snore and lose my guts for ten hours. I should have stayed drunk. The minute I’d taken my seat on the plane alone, my conscience had begun to squirm. Now, I was crawling out from judgment-impaired drunk to a hard cast of DTs and felt ill in a whole new way.

What kind of asshat talked a man into jilting his bride? I like Ashley. Shane could do a helluva lot worse. I should have kept my trap shut.

But no. I’d been ‘a good mate’ so here I was, drunk-sober and seedy, sick with the realization I had thrown a lever that would derail lives.

The other guy left. I washed and dried my sunglasses then hung my clammy face over the sink. I splashed cold water on my unshaven cheeks and into my mouth, rinsed and spat and stood straight. My head took a minute to catch up with the change in altitude. My stomach dipped and rolled until I found my equilibrium. Another cold sweat shivered over my ashy-brown skin.

I didn’t meet my own eyes in the mirror, but I did glance at my phone to see a text from Ashley.

I’m here to surprise Shane. Where are you? Don’t leave the airport without me.

Fucking brilliant.

Curling fetal under an airport urinal started to look like perfectly rational behavior. With luck the EMTs might turn up with a shot of antipsychotic medication and lock me up for a decade or two.

Why had I even got on the plane?

Will you tell her? I can’t. Those eyes.

I’d been too drunk to parse out that I should refuse. That was the pitiful truth. I’d been steeped in some kind of hero complex, convinced I was doing what was right by both of them.

Fucking idiot.

I shouldered my duffel with our company logo and left the men’s room, distantly recalling my suit was in the garment bag with Shane’s, the bag that had stayed in the taxi.

It’s fine, mate. I’ll make sure she’s not mad. Who did I think I was, promising dumb shit like that? Ashley was going to knee me in the raisins and I deserved it.

I shuffled through the flow of customs and followed the crowd toward the exit.

My stomach pitched again and I accepted the suffering as my due, but when I reached to my collar for my sunglasses, I realized I’d left them beside the sink in the can. I would have to go back through security to retrieve them and doubted I could do that without a boarding pass. I had a vague memory of hooking my hat on the back of the door and I actually wanted to cry. The sunshine was going to pierce my skull like a diamond drill—

Ow. There it was.

“Fox! Aloha!”

Despite my legal status of ‘walking dead,’ my heart lifted at the sight of Ashley. I’d missed her. A half-smile tugged one corner of my mouth.

She always made me smile. It was her sincerity and the way she radiated warmth. She had bouncy brown hair and big brown eyes and I especially enjoyed the fact she always tried to dress to the nines but, by her own admission, only made it to seven and a half. Today that meant full make-up, a pretty sundress that bared her shoulders topped with a thick, ruffled lei of pink and white flowers. Her hair framed her face in windswept waves. On her feet, she wore dollar-store flip-flops on toes overdue for fresh polish.

She was real. Earthy and funny. Bright and nice. She did not deserve to be thrown over by anyone. What the hellhad I done?

“Good to see you, Ash.” I slouched for the hug she offered, but the cringe that briefly soured my face couldn’t be helped, not when I was accosted by a fresh slant of sun and the thick blanket of humidity and the sickly-sweet aroma off the leis.

“Oh, wow,” she said with a wince of her own, drawing back.

“Yeah, I need a shower. Bad.” The whore’s bath in the chemical toilet hadn’t taken.

“Where’s Shane? Not stuck in customs.” She looked around me.

“He didn’t text you?” Let there be a God.

“About?” She frowned with concern and looked past me again.

I rubbed where the sun radiated against my short, recently-barbered curls. I stepped into the shade. Then I grabbed the proverbial bandage and yanked, even though it was attached to something inside me and turned me inside out.

“He didn’t come.”

Ashley gave a half-gurgling chuckle as if she knew her leg was being pulled and she appreciated the effort, but it wouldn’t work.

“Is he in the john? It sounds like you guys were really drunk. It’s okay. You can sleep it off by the pool.”

I clenched my molars against a fresh lurch in my gut.

“He didn’t get on the plane, Ash. The wedding’s off.”