Page 25 of On the Beat

“I got here first,” a woman’s voice said. I turned to look at her; she wore a red, high-necked dress with sequinned shoulders. A press badge stuck out of her clutch purse. So, she was part of the press. She glanced at me, her brown eyes lighting in recognition. “Aren’t you…”

The bartender slid a fruity drink toward the woman and a glass of champagne toward me. “Here you go.”

I tipped him; even if this was Skye and Leo’s wedding, it wouldn’t kill me to be nice to the staff. “I’m the ex-boyfriend. I showed up too late to object to their wedding so I decided to ruin their chances of happiness.”

“Seriously?” Her eyebrows knit together. “That’s kind of a jerk move.”

“No, I just came here to drop off my sister’s shoes,” I said, though unsure of why I was spilling so many of my secrets to a stranger. Then again, she didn’t know who my sister was. It could have just as well been the champagne loosening my tongue. I clamped down on it now. Since my early days in the business, I’d begun taking fewer interviews and the ones I did take never revealed anything substantive. For all I knew, she had a recording device on her. “What are you doing here? I don’t think you’re a friend of the bride.”

“I could be a friend of the groom,” she said.

I studied her features. She didn’t look like one of Leo Perez’s relatives—she looked Filipina and he was Cuban—but she was right. She could have been one of his friends. I was jumping to assumptions. “Of course. Do wedding guests usually have a name tag sticking out of their purse, though?”

“You caught me. I’m part of the press.” The press badge in her glittery clutch read I. HART.

“How’d you get past security?” Last time I’d checked, there had been some big hubbub about how Leo and Skye weren’t allowing any outside photographers or videographers at their wedding. They weren’t exactly A-list celebs, only related to them.

“How did you? You’re the ex-boyfriend, so I’m surprised Leo Perez didn’t tell the guards to tackle you on sight.”

“When you’re this good-looking, people let you get away with too much.” I knew I’d said and done things during my tenure as a pop star that would have made my mother blush or box my ears in.

“And when you’re this conceited?”

“Oh, then people let you get away with everything.”

She lifted her glass as if to clink it against mine. “Hear, hear.”

I humoured her like we were making a toast. “To new beginnings, or whatever.”

“Or whatever.” She hopped off the barstool. “Enjoy the wedding.”

Chapter 13: Isla Romero

Spending the day at the beach is exactly what the doctor ordered. (Well, maybe not Dr. Paulo.)

However, spending the day with a gaggle of female relatives who are fussing over me like I’m a long-lost princess is notat allwhat the doctor ordered. I’m not sure any doctor would order that, unless he was particularly psychopathic or sadistic. At least, no one is going to make me swim. My decades-long fear of water won’t be uncovered as long as I can lie on the beach and get a massage in my comfy cabana.

“I’m sure you all remember my niece, Isla,”TitaEvangeline introduces me with a flourish and a huge smile, her floppy sunhat covering half her face. “Isla is Cesar and Joy’s daughter.”

“Hi!” A teenage girl about Analyn’s age bounds up to me, her energy reminding me of a golden retriever. I mean that in the most polite and generous way possible. Her dark hair is tied into a braid and she wears a blue cover-up over a black bikini. “I’m Gloria, Paulo’s younger sister.”

I try to smile at her, reaching out for a handshake before she pulls me into a double cheek-kiss. “Nice to meet you.”

TitaEvangeline introduces me to three women in total, but they have so much infectious energy that it feels like there’s more of them. There’s her seventeen-year-old daughter, Gloria, then Gloria’s and my grandmother, Dolores, whose hand I raise to my forehead in the proper familial greeting, as my parents drilled into me when I was a kid. Finally, there’s my other cousin, Atarah, the daughter of my Tito James. Atarah is about my age, twenty-five, and some kind of marketing director.

“Ooh, wehaveto take Isla to go island-hopping!” Gloria suggests, tugging on my hand when we near the beach. “We could go to Marimegmeg beach, and then start planning ourMonito Monitagifts.”

“What’sMonito Monita?” I say, leaning forward on the seat of our cabana. It’s as roomy as a tent that I once camped in in upstate New York, which is to say, it’s actually pretty big for five people.

Gloria gasps. Even Atarah, who’s been relatively quiet up until now, looks shellshocked. “You don’t know whatMonito Monitais?”

I shrug. While we did celebrate Christmas insanely early in New York and have a lot of Christmas traditions, there are some that just never carried over to the States. We would go toSimbang Gabi—attending Mass at dawn from December 16 to 24th, yawning our way out of bed every morning to make it to church for nine days straight—and listen to Christmas music starting in September. My parents loved Christmas, but they were both too busy with four kids and their medical professions to do that much to celebrate. Though the American love of Christmas—and far too commercialized in my opinion—is still strong, it definitely begins later in the year… not right when August ends. “My parents might have mentioned it, but they never said what it was.”

“It’s like Secret Santa but with a weekly theme, all throughout December.” Gloria’s eyes are wide. “We pick a name out of a hat and choose a different theme for every week’s gift, like something blue, something you can eat, etc.”

“Oh, that’s cool!” I smile at the idea. “My parents told me that was how they met, but they never explained to me how it works.”

Now, I’m smiling at the picture in my mind of my parents, in their teens, drawing each other’s names out of a hat and buying presents for each other.

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