Girls' Night Out_A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  “Then don’t go down this road.”

  “Why do you care so much? This—whatever it is—does not impact you.”

  “Doesn’t it? I thought you were here to connect with me and Lauren, not with some guy you just met.”

  “We’ve had plenty of alone time,” Ashley argued, clenching her jaw. “The first night on the beach, yoga . . .”

  “We’ve barely been able to take a breath without him right there, spewing some mystical wisdom!” Natalie sighed heavily, glancing back at the table where he was reclined in his seat, his hands clasped behind his head as he gazed at the sky.

  “He’s nice. He’s shown us around.” Ashley put her hands on her hips. “I don’t get what the problem is.”

  “That’s not all this is, and you know it.” Natalie threw up her hands in frustration. “He was touching your knee, your lower back.”

  Ashley pinched her lips. “It’s nothing. A little harmless flirtation. Calm down.”

  Natalie turned toward the water, collecting her thoughts. Finally she said what was really bothering her. “Why is he acting like you’ve told him things?”

  “Because I have. I needed someone to talk to.”

  “But you don’t know him.” Natalie felt a burning in her chest—wondering again when they had drifted so far apart that they’d stopped talking about the things that mattered most. About the feelings they concealed from nearly everyone else but shared with each other. When they’d both had newborns, they’d sit for hours and talk about everything from C-section stitches to sex drive to fears they’d screw up their kids. Lately, they felt more like acquaintances making small talk at the grocery store.

  “Maybe that’s exactly why he’s easy to confide in.” Ashley looked down at her bare feet.

  Natalie wanted to ask her, Why aren’t you confiding in me? Really?

  She opened her mouth to say it, but Ashley cut her off. “Why do you care what I tell him, anyway?” She crossed her arms defiantly.

  Natalie felt her anger start to brim, but she pushed it down. “I thought this trip was about all of us.” As she spoke the words, she realized just how much she was hoping to fly home at the end of the week with a happy ending. With Lauren. For her and Ashley. For their company. And ultimately for her and Ben. Until Marco had stepped in and uprooted their dynamic, she hadn’t understood how much she’d been counting on it. “How are we supposed to reconnect if he’s always here?”

  Ashley’s eyes softened. “You still feel like we aren’t connected?”

  Natalie dug her toes into the sand. “Look at things from my perspective—finding out about you and Jason, telling me and Lauren together like I’m not your best friend? Like there weren’t a million opportunities to tell me before we came here? What am I supposed to think?” She watched Ashley twitch slightly at her confession. “I’m supposed to be your closest friend, and right now I feel like I barely know you. So yes, I’m here to reconnect. I want to be here for you. I’m here to see if we can find some common ground about Revlon. And sure, I’m hoping we can turn Lauren into someone we know again, rather than the polite stranger she’s become. But most of all, I’m here because you asked me to be.”

  Ashley rubbed her lips with her forefinger. “I want all those things too. Can’t you see that?”

  “If that’s true, then why spend all this time with Marco? Why confide in him and not us—me?”

  “It’s not like I planned it. We were in the water, and the wind was blowing. It was so peaceful, you know? I felt calm for the first time in a long time. When he asked me about my life, it just spilled out.”

  “Don’t you get it? He’s probably telling you everything you want to hear so he can get you into bed,” Natalie said, unable to contain her frustration any longer. “Don’t be so naive!”

  “God, Nat,” Ashley said. “Did it ever occur to you that he just wants to be helpful? Why are you so personally offended that I told him things? This isn’t about you!”

  “You really can’t see it?” Natalie said. “You think that he just wants to be besties?”

  “What’s going on with you?” Ashley asked wearily. “It feels like all we ever do lately is fight.”

