Page 1 of Beached Wedding

ASHLEY

Iwas 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 goingonwith 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’twaitto 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 besober 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.”

---