Beach Cute, page 24
Maybe I’m deluding myself.
Jodie said it wasn’t a surprise Liam had cheated. Rory told me I needed to get a grip. Have they been sick of me and my heartache all week but too polite to tell me to shut up about it before tonight? They must have been. Maybe that’s why they’ve been a bit short with me.
Did they complain about me behind my back? Whisper to each other about what a loser I am, like when Jodie wanted to talk to me about Rory on our first night in the villa? They must be by now—they’ve probably stayed at the club to bitch about what a pathetic, sad person I am and laugh at me. They’ll be relieved I’ve gone, like all of my—all of Liam’s—friends.
I feel terrible for all those things I said to them—things I don’t mean at all, not really. I wish I hadn’t been so rash storming off like that, if only to stay and apologize to them and explain it wasn’t about them at all.
I’ve made my world so small, so centered around my relationship with Liam…Is it any wonder I’m so focused on me, me, me? Even at the expense of people I’d come to consider friends?
I accused Jodie of using Gabriel to feel better about herself, that she was lonely and desperate. I called Rory a people pleaser. I said she was a failure.
But I’m the one who’s alone. I’m the one who’s failed.
“You’re a mess, Luna Guinness,” I tell myself, pushing off from the rocks and picking my way back down to the sand. “A mess.”
29 Rory
I’ve got no idea how long I’ve been shut up in this toilet cubicle, but I know it’s getting late. The place is noisier now, the music louder and the bathroom busier. I can see Zoe’s shoes on the other side of the door. The well-meaning, giggly women from the hen do are long gone.
Jodie never came back. I wonder if she had some epic showdown with Gabriel in front of Eduardo and the other arseholes and put him in his place. I would’ve loved to have seen that, but tempting as it had been, it didn’t quite outweigh the crushing humiliation of my fifteen minutes of fame.
Because now not only am I a people pleaser who refuses to live in the real world, I’m also the worst kind of viral sensation and currently the world’s biggest joke.
Which is just great. Totally awesome.
A real fricking blessing.
Ugh. I bury my face in my hands, but it doesn’t block out the memory of that video: me flailing wildly in the water to get out of that costume, the clean rip of my shorts as I lunged out of the pool…It looked every bit as bad as it felt at the time.
All the times this week I had longed for my phone, and now I’m wishing I could have lived in the internet-free bubble of Casa Dorada in blissful ignorance just a little while longer.
I wonder if Nic and Hannah have seen the video. But who am I kidding? Of course they have. People will be retweeting it, DMing it to their friends, posting the link in group chats. There’s probably someone out there who’s dug through my old posts to find everything and anything remotely embarrassing or overtly opinionated to drag out of context and add to the impression that I’m a joke and a loser. Maybe I’ve even been canceled.
Maybe people from the university have seen it. Maybe they’ll rescind their offer because they don’t want some absolute joke associated with them.
I wonder how disappointed my parents are going to be, because they totally will be because this is the kind of thing that sticks to you in the worst way, and, oh God no, they’ll want to know why I was dressed up as a lobster helping out at Kids’ Club while I was on vacation, and I’ll have to tell them everything and fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’m never going to be able to show my face anywhere again.
My life is over.
* * *
—
Eventually, I realize I’m being horrifically selfish. Luna has bailed, Jodie never came back and poor Zoe has not moved from her post outside my cubicle. I’ve got no idea how long it’s been because I don’t have a phone to check the time, but I know it’s been way too long.
Zoe doesn’t want to be spending her night standing in a grimy bathroom, waiting for a relative stranger to get a grip. She wanted a fun, girlie night out and I’ve ruined all that.
Feeling terrible, I haul myself back up, legs aching and arse sore from sitting on the toilet seat for so long, and unlock the door.
Zoe is slouched against the wall, looking bored out of her mind, on her phone. She startles when I step out from the cubicle, and her face creases with so much concern I want to shut myself back inside.
“You all right?”
We both know I’m not. But you don’t say that, so all I do is shrug and say, “Yeah. Course.”
“Do you wanna head off?”
As though I want to stay here and go back to the fun we were supposed to be having.
Zoe looks tired and bored and ten thousand percent done with tonight. Whoops. I owe her big-time. Maybe there’s something in the hotel gift shop I can get her as an “I’m sorry I’m such a hot mess and made you endure a terrible night out” present.
Nothing screams “Thanks, hon, you’re a saint!” like a plastic palm tree magnet, right?
“Can do,” I say. “I don’t mind.”
She nods. “Come on, then. There’s always loads of taxis outside.”
She’s right; we don’t have to wait for very long.
“What was all that drama with your other friend earlier, by the way? Luna? She looked really upset about something. Was she okay?” Zoe asks.
“Oh. You’re gonna laugh, but she thought you were shagging her ex.”
Rather than dwell on the too-true accusations of my own irresponsible, people-pleasing nature or my bucket list that Luna found and snooped at, I tell Zoe about the photograph on Liam’s Instagram and all the wild, far-fetched coincidences like Liam maybe having been at the same hotel as her last summer, Zoe also being from Manchester, and—
“Oh God,” I say, suddenly realizing, “and then in the taxi you were talking about some guy you had a thing with back home who’d just got out of a long-term relationship…No wonder she was so freaked out about it.”
