Acapulco Nights

by K. J. Gillenwater

  James’s suitcase was gone.

  My God. He’d left. He’d checked out and left me.

  My stupid too-full suitcase and my ice bucket of shoes occupied one corner of the room. He’d left no note, no indication of where he’d gone, nothing.

  Trembling, I sat down on the unmade bed. My head slipped into my hands, its weight too much for me to bear. I’d been too late. He had gone. I had no opportunity to tell him anything, to explain anything.

  Silent tears slid down my cheeks, and I let them come. I didn’t wipe them away. I didn’t grab a tissue. I sat there and let their wet softness glide down my face. What had I done? Oh, what had I done?

  All that stupid time I’d wasted wandering on the beach last night. I should have spent it here, with James, trying my hardest to keep him with me. To explain myself. But I gave up. I left and gave up.

  What kind of woman does that? What kind of woman leaves the man she loves?

  I should have stayed and fought for him. For us. What an idiot I had been. I let the best thing that ever happened to me slip through my fingers while I was out taking a damn walk on the fucking beach. Sleeping on the goddamn lounge chair. What the hell was I doing?

  Angrily, I wiped the tears away.

  I stripped out of my dress and took a hot shower. As hot as I could stand. The sand and salt washed away down the drain. I took the soap and scrubbed my face, got rid of my streaked mascara. I wanted to be clean. I wanted to start this day anew.

  If I couldn’t have James, I would at least fix the problem I should have fixed years ago. For myself. Not for anyone. Just for me.

  Wrapped up in a towel, I sat down on the bed next to the phone. “Room 1210, please.” It was early, but not so early that Janice wouldn’t be up and about. Could be she’d decided to take a run right now, but maybe—

  “Hello?”

  Hello indeed. That was George on the phone. George, in Janice’s room. In Janice’s bedroom.

  “Hey, it’s Suzie. Um, is Janice around?”

  I could sense George tensing on the other end of the line. Last night we hadn’t ended on the best of terms. “Hold on.”

  “Janice? It’s Suzie.”

  I heard her mumbling answer, “Tell her I’m not here.”

  George cleared his throat. “Um, well—”

  He was such a nice guy, he didn’t want to tell me that she didn’t want to talk to me. I had trounced on her heart, used her like no real friend would. “I’m coming down. I have to talk to her.”

  I hung up the phone before he could protest. I had no time to waste. I needed Janice to hear my apology and to understand how stupid I’d been. What a huge mistake I had made by not bringing her into my confidence all those years ago.

  I needed her friendship now more than ever.

  I threw on some clothes, my wet hair plastered to my shoulders, and rushed out of the room. Today was not about looking good or playing the tourist, today was about saving the relationships that mattered the most to me. I hoped Janice would give me a few minutes of her time. Let me in the door.

  *

  “Janice, it’s me. Let me in.”

  I knocked again on the door to her room. I could hear whispering and movement inside, so I knew she was there.

  “Please, I want to talk to you.”

  The door fell open. George stood there, fully dressed, a pained expression on his face. I could see Janice standing beyond him next to the couch where we had shared our screwdrivers that very first day of our trip, laughing and making plans. Now, her face looked pale and tired.

  George looked over his shoulder at her.

  She told him wearily, “Let her in. It’s okay.”

  Without looking at me, he held the door open. Once I entered the room, he stepped into the hall.

  “I’ll see you downstairs for breakfast in a few minutes,” Janice said to George.

  I scrutinized her face, as the door closed behind me, looking for some sign she wanted to hear from me, wanted an explanation. But her thin features remained tight. She wore more Janice-y clothing this morning—an oversized t-shirt and a pair of baggy Bermuda shorts. Her legs appeared even thinner and more stick-like than usual.

  But before I could open my mouth, Janice said, “So, when were you going to tell me?”

  I knew what she meant, but it was hard getting the words out.

  Janice rolled her eyes at me. “About a little thing called a marriage? To Joaquin?” Her arms crossed tightly and her left foot tapped the floor.

  “I wanted to tell you, Janice, oh, God, did I want to back then. But I couldn’t. I promised him I wouldn’t—“

  “How could you not tell me, Suze?” Her voice cracked. “I thought I was your best friend.”

  “You are my best friend, Janice.” I reached out to touch her arm reassuringly, but she pulled away.

  She looked up to the ceiling and took a slow, deep breath. “Yeah, right,” she huffed. “First, you get married behind my back, and then you use me for a free trip to Mexico.”

  “Use you?” I said, aghast.

  “God, Suze, you’re a piece of work.” Her mouth curled in disgust. “Do you really think I’m that stupid? That naïve?”

  “No.” I knew I had lied to her, but I didn’t think how much that might hurt her. All the little lies I had told to get here. Each one had been another stab to her heart.

  My worst fears were coming true. The truth came out, and my closest friend was pulling away from me. If Janice was this upset, how would James ever forgive me? I was a liar. A liar who had hurt the people I loved. What kind of person does that?

  “You never were my friend, were you?” Janice choked on those words. I could sense her feeling of betrayal.

