Page 64 of Afternoon Delight

Ashley

I was stepping onto the curb at International Arrivals of the Honolulu airport when my phone rang. My smile of anticipation fell away.

Izzy. I knew it . My maid-of-honor wasn’t coming.

Not a crisis. My sister was offended that I had asked Izzy instead of her. Whitney was dying to take over, but what was going on with Izzy?

I accepted her call and tried to put a smile in my voice.

“Hi.” I braced the cool petals strung around my neck so I wouldn’t bruise them as I hurried down the sidewalk toward doors where a handful of people with luggage loitered.

“Why am I hearing honking?” Izzy asked.

“I’m at the airport. Traffic is bonkers. I thought I would be late.” My fault. I asked my ride-share driver to stop for leis, thinking it would be romantic. Now I was sweaty and stressed. Pretty much my signature look.

“What are you doing at the airport?” Izzy was scandalized. “Diva the hell out of this week. I would.”

She would. For most of my life, I have been striving to become more like Izzy. Izzy does what she wants and says ‘no’ when she doesn’t want to do something. She makes zero apologies for either.

I’m getting better. It had only taken twenty-six years, but I was finally clawing forward with my own life, getting married in Hawaii to a great guy then moving to Australia with him. No more compromising and settling and doing as I’m told. No more apologizing for everything all the time.

“Sorry, hang on a sec,” I heard myself say as I entered the airport. I could have bitten my tongue in half for the reflexive apology. I read the arrivals screen. “Okay, their flight landed.” I drew a calming breath and moved into a corner to wait.

“I can’t believe you left the beach. I can’t wait to get there.”

“You’re still coming?”

“Of course. Why would you think not?”

Because she had waited until the last second to book and wasn’t arriving until the day before the wedding. Because she was tapping a keyboard right now, and lately seemed to have ten things better to do than give me her full attention.

But anytime I asked if something was wrong, she deflected and blew me off.

“I’m just stressing,” I excused. And gritted my teeth at myself for being less than honest. “My head went to worst-case when I saw you were calling instead of texting.”

“I need my fingers to finish entering these numbers...” More tapping. “But I wanted to know if the resort has a shop where I can buy a bathing suit? That scream you woke up to this morning? That was me trying on my old one.”

Unlikely. Izzy was gorgeous, but, “I did hear that.” I relaxed into the warm wall at my back.

The airport was open-air and as hot and humid as the rest of the island.

“There’s a shop, but it’s expensive.” The mismatched tops and bottoms started at eighty dollars, but Izzy had a great salary and wasn’t footing the bill on her own wedding.

“Now that I’ve seen what a cluster fu...

nction—” I smiled and corrected myself as a mom with two kids came to stand near me.

“—what a challenge traffic can be, I’ll leave more time when I come back for you. ”

“ Don’t . Seriously, climb into bed with Shane and send Fox to pick me up.” Izzy’s tone lowered to a smoldering sexiness. “Tell him I can’t wait to see him again.”

I don’t know why it bothered me, but for the last three months, Izzy had been making jokes about rekindling things with Fox and something about it put me off. She was the maid-of-honor. It was practically law that she slam the best man.

I knew Fox a lot better now, though. When Izzy and I had met him and Shane on our first night out after arriving in Sydney, we’d all been looking for a good time, not a long time.

Everything about those early days had been pure fun.

I didn’t begrudge either of them getting their rocks off, especially if they had nothing better to do while they were here on vacation.

But something in Izzy’s jokes sounded forced. Which made me think she didn’t really want Fox. That made me want to question her motives and made me defensive on his behalf.

Which was not my place. If he was willing to be used by her or anyone else, what business of it was mine? None. They were grownups. They could figure it out.

Maybe I was tired of the chase and thought they should be, too. That’s all this was. I went along with Izzy’s suggestion because that’s what best friends do.

“I’ll see what kind of shape he’s in. They might be jet-lagged or still recovering from the stag party.”

“I thought that was last weekend. Didn’t they go surfing?”

“They had a do-over. Quite a piss-up, sounds like. I got a text from Shane last night that he and Fox were taking a taxi to the airport because they were still drunk. That’s why I decided to meet them here.

They’re renting a car and I wasn’t sure they’d be sober enough to drive it.

This way I’ll be on the paperwork and can come back for you. ”

“Are you listening to yourself? That’s way too much micro-managing for a bride.”

“I know, but...” Normally I would trust Fox to sort it, but the stakes were really high. My mother was dying to find fault with my groom. I didn’t expect everything to be perfect this week, but I would do whatever necessary so things ran smoothly.

“When I get there, I want to see you in a bikini, a wedding dress, then a bikini,” Izzy stated. “That’s it.”

“Aw.” I layered my voice with a sentimental pang. “You sound like Shane.”

“That guy has gone three months without sex. Good luck wearing anything.”

I chuckled, but it came out weak. I wasn’t like Izzy in that way either, inclined to overshare about what went on in the bedroom.

Shane and I were fine in the sack, but we didn’t exactly tear each other’s clothes off.

I wasn’t convinced anyone ever felt as porny and horny as books and movies made out.

Was I suffering FOMO over those who did? Sure. But I’d been raised to keep my expectations low. Focus on needs, not wants, so there was less room for disappointment.

And I was marrying a gorgeous surfy-dude who had great parents and a growing business. He was giving me an excuse to move to Australia. I had no reason to be greedy.

I glanced up as a swell of travelers began streaming past me. They were mostly Asian so it was probably a different flight. Shane and Fox were coming straight from Sydney.

“Seriously, I— Oh, hang on, Ash.” Izzy muffled the phone while she spoke to someone.

I bit back a sigh, wondering if she even wanted to see me. We’d been best friends growing up, but she barely talked to me in the three months that I’d been back in Canada.

Granted she was four hours away from our home town, working at a demanding job in Winnipeg, living it up with all her city friends, but her parents still lived near me.

She hadn’t come back once to see them or me.

Every time I had suggested coming to stay with her in the Peg, Izzy had had other plans.

She often took days to respond to a text.

I felt like I was an unwelcome reminder that we came from a dot on the map that was more of a zit in the armpit of the country.

I genuinely hadn’t expected her to accept maid-of-honor duty.

I asked because she was the one who had coaxed me to go to Australia with her last year, something I wouldn’t have done on my own.

Then she drew me into meeting Shane after chatting up Fox.

Everything about that trip had started out fantastic.

Within the week, however, Izzy abruptly went back to Canada, ditching me for the bank job she currently held.

It was a really good job. I couldn’t blame her. And her abandonment had turned out fine for me, obviously, but given how easily she had left me alone in a strange country, I had been expecting a regretful excuse the entire time I’d been planning this wedding.

Izzy came back on the line. “That was a hot-goss alert about a mat leave. They want me to apply to cover it. Guess I can’t marry Fox and move to Oz after all. Do you think he’d move here?”

“The market for surf shops in Manitoba is wide open.”

“Right? It’s one of those things you don’t know you need until it’s here.”

“Ask him when you see him. They’ve talked about expanding into California, since Fox is American, but with the price of real estate there— Oh. I just heard someone say ‘G’day.’ Might be their flight. I’ll hang up.”

“’kay. See you in forty-eight hours plus traffic.”

“Can’t wait. Travel safe.”

I pushed off the wall and dropped my phone into my bag, bouncing on my toes in my excitement to see the man who was changing my life.