  Natalie’s eyes narrowed as she stared out at the brilliant blue water, examining what it was that was bringing all these conflicted feelings about Ashley to the surface. Was it the location—that they were somewhere remote where there was nowhere to turn and nothing to distract her from her aggravation like when she was at work, when she could close her office door, put on her headphones, and lose herself in a manufacturing contract? Or was it simply timing? That this trip had directly coincided with her hitting her breaking point? “Maybe I’m just tired of how selfish you can be, Ash. We have to wait on giving an answer on the offer because of you. We have to fly to Mexico because you have things to work out. And now we have to get our chakras cleared with”—she pointed toward Marco—“some guy you are making us hang out with!”

  Ashley looked as if she’d been slapped—her face registering shock, then sadness, then anger. “I’m done with this conversation. If you don’t want to get the damn massage, then go paddleboarding. I don’t give a shit! But don’t you dare put this all on me. It’s not fair, and you know it.”

  Natalie watched as Ashley walked back toward the table where Marco and Lauren were still sitting—Lauren’s nose buried in her phone, Marco staring up at the cloudless sky. Ashley sat down and scooted her chair closer to Marco, glancing back defiantly at Natalie. A shiver ran through Natalie. Yes, Ashley could be a little unpredictable, even crazy at times. But in all the time she’d known Ash, Natalie had always felt like she had a handle on Ashley’s sometimes erratic behavior, almost as if she were holding firmly on to the reins of a headstrong Thoroughbred.

  But since the moment they’d received their offer from Revlon, she’d been trying to push off the feeling that maybe she didn’t know Ashley at all. That the anger she’d just flashed was merely a preview of what lay ahead.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE DAY AFTER

  NATALIE

  Natalie’s heartbeat banged in her ears. Sweat soaked her back as she pedaled. She glanced behind her—Lauren was red-faced but keeping pace. After Maria’s call they hadn’t said a word to each other; they had a silent understanding to get on their bikes and race back to the hotel. Natalie’s legs felt like rubber, but her adrenaline pressed her forward.

  She thought about what Maria had said. That guests of the hotel had heard someone in the water last night. There had been an urgency in the front desk attendant’s voice. Natalie could still see the sand caked on her legs and feel her wet dress clinging to her body. Was there a connection between what the guests heard and Natalie sleeping on the beach? Something had started to nag at her gut in Marco’s apartment.

  What if Natalie had something to do with what had happened to Ashley?

  She pedaled faster in an attempt to jiggle the memory free, but her mind was thick. She knew there was something there—just out of reach. Her heart continued to pound, her mouth dry. It was so hot. She prayed. Please let Ashley be okay.

  Lauren rode up beside her. “We’re almost there.” She pushed her damp hair away from her face.

  Natalie only nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. If she did, she might scream.

  They laid their beach cruisers on their sides in front of the hotel and hurried up the steps, where they spotted Maria standing with a young couple. The woman was petite, her blond hair piled high on top of her head, aviators perched in front of her topknot. She had a tote bag slung over her shoulder with Beach Hair Don’t Care stitched on the side. Next to her stood a man with a baseball cap turned backward, his board shorts slung low on his hips, a rolled-up towel under his arm. Natalie hadn’t seen them before—were they the guests Maria had called about? From the way they were looking at her, she was pretty sure she had her answer.

  “Natalie, Lauren,” Maria said, motioning them over. “This is Scarlett a
nd her husband, Henry. They’re the ones I called about. They think they heard someone in the ocean last night.”

  Natalie rubbed her sweaty palms on her shorts before shaking their hands. Lauren did the same. The only sound was their labored breathing from the hot and humid bike journey.

  Finally Scarlett spoke. “We are staying in that room there.” She pointed. “Last night, we were on our balcony, and we heard a woman’s voice.”

  Natalie had a fluttery feeling in her stomach. Had it been Ashley?

  “It was late, and we’d drunk quite a bit—we’d just gotten back from La Zebra,” Henry said, wrapping his arm around his wife protectively. “So we didn’t make anything of it—at first.”

  “Yeah—like Henry said, there was laughing and some screaming, but we thought it was all good, you know? Like maybe the woman was a honeymooner, like us. Out there with her husband, having a good time.” Scarlett shared a secret smile with Henry, the way people did when they were still in the throes of early love. When a marriage still had that new-car scent.

