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“I’ll try,” I said.
“Just do it,” Jane said. “This is the last time you can be wild and free. Next week, you’ll be thirty and chained to a desk for the rest of your life.”
I shouldneverhave told Jane and Amanda about the promotion.
“Love you too,” I mumbled.
Amanda, the diplomat, said, “Jane, leave her alone. Mia, seriously, you want this. Youneedthis. Have fun and don’t think about anything except the moment, okay? Promise to be spontaneous?”
“Promise,” I said. “Now I really need to check in so I can enjoy the beach.”
“I swear,” Jane said, “if you don’t have sex on the beach, I’m never speaking to you again. When Robbie and I went to Miami, we...”
“Stop! I don’t want to hear about your sex life, not without at least three margaritas,” I said. Jane and Robbie had had sex in so many public places that I was surprised they hadn’t been arrested for indecent exposure. “Love you both. Bye.” I ended the call before they could say anything else.
I’ve known Jane and Amanda since college, and my life would be worse without them. Three years ago, I introducedAmanda to my assistant, Braden, and they married last summer; Jane and Robbie had been together for nearly two years with their destination wedding scheduled for October. Which would just leave me, Mia Crawford, the unattached hanger-on, the fifth wheel.
Because even if I found a man to share my bed this week, it wasn’t like he’d want to come home to meet my cats.
The gift shop was filled with clothing, bathing suits, hats, toiletries, souvenirs, and books. Lots and lots of books, more than just the bestseller rack.
You’d think someone like me, who reads every day, would have brought enough books to get me through the week. Normally, I would have, but Grams had called yesterday while I was in the middle of packing, needing help with a financial crisis. Hours later, I realized she was short this month because she had given four hundred dollars to an environmental group, two hundred dollars to an animal shelter, and fifty dollars to her distinguished neighbor who made six figures but apparently needed cash for a date.
The causes might be worthy, but not if Grams couldn’t buy groceries. I’d already taken over paying for her rent-stabilized fifty-five-plus apartment, utilities, and insurance out of the trust I’d set up for her—a trust she couldn’t touch because she’d give it away. But I made sure she had money in her personal account so she could get her hair done, buy groceries, go to a movie or lunch with a friend now and again. Yet ten days into the month, she was broke. She’d called me, and I had panicked more than she had, thus forgetting to pack my books because I was in a rush this morning.
And if I didn’t have a book to read, I would literally die.
The clerk approached, a young woman with dark curly hair and a bright smile. In fact, all the staff I’d met smiled brightly—too brightly. They were the Stepford Staff, I thought. Should I be worried?
“Can I help you find anything?”
“Just looking for a book.”
“This table here—” she gestured like Vanna White from Grams’s favorite game show “—holds books about the islands, the history of the area, photography. Over there—” she again gestured broadly “—is the fiction section. We try to keep it stocked with newer releases, but if there is something you’d like that we don’t have, I can order it from St. John. It’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” I said, and turned toward the rack of new releases. Nothing called out to me. The covers were uninspired, the titles boring, the authors not on my auto-buy list. And yes, some of the books I’d already read.
A table in the corner was tastefully decorated with flowers and a handcrafted sign:
BEACH READS!
Books left behind by guests
Free for your enjoyment
One of the books written by a popular author looked depressing. After I read the inside flap, my suspicions were confirmed—a story about a lying, cheating spouse. No thanks. I’d already had one boyfriend who’d cheated on me...
The next book was about a pathological liar. Also dated one ofthose...
And the third book was about love the second time around. Maybe... except, none of my ex-boyfriends ignited that spark inside me that made me think we could or should get back together.
Jane and Amanda agreed with my Grams. “Mia, your expectations are too high.” “Mia, there are no Prince Charmings, only frogs.” “The only perfect guys are in romance novels.”
Yet Jane was engaged to Robbie, who ran his family’s construction business, and Amanda was happily married to Braden, and I know that they didn’t thinktheirlovers were frogs.
They were partly right. I had high expectations. I didn’t want perfection; I just wanted someone who was perfectfor me. What was wrong with that? If I was going to spend the rest of my life with a man until we were both old and gray and needed hearing aids, shouldn’t I have someone I enjoyed spending time with? Someone who was smart and interesting and liked my cats?
Frustrated that I couldn’t even find one book that whispered “Read me,” I spotted, tucked under a historical romance, a book with a torn cover.