Page 53 of Cabin Fever

“Ew,” Marisol shakes her head. “Give me blood and guts any day.” Marisol’s an ER charge nurse, and from the few stories she told over the weekend, she sounds like a pretty good one.

When they pop up to get pool snacks, Dahlia turns to me. “You like my friends now?”

I laugh. “What?”

Dahlia lowers her glasses on her nose.

“Hey, I’ve always liked your friends. But . . . maybe I like them a little more when they’re not hitting on Finn.”

She smirks. “They’re still going to hit on him.”

“Feels different.”

Dahlia takes a long drink of her piña colada. “This might be something you need to unpack in therapy.”

“I don’t know. Feels pretty healthy that I hate-crush on other women when I’m not getting what I want.”

Dahlia snorts, then straightens in her chair as Theo arrives with a plate of fries. “Thank you, babe.”

Theo drops onto his chair. “We need to eat five meals a day so we can eat less when we get home.”

“Wait, didn’t you already get married? You can get fat now,” I tease.

Theo actually smiles at the joke. “More like, I need to be less poor.”

Dahlia doesn’t even blink. “We're building the comeback plan. Theo made a spreadsheet. I wondered if you’d want to contribute to the color coding?”

My eyes light up. “Yes, please.”

Dahlia grins. “Harder to be depressed about a consolidation loan when it’s ‘raspberry sorbet.’”

“My entire life strategy in a nutshell.”

“June was the worst month,” Theo says.

Dahlia sighs. “And it makes so much more sense why you weren’t sleeping.”

“July was better?” I ask.

Theo nods. “But really only because of Finn.”

I frown. “How so?”

Theo exhales. “I called him, not to ask, I swear. Just to talk. He asked how much I needed, and I told him.”

Dahlia’s eyes are wide. “That was the loan?”

Theo nodded. “He’s never mentioned it, but I’m going to pay him back.”

Across the deck, the man in question appears in his swim trunks and T-shirt. He fills up a cup with water and ice, then heads our direction. Priya catches him first and drops a straw into his drink.

Finn hugs Theo, then settles onto my lounger and examines the favor at length. “The craftsmanship is actually not bad.” He takes a sip through it, and I just can’t.

“But the cantilever,” I say, and he laughs.

“Again, I'm amazed it's load-bearing.”

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