  “But then the screams turned into crying,” Henry said. Natalie’s heart started to race, not sure where he was going with the story, frightened of what he was going to say next. She held her breath. “We listened for a minute—not sure what we were overhearing—and then it stopped. We figured we should go down to the water and check to make sure nothing was wrong. But when we went out to the balcony and looked, it was pitch-black, and we didn’t see or hear anyone.”

  “What time was it?” Natalie asked, thinking hard. Had she and Ashley and Marco gone to the hotel’s beach? Was that why she’d woken up there? Had Natalie been the one screaming? Had it been Ashley? Her heart pounded as she cataloged all the reasons either of them would have been yelling in the ocean in the middle of the night. Natalie thought about the way her chest clenched each time Ben asked if she’d convinced Ashley to be reasonable about Revlon. Each time she thought about not selling. Being stuck there.

  “That’s the thing, we don’t know. We didn’t even think to look at the clock,” Scarlett said, her cheeks flushing.

  “We got back to our room at one. So it was after that,” Henry added, and squeezed his wife’s hand.

  “We figured we’d been mistaken. But if it was your friend out there and something was wrong, and we were too lazy to walk down to the beach . . . We are so sorry. We’d had so many margaritas.” Scarlett’s lower lip quivered.

  “It’s okay—you couldn’t have known,” Lauren said, then widened her eyes at Natalie, most likely thinking about the fact she’d woken up in her wet dress this morning. That she’d slept on the beach. Was she making the same assumptions Natalie was?

  Natalie felt heat rush through her. Fear now taking over as she tried to make sense of everything. She pressed her thumbs to her temples. Would she ever get her memory back?

  “Don’t you think it’s time to call the police?” Maria asked.

  Natalie’s entire body tensed as she looked at Maria’s pinched expression. Her gut told her it was time, but her heart wasn’t ready. Calling the police would take this search for Ashley into a whole different stratosphere. It would make her disappearance real. But it had been too many hours since they’d seen her. Or could remember seeing her. They probably should have already called. Natalie hoped she wouldn’t regret that later.

  She looked at Lauren.

  “We should call them,” Lauren said, her eyes filling with tears.

  “I agree,” Natalie said, trying to hold her emotion back. If she started crying now, she might never stop.

  “Thank you for talking with us,” Maria said. She asked the couple whether they’d be willing to tell the police what they knew, and they agreed. They mumbled more apologies and asked to be updated on Ashley before walking away.

  “I need to call Jason too,” Natalie said. Her mind immediately went to what Ashley had confided. Had the problems in their marriage propelled her to run off with Marco? To want to escape her own life? “I probably should have called him first thing, but I didn’t think . . .”

  Lauren smiled at her sadly. “It’s okay. We’re doing our best. Alarm bells didn’t go off at first because it’s Ashley. You know what I was just thinking about? When she went camping on the Kern River with that guy she’d just met—she called from a pay phone that night.”

  “And made us come get her the next morning at that Jack in the Box,” Natalie said. She remembered answering the phone in their dorm room, Ashley giggling and telling her his name in case she didn’t show up for class the next day. But I will, she said before hanging up.

  “But she called,” Lauren continued. “That’s what’s different about this time. We haven’t heard from her. That’s the part that makes me sick to my stomach.”

  When they’d picked her up at the fast-food restaurant, Ashley had regaled them with stories about white-water rafting and sleeping in a tent, Natalie trying not to burst her bubble by reminding her she didn’t know the guy at all. What if he’d raped her? Or worse? Part of her had always felt Ashley was immortal—maybe because of how she tended to make spontaneous and often careless decisions but always came out okay.

  “Do you think Ashley might have left with Marco and she just hasn’t called yet because she’s not thinking about how scared we might be?” Natalie asked hopefully. “Because I could see her doing that.”

