by Lisa Jackson
“Just after.” She tilted her head. “Did he tell you that?”
“Well, he mentioned you were a lot younger then. In fact, he said you looked so much older now he hardly recognized you.”
Meredith bent down to retie her shoe to cover the fact that her cheeks were on fire. Her skin was too pale to be able to camouflage a blush. So Sam had said she looked like an old hag. Well, maybe in not those words, but that’s probably what he’d meant.
Meanwhile, Sam looked better than ever. The planes of his face were more angular, less boyish. He wore nicer clothes, more expensive clothes. Even his glasses had become more stylish, instead of the big geeky wire frames that used to perch on his nose. He’d been updated, buffed, while she had just lost her bloom.
She’d thought he’d been avoiding her gaze because of awkwardness. Maybe it had just been complete lack of interest, or discomfort at how different she seemed.
When she straightened up again, Janie was hurrying over. Her sister handed her a café au lait. “What are you two talking about?”
“Wheatgrass juice,” Meredith said, fearing Seth would blurt out the truth. The last thing she wanted was for Janie to think she was obsessing about Sam. Even if she was.
Especially if she was.
Janie tugged her away, saying in a low voice, “I wouldn’t spend too much time around Seth. He might get ideas.”
Meredith chuckled. “He’s already got them, but I don’t think he’s particular. He thinks you’re foxy, by the way.”
Janie tossed a gaze back at him. “Really?” Then she shuddered a little. “No. I might get past the Anton LaVey look and the John the Baptist eating habits, but that guitar is a threat. Last Valentine’s Day he showed up with it at the studio and did an entire afternoon of romantic folk-rock favorites in a unitard.”
A few yards from their gate, Janie stopped, pivoted on her heel, and dragged Meredith in the opposite direction, toward a seating section that was a gate away from where they needed to be. “Why don’t we go sit over there, next to the window? You brought your sunscreen, right?”
“I checked it.”
“Not too close to the window, then.”
“I’m not a vampire,” Meredith grumbled, looking over her shoulder to the gate to see why Janie had fled. Sure enough, Sam and Gina were sitting together, Gina leaning against him, ferociously focused on some electronic device. Sam’s hand rested on her leg, but his gaze darted nervously toward Meredith, almost as if he expected her to swoop down and break up the happy twosome.
She realized now that Janie was trying to keep her away from Sam, to spare her feelings. Of course, she herself had decided to use the same strategy. But now it seemed silly, almost teenager-like. All Sam saw when he looked at her now was someone old. So different he hadn’t recognized her.
Which made sense. When they’d split up seven years ago, she’d been twenty-two years old. She was a different person now, as different from herself at twenty-two as her twenty-two-year-old self had differed from herself at fifteen. By that logic, it would be just as ridiculous for her to pine after Sam now as it would have been for her to have lusted after the Backstreet Boys in college.
“What are you thinking about?” Janie examined her face avidly. Meredith’s glance back at Sam and Gina hadn’t escaped her notice.
“The Backstreet Boys,” Meredith said, intending to put Janie’s fears to rest.
But she might as well have answered Sam, my one and only true love, because that was evidently what Janie heard. “I am so sorry. If I had known Gina was in a relationship with Sam—of all people!—I never would have come on this trip. I certainly wouldn’t have encouraged you to come. And I really wouldn’t have arranged it so that we’d all be seated in the same row during the next flight.”
Meredith tensed. They would all be sitting together?
“I tried to convince the stupid airline person at the gate to switch our seats,” Janie said, “but the flight is booked except for first class. Which is hideously expensive. But don’t worry—I will sit between you and them. I hate window seats anyway.”
Janie was terrified of heights.
“It doesn’t matter. Honestly.”
“If only I’d known,” Janie said. “But Gina was so cagey. She and I would go for coffee, and she’d talk about this fantastic guy she was seeing—successful, good-looking, fun. Does that sound like Sam to you?”
