Page 24 of The Love Haters

“You don’t even have a list,” I said, likeBullshit.

But Beanie didn’t take the bait. “Get to ten,” she said, “and find out.”

Four

DID MY COMPANYsplurge for a nonstop flight from Dallas to Miami?

They did not. Though they did ship myequipmentdirect.

Instead, I flew all day—with a random stop in Newark and a plane change. And was there turbulence on both flights? And was I in the middle seat both times with no access toanyarmrest? And did the aisle guy on the second leg spend the entire time coughing—hacking up one lung after the other every sixty seconds?

Don’t make me say it.

And then as soon as I landed in Miami at last, a lady racing for her gate with a full, Venti-sized Starbucks cup in her hand crashed into me and doused me so thoroughly that cinnamon latté soaked into everything but my socks.

And then! After walking all the way to baggage claim—reeking of coffee and holding my wet, and now very cold, T-shirt fabric away from my chest with pinched fingers—I waited for my bags.

And waited.

And waited.

And then, finally, when the last unclaimed bag on the carousel (hotpink with flowers) was definitely not mine (black with a black luggage tag), I went to the service desk and got the astute commentary: “It’s probably lost.”

And let’s not get started on the thousand-hour wait at the rental car counter.

Let’s just sum up: thegetting therewas terrible.

But thearriving? That was something else entirely.

First of all, it was a 58-degree October morning in Dallas, Texas, when I left, and it was an 86-degree October afternoon in Key West when I arrived.

So that’s a start.

I’ve done a ton of traveling for my job. They put you up in one anonymous box hotel after another. And the places you go are all exactly, almost spookily, the same. Same strip malls, same chain restaurants, same hotel art.

I’m not complaining. There’s a comfort in all that sameness.

But I just need to note that everything about going to Key West was… different.

Even the drive to get there was different. The Overseas Highway really is ahighway over the seas. I googled it: forty-two astonishing bridges connecting all of the Florida Keys over the water for 113 miles—and one of them is seven miles long.

I mean,come on!

I’d never seen—or done—anything like it, work trip or not. Zooming over the water that way, surrounded by blue ocean and clouds, windows down, ocean breezes just slam-dancing around in the rental car. Just when I’d start to miss land, the bridges would set me down on another key, and I’d zip along past palm trees, and docks, and sun umbrellas, and beachy restaurants with turquoise signs about key lime pie and conch fritters.

Nothing about this felt anything like any job I’d had before.

And that was before I’d even arrived at the final key—Key West—and seen the Victorian buildings with Easter egg colors and metal seam roofs. The second-story verandas, and picket fences, and brick-pavedstreets. The mangrove trees and coconut palms. Everything was scaled for walking. The stores and restaurants had music playing. Pedestrians strolled along everywhere. Not to mention the wild roosters strutting around like they owned the place, with their red combs and black plumed tails.

The whole town just felt like one endless festival.

So, yeah. Not your average corporate video shoot.

Cole Hutcheson’s aunt, Rue—who I’d never even heard of a week ago—waswaiting for mewhen I pulled into the crushed-shell parking lot at the Starlite Cottages. She came right out to the car andgave me a hug.

That’s exactly the condition I was in when I met her for the first time, by the way: rumpled, sleep deprived, still damp, and stinking of someone else’s cinnamon latté.

Rue, for her part, was the opposite of all those things.

---