Sunscreen & Coconuts Read online

  Sunscreen & Coconuts

  ELIZA LENTZSKI

  Copyright © 2018 Eliza Lentzski

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or real persons, living or dead, other than those in the public domain, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, re-sold, or transmitted electronically or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 9781719930567

  Imprint: Independently published

  Other works by Eliza Lentzski

  Winter Jacket Series

  Winter Jacket

  Winter Jacket 2: New Beginnings

  Winter Jacket 3: Finding Home

  Winter Jacket 4: All In

  Hunter

  + + +

  Don’t Call Me Hero Series

  Don’t Call Me Hero

  Damaged Goods

  Cold Blooded Lover

  http://www.elizalentzski.com

  Standalones

  Sunscreen & Coconuts

  The Final Rose

  Bittersweet Homecoming

  Fragmented

  Apophis: Love Story for the End of the World

  Second Chances

  Date Night

  Love, Lust, & Other Mistakes

  Diary of a Human

  + + +

  Works as E.L. Blaisdell

  Drained: The Lucid (with Nica Curt)

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1

  Chapter Eleven

  109

  Chapter One

  6

  Chapter Twelve

  119

  Chapter Two

  15

  Chapter Thirteen

  128

  Chapter Three

  24

  Chapter Fourteen

  145

  Chapter Four

  35

  Chapter Fifteen

  153

  Chapter Five

  45

  Chapter Sixteen

  169

  Chapter Six

  57

  Chapter Seventeen

  179

  Chapter Seven

  66

  Chapter Eighteen

  187

  Chapter Eight

  76

  Chapter Nineteen

  197

  Chapter Nine

  86

  Epilogue

  208

  Chapter Ten

  101

  Author Page

  212

  Dedication

  To C

  PROLOGUE

  Cube. c-u-b-e.

  Fell. f-e-l-l.

  Brother. b-r-o-t-h-u-r.

  “Oh, you nearly got it, Aidan,” I murmured. I scribbled the correct spelling next to the misspelled word.

  Door. d-o-o-r.

  Fast. f-a-s-t.

  I cringed at the misspelled word on the next line: Field. f-e-i-l-d.

  I ran my hand over my face. “I before E, you guys,” I muttered aloud. “We spent forever on that lesson.”

  “Except after C, right?”

  I looked up from the lined paper that was rapidly becoming marked up by my green pen. My waitress smiled down on me, a filled coffee pot in one hand.

  “More coffee?”

  I placed my hand over my nearly empty coffee cup. “I’ve had too much already,” I refused. “You’ll have me bouncing off the walls pretty soon.”

  “What are you working on?” she asked.

  I shuffled through the remaining papers on the table. “First grade spelling quizzes.”

  “Oh, are you at the Friends School?” She named the private elementary school only a few blocks from our location.

  “No, I teach at Woodrow Wilson.”

  My waitress rested the coffee pot at her hip. “I don’t recognize the name. Is it a charter school?”

  “Nope. Regular old public school.”

  I could have predicted the look she gave me—a mix of sympathy and bewilderment. But after five years of teaching in Boston’s public school system, I was used to it by now.

  “Wow. Good for you,” she admired.

  I forced a wavering smile to my lips.

  Back in the 1970s, there had been an attempt to integrate Boston’s public schools. The history textbooks tell all about Jim Crow segregation and Brown v. Board of Education, but northern cities are largely lost in the narrative. Attempts to balance the racial makeup of Boston’s public schools through forced bussing led to massive white backlash, and in recent years, the elected school board appeared content with the status quo.

  This had resulted in the gross underfunding of schools in the district where I taught. Luckily, in the first grade, my students didn’t yet require expensive textbooks or individual laptops, but even then I typically ended up buying my own supplies for my classroom when the storage closets ran out of crayons, glue sticks, and construction paper.

  “Want me to clear away the other place setting so you have more room to grade?” she offered.

  “I’m good. I’m waiting on someone.”

  I’d been hoarding the table for two for the better part of an hour. Between my employment as a public school teacher and my seemingly solo status at brunch, I couldn’t imagine what she thought of me. I probably seemed to her the saddest person on the planet.

  “I guess I could handle another re-fill,” I said.

  It took a long moment for her to realize what I was requesting.

  “Coffee?” I supplied.

  She barked out a laugh. “Oh, right!”

  A knock on the plate glass window pulled our joint attention towards the front of the restaurant. The person for whom I’d been waiting smiled and waved at me through the restaurant’s front window.

  Between the awkward exchange with my waitress and my friend’s tardiness, I was already in a tested mood. I tapped at my wrist where a watch would be. “You’re late.”

  I doubted Racy was able to hear my censure through the thick glass, even without the competing sounds of the neighborhood on a Sunday morning. But my disapproving gestures were enough for her to understand my complaint.

  She clasped her hands together as in prayer—a mea culpa for leaving me to fend for myself at brunch.

  “I’ll grab you another menu and freshen up that coffee,” the waitress announced.