  Lauren sighed. “I don’t know. If things are really as bad as she said they are with Jason, it’s possible she took off, and who knows when or if we will hear from her.”

  “She’d never leave Hannah and Abby,” Nat said, looking down. “Right?”

  “I have no idea, Nat. Of course she loves them, but a bad marriage can make you do strange things. Especially once it’s out in the open.” Lauren averted her eyes for a moment. “You get messy, desperate even. If that’s even why she left. Maybe she took off because of how I treated her.”

  “Maybe she’s just somewhere cooling off,” Natalie said, but she knew it wasn’t likely, because Marco had cleaned his place out. It felt final—whatever it was.

  “I don’t know what to think.” Lauren stared down at her feet. “I just wish I could go back and change what I said to her at La Cantina.”

  “I wish I could change a lot of things too,” Natalie said, especially wishing they hadn’t argued so much. That she hadn’t been so pushy about Revlon. Because now that Ashley had disappeared, that deal was slipping away. She hated that this thought followed the last. But she couldn’t help it.

  Lauren smiled sadly and said she was going to get them some coffee. Natalie looked over and saw Maria on the phone, presumably with the police. She pressed Jason’s name on her cell and waited. Her heartbeat raced again as she tried to gather the words to say to him. To tell him Ashley had disappeared in Mexico. That she couldn’t remember anything of significance to help find her. She put her head in her hands and waited for him to answer, scared shitless to tell him his wife had gone missing on her watch.

  “Hey, Nat, what’s up?” Jason asked casually. He always answered the phone this way, saying a person’s name before they could speak. But still, she wasn’t prepared. The sound of his voice made it more real.

  “Jason—” Her voice shook. She paused.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” she spoke slowly. “Have you talked to Ashley?”

  “Is everything okay? You don’t sound good.”

  “Have you talked to her today, by chance?” She held her breath. Maybe she had contacted him—told him where she was. Called the girls?

  “No—but she texted me last night. It was around midnight here. Why?”

  That would have been 2:00 a.m. in Tulum. Lauren said they’d left La Cantina at 11:30 p.m., so she’d texted him after that. Maybe from Marco’s place? She hoped she told him something—gave him a clue that would help them find her.

  “What did she write to you?”

  “It was just a bunch of emojis. Hands in prayer, a sad face with a tea
r, and an ocean wave. I didn’t see the message until this morning. And she hasn’t written back. Why? What’s going on?”

  Natalie took a deep breath. “We don’t know where she is.”

  “What?” His tone startled Natalie.

  “I woke up this morning around six thirty and she wasn’t in our hotel room or in Lauren’s. And we’ve been looking, but we can’t find her.”

  “And you’re just calling me? That was three hours ago,” he said, his voice rising.

  “I know, I’m sorry. We thought we’d find her.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “I’m not sure. Most of the night is a blur.” Natalie squeezed the bridge of her nose.

  “What?” He spoke sharply, and Natalie felt sharp pricks run up and down her arms.

  “I think I may have been drugged,” Natalie said, releasing a long breath.

  She could hear Jason exhale. “Just tell me everything you know from beginning to end—please,” he said, his words measured.

  She filled him in on what she could. She left out Marco, for now. That could wait. There was so much they still didn’t know.

  “Have you called the police?” Jason asked when she finished.

  “Yes, they should be here soon.” She could see Maria talking to Lauren by the front desk.

  “Soon?” Jason snickered. “You’re in Mexico, Nat. I’ll probably get there before they do. I’m going to try to get on the next flight out.”

  Natalie waited for him to say more, but she could only hear his deep breathing on the other end. “Hey, you still there?”

  “I’m here, Nat. This is just not the call you want to get—ever.”

  Natalie wanted to say, This is also not the call you want to make—ever. Especially when she couldn’t even be sure when the last time she saw Ashley was. A thought started gnawing at her insides. What if her mind was protecting her from the devastation of her own memories?

  Jason sighed. “That thing you told me about a woman screaming in the water, that scares the shit out of me.”