CHAPTER 1
SOL
It’shard to feel like a whole new woman when you’re sweating through your aesthetic bikini and everyone around you is happy, drunk, and/or in love.
Somewhere between the fourth round of poolside mojitos and the third retelling of Josefina’s engagement story, I start to disassociate and think about the Dominican sun.
How it hits full force before eight in the morning, sharp and golden, warming up tile and skin and pool loungers. There’s no breeze, only the faint sound of Christmas music playing through hidden speakers and the noise of the resort guests all around us, each in their own little blissed out bubble celebrating the holiday.
My legs are sweating against the lounger, but I don’t move. Moving would require caring, and I’m not sure I’ve got that in me today.
“Sol,¿querés algo?” Mariana calls from the swim-up bar. She’s already waist-deep in the water, her long hair braided down her back, and holding up two fingers to the bartender to grab his attention.
I shake my head and lift my water bottle.
She squints at me, unimpressed. “You’re on vacation. You could try looking like it.”
“I’m drinking,” I say, lifting the bottle like toast. “Hydration is trending right now.”
She waves me off and turns back to her order. Another round of mojitos, probably. It’s barely noon, and no one seems to have any food in their systems, but the drinks are included in our resort fee so might as well take advantage of that.
Behind me, my friends Isabel and Florencia are arguing over whether the hotel gym has yoga mats, and Juana is filming herself doing a walk-through of the pool area for her social media. She keeps stopping mid-sentence to adjust the brightness or the angle or her hair, then starts over like she’s hosting a travel show. It’s entertaining and she has many, many eyes on her, making her bask in the attention, especially of the male variety.
I reach for my sunglasses and slide them back on.
Everything here is too loud—the colors, the music, the voices. And if you let yourself get swept away, there’s no space for you to think about anything but the food, the drinks, the pool, and the beach. Everyone around me knows their role: carefree, slightly sunburned, smiling with teeth.
And then there’s me.
It’s not that I’m not grateful. I am. This trip was a gift—literally. The girls all chipped in a little to cover part of my hotel stay after my divorce was finalized, calling it a “post-marriage cleanse.” A girls’ trip-slash-bachelorette combo, celebrating the end of my marriage and Mariana and Josefina’s impending nuptials. My only job was to show up and try to have fun.
I did the showing up part.
The fun part… well.
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that hits when you’re the only one at the bachelorette who isn’t married, engaged, or emotionally fluent in dating app lingo.
I lean back against the lounger and close my eyes, letting the chatter around me melt into background noise. My body’s here, but my mind still hasn’t caught up. It’s been three months since the divorce and almost a year since we separated, but somehow my brain keeps glitching, like it can’t quite update my status. I’ll catch myself reaching for a ring that isn’t there, or thinking I need to check in with someone who doesn’t exist in my life anymore.
Seven years of marriage don’t simply vanish just because you sign a stack of papers at a sterile office and pay an attorney too much money.
I feel the edge of that familiar tightness in my chest—the one that curls in when I’m tired or alone or asked too many questions. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. I’ve gotten good at managing it and smoothing it over until it passes. But I haven’t figured out a way to fix it just yet.
A loud splash startles me. Josefina cannonballs into the deep end and is now shrieking at Lola to join her. I hear someone say, “I can’t get my hair wet, are you insane?” and the chaos crescendos again.
I open my eyes and sit up.
“Going to the beach,” I call out, even though no one’s really listening. Mariana waves without looking, and that’s good enough for me.
By five o’clock, the light shifts and the sun finally starts to set. The breeze is now blowing a little faster and a little cooler,making the palm fronds move overhead as I head back to the room. The girls texted earlier that they were heading back to take a nap and get ready, but I lounged by the ocean for a while longer, just enjoying the uninterrupted quiet before the chaos of the last night together starts slowly building up.
The room smells suspiciously like a mix of coconut and stale beer.
There’s one curling iron plugged in on the dresser, and I hear the sound of a hairdryer coming from the closed bathroom. Josefina is sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, painting her nails a blinding neon orange.
“We’re switching to tequila tonight,” Mariana says from the other room. The connecting doors have been propped open since the first day, and we’ve been using both rooms like a giant apartment. It’s probably bigger than my apartment back in New York City, the one I found after I separated and had to start living a very different life than what I was used to. “No more of that water shit, Sol. You need to let loose a little.”
“I’m loose.”
