Page 18 of Total Dreamboat

Lucie and her colleague Chanlina then proceed to bury Lauren and I in a layer of hot sand up to our chins. They turn on soft New Age music and tell us they’ll return in half an hour.

Lauren groans rapturously. “This feels amazing.”

“It’s like if a hot tub were a weighted blanket,” I agree.

“I’m never getting out.”

“How was the casino last night?” I ask her.

She sighs. “Well, first it was promising. I ran into that guy Ralph I met hiking and we played roulette. But then he totally granddaughter-zoned me.”

I snort. “What does that mean?”

“He completely missed all my signals and started giving me life advice and talking about his kids. Then he offered to set me up with his grandson in Arkansas.”

“Maybe the grandson is nice?”

“I’m not moving to Arkansas unless it’s to marry a Walmart billionaire. The grandson works at a nonprofit. No thank you.”

“Yeah, people who devote their lives to nonprofits must be terrible.”

“You know what I mean. Anyway, then I went up to the cigar bar to see if I could meet someone else, and sat down next to this very handsome guy who was alone and not wearing a wedding ring. I said hello and he was friendly enough and he asked what I was doing and I said I was hoping he’d buy me a drink. And do you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He informed me that drinks are free . Like hello! I know that, sir! I’m hitting on you?”

“Ha. Suave.”

“So then I ordered a cigar and went to sit by the piano to smoke it and look beguiling. Cuz like, who is not going to chat up a beautiful girl smoking a cigar alone, right? It’s sexy and a perfect conversation piece.”

“Right.”

“Well, guess who came over and joined me? A group of three women on a girls trip. So I had to talk to them about tasting notes of Cuban versus Nicaraguan tobacco, which obviously I know about because you have to in my line of work, and they kept asking me questions and it took me like an hour to extricate myself. And by then I was all stinky from smoke so I decided to go upstairs and shower. And that’s when I found you half-dead in the bathroom. ”

“I’m sorry it was a bust.”

“It’s fine. I made plans to meet Colin, that Irish whiskey distiller, at the outdoor dinner thing tonight. Do you want to come? He’s extremely charming and has cute friends.”

“Maybe. I’m going to see what Felix is up to.”

“ Felix , eh,” she drawls.

I can’t stop myself from grinning. “We went back to his room after the Elvis show last night and—”

“Hopie!” she cries. “You didn’t!”

“No, not that . But he kissed me, and it was… lovely. Until I puked in his bathroom.”

“You didn’t .”

“I did. At length. He was so nice about it. He gave me his bathrobe and got me ginger ale and then this morning he came over with electrolyte tablets. He’s nice. I really like him.”

It feels so good to talk to her like this. Just shooting the shit on vacation, without all the heaviness of my stalled-out life or the guilt I feel about overrelying on her. I smile to myself, until I notice she’s gone oddly quiet.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

“Just be careful,” she says.

I look over at her and she’s frowning at me.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“You know what you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“You meet sexy guys and go nuts over them immediately and then they turn out to be troubled or sleazy and you get your heart broken.”

So much for easy breezy girl talk.

She is, of course, correct about my pattern.

But this crush is the first thing I’ve enjoyed in months. Can’t she just… let me have it?

“Okay, I admit I’ve been guilty of that in the past,” I say, “but I’m talking about kissing someone. I’m certainly not going to end up devastated over kissing a guy on a cruise ship. We’re only here for ten days.”

She side-eyes me. “I’m pretty sure you moved in with Gabe after ten days.”

“Oh my God. It was three months! And excuse me, but you literally told me to hook up with Felix the day we met.”

“Fair. Sorry. It’s good for you to dabble with someone else. I was just imagining more of a fuck buddy situation, and I worry when you get all swoony like this. I’m really glad you’re having fun.”

I’m relieved she’s not pressing the point. Lately, we’ve been bickering over our respective life choices. I get irritated with her incessant filming of every moment of her life, and while she doesn’t outright say it, I think she thinks I’m too passive.

“I am having fun,” I say. “Thank you for inviting me. I know I was a bit skeptical about this, but I’m having such a great time.”

She smiles at me. “Good. It’s nice to see you less hung up on Gabe.”

“I’m not hung up on him,” I say immediately.

She snorts. “You’ve been in mourning for him for months, Hope.”

I consider this.

My feelings for him are still so complicated.

I loved him madly. From our first date, he enchanted me with long, intimate talks in which it felt like he could magically see inside my soul and was entranced by what he found there. And it was flattering, because of who he was.

He’s an influential book editor, and he told me that despite my disappointments, I still had vast potential.

That by our combined powers we could conquer the world.

That feeling was magnetic. That feeling dulled my real life—the writer’s block, the thankless deadlines at work, the constant low-grade financial anxiety, the dread that I’ll never stop floundering.

