Page 7 of Accidentally Wed to My Enemy

I crossed my huge bedroom, still dragging my suitcase, and let myself out onto my long balcony. The breeze off the ocean was cool and refreshing, and I turned my face to it and took a deep breath. I could hear the waves crashing, soft with distance, the chirping of birds in the garden below. I whispered a line I’d memorized from my script, “If I have to die somewhere, I’m glad it’s here. I’m glad all this beauty is the last thing I’ll see. Beats a hospital ceiling, so yeah. I’m okay.”

A lump rose in my throat, and I felt my eyes prickle. I’d never been one to cry from just… beauty, but the view spread below me was threatening to break me. I plopped down in a lounge chair and dug through my suitcase, and pulled out my well-thumbed, well-highlighted script. The wind flicked it open to a random page, and I ran my finger down it and started to read.

LOCK: You’re talking about a massacre. Too many to count.

KATE: I’m talking about an end to this. Swords to plowshares. We could go home, start over, rebuild your farm.

LOCK: There’s no ‘we’ anymore. And if you take part in this, there can’t be, ever. If we run now—

A barrage of gunfire made me jump from my seat. I dropped my script, shrieked, and lunged for the railing.

The beach lay below me, peaceful as ever, gentle palms swaying in the tropical breeze. A car honked, a bird squawked, and the guns came again, a deafening burst from right behind me. My heart thumped, then it hit me — someone’s TV. Some idiot next to me with his Dolby cranked up, blasting his movie over half of Hawaii. I leaned over the railing and I could see it, a flickering screen in the suite next to mine.

“Hey!”

The guns roared again. A pained voice cried out. I thought I caught movement in the thick-curtained dark.

“Hey!I can see you!” I thumped on the railing.

This time, when the guns roared, they roared twice as loud. I squawked my outrage.

“Did you turn that up?” I leaned out all the way to pound on the window. “Come on, knock it off. It’s like a war zone out here.”

I caught movement again, then a shape through the curtains. Then the door opened and Eric leaned out. I groaned, frustrated.

“Should’ve guessed it was you.”

He squinted at me and shielded his eyes from the light. I wondered how long he’d been in there, cooped up in the dark.

“I’m getting in character,” he said.

“By watching war movies?”

“By listening to war zone clips on loop, in the dark. Gives me a feel for what it would be like — can’t see what’s happening, can’t get away. You can hide all you want, but you can still hear it, and you know if a bomb hits—”

“Can’t you do it with headphones?”

“Ruins the immersion.”

“And a cushy bed doesn’t? A big-screen TV?”

Eric just shrugged, and he ducked back inside. I banged the window again, but he pumped up the volume. I stood stymied, fuming, my hands on my hips. After a moment, I banged again.

“Thanks,” Eric called. “Adds to the ambience.”

“Oh, yeah? How about this?” I sucked in a deep breath and sang as loud as I could, “Old MacDonald had a farm! E-I-E-I-O!” I slapped on his window, a good hard smack. “And on that farm, he had a pig.” I slapped again, snorted, and stamped my feet. Eric turned on a second TV, or maybe his laptop. Guns blazed in stereo, and I sang louder.

“Old MacDonald had—”

Kracka-kracka!

“And on that farm, he had—”

Ka-BOOM!

“With an oink-oink here, and—”

“Hey!Open up in there!”

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