  “Of course I’m your friend! If it weren’t for Joaquin being here—”

  “See what I mean? It’s all about you. Your problems, your life. Who cares about Janice.” She turned away from me and faced the view of the ocean.

  I had to convince her. I couldn’t lose my friend now, not when I needed her advice and help the most. “Do you think I’m really that cruel? That I don’t care about you?” I tried to turn her away from the view. I wanted her to see my face and know that this time I was being honest.

  She turned, but she hid her face from me. “Everything you’ve done since you’ve gotten here was all about you and your problems. Just like when we were at the university.” She was right. Why would she expect me to act any differently a decade later? I showed her where my loyalties laid back then—that day at Teotihuacán, my trip to Acapulco with Joaquin. Why would it be any different now?

  I had let her down in the past. Put my feelings before hers. I had been stupid then, but I had matured.

  “That was years ago. Another me entirely. I was an idiot. I was selfish. And I never did apologize to you for that.”

  She lifted her eyes to mine. The usual happy smile on her face disappeared, replaced by a frown of sadness and worry.

  “So who is the ‘me’ here in Acapulco with me now? My friend? Or Joaquin’s wife? Oh, or, wait, James’s fiancé?”

  James. The sound of his name cut me with an invisible blade.

  “You told him.” We both knew the truth, but I needed to hear it said aloud.

  “Yes, I did. He deserved to know the truth, Suzie. He’s too good for someone like you.” Her eyes were blazing.

  She spoke the truth. I couldn’t deny her that. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t deserve someone like him.”

  I felt the tears coming again, and I fought them back. Crying wouldn’t help matters. I needed to stay focused, or I would never get James back or my friend.

  My knees trembled, and I collapsed onto the couch. I couldn’t take this anymore. I needed her to understand me, and I’d only made things worse. If I couldn’t win back her friendship, then I knew I couldn’t succeed with James.

  I heard a whisper of movement. And then Janice and those long, thin legs were next to me, sitting in the wingb
ack chair.

  “I don’t get you, Suzie. Why would you do something like that? Did you think I wouldn’t understand? You were my friend, and I wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize our friendship.” I sensed a softening in her demeanor. A small hope grew in my heart that she might be able to forgive me for my transgression.

  “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” I explained. “But when my dad died—”

  A light grew in her eyes, a light of understanding. Maybe she was beginning to see how I had gotten myself into this mess in the first place. It hadn’t about me at all. It had been about everyone I loved.

  “Your dad? Is that when you and Joaquin—?”

  “Yes.” Tears pricked in the corner of my eyes. “Do you see now why I couldn’t tell you?”

  “But after things got better at home, why didn’t you say something then?” Her expression hardened again. She still saw me as the liar, the selfish one. That look in her eyes hurt.

  “By then, it had been months. The lie had grown bigger and bigger. There never seemed to be a good time,” I said, not even convinced by my own words. Nothing could ever truly explain why I had made the decision I did. “And then there was James.”

  “Yes, James.” Janice echoed, deep in thought.

  “And now I feel like such an idiot. Joaquin never really loved me—he used me to get back at Mercedes.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why she was there last night at the party. They have a daughter.” I let that fact sink in for both of us.

  All those years of worrying about what Joaquin had been thinking and feeling had been wasted emotions. He’d never thought of me beyond what I could do for him.

  “I think that’s why Mercedes left school back then,” I told her. “I think she was pregnant. God, what an idiot I was for not believing her. She tried to tell me. She tried to. And I wouldn’t listen. I thought she was jealous.”

  Janice sat back, her face reflecting disbelief. Then, came the Janice-type comment I had been hoping for, “What a bastard. What a friggin’ bastard.”

  Janice didn’t swear much.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  She patted me on the knee, all of her best friend responses starting to come to the fore. “Dick.”

  She blushed when she said it.

  I looked her straight in the eye. “Janice, I know I’ve hurt you. I know you feel I took advantage of you. I wanted you to know that’s why I turned down the trip in the first place—I couldn’t face you here, not after everything that happened between us in Mexico. I thought you would probably read it on my face the minute I stepped off the plane at the airport. But James insisted I go after you talked to him.”

  “He did?”

  “He wanted me to take this trip because he doesn’t think I know what I want. If I want to be with him, get married—”

  Her brows knit together, “Oh, but you love him!”

  “But he doesn’t think I do,” I divulged. I thought back to the conversation I had with James in the kitchen at our house. He thought this trip would be a way for me to analyze my feelings for him, get some perspective on things. “Especially not now. God, I don’t know what to do. How can I get him back?”

  “You need to find him, Suze.”

  I looked in Janice’s eyes and saw reflected there her faith in me and in my relationship with James.

  “He’s already gone,” I told her. “It’s too late.”

  “It’s not too late, Suze. He loves you—it’s not too late.” She reached out and grasped my hands in hers. I could feel some of the anger and hurt drain away from her in those cool, thin fingers.

  “I have to take care of something first, though,” I said.

  Without having to explain further, I knew she understood what I meant. “He still loves you,” she repeated, giving my hands a comforting squeeze.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’ll forgive you.”

  “But what if he doesn’t? What would I do, Janice?”

