Page 42 of Gin and Lava

“Shauri, hey!” I say, grabbing the rest of my personal items and heading outside the meditation studio. Conveniently, the studio is near the beach, so I head down the boardwalk toward the ocean. “How’s it going?”

“Naomi!” Shauri exclaims like a screeching parrot, and I know she’s about to ask for ten favors. She may be having her destination wedding in Hawaii, but guess who actually lives here?

Me.

So who’s she going to ask to hammer out all those pesky last minute island details? I give her thirty seconds before I’m recruited for all the maid-of-honor duties that the actual maid-of-honor can’t do.

“Naomi! Naomi! Naomi!” Shauri sing-songs as if she’s about to do a full-on musical number on the other side of the phone. “Life is going so well! Everything for the wedding is coming together brilliantly. Did you get my itinerary? I emailed it last night. We’re going to have so much fun! The best time. But, here’s the thing—”

Yup, I’m not even to the end of the boardwalk and here come the requests.

“I was thinking it would be ah-mazing—if it’s not too much of an ask—if we, and by we, I mean the wedding party and a few of our friends, could use your beach house for the week before the wedding? I know it’s last minute, but I was just talking to Sam about—”

Sam? She was talking to my ex?

“—and he reminded me,” Shauri continues, “that you have an epic beach house that would be perfect for pre-wedding festivities. Could we use it? Just imagine how bomb it would be to sit around the fire and drink, to have volleyball on the beach, to have everyone together and avoid multiple-accommodation car-pooling.”

“You haven’t booked accommodations for your wedding yet?” I ask, reaching the sand and kicking off my sandals to walk down the beach.

“For the actual wedding, yes of course.” Shauri launches into a non-stop tirade on how expensive everything is in Hawaii, and how I’d be saving her butt if I could loan her the beach house for the week before the big day. “It will be so much fun to have everyone together! Don’t you think? Obviously, you get to stay too. And of course, bring your plus one. It will be so cool.”

“My plus one …” I mumble. Shauri did grant me the courtesy of bringing a date to her wedding when Sam and I broke up, but it’s not like I found anyone.

“Yes, of course,” Shauri confirms. “Sam will be there too, but it won’t be a thing. I promise.”

Sam? At my beach house? With my non-existent plus one?

I thought this phone call would be a good distraction, but it’s just blown up any possibility of calm.

“Uh, okay, so—” I start, rubbing my temple that’s throbbing like the woh-woh-wohs of the sound bowls.

“Fantastic!” Shauri jumps in, taking myokayas a yes. “You are the absolute best! This is like the most amazing wedding present ever, Naomi. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Uh, wait—!”

“I’m sending you an email now with all the details: guests, needs, our arrival times,” Shauri blathers on and I can’t get a word in edgewise. “You’re the friend of the century for helping out like this. I knew I could depend on you. You’ve always been the sensible one.”

That rubs me the wrong way. Considering the fact that when Sam and I broke up, Shauri told me I was clingy and obsessed with him, and I needed to give Sam space. It was a conversation filled with a thousand adjectives in which sensible was never mentioned. In fact, it was the complete opposite.

“Okay, the email is sent!” Shauri exclaims. “I’ll be in touch shortly about catering and transportation. Let me know if you have any questions. Aloha, friend! You’re the best!”

Shauri hangs up.

I stand ankle-deep in the sand with the phone still pressed to my ear and the silence on the other end echoing. Shauri has always been a whirlwind of a personality, but I just got blown over by a hurricane.

I click over to my email, ignoring the gnawing ache in my stomach that I’m going to regret it. Shauri’s email is a task list. Not only does she want to use my beach house, but there’s a string of things she’d like me to provide for her guests: food, beer, snorkeling equipment. And it’s not just a tiny request to do a little shopping for her, which she’ll later reimburse. Oh no. She expects me to pay for all of it.

Yes, I do have this fancy beach house … which everyone thinks my parents own. Only they don’t. My Aunt Lisa owns it, and I manage it for her. It’s not exactly the same thing. But when people started assuming it was a family property—and technically it is—they just assumed it was my parents’ property, something I’d be inheriting one day. Everyone assumes I come from money, but it’s one-hundred-percent the opposite. I’m the one who sends checks home to my mother in Texas. I’m the one scraping by on my spa salary and the stipend I get from my aunt—the aunt who no longer speaks to her sister anymore because of family drama.

Years ago, it was just easier to let everyone believe the story they told themselves concerning the beach house. It was easier than explaining I grew up in a trailer park, or that I haven’t seen my father since I was a year old. I didn’t want the looks of pity from my friends, so I never corrected them. It was nice to have people look at me like I wassomethingbecause they thought I had money. So why not let them fill in the details of a backstory that doesn’t exist?

But I’m not made of money.

And Shauri doesn’t know that. She assumes a few extra asks are nothing when the backstory she’s built for me includes … Real-estate moguls? Trust-funds? Royal princes awaiting in the wings? Not even my aunt Lisa has those things. She’s just a smart business woman who bought the beach house ages ago, knowing its value would increase.

If you dig your own grave, you have to sit in it. Right? I never corrected Shauri, or Sam, or Esme, or anyone. I just let them believe what they wanted. And it’s not like I haven’t bought designer clothes and bags to keep with the illusion.

So … what’s one week of footing the bill?

---