He sighed. “Clara. This is insane. You’re in deep trouble when you get home, you realize this, right? Like, this iswayworse than the fight with Rose. You’re going to have to work on the truck your entire senior year to make it up to me.”
The mosquito net got caught in my hair as I paced in my room, and I tried to pull it out with one hand. “I know. And I’ll pay you back for this ticket. And everything else. But, I just…” With a quick yank, my hair was released. I straightened out. “I needed to see Mãe.”
“You needed to see Mãe, or get away from us?”
He didn’t have to clarify who “us” was. Hamlet’s and Rose’s unread texts practically weighed my hand down. I didn’t answer, and when enough seconds had passed, my dad changedthe subject. “Well, Shorty, how are you? How was the flight? How’sTulum?” The last word dripped with a faux frou-frou accent.
I sat down on the bed, my back against the fluffy pillows. “The flight was fine. I watched three movies.”
“Whoa, which ones? Wait, let me guess. The new Marvel thing, the new Pixar thing, and a documentary about the financial crisis of 2007.”
“Are youpsychic?!”
We both laughed, then an awkward silence settled between us. “So, how’s your mom?” he asked.
I stared at a large spider that was making its way across the wall next to the window. “She’s good!” Could he hear the effort it took for me to be chipper? “And this hotel is,as you would say,the bomb. My villa is on the beach.”
“Yourvilla?”
“Yeah, I get my own. Isn’t that cool?”
The judgy pause on the other end made it clear thatno, it was not cool. But he replied with, “Yeah! So what have you guys got planned?”
I turned on the ceiling fan when I realized how hot and sticky I was. “Well, I just got here, so not sure. There’s a party tonight or something, so we’re going to that.”
“Aparty?”
“Pai. Calm down. It’s one of the events for this retreat thing.”
“Oh. So she told you about that?”
My dad’s relief didn’t go unnoticed. “You knew about it?”
I felt his shrug over the phone. “Yeah. Jules told me about it a while back.”Jules.It was moments like this that reminded me that my parents had actually known each other at one point in their lives. Really well.
“Wait,” he said. “Didyouknow?”
Ugh. When you were a kid with parents who were divorced or separated or whatever it was my parents were, you were stuck in this annoying diplomatic purgatory—always wondering if you were saying something to get the other parent in trouble. “Yeah, I knew,” I lied again.
“I’m surprised you were still hell-bent on going, then.”
I took my time responding because, had I known, maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to hop on a plane to get here. With my dad’s credit card. In the middle of a fight with my boyfriend. “It’s going to be fun. Once the storm passes, I’m going to work on my tan.”
“Right, that storm. I saw that when I checked the weather report. Did your flight get in all right? When did you land?”
My dad and I talked for a bit longer—I told him the details of my flight, which he actually wanted to hear. Suddenly, I realized the rain had stopped. And that there was live music playing outside.
“I think I should go now,” I said, reluctant to interrupt our conversation. “Party’s in full effect.”
“Okay. Well, enjoy yourself, because you’re grounded forever once you get back.”
I would have laughed except I knew he wasn’t joking. “I will. I’ll buy you a puka-shell necklace.”
He laughed then. “Looking forward to it.” A beat of silence. “I told Hamlet and Rose where you were.”
Another wave of homesickness hit me. “I’m pretty sure I broke up with Hamlet. And Rose is probably mad, too.”
“I don’t think so. They were both worried about you.”
