Save the Secret Date

by Ellie Cahill

  Luxury. I couldn't think of another word. This whole place was just pure luxury. Marble floors walk-in showers, fluffy white towels. Everything said 5-star. It was hard to believe I was here. Hard to believe my friends were getting married in a place this lovely.

  Hard to believe my friends are getting married at all!

  Ash tipped the bellhop so he could head down the hall with Jake. We wanted to get changed into swim suits and get outside ASAP. We promised to knock on Jake’s door as soon as we were ready to go downstairs.

  “This is incredible!” Ashley gave me another squeeze as soon as we were alone in the room. “I’m so excited!”

  “Me, too! I can’t wait to see everyone else.”

  We got settled as quickly as we could, picking out sides of the king size bed we were sharing, and digging through out suitcases for beachwear. Ashley was ready faster than me, and of course she looked like an ad for men’s cologne in her white bikini contrasting perfectly with her long black hair and tawny skin. She’d obviously taken the time to put on a little makeup this morning, unlike me.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, “I’m obviously going to need a few more minutes.”

  “No worries.” Ashley went to the desk to enter the WiFi password into her phone and send a text to Emmy.

  As pointless as it felt, I took the time to put on a little makeup. Not much. Just a little eyeshadow and mascara and a touch of pink lip gloss. And I tried to fluff up my blonde hair a little. There wasn’t much to be done with hair only long enough to graze my shoulders. I didn’t have the nearly waist-length sheet of glossy black hair that Ash wore, or the tumbled waves that always made Emmy look like she’d just finished surfing. Mine was somewhere between straight and wavy, and I always got bored before I could get it much longer than chin length. I didn’t mind my hair most of the time, but it always seemed a little lackluster when I wanted to look sexy.

  Sexy had never been my strong suit.

  Even now, in a cute, retro-inspired bikini that was basically the most flattering swim suit I’d ever owned, I still felt like a little girl playing at being a grown-up. Maybe it was because I’d never grown into my boobs. No one could. They were just plain too big. No way around it. I’d been cursed with the kind of boobs that made swimsuit shopping a nightmare. It was hard not to draw attention to the one feature I’d like to hide when every top was practically bursting at the seams. God bless the vintage look that had come into style a few years back. At least in the generous cuts of the 1950s and ‘60s, I could sort of contain the girls.

  With a final check to make sure I was in no danger of a nip slip, I went back into the main room to find Ashley.

  She whistled when she saw me. “Look at you! I love that suit!”

  I fought the urge to cover my cleavage with one hand. “Thanks.”

  “You ready?”

  I pulled a loose cotton beach cover-up over my head and tossed a bottle of sunscreen into my straw bag. “Yup.”

  “Then let’s roll.” Ash slipped her arms into a sheer kimono wrap that didn’t cover any of her swimsuit, and slid on a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  We headed down the open-air hall to Jake’s room, four doors down. Ash knocked, loudly, and called, “Jake! Let’s go! Beach!”

  A muffled reply came from inside. It sounded like “Just a minute!”

  Ashley lowered her glasses enough to look at me. “First things first, I need a drink. Preferably something blended and served in a coconut. Next thing, we must get the scoop on these Iowa boys.”

  I laughed. “Don’t you want to say hi to Emmy and Beck?”

  “Of course I do! But that is all part of getting the scoop. Em will help us pick the right ones out.”

  “Ash, you are shameless.”

  “And proud of it.” She pushed her glasses back up. “Why wouldn’t we want to have a little vacation fling?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “We?”

  “Of course we! Everyone needs a little vacation fling, don’t you think?” Her tone was a sing-song, “It’ll be fun.”

  “I’m not—no, I don’t think I—I…”

  She laughed. “You should see your face. You look so freaked out!” She put an arm around my shoulders in a half-hug. “My sweet innocent Mary. I’ve missed you!”

  8

  Double Double Negatives…I Think?