Meredith didn’t answer. He was obviously different from his twenty-three-year-old self too. But not so different that she didn’t recognize him even in that brief description. He had been fun, in a low-key way, and she’d always thought he was good-looking. He hadn’t been successful, but who was successful right after college? He’d been hardworking, focused. Studious, even when they weren’t in school.
“Even when she griped about him, it didn’t sound like him,” Janie went on, aggrieved, as though Gina had conned her by inadvertently going out with a mutual acquaintance. “She’d talk about how he was always too eager to do couply, romantic things, and to take a big vacation. Does that sound like your Sam?”
“He’s not my Sam.”
“Thank God!” Janie sent an eagle-sharp glance back at him and Gina. “Although I will say he’s not as bad as I remembered. His taste in clothes has improved from the post-grad, rumpled look. That’s a Ralph Lauren leather jacket he’s wearing—I saw it at Barneys. Not cheap. Gina said he’s an accountant at some big firm. Guess graduate school worked out for him.”
“I’m glad. He deserves success.” His family hadn’t had much money when he was growing up, and he’d had to work several jobs and take an extra year to get through college, which had fueled him with ambition.
They’d moved into an apartment together after going to college in Boston because they were both moving to New York and he’d been the roommate of her friend’s boyfriend senior year. For a while, it had seemed as if Sam didn’t even realize she was female. He just viewed her as someone who used all the hot water in the mornings and was too fond of dumb TV shows. But somewhere around the end of June, she noticed she was no longer alone on the couch during So You Think You Can Dance.
One night while they were making popcorn in the tiny, airless kitchen, he had bumped into her, and she had turned and found herself flush against him. He’d kissed her for the first time then, kissed her until the popcorn burned and the smoke detector screeched at them.
“But of course, it all could have turned out differently,” Janie said. “Like I told you at the time, he was practically a baby then. You both were. Which was the problem.”
Looking back on the breakup, Meredith could see that she and Sam had been as Janie said. Blundering children, making all sorts of mistakes. They hadn’t known how to communicate like adults yet, how to weather life’s problems. And Janie had been one hundred percent correct—Meredith hadn’t yet seen anything of life and would have missed out on a lot by settling down. But sometimes, in her weaker, lonelier moments, moments usually fueled by margaritas or cupcakes or whatever comfort fuel was on the menu, she wondered if taking Janie’s advice and money and breaking up with Sam hadn’t been her most childish mistake of all.
“But he’s still the same person, underneath all the updated trappings,” Janie went on. “We can’t forget that.”
“We won’t,” Meredith deadpanned. We wouldn’t let ourselves.
Her sister tapped her fingers fretfully against her coffee cup. “It’s just so unfortunate he’s here—and that you’re here.”
“Why? Who cares?” The more Janie went on, the more Meredith saw how crazy it was to freak out. “It’s not that big a deal. Just one of those fluky things life throws at you sometimes.”
“But if anything happens . . .”
“What can happen? I don’t care about him, and I know he doesn’t care about me.”
Janie’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”
“Because he has a girlfriend. He and Gina have been together for eight months. That’
s a long time.”
“Oh. Right.” Her sister frowned. “And that says volumes about his taste, if you want my opinion.”
“You like Gina.”
Janie drew back as if surprised to hear it. “We were sort of friends, I guess. Coffee after class and that sort of thing. Then she got involved with Mr. Wonderful.” Janie rolled her eyes. “Sam. If I’d known it was him she was dumping me for, I would have been more incensed. Of all people . . .”
Of all people. Meredith agreed with that. Of all the people to show up on her big vacation, why did it have to be Sam? Worse—Sam with Gina.
Fran, a woman from their group who was on her own, spotted them and veered over. “Oh! Sister pic!” Before Meredith could register her intention, Fran held up a digital camera and snapped a photo.
She grinned. “It’s going on the blog.” Fran wrote a blog called Yogaholic in Manhattan. The times Meredith had visited the site, the entries had mostly been gossipy items about Fran’s job as an HR person for an insurance company. God only knew what she would write about this crew.
“I’m calling my Peru blog entries ‘Yogaholic at the Top of the World.’ ” Fran said. “This is going to be such fun, don’t you think?”
