Page 66 of The Best Worst Thing

Cancun

The next few days were magic.

In Mexico, everything was hot and thick and bright: the soft white sand; the turquoise sea; the balmy, salty breeze.

Time slowed down again, but this go-around, it felt different.

It felt safe. It felt real. They’d sleep till ten, then crack the slider open and sip too-hot coffee as the late morning sun stretched into their hotel room and warmed their braided bodies.

Logan ran on the beach. Nicole found a midday yoga class she only half hated.

They met up for lazy, poolside lunches that consisted of little more than chips and guacamole and several embarrassingly large frozen margaritas, because if not now, when?

They read, they talked, they took those dreamy, sunburnt hotel-robe naps—the ones that felt like forever, like a soft, cozy, slightly delirious hug.

And then, as the sun began to dip around six each evening, they’d slide back out of bed, slip into their dinner clothes, and venture outside of the hotel zone to tackle another must-try restaurant on Mari’s cousin’s college roommate’s tourist-trap-free guide to Cancun.

They ate tamales stuffed with chaya and octopus, massive cobs of elote, and hot pink tortillas filled with grilled cactus, then washed it all down with local mezcal infinitely better than the crap Logan was selling back in LA.

It was Thursday—their last night before all Logan’s friends started rolling into town—when Logan, working his way through a particularly exceptional slice of tres leches cake, stared right at Nicole.

“What?” she said, the back of her fork cold and sweet against her tongue. Her foot, halfway up his shin.

“Nothing,” he said, his hand finding her bare knee. “Just really, really happy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Me too,” she said. “Ridiculously, stupidly happy.”

They took the long way to the welcome party—a winding, delightfully lush path of faded stepping stones that connected their hotel room on the edge of the property to the resort’s largest pool.

Above them, the sunset smeared billowy strokes of gold and peach.

Nicole, after three outfit changes, had settled on a ditsy floral slip dress.

Logan, a chambray button-down rolled up past his elbows.

“You all right?” he said, pulling a rogue palm frond out of their way.

“Yeah, for sure.” She ducked under his arm. “Just a little nervous, that’s all.”

“My friends are going to love you, okay? Trust me, half these people are from Grand Rapids, Michigan. They’re even nicer than me.”

“I know, I just feel like a liar. Like I can’t tell anyone here who I am or what I do or what my life really looks like.”

“You could,” he said. “And maybe a few people would think it was weird for, like, three minutes. And then they’d get to know you, and they’d think you were great, and also that you were literally 3D-printed for me, and they wouldn’t care.”

“3D-printed for you, huh? How romantic. You should pitch that to Hallmark.”

“I’m serious, okay?” he said, pinching her waist, then pushing open the pool gate. Music, already swirling. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. We don’t need to tell anyone anything, at least not yet, but whenever you’re ready, we’ll do it together, and it’s going to be completely fine. I promise.”

Nicole nodded, closing the gate behind them, then weaving her fingers into his.

String lights stretched over a now-pristine pool deck where lounge chairs had been wiped down, laid flat, restored to order.

Guests in sundresses and metallic sandals and freshly pressed chinos talked and laughed and clinked their glasses, their voices blending into one stressless echo.

To the left of the buffet, a handful of kids—they must have been nieces and nephews; children of cousins—played a shrieking-but-harmless game of sunset hide-and-seek.

And at a high-top in the far-right corner, a group of laughing women around Logan’s age sipped their drinks as a curly blonde scrolled animatedly through her phone. Logan followed Nicole’s line of sight.

“Which one is Kara?” she said.

He looked at Nicole, then scanned the crowd. “I don’t think she’s here,” he said. “But seriously, you don’t need to worry about her. I mean that.”

“It’s not really about you. It’s about me. I just don’t want to be blindsided, that’s all.” She dug her fingers into his back pocket and smirked. “Also, I need to make sure I’m hotter than her. That’s just ex-girlfriend 101.”

“Really? Because your husband is literally the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

“Nah,” Nicole said. “I’d 3D-print you in a heartbeat.”

“Stop it,” he said, pulling her into him, kissing her, then tugging her toward the center of the party. “You’re making me blush.”

Logan’s friends were lovely. They were also, as promised, virtually all attorneys.

She met Mila and Dev and Jake. She met Carlos and Graham and Kimmy.

She met the bride and the groom and the bride’s very anxious mother and the groom’s very long-winded father.

Liquor flowed. Laughter flew. Within ninety minutes, she’d met everyone, really, except Kara—whose jury selection had apparently run long, forcing her and her husband to fly out tomorrow instead.

With the night still young, she and Logan’s crew—now rounding out a very drunk two dozen—had galloped to a cantina a few blocks away where the alcohol was overpriced and the air was heavy and sweet.

Nicole finished Logan’s drinks, and with his hand resting on her waist, tipsily finished his sentences.

She made small talk about beach wave best practices and Saint Louis–style barbecue and how, it turned out, Logan had been a groomsman a predictably adorable fourteen times—and that the only thing keeping him out of this weekend’s bridal party was Benny’s four brothers.

And by the time they were shutting down the place at three o’clock in the morning, Nicole knew every last detail of Logan’s annual camping trip to Tahquamenon Falls, how he’d been banned from his dorm’s common room for microwaving a plastic tub of peanut butter, and how—according to Nicole’s new favorite person, Hannah Meyers—Logan had, in a drunken haze, crawled into some random guy’s bed freshman year, decided he seemed nice enough, then stayed through lunch the next day.

Obviously, Logan had been a groomsman of his too.

“I can’t believe you went to Kevin’s wedding with some other girl!” Nicole said, climbing onto Logan’s back, giggling as they crossed the street and two of Benny’s brothers whooped behind them.

“I can’t believe you married some other guy!”

“Rookie mistake! Will try not to do it again!”

And by the time they were stumbling through the hallway of their hotel, hands all over each other, Nicole didn’t even care anymore.

What anyone thought, what Kara Cohen was up to, how bad her own hair looked in this humidity.

Because the minute she closed the door behind them, the man of her dreams was pulling her into bed, peeling off her dress, then attacking her with the beak of a towel-swan while she quacked between fits of laughter.

“How are you even real?” he said.

“CAD model,” she said as she climbed on top of him, slowly kissed his jaw, and then—when he least expected it—quacked again. He smacked her in the face with a pillow, then hit the lights. “Fresh off the printer.”