Page 3 of Beached Wedding

The other guy left. I washed and dried my sunglasses then hung my clammy face over the sink. I splashed cold water on my unshaven cheeks and into my mouth, rinsed and spat and stood straight. My head took a minute to catch up with the change in altitude. My stomach dipped and rolled until I found my equilibrium. Another cold sweat shivered over my ashy-brown skin.

I didn’t meet my own eyes in the mirror, but I did glance at my phone to see a text from Ashley.

I’m hereto surprise Shane. Where are you? Don’t leave the airport without me.

Fucking brilliant.

Curling fetal under an airport urinal started to look like perfectly rational behavior. With luck the EMTs might turn up with a shot of antipsychotic medication and lock me up for a decade or two.

Why had I even got on the plane?

Will you tell her? I can’t. Those eyes.

I’d been too drunk to parse out that I should refuse. That was the pitiful truth. I’d been steeped in some kind of hero complex, convinced I was doing what was right by both of them.

Fucking idiot.

I shouldered my duffel with our company logo and left the men’s room, distantly recalling my suit was in the garment bag with Shane’s, the bag that had stayed in the taxi.

It’s fine, mate. I’ll make sure she’s not mad. Who did I think I was, promising dumb shit like that? Ashley was going to knee me in the raisins and I deserved it.

I shuffled through the flow of customs and followed the crowd toward the exit.

My stomach pitched again and I accepted the suffering as my due, but when I reached to my collar for my sunglasses, I realized I’d left them beside the sink in the can. I would have to go back through security to retrieve them and doubted I could do that without a boarding pass. I had a vague memory of hooking my hat on the back of the door and I actually wanted to cry. The sunshine was going to pierce my skull like a diamond drill?—

Ow. There it was.

“Fox! Aloha!”

Despite my legal status of ‘walking dead,’ my heart lifted at the sight of Ashley. I’d missed her. A half-smile tugged one corner of my mouth.

She always made me smile. It was her sincerity and the way she radiated warmth. She had bouncy brown hair and big brown eyes and I especially enjoyed the fact she always tried to dress to the nines but, by her own admission, only made it to seven and a half. Today that meant full make-up, a pretty sundress that bared her shoulders topped with a thick, ruffled lei of pink and white flowers. Her hair framed her face in windswept waves. On her feet, she wore dollar-store flip-flops on toes overdue for fresh polish.

She was real. Earthy and funny. Bright and nice. She did not deserve to be thrown over by anyone. What thehellhad I done?

“Good to see you, Ash.” I slouched for the hug she offered, but the cringe that briefly soured my face couldn’t be helped, notwhen I was accosted by a fresh slant of sun and the thick blanket of humidity and the sickly-sweet aroma off the leis.

“Oh, wow,” she said with a wince of her own, drawing back.

“Yeah, I need a shower. Bad.” The whore’s bath in the chemical toilet hadn’t taken.

“Where’s Shane? Not stuck in customs.” She looked around me.

“He didn’t text you?” Let there be a God.

“About?” She frowned with concern and looked past me again.

I rubbed where the sun radiated against my short, recently-barbered curls. I stepped into the shade. Then I grabbed the proverbial bandage and yanked, even though it was attached to something inside me and turned me inside out.

“He didn’t come.”

Ashley gave a half-gurgling chuckle as if she knew her leg was being pulled and she appreciated the effort, but it wouldn’t work.

“Is he in the john? It sounds like you guys werereallydrunk. It’s okay. You can sleep it off by the pool.”

I clenched my molars against a fresh lurch in my gut.

“He didn’t get on the plane, Ash. The wedding’s off.”

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