But still, I did not need to see them in bed with rumpled satin sheets, empty take-out containers, and other signs that they’ve been playing musical chairs with every horizontal and vertical surface at her father’s Tower of Reeds luxury hotel.
“We’re having the time of our lives,” Jordan says, looping his arm around my shoulders and reminding me I’m supposed to pretend I’m over Stephen and my busted wedding.
“Oh, yes, we are!” I suddenly chirp. “Have you ever had sex inside a lava tube?”
Jordan makes a choked sound while both Aiden and Jade’s narrow eyes widen.
“Have you ever gone pearl diving with a Navy SEAL?” Jade resorts to one-upping me.
“Have you ever been bundled inside the cape of a Nordic god and his mistletoe spear?”
“Have you ever…”
Aiden cuts Jade off by planting his lips over her rosebud mouth and at the same time, Jordan says, “Merry Christmas” and ends the call.
I sit for a moment to catch my breath before noticing the other denizens of the Internet, poke, and shaved ice café are staring at us. One or two of them have their cell phones pointed our direction.
“There you two are,” one of the fortieth-reunion folk shouts at us as she struts toward us, flouncing her red and black handkerchief skirt. It’s Joy, the perpetual cheerleader with the eternally happy face.
Her friend, Sheri, a tall, elegant and svelte woman who is all linear lines, glides like a fashion model down a catwalk with one hand on her hip. “The newlyweds have landed.”
“You seriously did it in the lava tube?” Joy asks. “Weren’t you afraid of pissing off the gods?”
“I wouldn’t have brought a handsome guy like that into Pele’s territory,” Sheri adds. “You do know who Pele is, don’t you?”
Of course, everyone knows Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanos. They announced it this morning when we were disembarking and warned us not to take any of her lava rocks home—else we’d be cursed.
“You know all those volcanic eruptions going on?” Joy adds, wagging her finger. “It’s Pele staking her claim.”
“All handsome and hot young men belong to her,” Sheri intones in the voice of a fortune teller.
“You’re lucky she didn’t send rivers of lava through the tubes and trap that hunky husband of yours for herself,” Joy says, clamping a hand on Jordan’s shoulder.
Sheri, meanwhile, wiggles her slender body in front of Jordan, doing hand motions like an Egyptian goddess. “Yum, yum, yum. Let me be your Pele tonight.”
“No, no, no!” Joy chants with a tone of warning. “How dare you desecrate Pele’s holy lava tubes with your dirty thoughts? She, only, deserves the life force and essence of all the handsome young men to approach her dominion. Beware her anger. Lava flows and the earth quakes. She will explode in fire and fury, shooting streams of molten fire and lava rocks into the sky. She will seethe and boil, huffing plumes of noxious gasses, geysers of flaming rock, searing mists of fumes, of acid, ground glass, and steam, and prickly spikes and shards called Pele’s hair to pierce your feet and cloud your lungs.”
“You must offer her the very best of men, the youngest, most virile of all,” Sheri adds, still waving her arms like a cross between the Supremes and a snake charmer. “You must defer to her majesty, cater to her urges, bow yourself to her desires, and give her your Lava Man as an offering.”
“You say the best and most virile?” I raise a skeptical eyebrow at Joy and Sheri. “In that case, Jordan’s safe. I’m sure Pele has a huge appetite.”
The two half-century ingenues giggle and roll their eyes at my miserable man with the blue devil balls.
Jordan takes an exaggerated look at his watch and yelps, “We’d better get back to the ship before it leaves port.”
We walk by a man wearing a hoodie with a video camera pointed at us. Why are people so nosy these days? Cell phone cameras have turned ordinary papas into paparazzi.
Now, the whole world is going to think I had lava tube sex. But then again, maybe it’s not such a bad thing. I might be in a viral video.
I mention it to Jordan, and he sniffs dismissively. “Only newbs get excited about stupid stuff like viral videos. Who the eff cares?”
I feel like kicking myself. How is it one Jordan Reed can make me feel so inferior?
“Don’t you hate it that people can invade our privacy by taping our private conversations?” I retort to regain some of my lost sophistication.
He takes my hand and stares into my eyes. “You care too much what others think. No more internet cafés for the rest of the cruise. Stick with me, and you’ll be a changed woman when we disembark.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise, among other things.”
“What comes next?” I ask, reminding him of his other promise.
“We come next.” He says it so seriously, there’s no room to turn it into sexual innuendo.
But I’ll try anyway.
“We might, but not together.”
