Page 10 of Sharing Shane

Veronica shrugged and filled her wine glass. “My guess? He doesn’t hear the word ‘no’ very often. And when he does, he can usually talk his way out of it. He’s a born used car salesman.”

“You caught him balls deep in your neighbor,” Delia pointed out.

“Like I said, he doesn’t hear ‘no’ a lot.” Veronica passed the bottle, already half depleted, across the coffee table. “And I haven’t answered any of his calls or texts, which is pissing him off.”

“Good.” Delia filled her glass. “What are you going to do about the trip?”

“The trip?” Veronica’s eyes went wide over her wine glass. “Oh, shit. The trip. It’s already paid for.”

“By you,” Delia reminded her.

“Yeah, but he gave me the money for his half.” She frowned, then reached for her phone with a sigh. “I guess I have to send it back to him.”

“The hell you do.” Delia snatched the phone off the table before Veronica could. “Keep the money. Compensation for your pain and suffering.”

“I can’t do that, Delia,” Veronica told her. “He paid me using a money transfer app, I’ll just send it back the same way.”

“He fucked your neighbor on your grandmother’s quilt.”

“Okay, maybe I’ll let him sweat it a while.”

“That’s my girl,” Delia cheered, and held up the bag of takeout. “More?”

Because it was as good an idea as any, Veronica held out her hand.

“Remind me to call the airline,” she said, carefully squeezing salsa onto her fresh taco. “I bought Derek’s plane ticket with my miles, so I can probably cancel it.”

“You bought his plane ticket?”

“With miles,” Veronica repeated defensively. “I didn’t spend any money.”

“Miles are money,” Delia said, exasperated. “You cancel the ticket, and I’ll call the resort.”

Veronica chewed her taco thoughtfully. “What can they do?”

“They can get his name off the reservation, at least.” Delia dug her phone out of her bag, then stared pointedly at Veronica. “What are you waiting for?”

Veronica sighed and set down her taco and wine. She didn’t want to deal with this right now. Getting drunk was a much better idea, and she wasn’t even halfway there. Tipsy, she concluded as she stood. The room only tilted a little before righting itself, and she was able to walk a reasonably straight line across the living room to the desk. She dug out the confirmation email from the airline, the one she’d dutifully printed and placed in her desk drawer at Derek’s hyper-organized insistence, and made her way back to the couch.

It took all of ten minutes to cancel the reservation, though they charged her a cancellation fee. She figured she could afford it, since Derek’s money was still sitting in her bank account. By the time she gave it back to him, she would’ve gotten paid again. And they were going to refund her miles, so all in all, it was much less painful than it could have been.

Task accomplished, she set her phone down and refilled her wine. Delia was talking to someone, presumably at the resort. She wasn’t saying much, just a lot of agreeable humming and the occasional “I see” or “of course”. It didn’t look like the conversation was winding down anytime soon, so Veronica set her wine glass on the arm of the sofa where she could easily reach the straw and picked up her phone.

She’d lost two rounds of Candy Crush and was working on a third when Delia hung up. “Well, the good news is they can take his name off the reservation.”

Veronica set the phone aside and leaned over to suck up more wine. “What’s the bad news?”

“You can’t go by yourself.”

“What do you mean?” she mumbled around the wine straw.

Delia’s lips twisted into a grimace. “The discount voucher stipulates double occupancy. There have to be two people or the whole thing gets canceled without a refund.”

Veronica’s mouth dropped open and her wine straw fell out. “Seriously? I have to find someone else to come with me?”

Delia nodded. “They’ll put down whoever. The reservation’s in your name, and you can bring whoever you like as a guest. You just have to bring someone.”

“You.”

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