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…and THAT’S when panic set in…
My eyes popped open to the sound of my cellphone ringing beside my head. The sunlight streaming in through my hotel window told me I’d slept in. I glanced at the time. It was a quarter to ten.
Yikes! Kai was probably already on his way to meet me for another day of fun in the sun. I couldn't resist the goofy grin that spread across my lips when I remembered the way we had said our goodbyes last night after our sunset swim and dinner.
Let's just say, lips were involved, but we weren't using them for talking.
The phone kept ringing, slapping me in the face with reality as the rest of my antics from the night before came rushing back to me.
After Kai had dropped me off at my hotel, I’d decided I couldn’t wait another minute to set Chuck straight. I’d called him and left a middle-of-the-night voicemail that would live in infamy.
It was either the bravest or the most boneheaded thing I’d ever done. I hadn’t been able to decide which. And that was why I’d texted my best friend soon after
The million-dollar question was who was returning my call? My boss or my friend.
I hesitated for half a moment before picking up the phone. I gulped and forced myself to look at the screen. The nerves twisting my gut into a knot eased off a bit when I saw my best friend's smiling face on the caller ID.
I hopped out of bed and answered the phone, putting it on speaker. "Hey, Allie—"
"Are you hurt? Were you kidnapped? Are you alive?"
I laughed as I tossed the phone on my bed and pulled an outfit from the chest of drawers. "No, no, and yes, Allie. I'm still alive. Relax."
"People who send S.O.S. texts in the middle of the night don't get to tell their friends to relax. Do you know what it's like to take your phone off the charger and have a text like that waiting for you with zero explanation?"
"I'm sorry, but I panicked last night."
"What happened?"
I took a deep breath, facing the grim reality of what I'd done after saying goodnight to Kai. "I called my boss."
"Um, you're gonna have to give me more than that, Beth. I talk to my boss almost every day and it doesn't make me send cryptically terrifying text messages to my best friend."
I groaned when I thought of the scathing voicemail I'd left for Mr. Peters. The afterglow of the evening I’d shared with Kai had made me as bold as a lioness and as fierce as a woman protecting her chocolate stash. But once the adrenaline had worn off a little, I started to question the mildly aggressive course of action I’d chosen. “This wasn't a usual phone call. It was a little one-sided."
"Did he yell at you?" I could hear Allie's hackles rising, if we were facetiming, I'm sure I'd have seen her cheeks flush and her nostrils flare. I could always count on her to have my back. I smiled despite my desperate need to go and bury my head in some of the fine Hawaiian sand outside.
"No, he didn’t yell at me. I did all the talking." A long silence followed as I remembered the string of half-baked words I'd spewed into Mr. Peters's voicemail inbox.
"Wow, I can see how that could really be traumatic." Allie's voice was flat and held a hint of sarcasm. "I think I need the whole story from the beginning because right now I don't know who to be mad at, you or your boss."
I sighed. I was going to have to have this conversation with Kai in just a little bit, and I wasn't sure I wanted a rehearsal run. "I drunk-dialed him, Allie. I drunk-dialed my boss."
Allie gasped into the phone. "Drunk? Elizabeth Renee Ferguson, what would your mother say?"
"No, not like that. I hadn't actually been drinking." I paused a moment. There was no point in holding back. Allie would drag the whole truth out of me one way or another. She always did. It was best to fess up right from the beginning with her. "I was drunk on love."
I wanted to blame Kai and all his amazingness for my lack of judgement on the phone, but I couldn't. This whole situation was a mess of my own making. "But that's almost worse than actually being drunk because I have a perfect memory of everything I said to Mr. Peters."
"Hold the phone!" Allie shouted. "Love? Did you say you were drunk on love? Rewind. Let's put this voicemail to Peters on pause for a minute. Are you telling me, you've only been gone a few days and you're already in love? Can you box up some of that Hawaiian magic and send it my way?"
I laughed away some of the tension that was mounting inside me. "Well, I knew him before I came to Hawaii."
"Oh, really? Don't stop now." I couldn't get this story out fast enough for Allie's taste.
"It's Kai." She must have heard me sigh after I said his name because all I heard were squeals, whooping, and hollering on the other end of the line.
"You mean Mr. Hottie McDimples from the bus? That hunky Hawaiian dreamboat is in Oahu? And you're in love?"
