Page 3 of The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

“Put your head between your legs,” he says. “And don’t throw up on my pants.”

I bend my body over and put my head down, just as Dr. Bedside Manner suggested.

So far, Hawaii is proving more exhausting than my real life.

2

JOSH

It’s a lesson I should have learned from children’s television programming: every lie, even lies of omission, even lies meant to spare someone, will come back to bite you in the ass eventually. I just never thought they’d all bite me in the ass at the same time.

Mere hours ago, I was at the end of a very long flight, looking forward to some time with my family in Hawaii. Well, looking forward to time with my mother, anyway. I expected to find her with her health restored—that last round of chemo behind her—and my father by her side, pretending to be a decent human being, while my brother drank too much and acted like the selfish prick he is.

But only my father is living up to expectations so far, because my mother is clearly not well and my brother couldn’t even bother to show up. I’m starting to wish I’d never stepped off the plane.

The van arrives at the hotel at last. By some small miracle, my brother’s diva girlfriend has managed not to vomit, but I climb out as fast as possible anyway and head to the Halekulani’s open-air lobby.

The place radiates serenity, all bleached stone and quiet elegance, the kind of hotel where no one speaks loudly and it’s as if you’re the only guest. There are no lines at check-in, no nonsense. In under a minute, we are being led (quietly) through a maze of well-kept gardens and gently gurgling fountains to the elevator in our wing of the hotel. My mother has reserved us three rooms, side by side, on the fifth floor. She wants maximum togetherness at all times.

“Let’s meet down by the bar at six,” she says when we reach our respective rooms. “They do a sunset show.”

I open the door to our suite, which consists of a bedroom with a plush king-sized bed, a living room spacious enough for a table, a desk and a couch, and a long balcony overlooking Diamond Head. In Dooha, I sleep in a tent barely tall enough to stand in. Simply having a bathroom nearby would be a luxury…and here there are two, complete with Japanese toilets that do everything but pull your pants down for you.

I can’t begrudge my mother a single thing. She wanted this trip to be perfect and I suspect I know why. I just wish it wasn’t…so much. There are kids at the refugee camp using wheelchairs constructed of bike tires and hospital chairs. How much equipment could we have purchased with the money this is costing? How much food?

“You really had no idea,” Sloane says. She isn’t talking about the room. She’s not even noticing the room. She’s only thinking of this—us, when “us” wasn’t even a thing until two hours ago.

I run a hand through my hair. Jesus, what a fucking mess. “No,” I say, forcing my mouth to move into a smile. “But it’s great to see you.”

It’s not all that great, really.

My mother’s decision to surprise me by inviting her was…definitely a surprise. Sloane and I were a fling, nothing more, and then she left Somalia, which fortuitously brought things to an end. Now I’ve got to pretend I wasn’t relieved, on top of everything else I’m pretending.

She folds her arms across her chest. Somewhere between the airport and here, she’s put together what’s happened. “Why did you let your mother think we weren’t over,” she asks coolly, “if you thought we were?”

I shove my hands in my pockets. It’s hard to explain how hung up my mother is on the idea of Joel or me settling down. I think she blames her screwed-up marriage for our aversion to relationships, and she isn’t entirely wrong. “I didn’t want to upset her right before she went through chemo,” I reply. I thought I’d gracefully exited the thing with Sloane, gracefully sidestepped the conversation with my mother. And now I’m back in the middle of both.

The bellman enters and we fall silent while he sets each suitcase on the bench at the foot of the bed. When he leaves, she crosses the room and unzips it, saying nothing. The inside of her bag looks like it’s been styled for a photo shoot. Everything is pressed, perfectly folded. That’s Sloane to a T. Neat, precise, methodical.

By contrast, Drew’s bag is probably bursting at the seams. I picture frilly panties and bras and negligees exploding like confetti from a cannon when she opens it. I have no clue why I’m picturing Drew’s panties, or why I picture them all being sheer and extremely non-functional, but it’s a troubling development.

Sloane opens a drawer and then closes it. “Is this going to be okay? That I’m here?”

No, I think. There is so much that is not okay at this moment that I feel like I can barely take a deep breath. “Of course,” I tell her, because the only option is to say Hey, not really, would you mind flying back to Atlanta instead?

Her lips press tight. “Then do me a favor: please don’t spend the entire trip fawning over your brother’s girlfriend.”

I give a startled laugh. “Fawning?”

“You talked to her more than you did me at the airport,” she replies. “And then you rushed into doctor mode in the van.”

“I asked her not to throw up on my pants. It was hardly the height of medical care.”

Her lips press again, as if she doesn’t agree but knows further argument is pointless, and I step onto the balcony. There is no longer enough air in this oversized room. I suspect it’s going to feel that way until we leave.

My hands grip the railing and I glare at the perfect view. What the hell am I going to do? The issues with my mother would be enough to make me feel like I was drowning without an unhappy ex sharing my room for the next two weeks.

The balcony door beside mine slips open and Drew walks out, pulling her endless blonde hair free of its ponytail. She’s removed the hoody she wore earlier, stripped down to the tank beneath. I see ice-blue bra straps, a hint of lace under the shirt’s thin fabric. Collarbone, bee-stung lips, so much exposed skin. She always looks like her clothes can’t quite contain her.