Page 87 of Beached Wedding

“Are you coming to the turtle beach with us?” Fliss asked as we finished up at the spa. Her moonglow purple toes had finally put a smile on her face. Whitney had gone with valentine red. Izzy wore neon green and I wore bubblegum pink. A safe choice because the rest of my life had drifted into such choppy waters.

“Sorry, hon. I forgot all about that.” I thumbed through my string of unread texts, all well-wishes from friends in Pine Grove. Ugh. Fox and I had posted the statement to the T&B website, but I would have to post the link on my social media and stem all this salt they were rubbing into my wounds.

Still nothing from Fox, though. Was he making progress with Shane? Or so furious with me, he didn’t want to talk to me? The longer this silence went on, the thicker the blanket of guilt weighed on me.

“You guys go ahead,” I urged Fliss and Whitney. “Tell Mom I’ll figure out something for dinner.” Mom had already been stressing about how to rearrange her meal plan since the wedding dinner had been called off.

“Izzy?” Whitney invited. “Want to come see the turtles?”

“Pass, thanks. I have a hot date with a lounge chair next to the pool.” Izzy nudged my elbow with her own. “Let me buy you lunch first. I haven’t had breakfast.”

“Me, neither. I’m starving,” I confessed.

Whitney and Fliss headed back toward the villa and I followed Izzy to the restaurant.

“Looks pretty busy.” Izzy made a face at the family in a booth chaotically trying to feed two little kids and a baby. “Let’s see if the other one is open.”

“It’s expensive and I think they only do dinner.”

“The beach one?” she suggested.

“It had a notice yesterday that they would be closed for a private event today.” The pharmacists were still here. “Oh, wait. I have a coupon for the golf clubhouse.” I had printed it before I left home and dug it out of my purse. “Want to try it?”

“Sure.”

By the time we had walked the short distance in the midday heat, we both gratefully ordered the pineapple margarita that was on special. Even with the lingering champagne in my bloodstream, however, I couldn’t relax as I sat across from Izzy. In the spa, we had thankfully moved on from discussing Fox and Shane and sex lives, but now all I could wonder was, “Are you judging me?”

“For ordering fries instead of salad?”

“Pfft. Diet firmly set alight and launched over the ocean in one of those paper balloons. After I starved myself to fit into that stupid dress, too.” I propped my head on my hand and wondered what I could get for it.

Wedding dress, never worn. It probably had its own category on Marketplace.

“The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking, ‘Izzy would never punish herself like this. She’d order a dress that fit in thefirst place.’ But you have such a great body, you could wear a Snuggie down the aisle and look great.”

“So could you. Why do you put yourself down all the time?”

“I don’t know. Mom and her ‘be realistic’ lectures? She made sure I didn’t kid myself into thinking I was a supermodel. Therefore, I must be hideously flawed and have to work every second to look like a human.”

“She’s not that bad. Is she?”

“No.” I wrinkled my nose at my twisted self-esteem. “Mostly that’s me suffering the messages society sends me, but where’s the fun in taking responsibility for my own hang ups? Aren’t our parents supposed to be the reason we all need therapy?”

“No kidding. The other day, I told my boss we should market a savings account for counselling. Parents won’t need to go to confession, they can deposit their guilt as monthly contributions into their child’s future cognitive therapy fund. They’d never have to feel bad about the fixations and phobias they bequeath us. Win-win.”

“Did you get a promotion? Because that is seriously brilliant.”

“I know.” Izzy coolly sipped her drink and licked the salt from her lips.

“Yet another way I wish I could be like you. Bold. Innovative.” It was supposed to be a cheeky compliment, but Izzy gave me an impatient frown.

“What’s wrong with being like you?” she asked. “Why isn’t that good enough?”

“Because I don’t know how to do it,” I moaned. “You accept people how they are, especially yourself. You don’t make apologies for who you are, either. You say, ‘Screw it’ and go after whatever you want without letting it rot your stomach with anxiety. I went to Australia so I wouldn’t be so freaking boring and came home engaged. How predictable isthat?”

“You think you’re boring and predictable?”

“Don’t you?”

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