  “He’ll forgive you,” she insisted, her eyes clear and her gaze unwavering. Janice, the goofy girl with too much energy and oodles of heart, looked into my eyes and said exactly what I should have known she would say. “Just like I did.”

  I wish I could be as sure as she that James would forgive me. He had been hurt once by lies. Would this second time be too much for him?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I did what you asked. I want my divorce.” I stood rigidly in Joaquin’s office. I squared my shoulders and tried to maintain my dignity. The marriage had all been a farce, no point in pretending he had any hurt feelings over it.

  I had been a class-A fool for ever believing this man had fallen for me. If I had figured that out twelve years ago, I probably would have been a wreck. But now? I felt used. That weird moment up in the suite, when I’d thought for sure we’d end up having sex—I was sick to my stomach thinking about it.

  Joaquin sat behind his desk, his fingers tented over the expensive mahogany. “I will sign the papers. You did a perfect job.” His hazel eyes were nothing more than empty hollows to an empty soul. That man could feel nothing for any woman.

  I wanted to tell him Mercedes knew our marriage had been a farce and that we were divorcing. But I didn’t think it would hurt him as much as he had hurt the both of us. He would be angry, yes, but the hurt would not be the same.

  Mercedes seemed to be over his lies. It probably wouldn’t have helped her either.

  I wasn’t about to let him off so easily, though. He couldn’t waltz back into my life, try to sleep with me, and end up ruining my relationship with James for nothing. His actions had to have some consequences. I tucked away that thought for later. Right now, I needed to get his signature on whatever papers the lawyer, Mr. Esposito, would have.

  “I’ll be back in touch this afternoon. If you’re not here, I’ll leave the papers with your secretary and pick them up tomorrow morning.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “And then I never want to see you or hear from you again.”

  “Ah, Querida—“

  “I told you not to call me that again,” I seethed. “We both know there was never any love between us.”

  His mouth curled up into a sardonic smile. “Sometimes you don’t need love,” he said. He picked up a silver letter opener off of his desk and ran its flat blade against the palm of his hand. “You had something I wanted.” His eyes locked onto mine and a jolt of sexual energy radiated from them. “And you let me take it. Simple as that.” He turned the letter opener over in his hand, concentrating on its shining surface.

  I shuddered at the coldness in those words.

  “It’s no longer yours for the taking, Joaquin. Tomorrow I’m leaving here and going back to a much better life than you’ll ever have.” I turned on my heel to leave, but not before I saw him clutch the sharp letter opener tightly in his hand, as if he were trying to squeeze the life out of it. I heard it clatter on the desk as I walked out the door and out of his life forever.

  *

  “So, you’re going to stay?” Janice asked.

  I dumped my shoes out of the ice bucket in my new suite and hung some of my clothes in the closet. “I don’t know what I want to do to tell you the truth.”

  “I think you should stay.”

  “But what about James?”

  “He’s hurt. He’s angry. You need to let him blow off some steam.” She sat on the couch, watching me put my clothes away.

  “I think I’ve lost him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “But I feel it. The way he told me to leave—I’d never heard him sound like that before.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, Suze.” She got up from the couch and gave me a sympathetic hug, her bony body more bruising in an embrace than comforting.

  “I think I just need to have my mind on something else.”

  “Even with Joaquin here?” />
  “I think I can manage. Now that I know the truth, he won’t bother me anymore.” I slipped my favorite sundress onto a hanger and stuck it in the closet. “All of that is over with. In the past.”

  “And you got him to sign the papers?”

  I nodded. “The lawyer’s sending them over today. It gets the process started. It takes six months for the whole thing to be over with, and it can’t come soon enough.”

  She patted me on the back and walked over to the mini-fridge. “Well, so now that you’re staying another three days, what do you want to do?” She stuck her head inside it. “Maybe try out the parasailing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Janice, unwrapping a Snickers bar she’d found, made a moue of disapproval.

  “But,” I said, “I think I’d be up for the intermediate kayaking class.”

  “You would?” she asked with a mouthful of chocolate and peanuts.

  I nodded.

  She swallowed and set the candy bar down on top of the fridge. “Just wait ‘til I tell George! He won’t believe it.” She dashed to the phone by the bed. “Oh, and by the way, he’s invited both of us on a river rafting trip.”

  She dialed the phone.

  “Is that so?”

  “I’m thinking next August? It’ll be warm, but all the college kids will be back in school. What do you think?” She turned her attentions to George on the other end of the phone. “Oh, George! You’ll never guess. Suzie said she’ll take the class.”

  I continued to hang up my clothes while Janice chattered with George, making plans for the few remaining days of our trip. Dinner, excursions, kayaking—she was packing three vacations into one.

  I owed it to her to stay. Be a friend. Do the things she had envisioned us doing together. Then, I could head home and tackle my relationship with James—if I had a relationship left to salvage.

  *

  The hot sun shined bright in my eyes, but I paddled for all I was worth. Our instructor, Enrique, proudly declared me certified to kayak on the open ocean yesterday, and I was determined to keep up with Janice, George, and his traveling buddies.

  “Come on, Suzie! You can do it!” yelled Janice from her position, only fifteen yards in front of me.