by A. L. Woods
I ditched the jacket and hoodie once I got the keys to the rental from the Alamo counter. Seventy degrees was T-shirt weather to this New Englander, but it didn’t escape my notice that locals still sported thin jackets, like the air possessed a bite to it.
If only they knew.
The sedan I’d rented for the next couple of days was nothing to write home about. It was a newer Camry with a spacious cabin interior with enough clearance for my head. It did not, however, change the fact that I did have to slide the driver’s seat back considerably to accommodate my legs.
The guy at the counter waived the fee on the GPS rental. I affixed the thing to the bottom of the windshield, punching in the address that Dougie had begrudgingly given me when we’d gotten to the airport. He mumbled something close to an apology, but I just grabbed my shit, flipped him off and slammed the door shut with a flair for drama that belonged to Livy.
I didn’t know what shit he was projecting onto me or if he meant what he said that Raquel was less distraught and more alive without me. I didn’t want to believe that. I couldn’t fathom considering it. It would have killed what remained of my dwindling mettle.
Exhaustion from the five-and-a-half-hour flight suffused me, but as I settled into the driver’s side seat, I felt the first sliver of dread sneak through me. This could all blow up in my face. This whole thing could go awry, and if it did, it would make things so much worse for the both of us.
Just like Dougie said.
Glancing at the GPS unit, I took fortifying breaths, fighting the early throes of an anxiety attack—it had been years since I had one of those. I had an almost three-hour drive ahead of me, but I’d come this far. If this was the worst idea I ever conjured, then I wanted to believe that cosmic intervention would have interfered by now. The inability to get a plane ticket, missing my flight, the plane dropping from the sky, a car accident on the way to Pismo Beach.
So far, none of that had happened.
And somehow, I didn’t think it would.
With my thumb on the release of the gearshift, I pulled the car into drive and started praying to every god and deity I questioned the existence of that they wouldn’t fail me now.
The motel where Raquel was staying bore a resemblance to mid-century apartments spread between two floors, the structure situated near a self-storage facility and an outdoor shopping outlet. The parking lot was empty save for a handful of cars sporting California license plates and one from Arizona. I pulled the car into a parking spot in front of the motel’s office.
A jolt of worry zipped through me as I appraised the melon-colored structure that looked like someone had poured a glass of milk on the late evening sun just as it laconically set.
I didn’t have time to give the worrisome thought fodder to feed off of once I started driving, but now that I found myself parked, it was like they’d broken free from their temporary restraints and were desperate to consume me.
What was I doing here?
The vibration of my phone in the cupholder made me jolt in my seat, chasing the invasive apprehension away. Surprise flickered through me when Dougie’s name flashed on the caller ID.
I ditched the formalities, opting for something snippy when I answered. “One last attempt at stopping me?”
“I shouldn’t have said any of that to you,” he said in greeting, his voice gruff. I knew it pained him to say it. I could count on both hands the number of times Dougie had apologized to me in twenty-two years. They were hard to come by and seldom direct.
My insides wrenched as I eyed the glowing Vacancy sign pressed against the entrance door. “Is she really doing okay?” My grip tightened on the phone. I was a selfish bastard for showing up here this way, but if she was better off without me, then I’d make the painful decision and turn around.
Even if it killed me.
Dougie let out a harsh breath. “I’m not actually sure,” he said, hesitating. “It’s just what I’ve gotten comfortable telling Penelope. They’re not talking much, either.” I could imagine him scraping his face with his palm, his fingers working into his short beard. “This situation is fucked up, man. I never thought I’d be playing moderator for Raquel and my fiancée.”
“I know,” I replied in a whisper.
“Where are you?”
“Here.” I swallowed. “Parked outside the inn.”
He whistled. “Time to face the music.”
If I didn’t rip the gearshift into reverse and race the Camry back to Los Angeles first.