Zoe looks at me with her mouth hanging open for a long moment and then hoots with laughter. “Jeez. Okay. I mean—that makes so much sense. I thought she was being kind of frosty, but, you know, I didn’t want to say anything and make things awkward. That would drive anybody to distraction, wouldn’t it? Gosh. Poor Luna, she must be really hung up on this guy.”
“Yeah,” I say, not mentioning that I can’t see why because Liam doesn’t sound like a very good boyfriend at all. Instead, I double-check: “You’re not dating a guy called Liam, are you?”
“Most definitely not,” Zoe says, laughing again and then leading me to the next free taxi.
As soon as the car pulls off, I ask her, “Can I borrow your phone?”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“You sound like my mum,” I tell her, laughing. It sounds loud and fake. I cringe.
Zoe tries to smile, and although it looks more like she’s just baring her teeth at me, she unlocks her phone and passes it to me anyway.
I search “lobster fail” on TikTok—the one I saw earlier is up to eight hundred thousand views already, and the number makes me feel so queasy, I click off it quickly. I type “lobster fail” into Google, where one of the first results is the BuzzFeed article the hen party mentioned. The writer found out who I am through the Instagram video that tagged me—they’re nice about my photos, even mentioning my “career as an artist” (which is laughable only for its nonexistence), and are ruthless in the way they dissect the “best” (worst) moments of the video. But BuzzFeed has at least been kind enough to link my Etsy store. Maybe I’ll get a pity sale or two out of it.
I look for Instagram, but the familiar tile is nowhere to be seen, and Zoe’s apps are sprawled with no apparent order across the pages rather than filed neatly. It takes me a couple of good looks before I ask her, “Where’s Instagram?”
“Oh!” She blinks at me. “I don’t have it.”
“You don’t have Instagram?”
“Nah. I just never got into it. If I like a photo so much I want to share it with my friends, I’ll just send it to my friends. I don’t get the whole culture of it. I only have TikTok because my friends basically bullied me into it. I don’t use it unless they send me something on there, though.”
As she’s talking, I look at her phone again. Now she mentions it, Instagram, Messenger, even Snapchat or Twitter—I don’t see any of them.
“You don’t use any social media?”
“What’s the point of it?”
“Well—to—because—it’s…” I trail off. I can’t even form a sentence because I can’t get my head around it. The uneasiness of #LobsterFail is totally gone from my mind now, because all I can think about is how this girl doesn’t have social media.
Who doesn’t have social media?
It’s, like…like…well, it’s just weird. Everyone has it.
And what does she mean, what’s the point?
“Isn’t it in the name? It’s social media; it’s to be social. To connect with people,” I say.
“Sure, but the people I want to connect with, I talk to. I don’t get the point of sharing selfies with total strangers or posting a hundred and forty characters about some joke you’ll forget about in an hour anyway.”
“Its two hundred and eighty now.”
“Is it? Since when?”
“I don’t know. Ages.”
“Hmm. Well. Yeah, I just…don’t get it. Like, why do I want to share that stuff with strangers? What do you get out of it? If you need that much validation from people who know nothing about you…” She bites her lip, cutting herself off. “I mean…”
“But they do know you,” I say. “They get to know your personality, the essence of who you are. And sure, they don’t know where you went to school or if you got good grades or if you have brussels sprouts at your Christmas dinner, but you form a real bond with some of these people. You feel like you know each other in a way that really connects you, you know?”
“So you’re telling me that if you post a joke on Twitter, you don’t want it to go viral?” she asks.
“Everyone wants to go viral,” I say, snorting.
And then I remember the phone in my hand and the fact that, according to the BuzzFeed article, I am now a trending topic on Twitter.
“For the right reasons,” I add. “For making a funny joke or an insightful comment or taking a good photograph or creating something people enjoy.”
“Not for being pushed into a swimming pool by a little kid and ripping your shorts.”
I pass the phone back, groaning and smacking my head against the headrest. “Not for that, no.”
“It’ll die down, though. People forget these things.”
“Not all of them. People remember Grumpy Cat, Kombucha Girl, Blinking White Guy, Salt Bae, the Corn Kid, ‘Chrissy, Wake Up’…Some of them stick around.”
Zoe gives me a sympathetic smile. “Well, hey, look, it’s not all bad. If you wanted to sue, you’ve got great evidence now. I mean, sure, I bet Esteban will say it was photoshopped, but…”
She catches my eye, her expression so deadpan that, despite the knots in my stomach over the whole thing, I start giggling, and we both dissolve into fits of laughter, doing our best and most exaggerated impressions of Esteban the rest of the ride to the resort.
30 Jodie
Gabriel and I walk to the end of the strip, away from the stream of taxis zipping by and the throngs of people moving from one restaurant, bar or club to another. Away from the rush of the crowd and the pressure of his friends, my confidence in getting through this with my heart in one piece falters.