  I kept my eyes peeled for any sign of a familiar face as we stepped onto the hot sand. The sound of the ocean was much louder this close, even louder than it had been from the balcony. And the sun was intense. It felt great. I shielded my eyes with a flattened hand and scanned the beach finally spotting Emmy about 50 yards away.

  “There!” I pointed in her direction.

  She was just emerging from the ocean, wearing a mismatched bikini of aqua on top and a bright, watermelon pink on the bottom. She paused to squeeze the excess water from her hair, unaware that we were watching her.

  I called to her across the sand, “Emmy!”

  She turned in my direction, her face brightening as soon as she recognized me. Her steps were clumsy as she slogged through knee-deep water in our direction, screaming, “You're here!”

  Ashley and I took off running at the same time, splashing into the shallows to meet our friend. In an instant, we were all in a bear hug, totally disregarding the fact that Emmy was soaking wet.

  From there, it was a repeat performance of my reunion with Ashley—a lot of screaming and jumping around and all trying to talk at once.

  “I’m so happy you’re here!” Emmy sounded a little choked up, which set me off, and soon all three of us were nearly in tears. Happy tears, but tears nonetheless.

  “Where’s Beck?” Ashley asked.

  “He went to get drinks, he’ll be back in a second. Over here!” Emmy took us by the wrists to lead us back to the area she’d staked out, but I held back.

  “Wait! Jake!”

  Emmy turned, and found Jake a few feet behind us, waving.

  “Hey, Em.”

  She dropped our wrists and hopped excitedly to him for a hug and more high-pitched greetings and enthusiastic reuniting.

  “Come, come, come!” Emmy said, flapping her hands to beckon us back down the beach. “Beck will be back in a second.” She talked a mile a minute as she led us to a small group of lounge chairs and towels. Just like it had been with Jake and with Ashley, I felt like no time had passed since I’d seen her. We all fell into place so easily. It was heaven.

  We were still on our feet when we heard Beckett shout to us from down the beach. Emmy shrieked with happiness and ran to him, taking the pair of cocktails from his hands so he could greet us. His hug was a bone-crusher that I accepted willingly, happily.

  He looked fantastic. Like the others, I hadn’t seen him in two years, but he was the only one so far who had noticeably changed. Sure we’d been in touch by text and online, but he wasn’t much of a social media user. And the few pictures I’d seen hadn't done him justice. My former roommate had bulked up considerably. I knew he’d gotten into weight lifting, but seeing him in person was another thing entirely.

  “Oh my God! Beck, look at you! You're huge!”

  Always humble, he brushed off the compliment. “Oh, yeah, I guess. God damn, it's good to see you.”

  I released him and turned my attention back to Emmy. “And you! You look amazing!”

  She did. Emmy had always been stunning. She was one of the most beautiful people I knew in real life. Chestnut brown hair and enormous green eyes, and a wide, straight smile that lit up a room. Only now, there was a glow about her that made her even more beautiful. Something intangible.

  “I think Iowa agrees with you,” I said.

  Emmy rolled her eyes. “All that farm air, or something, I guess.”

  Beckett imitated the sound of a cow mooing, and Emmy laughed.

  “Are we the first ones here?” I asked.

  “No, a bunch of my family is here already,” Beckett said.

  “And my dad and his fi
ancée,” Emmy added. “But, none of our friends from Iowa have gotten here yet.”

  “What about Brady?” I asked.

  “He and his girlfriend should be here any minute,” Emmy said.

  “I can't wait to meet her,” I said.

  “You mean the female who's actually willing to be with Brady?” Ashley teased. “Are we sure he didn’t kidnap some helpless girl and drag her to Mexico?”

  Our roommate Will Brady had been the biggest slob of the six of us. To be fair, he was probably just a typical college student. But, we’d all taken particular joy in teasing him about it even more than he deserved. He reveled in it, though. That’s just the way he was.

  “Jake, have you met my cousin yet?” Beckett asked. “He’s here already.”

