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“She still managed to organize it all,” I say. “If it was up to Dane, they’d be staying at the Doubletree in Mankato this week.”
“You realize you’re just arguing with me for the sake of arguing, right? I already told you you could have the room.”
I point at him. “What you’re doing right now isn’t arguing?”
He sighs like I am the most irritating person alive. “Take the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the couch.” He gazes at it. It looks plush and nice, sure, but it is still a couch and we’re here for ten nights. “I’ll be fine,” he adds with a hefty spoonful of martyrdom thrown in.
“Okay, if you’re going to act like I’m beholden to you, then I don’t want it.”
He exhales slowly, and then walks over to his suitcase, lifting it and carrying it to the bedroom.
“Wait!” I call. “I take that back. I do want the bedroom.”
Ethan stops without turning to look at me. “I’m just going to put some things in the drawers so I’m not living out of my suitcase in the living room for ten days.” He glances at me over his shoulder. “I presume that’s okay?”
He is so carefully balancing being generous with being passive-aggressive that I am all mixed up about how big an asshole he really is. It makes it impossible to measure out the correct dose of snark.
“It’s fine,” I say, and add magnanimously, “take all the dresser space you want.”
I hear his bemused snort as he disappears from view.
The bottom line is that we don’t get along. But the other bottom line is that we don’t really need to! Hope fills me like helium. Ethan and I can move around each other without having to interact, and do whatever we like to make this our individual dream vacations.
For me, this slice of heaven will include the spa, zip-lining, snorkeling, and every manner of adventure I can find—including adventures of the alcoholic variety. If Ethan’s idea of a perfect vacation is brooding, complaining, and sighing exasperatedly, he can surely do that anywhere he wants, but I don’t have to endure it.
I quickly check my email and see a new one from Hamilton. The offer is . . . well, suffice it to say I don’t need to look through anything else to know I’ll take it. They could tell me my desk was perched on the lip of a volcano, and I would accept in a heartbeat for this kind of money.
Pulling out my iPad, I digitally sign everything and send it off.
Practically vibrating, I thumb through the list of hotel activities and decide that the first order of business is a celebratory facial and body scrub down at the spa. Solo. I don’t think Ethan is much of a pampering type, but the worst thing would be to have him lift a cooling cucumber slice off my eyelid and glare down at me while I’m lounging in a robe.
“Ethan,” I call, “what are you up to this afternoon?”
In the answering silence, I sense his panic that I might be requesting his company.
“I’m not asking because I want to hang,” I add quickly.
He hesitates again, and when he finally answers, his voice comes out tinny, like he’s actually climbed into the closet. “Thank God.”
Well. “I’m probably going to head down to the spa.”
“Do whatever you want. Just don’t use all the massage credits,” he tacks on.
I scowl, even though he can’t see me. “How many times do you think I’m going to get rubbed down in a single afternoon?”
“I’d rather not contemplate.”
I flip the bird in his general direction, consult the directory to confirm that the spa has showers I can use, grab my key card, and leave Ethan to his surly unpacking.
• • •
GUILT EDGES IN A TINY bit when I am being pampered and indulged for nearly three hours using Ami’s name. My face is exfoliated, massaged, and moisturized. My body is covered in clay, scrubbed until I’m red and tingly all over, and then covered with warm eucalyptus towels.
I make a silent promise to put aside money from each paycheck for a while so that I can send my sister to a lavish spa back home when she no longer feels “like a freshly reanimated corpse.” It may not be Maui, but any little bit I can pay her back for th
is, I’m committed to do. All I have to do this entire week is tip the staff; it seems so preposterous. This type of blissful, transcendent spa experience isn’t for me. I’m the one who gets a fungal infection from a pedicure in the Cities and a bikini wax burn at a spa in Duluth.
Limp as a jellyfish all over and drunk on endorphins, I look up at my therapist. “That was . . . amazing. If I ever win the lottery, I’m going to move here and pay you to do that every day.”
