Summer’s plans for a romantic escape to Mazatlán with her boyfriend the week before her University of Arizona classes resume disintegrate when he dumps her just before the trip. She goes anyway, planning to drown her sorrow with Mai Tais. Her plan goes awry when she wakes up beside a drop-dead gorgeous guy she can’t remember sleeping with. She imagines things can’t get worse until she learns this Alex has a bristly personality and, thanks to the hurricane outside, they’re stuck together until the storm ends.
My legs and lower torso submerged, I traced circles through the warm, sensual water with my toes as I sat at the bar at the Mazatlán resort. I drank down the Mai Tai in front of me quickly, wanting it to slow my mind’s tempo so I’d stop thinking what a romantic vacation this could have been...if I hadn’t just been dumped.
Surrounded by lush green coconut palms, the bright blue swimming pool--almost large enough to call a lake—descended from one level to another with tumbling waterfalls. My bar stool and the tile counter my elbow rested on vibrated as loud music boomed over nearby speakers.
Several steps below the pool and jungle of trees, the beach, rocky in places, swung around in an arc accenting the blue green Pacific Ocean. Lines of pelicans glided across the sky. Heavy clouds hung low on the horizon, suggesting rain might be blowing in. It was, after all, hurricane season, but my college friends said I shouldn’t worry—the worst I should expect was a soggy day or two. Now that I was vacationing alone—instead of with Jason—heavy drinking was at the top of my itinerary anyway. I’ll need the rainy days to sleep off the hangover.
Four Mai Tai’s later, I probably couldn’t have spelled Jason’s name, let alone reflected on the misery of our breakup. I floated away on an alcohol high—I could almost picture myself as one of those pelicans gliding endlessly—first in an I and then a V formation across the sky. And that image temporarily distracted me from painful memories of Jason saying he wanted to see other people and my being stupid enough to ask why.
A man with startling green eyes and a to-die-for physique swam over and sat on the barstool beside me. Wavy, reddish-brown hair hung in wet locks well below his shoulders. My heart rate accelerated. I responded to his, “Hi there. Mind if I join you for a drink?” with a shrug and a curt nod. Men are nothing but trouble. I won’t talk to him.
I turned my head away from him, gazing toward the ocean. The sky above the billowing storm clouds on the horizon ignited a brilliant orange and pink.