I fell in love with that feeling as hard and fast as I fell in love with him.

But he panicked and fled when the smallest part of the fantasy he spun for us became real. And the way he did it—so abruptly, with so little regard for how it would upend my life—was, frankly, cruel.

I should hate him.

And yet I still miss him, a little. I miss our Saturdays at the New York Public Library, him scribbling on manuscripts in his glasses with his shirtsleeves rolled up, me toiling over the stories that I finally felt inspired to write.

I miss the wine-drenched dinner parties we threw, the dazzling conversations with authors and artists that before I’d only known from the fiction pages of the New Yorker and exhibitions at the Guggenheim.

I miss his solicitousness, his enthusiasm for introducing me to his friends and family, his intelligence and wit.

I miss believing in the fantasy of that life being my happy ever after.

That, more than anything, is what I’m in mourning for. The version of myself I might have been if the dream had actually come true.

“I’m not sure that’s right,” I say to Lauren, choosing my words carefully. She loathes Gabe, and thinks I should too—unilaterally, viciously, without mercy.

But I’m just not there.

And I’m tired of her lecturing me about it.

“I’m not pining for him anymore, per se. It’s more like without him sugarcoating my life, I feel stuck.”

“We have to get you out of that PR job,” she says, perhaps tacitly agreeing not to dwell on this topic. “It’s not healthy for you to work so hard at something you hate.”

I do not inform her that I’m still being harassed by my boss, and on the hook to send out a press release on vacation. The spike in her blood pressure will undo the spa treatments.

“I know,” I say. “But I’m so tired of bouncing around in entry-level positions trying to find something that sticks. I want to be great at something, you know?”

“You are great at something,” she says. “You just need to start writing again. It’s what you love. But it won’t happen if you don’t try.”

“I know that,” I say. My tone sounds defensive.

I hate that we’re back in this dynamic. Her wanting more for me. Me falling short.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to sound all harsh and judgey,” Lauren says. “It’s not like I’m living my dream life either.”

This startles me.

“I thought you were,” I say.

She sighs. “I like the money, obviously. I love being creative. But I’m a little over trotting around being a fake pickup artist, if I’m honest. I know it’s my bread and butter, but I’m ready to meet someone for real.”

It touches me that she’s being vulnerable. Lately, I’ve been so emotionally shaky that she’s acted almost like she’s my mom—like she has to protect me from any of her problems. Sometimes her soft heart gets buried under all that bravado.

“I hope you let yourself,” I say, thinking of the pleasure she took in flirting with the Irish guy from yesterday. “It would be so nice to see you in love. And you can always pivot to being a tradwife.”

She snorts. “Honey, I don’t have the birthing hips to make eight babies, and I spent enough time on the farm back in Texas.”

“Well, your following adores you. You could post about your favorite cereal brand and you’d still get ten thousand likes.”

“Actually,” she says. “I might have a new opportunity. I didn’t want to tell you until it was more concrete, but I’m in the running to host the Australian version of Man of My Dreams .”

“Oh wow,” I say. “That’s fucking amazing. Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye, wrinkling her lips. I realize she’s worried about me.

“I’d be in Melbourne for a couple months,” she says. “And if it works out, they’d potentially consider me for the UK version too.”

“Oh,” I say, realizing the implication. “So you’d be gone a long time.”

“Yeah,” she says. “And I’d really miss you.”

It’s sweet that she cares about me so much she doesn’t want to leave me on my own. But I know what it’s like to have a dream you don’t pursue. I don’t want that for her.

“I’d miss you too,” I tell her. “So much. But you can’t hesitate about big opportunities just because you’re worried about me.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. But like, we’ve been two peas in a pod forever. It would be weird not to be in the same place.”

“You have to go for it, my love,” I say. “You’re meant for big things.”

“You are too,” she says. “I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

“Love you,” I tell her.

“I love you too, Hopie,” she says. “I would hug you if I weren’t buried in twenty pounds of sand.”

The spa ladies come back and exhume us, then lead us to a steam shower where they scour us with sea sponges native to the Caribbean.

We emerge pink and tingly, wrapped in fluffy robes, and are escorted to a room facing the ocean, where we lay on massage tables and have our faces daubed in serums and then wrapped in actual kelp.

“We’re gonna smell like sushi,” Lauren says when the facialists leave us alone to absorb chlorophyll. “And then how will we inveigle our suitors?”

“I thought my suitor was off limits,” I said.

“Changed my mind on that. I’m just being overprotective. Maybe a good ol’ fashioned makeout is just what the doctor ordered.” She pauses. “If you guard your heart .”

“I will,” I promise. “If you swear you’ll stop guarding yours.”