I stand there, breathing hard, the rough wooden planks warm under my sandals. The breeze coming off the Mediterranean is cooler here, lifting my hair, carrying the cries of seagulls circling overhead.
And then I see her.
My sister—tall, blonde, perfect even from a distance—standing on the upper deck with the other bridesmaids. They’re all holding colorful drinks with little umbrellas, their dresses fluttering in the wind. She’s waving. As though this is a fun little mishap and not a complete catastrophe.
“CHLOE!” Her voice carries across the water, bright and unconcerned. “We’ll meet you there! Don’t worry!”
Don’tworry?
I slap on my best event-planner smile and wave back as I watch my carefully planned bridal-cation float away, mimosas and all.
“Okay!” I call out, my voice hitting that register that’s way too cheerful to be genuine. “See you in Mallorca!”
The ship keeps moving, its wake spreading out in a V shape that rocks the smaller boats in the harbor. The bridesmaids keep waving—a little cluster of pastel colors against the white railing. Someone’s taking a selfie.
Of course they are.
Brody appears beside me, slightly out of breath. “Did you just?—”
“Miss my cruise? Yup.” I lower my hand, letting my arm drop to my side. My shoulder aches from waving. “Watch my sister and her friends leave without me? Also yup.”
“They didn’t seem worried.”
“They’re not.” I turn to face him, and I can feel the weird smile on my face—it’s my people-pleaser smile. “Don’t worryabout it. It’s…it’s fine. Super fine. She’s happy, that’s what matters.”
There’s something in his expression that looks almost like…sympathy? Understanding? I can’t tell, and I don’t want to look too closely, because I’m approximately five seconds away from doing something embarrassing, like crying.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, pressing my hands to my warm cheeks. “You were trying to help me get here on time, and I was babbling the whole way, and now I’ve wasted your time?—”
“Hey.” His voice is gentle. “This isn’t your fault.”
“It kind of is though?—”
“When’s the next stop?”
“What?”
“The cruise ship. When does it stop in Mallorca? There has to be a schedule.”
Oh. Right. Problem-solving. That’s a thing I can do. That’s literally my job.
I pull out my phone—miraculously unstolen, still in its chipped daisy case—and pull up the cruise itinerary. “It gets to Palma de Mallorca tomorrow morning. Around ten.”
“Okay.” Brody nods, like this is a perfectly solvable problem and not the end of my carefully orchestrated plans. “So you need to get to Mallorca by tomorrow morning.”
“Right. Which means I need to…” I scroll through my phone, squinting at the screen in the bright sunlight. “I need to figure out how to get there. There has to be a ferry or a flight or?—”
“Or you could stay here tonight.”
I look up from my phone. “What?”
“In Barcelona. You’re already here. The ship doesn’t get to Mallorca until tomorrow morning, which means you have”—he checks his watch—“about eighteen hours. You could get a hotel room, catch a flight or ferry tomorrow, meet up with your sister.”
“I…guess?” My brain is trying to process this, but it’s still stuck on the image of that ship disappearing into the distance. “That makes sense. Logistically. I should probably…” I walk over to the port authority booth—a small white structure with a faded blue awning and a bored-looking attendant inside, visible through the smudged window. The booth smells like stale coffee and cigarette smoke.
I knock on the glass.
The attendant looks up from his phone, his expression suggesting I’ve just interrupted something very important. “¿Sí?”