“Where are the others?” Janie asked.
Fran peered around the terminal. “I lost Claudia—although I think Claudia might have lost me. I don’t think she’s liked me much since I called her a yoga Nazi on the blog. Some people are too thin-skinned for their own good. And I saw the moms in the bar, but I didn’t want to pay ten bucks for a drink, so I just snapped a pic and left. And there’s Sam and Gina over there. . . .” Fran sighed. “I think it’s so cool that we’ve already got these little groups forming. The sisters, the yoga moms, the lovebirds . . .”
Meredith followed her gaze to where Sam and Gina were still sitting, leaning against each other in lovey-dovey mode.
“Don’t forget Seth,” Janie piped up. “The gasbag.”
“He does talk a lot,” Meredith said.
Fran laughed. “Not the kind of gas she was talking about. Do not put your mat downwind of his.”
Good to know.
“Oh! I see boarding action.” Fran’s elfin frame hopped in excitement. “Next stop, Peru!”
The three of them headed for the gate, where Gina and Sam were approaching the flight attendant at the door, boarding passes and passports extended.
Gina grinned at them. “Sam got us a surprise upgrade for the flight to Lima. Wasn’t that sweet of him?”
Janie looked as if she’d swallowed a bug. “Awesome!”
Gina took her scanned boarding pass from the flight attendant, trilled her fingers at them, and practically skipped down the passageway to the plane. Sam hurried after Gina as Fran snapped a picture of their backs.
Once, Meredith had dreamed that he would follow her onto a plane. Not dutifully, but in a cinematic burst of love involving a sprint down a crowded avenue to hail a cab, mad hurdles over turnstiles and security checkpoints, and finally that long dash down the jetway. Oh, her mind had been on rom-com overdrive as she’d settled into her seat on that flight to London. But the panting, remorseful, loving costar of her hopeful fantasies had never materialized.
“The man obviously had air miles to burn,” Janie grumbled as they milled about with the others, waiting for their boarding group to be called. “Either that, or he’s a bigger spender than he used to be. More money than sense, if you ask me.”
Or maybe he’d heard about the connecting seats and had the same impulse Janie had. But he hadn’t let cost stop him.
Or maybe he just thinks Gina is worth it, Meredith thought.
CHAPTER 3
“This is not a luxurious hotel room. It does not exude charm or comfort. It’s a tomb with twin beds.”
“We have a private bath,” Meredith pointed out. She was busy double-checking the sights she’d highlighted that they needed to see in Cuzco. The ruins of Qorikancha were a must-see, and there were at least two museums to hit. “I think some of the single rooms have to share one.”
The rooms of the hotel were situated around a narrow, ragged courtyard that featured a long, rectangular strip of weedy grass with a neglected birdbath in the center of it. It was in the Spanish Colonial style, but with a stripped-down, budget effect. No graceful awning shaded the tile walkways outside the rooms, whose doorways were painted a sun-faded and peeling sky blue. There were no archways draped with hanging flowers, no bubbling fountains.
Janie plucked at the stiff plastic shower curtain that evidently did double-duty as a bathroom door. “Your idea of privacy must be different than mine.” She peeked through the curtain at the rust-stained toilet and sink. An intermittent splap came from the dripping shower in the corner. No shower curtain encircled the shower—it was just open, like something you’d find at an outdoor pool.
“This is completely unacceptable,” Janie said. “Where is Claudia? She promised us luxury accommodations. She said there would be charm.” She glared at the drain in the center of the green square tiles, next to which lay a small bug carcass. “Completely primitive.”
“Pretty tile color, though, isn’t it?” Meredith asked.
“Penitentiary green,” Janie said flatly. “And frankly, I’m not sure whether that’s the tile color or mossy mildew.”
Meredith chuckled, and immediately felt Janie’s irritation that she could find anything in this situation to laugh about.
“We need to change hotels,” Janie said.