“I keep thinking I should turn around,” I said, fighting the tremble that coursed through my spine just as the next words left me. “If you’re right, I don’t want to undo whatever progress she’s making here without me.”
“If you don’t see it for yourself, you won’t know. You said it yourself.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I was a different man on the way to the airport. Now, I’m surrounded by palm trees and seagulls that look like they pop ’roids. The salt in the air stinks worse than it does in P-Town, and my body is buzzing at the realization that she’s all of fifty-feet away from me after months.”
Dougie chuckled, the bass rumbling through the phone. “Even more reason to get out of the car.”
“What happened to you this morning?” I asked. “You seemed dead set on trying to change my mind.”
He was quiet for a minute, as though sorting through what had spurred his reaction. “I was projecting, I guess. Things are a bit tense for me right now. I feel like I’m refereeing three different people over the same issue. Sometimes…” He trailed off, his worry filtering between us. “Sometimes I feel like maybe it would be better if we all just let her be and try to adapt to life without her here.”
I swallowed hard. That kernel of doubt popped inside of me, burning a hole in the pit of my stomach. “This could go badly.”
“It could,” Dougie conceded. “Or it could work out. We don’t know.”
Rubbing my forehead, I groaned. “I can’t believe I let Maria talk me into this.”
A long pause occurred before Dougie cleared his throat. His acknowledgement was stiff as it escaped him. “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”
I leaned back in my seat, keeping the phone trained to my ear. My lids dropped shut, the question sliding out of me slow and curious. “What’s with you and my sister lately? I realize you guys can’t stand each other, but that’s seemed more obvious in the last couple of months. Are you finally mad about your nose? Did she retaliate by threatening to bury you under a lawsuit?”
It was a joke, but there was a half-truth in the question. My sister and Dougie had never gotten along. After all, she was the reason he now rocked a deviated septum, though I never fully understood her reason for punching him. But there was a period when they seemed like they were tolerating each other or making concessions for my sake, anyway.
Now it was like they couldn’t handle so much as being in the same room together.
Which begged the question why my sister attended Dougie and Penelope’s New Year Eve’s party rather than spend it in the city with one of her equally rich and well-educated friends.
He coughed, clearing his throat. “You want to talk to me about your sister while you’re minutes away from your Raquel rescue mission?”
That depended on who was I rescuing her from? Herself, or me?
Unconvinced by Dougie’s evasion tactic, I conceded. I couldn’t deny that it had merit. I didn’t drive all this way so I could sit in the parking lot to talk about him and my sister’s fractured friendship. I was here to get the girl.
“Okay.” I inhaled deeply. “I’m going.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“No bullshit?” I hated the wistfulness in my voice, my need for his reassurance. This was high school all over again and I was that pimply faced, gawky, and long-limbed motherfucker about to ask the hottest girl in school to the prom—which for the record, hadn’t gone over very well
.
“No bullshit,” he insisted. “Go get her.”
We exchanged goodbyes while I killed the engine. Climbing out of the rental, I closed the door and hastened toward the entrance. The fragrance from strong and chemical lemon-scented cleaning products singed my sinuses. The mid-century modern theme carried throughout the interior of the concierge area. The laminate that ran throughout the room was the color of sand, a statement wall of white wood paneling near the desk. Womb chairs in a deep turquoise flanked a circular walnut coffee table with legs tilted in a style that was signature to the time period.
“Welcome to Pismo Inn!” a voice warbled over the Elvis Presley number that was coming from the sound system overhead. A thirty-something man poked his head out of a small closet overflowing with office supplies, his head full of blond hair brushed in a comb-over. “I’ll be with you in one shake of a virgin margarita!”
What in the ever-loving fuck?
Before I found the time to question the statement, he popped out of the closet. And I mean literally sprung out of there as if his bright blue, tight cigar pants were on fire. “Are you checking in?” His teeth were offensively white, like take-the-first-layer-of-your-retinas-off if you stared too long. It was as though he replaced all his teeth with Chiclets or had been hiding in that closet so he could use the inn’s supply of Wite-Out to keep them that shade.