“Listen,” I say, holding both hands up, palms out, in front of me, “whatever you’ve got to say for yourself, save it. Rory overheard everything you said to those guys in the staff room, and it’s—”
It’s not “fine.” It hurts too much to be fine.
“It is what it is,” I settle for saying. “I mean, we both knew this wasn’t going to go anywhere. That it couldn’t. I won’t hold it against you. Let’s just—forget all this ever happened, okay? I think…I think that’s best.”
“No,” he says.
I blink, pulling away to look at him better. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that.
He holds my gaze steadily, his expression serious. “No. I don’t want to forget this—you—happened,” Gabriel tells me, and some of my waning resistance turns warm and gooey, because it sounds like something straight out of a movie.
“Those things I said—”
“What, you weren’t talking about me? You didn’t mean it?” I retort, relieved that there’s a bite to my voice. Stand your ground, Jodie, come on.
He bows his head slightly, shoulders slumping. “No, no. I said them, but…”
“But what? I’m supposed to believe that you realize the error of your ways and you’re a changed man in all of, what, less than a day? Do you just wait around for lonely, pathetic girls like me to throw themselves at you so you can laugh about it with your friends?”
“That’s not what it is.”
I scoff, feeling like an idiot. “You’re just sorry you got caught and want to clear your conscience.”
Even if he does have a good excuse lined up, or suddenly declares what a fool he was because he’s fallen madly in love with me, what am I going to do, exactly? Swoon into his waiting arms and kiss him and tell him all is forgiven so we can ride off into the sunset for our happily ever after? A few days ago, this was something exciting and tempting and fun, but now it’s been tainted by the things he said—whether he meant them or not.
The confidence and dizzying desire that drove me even until earlier this afternoon is a distant memory. I don’t think I could claw it back even if I wanted to. Now I feel every inch the lonely, desperate girl he and Luna accused me of being.
“Jodie, please. Escúchame. The people I said those things to…It isn’t an excuse, but they were goading me. Egging me on, I think you say.”
“That’s supposed to make it better?”
Gabriel lets out an agitated sigh, but it seems directed more at himself than at me. He scrubs a hand over his face, and I try hard not to think about how endearing he looks right now.
“It doesn’t. And I know that an apology won’t make up for the fact you are upset with me. I am not trying to explain myself so you will sleep with me or anything else, but I don’t like to think that I have hurt you. Those guys—they bring out a side of me I don’t like. More the person that I used to be. I want to think I have grown up a bit from that cábron I was in school. It’s not someone I want to be anymore, but”—a faint, wry smile tugs at his perfect mouth, a look so vulnerable that it makes my heart give a little jolt—“I said those things, yes, but more out of a…sort of self-preservation. I did not believe them. Does that make sense?”
“Self-preservation?” I ask.
“Because I like you.”
I frown, searching his face. He looks so completely sincere, and I believe him, but—“What’s that got to do with it?”
He lets out a brief bark of laughter and runs his hands raggedly through his hair. “Everything! Because I believed that you were the kind of girl who could mean something to me, I felt that spark, and you were not looking for anything more than un ligue. A hookup, ¿sabes?”
“I was—I—what on earth gave you that idea?”
“You said that was what you wanted,” he exclaims, his brow creasing. Some of his hair falls over his forehead, but he doesn’t brush it away. “You were the one who told me first that you only wanted to enjoy yourself while you were here.”
“I didn’t—”
I did say that. I deserve to have some fun. Let loose. But I’d been so drawn to Gabriel, even beyond his good looks and that smile, enraptured by every story he told me and each piece of himself he revealed, giddy with how easy it had been to open up to him in return…
“Well, I only said that because you made it sound like you were only after something short term! You were talking about passions and wanting to try everything, and—”
“I was talking about my job!” he says, a laugh in his voice. His frown creases into disbelief, eyebrows twisted upward and mouth wide as he shakes his head toward the heavens. “Food! Travel! Not women.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“How was I supposed to know you didn’t mean what you said?” Gabriel retorts. “You were quite clear that you only wanted something short-term, and I thought I would rather know you a little while than not at all, even if you were not looking for something more.”
“I didn’t know I was looking for something more,” I confess, the words tumbling out of me, quiet and soft and scared, and it’s only after I say them out loud that I dare to look at him again, heart thundering in my chest.
I didn’t know I was so scared of losing that chance at something more until Rory told me what she’d overheard. Gabriel isn’t just the first guy I’ve let myself show interest in for a long time—he’s the first guy I’ve wanted to make an effort with or open up to. And he’s right: I felt that spark, too.
“And now?” he asks softly.
I take a small step nearer. “I think I’d like to find out.”
Gabriel’s handsome face softens, his eyes searching mine, and something warm and hopeful blooms in my chest as we move toward each other. Gabriel wraps me in his arms as mine slide around his back, my face pressing into his shoulder. A breath shudders out of me, taking with it a lifetime of tension from feeling overlooked and ordinary. He brushes a kiss on my cheek and murmurs something softly, sweetly in Spanish to me.