  “He wasn’t in the room when I got there,” Jake said. “But I saw his stuff.”

  “Thanks again for rooming with him,” Emmy said. “I know this place is a little pricey, but…I hope you guys think it’s worth it?” She looked nervously at each of us.

  “Oh hell yes.” Ashley raised her hand in a ‘preach’ pose. “You guys did good.”

  “This place is amazing,” I agreed.

  “I don’t mind the roommate.” Jake shrugged. “If Brady didn’t have his girlfriend with him, I would have been stuck with him anyway.”

  “You’ll like Luke, I promise,” Emmy said. “I should text him to come down here and meet you…” she trailed off, turning to search her beach bag for her phone.

  From a distance, a new voice shouted, “Hey! Who let you losers in here?” and we all turned to see the familiar shape of Will Brady walking toward us. He was as huge as I remembered, 6-foot-4 and broad-shouldered. He'd somehow gotten bigger since I’d last seen him. I knew he was working construction with his father's company. He loved it, and the physical labor definitely showed in muscle definition.

  Beckett cupped one hand beside his mouth and shouted, “Looks like they'll let anyone in here!”

  Brady was still about 20 yards away and I took the last few moments before he arrived to steal a look at his girlfriend. She was smaller than him by about a foot, which still made her taller than me, thought not by much. She had long red hair, and so many freckles it was hard to tell where the freckles ended and her regular skin tone began. She was pretty in a cute, Ivory soap commercial way, wearing a big floppy hat and a long sleeved cover-up over her swimsuit.

  There were hugs all around when Brady reached us, with manly slaps on the back for the guys, while each one of the girls was literally swept off her feet. A hug from Brady was an experience, especially for short girls like me.

  “Guys, this is Hadley.”

  The red-haired girl stepped forward with a little wave. “Nice to meet you, I've heard a lot about you guys.”

  “We've heard a lot about you,” Emmy said. “It's nice to finally meet you.”

  The introductions went around again. We all chatted for a few more minutes, the typical travel stuff, like how was your flight, were you delayed, any trouble finding your shuttle? All that stuff.

  “Did you guys find your itineraries?” Emmy asked. “They should be in your rooms.”

  We had to admit we hadn’t even looked.

  She gave us a brief overview of the weekend. Who was going to be there, where to get breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When we had to be ready for the wedding, etc.

  “There's not a ton of nightlife here to be honest,” Beckett said. “They've got those goofy shows in the theater every night, and there's usually a band playing on the pool deck, or something. But it's pretty chill.”

  “There's a discotheque down at the shopping center.” Emmy told us. “We haven't checked it out yet, but it's there.”

  Ashley waved her hand. “I don't really care what we do, I just want to hang out with you guys.”

  “I’ve been to places like this before,” Hadley volunteered. “I think they expect most of the tourists to be so tired after drinking all day, every day, they don't really need much entertainment at night.” She laughed.

  “There is nothing wrong with day drinking,” Brady said, smiling at her and lifting his glass up in a casual toast.

  “Amen to that!” Beckett concurred.

  We talked more about what might be fun to do while we were here. There was talk of possibly doing one of the tour desks excursions, like to see the Mayan ruins or something. I brought up Phil and his recommendation for Raul, which made Jake laugh. No one was ready to commit, however. It was too nice to be on the beach, drinks in hand, and with our old friends.

  I couldn't help stealing glasses at Jake from time to time, while everyone was talking. He hadn't changed as much as Brady or Beckett, but he was still really freaking hot. And now that I was seeing him in nothing but his swimming trunks, I was starting to get nervous again.

  I know the adage is that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I’d been sort of hoping that absence would make my heart grow colder. I should have known better. It’s not like anyone could really be absent from one another on social media. Still, there was something to the physical presence of another person, and part of me thought I could have built him up in my mind. He could have turned out to be not so good-looking after all, and I could have finally gotten over him.