Meredith balked at the idea. After losing an entire day of her life to airports and airplanes, she just wanted to be settled somewhere. She’d expected to feel dead on arrival, but during the bus ride from the airport, the countryside and exotic city had awakened her senses. It was one thing to read about a place being the heart of the Incan civilization—but here it was. The air was different. There were foresty peaks in the distance. She forgot about Sam, and Sam and Gina. She forgot about being so old and haggard that the man she’d broken her own heart over didn’t even recognize her. This was the vacation of her dreams, and there was so much to do, and so little time.
So the Hostal Tres Chivos was a little primitive. Who cared about hotels? “How much time are we going to spend in our room? We should be out exploring, or going to the pre-Columbian art museum, or lounging in cafés and drinking in the scenery. Having a cup of rich coffee—maybe a yummy empanada.”
The sidewalk café/pastry idea created instant mental diversion. Janie sank down onto one of the room’s twin beds. The brightly woven pink bedspreads gave the damp, cavern-like room its one cheery note. “Empanada,” she repeated. “That sounds good.”
“Besides,” Meredith continued, “I’m sure everyone is in the same boat, disappointment-wise. We don’t want to start out the trip with the group acting as if we’re too good for the hotel everyone else is staying in. We’ve got a whole week ahead with these people.”
Egalitarian arguments didn’t always work with Janie, but the possibility of being shunned by their temporary cohort evidently did. And now that imaginary empanada was dangling temptingly in her mind. “You really think everyone else’s rooms are the same?” Janie asked.
“Of course. It’s not as if the hotel, or Claudia, would have singled us out for the crappy room.”
At that moment, Fran flitted down the corridor outside their doorway. A few moments later, she backtracked and reappeared, standing on the threshold, slack-jawed. “Omigod. What a dump!”
Over her sister’s head, Meredith began waving a warning, as you might to someone about to light up a cigarette in a fuel depot. Fran seemed too overwhelmed by awfulness to notice. Plus she’d found the most receptive audience ever in Janie.
“Yes!” Janie straightened. “Isn’t it the pits?”
“Omigod,” Fran repeated, with even more relish. She raced over to the shower curtain/door. “What is this?” She peeked into the bathroom and then cackled. “What are you guys supposed to do when you’re both in
the room together? Hold your poo?”
“That’s what I was wondering,” Janie said.
“It’s not even a particularly clean shower curtain.” Fran shook her head, and then her eyes lit up. “Can I take pictures? This is too gruesome not to share.”
Meredith hung back during the photo shoot, interjecting half-hearted reminders about the pre-Columbian treasures and lively street life awaiting them while Janie and Fran dashed about, exclaiming over various stains and frayed wires. Also, what first had seemed to be a sponge-painted pattern on the wall on closer inspection turned out to be evidence of some kind of water seepage problem.
“The room is oozing,” Janie said flatly.
“It is not—the wall is dry.” To demonstrate, Meredith put her hand against the plaster—and then recoiled, eyeing the film of damp, ochre dirt on her hand. She shuddered. “Mostly dry.”
“Yuck!” Janie said.
Fran snapped ooze stain pictures and photographed Meredith washing off the ooze dust in the rusty sink.
“But I guess everyone’s rooms are sort of damp and dingy, right?” Meredith asked, even though it seemed unkind to be wishing dead bugs and ooze on the others. She just dreaded the idea of precious sightseeing hours being consumed in hotel hunting.
“Mine’s fine,” Fran said. “And Seth’s is pretty nice too.”
Janie tensed with bird dog alertness. “Seth has a better room than we do?”
“Actually, this is the worst room I’ve seen,” Fran said.
Janie looked resolute. “I’m going to talk to Claudia.”
“Good luck finding her,” Fran said. “She’s staying at a really swank place across town. She said this one was overbooked.”
“That’s just perfect,” Janie fumed.
“But you guys should see the honeymoon suite,” Fran said. “It’s got a king-sized bed, a forty-inch television with satellite reception, and a Jacuzzi tub. That’s where Sam and Gina are.”
Meredith froze. The combination of Sam and Gina and honeymoon suite caught her off guard.