Page 40 of Total Dreamboat

Hope

I decide I’m glad Felix doesn’t want to explore the water park with me. He seems pensive, and I don’t want to live out my childhood fantasy in the shadow of someone else’s bad mood.

Besides, I could use some time to process his apology.

Water slides bring out my claustrophobia, so I forgo them in favor of floating on the “rapids river,” a mile-long loop through the park the brochure says is filled with steep drops and sudden wave surges.

I assume its thrills will be on the mild side, given that it’s full of children, but a section of “white water rapids” topples me over, and a group of little boys laugh at me as I go chasing after my inner tube.

I decide to leave the rides to the one million families milling around. I treat myself to a frozen lemonade and grab a spot by a lake-sized pool under an enormous fake Mayan temple.

The problem with lying by a pool when you have neither a smartphone or a book is that it’s inherently boring, and you start obsessing over the boy back in your hotel room.

I need to get this out of my system.

I text Lauren.

Hope: I made it to the hotel.

Hope: It’s everything.

Lauren:! !!!

Lauren: Send pics!!

Lauren: Oh wait, you don’t have data

Lauren: Did you escape Felix?

Hope: Uh, so… no.

Lauren: What?!

Hope: He apologized this morning.

Hope: Out of the blue.

Hope: He said he now sees that your persona is a joke and he overreacted.

Lauren: Pretty shitty apology.

Hope: He also said he took it so hard bc he’d been falling for me.

Lauren: Hmmm.

Lauren: Not sure what to think about that.

Hope: Me neither, tbh.

Hope: I’m less mad but more sad? Cuz I really liked him, and if he also felt so much, maybe it could have been something real.

Lauren: Are you trying to make me give you a lecture?

Hope: I’m not saying I’m going to give him another chance.

Hope: And anyway he didn’t ask for one.

Hope: But it does make me sad.

Lauren: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE SAD AT ATLANTIS.

Hope: Ha ha.

Hope: You’re right. I need to go find the aquarium. I fucking love aquariums.

Lauren: IKR? They’re like snorkeling except nothing can bite you.

Hope: What’s happening on the boat?

Lauren: I’ve been hanging with Colin mainly.

Lauren: I told him about my hustle and he thinks it’s hilarious and wants to play a character who sweeps me off my feet. He keeps begging me to put him in TikToks.

Hope: Cute!

Lauren: Oh, and I ran into Gabe. He knows about you getting stranded. One of Felix’s sisters told him.

Lauren: He offered to get off the boat and go rescue you and I might have said you were happily ensconced in Felix’s arms just to make him jealous.

Hope: Good. He deserves it.

Lauren: Going for a walk into town with Colin now.

Hope: K have fun!

These updates make me happy. I have a good feeling about Colin and Lauren. And I do not mind the idea of Gabe sulking around imagining me in paradise bliss with a lover.

It’s hot, so I take a dip in the pool, and then dry off and wander to The Dig, an aquarium modeled on the ruins of the lost city of Atlantis.

There are endless chambers spanning an entire floor of the hotel.

I’m struck by a tank holding an eight-hundred-pound goliath grouper that will surely give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

The moray eels don’t help. But then I wander through alleys filled with moon jellyfish, a coral reef exhibit bursting with gorgeous colors, and a huge population of bright orange clownfish.

We saw clownfish the day I spent snorkeling with Felix, when he laughed at me for dissecting their social patterns, and then made fun of me for running away from a sting ray. It was such good, clean fun. My cheek muscles were tired from smiling by the time we got back to the boat.

I still love that day. Because I haven’t laughed that much with someone besides Lauren in years. I haven’t felt so much lightness since my breakup. And really, it wasn’t just that day. It was the whole week we spent together.

That week was good . It was good for me.

It got me out of my head. It made me see my ex more clearly for the asshole he is. It returned me to the world of orgasms.

It made me see myself as Felix saw me: amusing and clever and silly and sexy.

The kind of girl you could fall for without meaning to.

The kind of girl who might just have been falling back.

Even if Felix and I fell apart just as spectacularly as we came together, we gave each other something of value. Maybe I needed him to remind myself who I could be—no, who I am —when I let myself live in the moment. When I stop giving myself shit for not being enough.

I make a decision: I’m going to let it all go. I’m going to try to spend this next day or so with Felix as friends. Because while he is not a perfect person, and he made a big, hurtful mistake, I’m still very happy I met him.

He gave me that thing I was looking for when I left New York: optimism.

I came on this trip to wake up, to feel alive.

And I do.

I finally do.

And so much of that is because I met him.