“Uh, no. I’m a visitor.”
Recognition sparked in his face.
“Oh.” The man grinned, wagging a finger at me. “I think I know exactly who you’re here for. You’ve got an accent that’s reminiscent of our resident guest.”
I swallowed. My insides bubbled. It took everything inside me to keep me standing there. My fear twisted my insides, my brain was screaming to abort the mission.
“Although…” He tapped his dimpled baby-smooth chin with the tip of his pointer finger. “Sometimes, I feel like I need a translator to make out what she’s saying. Your accent doesn’t seem as thick.” The sound of wheels on a cart in desperate need of some lube had me cranking my head over my shoulder.
“Rosa, guess who has a visitor?” He still didn’t confirm who I was here for…and yet…
The woman who entered the room was tiny and round. Like, stick her in your pocket and tote her around as if she were some kind of plushy. Okay, not quite, but short enough that I could have used the tip of her head as a table and still would have needed to lean forward.
Rosa didn’t speak, so the guy behind the counter jumped in, offering her the answer. “He’s here to see Raquel!”
Bingo. He did know.
Rosa’s dark eyes turned hard as she worked them over my frame, lips compressing. The man at the desk was still grinning at her, but she didn’t even quirk a smile. Hell, her brow didn’t even so much as twitch.
“I need toilet paper,” she huffed in a thick accent, abandoning the cart and disappearing down a hall. I heard it in the way she enunciated her words, the vowels in “toilet” sounding almost Latin.
My Portuguese radar was about to go nuclear.
Fuck.
“Don’t mind Rosa. Her and Raquel are close.”
“Close?” I grunted. The last person I wanted Raquel to be hanging out with was someone who looked like she would have preferred to see my head spiked on one of the dulled decorative stakes that marked the perimeter of the inn’s parking lot.
“They spend a lot of time together. I guess you could say Rosa’s become a bit of a surrogate mom to her,” he continued. He clapped his hands together, his brain pivoting. “Anyhoo, shall I give our Bostonian princess a ring-a-ding-ding to let her know she’s got a guest? Is she expecting you?”
The same way she was expecting the fiery pits of hell to swallow me whole, sure.
“I’d prefer an element of surprise, if that’s okay with you.”
“Oh.” He tapped his lips with the tips of his fingers. “It’s not quite our policy, but…” He glanced around as though he was about to do something clandestine, then with a hand caging his mouth, he whispered, “If I can grab your driver’s license real quick, I can point you in the right direction.”
I almost laughed. This guy had been about to roll out the red carpet for me and now he was questioning me?
Whatever.
I fished my license out of my wallet and handed it to him, chancing a glance at his name badge. Stevie.
Stomping behind me captured my attention. Rosa was back, her arms full of rolls of wrapped toilet paper. She didn’t look at me as she shuffled to the cart.
“Here you are, Sean,” Stevie chirped. I pried my attention from Rosa and held out a hand to him for my license. “Tavares. Is that Spanish?”
Before I could reply, a litany of murmured curses drew my attention behind me.
“What kind of combination is that?” Rosa muttered to herself in Portuguese, slamming packages of toilet paper onto the cart in a haphazard tower. “Portuguese last name and stupid English first name.”
What kind of name was that? She was about to find out. Two-for-one special for these two.
Tucking my license back into my wallet, I swallowed back a laugh. “You ever tried to get an American to say João?” I humored her.
Her eyes just about bugged out of her head. Yep, nothing prepared her to hear me speak our mother tongue. Only one of our radars had been pinging, and her disdain clearly distracted her from the possibility that we shared more than one common denominator.
“Much easier to change it,” I concluded.
“Oh, wow!” Stevie clapped. “You’re Portuguese, like our Rosa.”
God, what kind of serotonin cocktail did this guy take daily? I ignored him; my stare bolted to the woman who looked close to beating me within an inch of my life.
