Catalina moved away from the wall, letting her gaze crawl upward, as if the answer to everything would at some point reveal itself. And it did…kind of. Because what she saw—it didn't make much sense, and she wasn’t sure if she could trust it. She traveled further back until the object became clearer. It was a large oval-shaped banner readingWhat Happens in Cancun, Stays in Cancun, and, like the smaller sticker she’d noticed earlier, it was burnt orange around the edges with turquoise blue waves and a bright yellow surfboard. It also appeared more permanent than a typical banner, seemingly adhered to a much higher portion of the wall. She supposed it could have been a giant vinyl someone had professionally made to decorate this one auditorium, but why would a nice resort get such a tacky, touristy sentiment attached to their walls? Their older room decor aside, the rest of the resort was more elegant and modern in style.
“Where the hell are the doors?”
It wasn’t until Trey asked the question that sherealized he was correct. Doors weren't the only thing missing. There were no windows or any other means of escape…although one side of the wall didn’t go all the way to the floor, and she could probably slide under it without much effort. Knowing she wasn’t completely trapped kept her somewhat calm, but not by much. Cat dropped her bag on the ground, going to the wall and bending to look through the gap. On the other side of their current room, there were chrome pillars in the distance, some of them at odd slanted angles like a futuristic architecture installation. The ground was even more bizarre, a tanned, expansive landscape of fluffy humps like a million small haystacks, which would have led her to believe the area was outside except for the fact everything had a synthetic appearance about it.
What kind of fun house area of the resort did they transport to? None of this made any sense.
Where the hell were they? Was this a dream? A nightmare?
Pushing her head under the wall gap even more, she rotated it, looking upward, hoping to see something familiar or some kind of clue to explain their situation. The ceiling was incredibly high again. The expansiveness of the space was almost suffocating. There was an anxiety building inside her gut.
“Cat? What is it? What did you see?”
She pulled back to face him, unsure of how to react. The explanation forming in her head didn’t make any sense. Cat got to her feet and pointed toward theWhat Happens in Cancunbanner again. “See thatup there?” she said to Trey, picking up her bag and slinging it onto her left shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“That was a small sticker on the wall inside of that weird booth we went into.”
“Okay. And?”
“And now it’s huge. I mean…this is going to sound strange, but…what if we…” The thought was so silly Cat couldn’t bring herself to finish it, hoping he’d come to the conclusion on his own.
Trey considered her partial sentence for a moment while studying the Cancun banner before seeming to give up on the clues. “We…transported into some alternate multiverse reality?”
Okay, well, he didn’t seem to mind suggesting his own wild theories. Perhaps she shouldn’t care about doing the same. Trey never treated any of her ideas badly. In fact, quite the opposite. It was one of the things she’d always liked about him.
“Yeah, I guess that’s also possible, but what if we…” She did not want to say it, but she had to. The question spilled from her lips in a rapid-fire burst. “Whatifweshrunk?”
Trey stopped, staring at her intently. “What if we what? Shrunk? What do you mean?”
“I mean, actually shrunk, like now we’re smaller, a lot smaller. Tiny.” Catalina brought her pointer finger and thumb together to emphasize the minuscule size in her mind.
Trey tilted his head as he considered this. “How tiny?”
She threw up an arm in frustration. “How would I know? But something happened, something strange. You didn’t feel that weird tingling sensation all over your body when we kissed?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“But what?” she asked when it didn’t appear as if he was going to finish his sentence.
Trey ducked his head, appearing almost bashful as he rubbed along his neck. “I always feel that way when I kiss you.”
This stopped her. “You do?”
“You don’t?”
“I—You know what? I don’t want to talk about this right now because we clearly have bigger problems, literally, and—What in thehellare you doing?”
Trey had the front waistband of his shorts pulled away, lifting his T-shirt upward, revealing his flat stomach underneath. He peered intently into the depths of his shorts, his expression dead serious. “You’re describing a major body-changing event, and you think I’m not going to check to make sure my dick is okay?” He said this as if it was the most normal reaction in the world.
Cat’s brain mentally tapped its foot. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
She blew out an impatient breath, waiting for his moment of crisis to be over so they could move on to the real problem. “Is your dick okay? Let’s have at least one bit of good news in this potentially catastrophic situation.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s okay. In fact, it could be morethan okay. I don’t know if your theory is right because I think my dick might actually be a little bigger than before. Maybe we didn’t shrink, and we actually grew.”