  Of my three college roommates, Jake had always been the one in the middle. He was taller than Beckett, but shorter than Brady. His hair was lighter than Beckett, but darker than Brady's. He was of an average build, not strapping and broad-shouldered like Brady, or the more lithe soccer player build of Beckett. (Although the Beck in front of me today was certainly more ripped than I'd ever seen him.) No, Jake was sort of an Everyman. Except, I always thought he had the best looks of the three. Even when I took my own bias out of the equation, he was just plain handsome. Like a movie star.

  I was completely self-conscious about where to stand. I wanted to be next to Jake every second. Drinking in his proximity and making up for lost time. But I also didn’t want everyone to notice I was next to him all the time. I’d endured some next level teasing from Ashley and Emmy after the morning Emmy’d discovered Jake in my bed. The girls believed me that nothing happened between us. But they couldn’t resist poking at me about it. I couldn’t blame them—we had been curled up together in my bed. What were they supposed to think?

  Except that I was me, and I wasn’t really known for my wild love life. Neither was Jake for that matter. So it was totally believable that we’d somehow managed to spend an entirely platonic night snuggling.

  Only me.

  Beckett’s cousin, Luke joined us at some point. Of course, Beck introduced him all around. He was friendly and seemed comfortable almost instantly. If I could have one super power, I might have to go with never being socially awkward. It must be so nice to be confident and relaxed everywhere you go.

  Not that I could blame him. Luke had the striking combination of dark, almost black hair, and dark brown eyes. He was good-looking in a brooding, bad boy kind of way, which didn’t fit at all with his easy-going personality. And on top of all that, we found out he was just starting business school after getting his law degree. Unreal. He was the definition of potential.

  After a while, it got hot sitting there on the beach,and I had to take off my cover up. I put on sunscreen while we were still talking, and when it came time to do my back I handed the tube over to Ashley with a look.

  “What's that look for?” she asked.

  “You should be putting sunscreen on,” I said.

  Emmy laughed. “Same old Mary. Everybody's mom. God, I've missed you.”

  “We had no idea how good we had it when we were living with you, Mare,” Beckett added. “We were lost when we first moved into our place in Iowa.”

  “Seriously,” Emily agreed. “Beck had to duct tape up the shower curtain.”

  “You all used to tease me!” I said.

  “Well, then we owe you an apology,” Brady said. “I had it rough when I got home, too.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe you shouldn't have taken such good care of them,” Hadley said. “You should have seen what this one's RV looked like when I first saw it.” She jerked her thumb toward Brady.

  He gave her a gentle push on the shoulder, and she laughed

  “Same old Brady, " Emmy said.

  “Do you guys always call him, Brady?” Hadley asked.

  “Yeah,” Beckett said. “Why? What else would we call him?”

  “His name?” she said.

  The look of confusion passed among the six of us who had been roommates.

  “What do you call him?” Ashley asked.

  “Will?” she said it like a question, and her confusion was so obvious I couldn't help smiling.

  “Man, that sounds weird,” Jake said.

  “We had two other friends,” Brady said. “In college, I mean. So they called me Brady. The other ones were—”

  “Big Will and Little Will,” the rest of us said almost in unison.

  “You weren't Big Will?” Hadley gave her boyfriend a deliberate once over. He was almost twice her size, so I could see her point.

  “Big Will was…” Brady held his hands wide around his waist, and made the rough shape of our large college classmate. “Big.”

  “Oh!” Hadley said.

  “Ironically, we didn't really hang out with Big Will much after we all moved in together.” Ashley shrugged. “But by then he was Brady. I can't call him anything else."

  “I’m not calling you that,” she told him.

  “You can call me whatever you want, HB.”

  She glared at him, making him smiling return. Then she rolled her eyes, and he bent down to kiss her nose, lifting the wide brim of her hat out of the way to do it.

  It was an incongruous gesture from my old friend. Brady had never been this sweet, affectionate type. He wasn't mean, just maybe a little rough around the edges. But I liked seeing them together. They seemed so happy. It was cute.