She harrumphed while her posture straightened, her arms folding across her chest. “Where are you from?”
“Sao Miguel.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I know that; I can hear it in your accent. Where?”
“Ribeira Grande.”
“Wow, this is incredible. Listen to you guys go!” Stevie chirped, looking utterly starry-eyed. “I love this. I took an Italian class once in college, then backpacked through Spain. Ended up meeting this incredible girl in Paris, although she already had a boyfriend. I nursed a broken heart in Portugal before I flew to Ireland to reconnect with my heritage. My dad comes from a long line of potato farmers there,” Stevie prattled on, but neither the Portuguese fireball nor I paid him in any mind.
“Why did you come here?” she asked, wringing her hands together in front of her, appearing as righteous as a nun. “Are you going to make trouble?”
“No.”
She raised an accusatory finger in my direction. “I worked too hard for you to come undo everything.” She held me in the depths of her inferno of a gaze. “She drinks too much, she smokes too much, she throws up too much. Her clothes finally fit her. I don’t know what you did to her for her to run away, but I don’t want you to make another mess for me to clean up.”
My throat weaved, my body fidgeting. If this was Dougie’s idea of Raquel getting her shit together, then he needed to seek professional help. “I won’t.”
“I don’t trust you,” she said matter-of-factly, tossing me a cursory look.
I don’t know why it bothered me. Being told this by a woman I’d never met before was irksome; it rubbed me the wrong way. The last thing I needed was yet another person trying to moderate and imply that they understood Raquel better than me. This stranger had been around Raquel for almost the same length of time I was before she’d taken off, and yet I felt like I had something to prove to her.
“I don’t need you to trust me, I need her to.”
Rosa’s expression grew pained, as if resigning herself to whatever was going to happen next. “Fine.” She nodded. “But make no mistakes, if you cause her problems, I will find your mother’s phone number and tell her myself what a wicked son she has.”
Wouldn’t t
hat be something?
I’m sure my ma would have loved to learn that her royal son was nothing but an asshole who was the sole cause of the demise of the relationship she had been banking on to see one of her children married off.
“I’ll make it easier for you and give you her number if that happens. How’s that?” I suggested.
She cocked a brow at me, training her expression. I would not stroke my ego by allowing myself to believe that my self-sacrificial offer impressed her.
“Not necessary. Sao Miguel is small; I’ll find her myself.” She gave me a stiff nod before leaving without another word, the squeaky cart marking her departure.
Stevie cleared his throat. “Raquel’s in room 211. Head back out the doors and swing a right. The stairs will be on the side of this building. You can’t miss it.”
This was it. There was no turning back now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A thunderous knock on the door cut through the tranquility of my shower, disrupting the peace in my mind. Jutting my head out from my steamy sanctuary, I craned my neck toward the bathroom door, listening.
A few seconds later, another resounding knock.
Okay, I wasn’t hearing things.
I rolled my eyes. Now Rosa wanted to extend me the courtesy of boundaries and respect? I wasn’t leaving this mock sauna for her. “Let yourself in, you nut job,” I shouted over the stream of water.
Rosa had never knocked to announce her presence before. Hell, she stormed into the bathroom last week to make sure I had cleaned behind my ears.
Like I was five.
The pounding resounded; this knock more urgent. My familiar frown slid into place, a nervous chill working through me that chilled me to the bone.
I cut the shower short, reaching for the terrycloth bathrobe Rosa got from Stevie to give to me. He had taken to calling me the resident guest, and in exchange, I committed to glare at him a little less. He was cutting me some slack with letting me pay cash. Besides, if he was nauseatingly happy, who was I to tell him that made him a sick fuck?
“I’m coming,” I called as loud as my voice would project, feeding my arms through the sleeves of the robe. Stepping out of the tub, I wiped my feet on the bathmat before scurrying to the door while my thoughts raced.