  I felt the slight tug of smugness. I wasn’t entirely pathetic.

  My friend Racy skirted through the restaurant’s entrance, pausing briefly at the hostess stand to indicate that the other half of her dining party was already seated. I shuffled papers on the table for two, collecting my students’ spelling quizzes, and packed them away in my workbag.

  Racy dropped her oversized purse on the floor and her body in the seat across from me. “I know, I know,” she huffed. “I’m late—unforgivably so. But I have an excuse this time.”

  “You always have an excuse,” I pointed out.

  “But this one’s actually good,” she countered.

  Instead of offering up the explanation for her tardiness, Racy reached across the table and confiscated my glass of juice. She took a quick sip and made a disgusted face the moment the liquid passed her lips. ”Oh, God, “ she practically gagged. “What is that?”

  I grabbed the glass back. “Orange juice.”

  “Just juice?” Racy continued to express her disgust. “What’s even the point?”

  “I was waiting for you!” I defended myself. “I didn’t want to drink alone.”

  “Why not? I do it all the time.” Racy removed her sunglasses and flung t
hem onto the table. They stopped when they struck against my near-empty coffee cup. “God, I’ve had a day,” she sighed.

  “It’s not even noon,” I remarked.

  “My point exactly.” She sat up straighter in her chair and craned her neck. “Where’s our waitress? Did I interrupt you trying to get your game back?”

  “Why do you think I’m flirting every time I talk to another woman?” I accused.

  “I don’t know how you lesbians work,” she dismissed me.

  “Do you flirt with every man you talk to?”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  I audibly sighed. “Where were you this morning? Chewing your arm off to get out of some investment banker’s bed? Carrying your heels through Chinatown?”

  “Not this time.” She continued to look distractedly around the restaurant in search of our elusive waitress. “I was planning our Christmas vacation.”

  Racy and I weren’t dating. Even if she’d been my type—which she wasn’t—she was the definition of hyper-heterosexual. We’d traveled together over the past two Christmases, however, because we’d grown up in the same small, Midwestern town. Even though we’d graduated high school together, we hadn’t exactly been friends back then, more like acquaintances, but we’d reconnected in recent years when our respective parents discovered we were both living in Boston.

  I visibly slumped in my chair. “I told you I don’t want to go back there.”

  “And neither do I,” Racy was quick to correct. “Which is why we’re going to be spending Christmas this year—wait for it—at an all-inclusive resort on the beautiful, exotic island of Curaçao.”

  “Curaçao?” I echoed.

  “It’s in the Caribbean, just off the coast of Venezuela.”

  “That sounds expensive,” I lamented. “You do remember I’m a public school teacher, right?”

  “You remind me every chance you get,” she countered. “Listen, it’s the off-season. Everyone heads home for Christmas, so these resorts offer incredible deals. Trust me, even you can afford this trip.”

  “Isn’t it hurricane season?”

  “Nope. That ends in November. We’ll have nothing but perfect, blue skies.”

  “I’ve heard that a lot of the islands down there aren’t gay friendly.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too,” she grinned. “I did some research, and according to everything I’ve read, Curaçao is the most gay-friendly island in the South Caribbean.”

  While I delayed, Racy continued to explain her plan: “They speak English, and they drive on the right side of the road. It’s an adults-only, all-inclusive resort on a white, sandy beach. There’s an incredible man-made lagoon, and at night you can see the floating cities of cruise ships just off the shoreline. We can leave as soon as your semester is over and come back before New Years Eve when the flight prices spike again.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve really put a lot of thought into this.”

  In my experience, Racy wasn’t much of a planner—more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants-er. The fact that she’d made sure I would feel safe in a foreign location spoke miles for the effort she’d put into this idea.

  “Don’t say no, Mercy,” Racy pled. “I know how much you covet your school breaks, but wouldn’t you rather spend your Christmas drinking a Mai Tai on a white, sandy beach surrounded by women in bikinis instead of shoveling your car out of snow bank?”

  I folded my hands on the table. “You make a compelling argument, Ms. Sawyer.”

  Racy’s grin widened. “So is that a yes? Christmas in Curaçao?”

  CHAPTER ONE

  A disembodied voice floated over the airplane’s public address system: Ladies and gentlemen, the cabin door is now closed. At this time, please turn off all cellular devices and confirm your seatbelt is fastened and secured.

  My seatbelt had long been fastened. I’d turned my cell phone to airplane mode even before my flight had boarded. I had a paperback mystery novel in the front seat pocket, and a bottle of water and a pack of gum to keep my ears from popping. I was ready for my seven-hour flight.

  Or at least I’d thought I was.

  The woman seated in front of me turned around. “Excuse me. Would you mind switching seats so I can sit with my son?”

  She gestured to the boy in the middle seat beside me. He looked to be about fifteen with his scruffy brown hair poking out from under his Red Sox baseball hat.

  I was loath to move; we would be taking off any minute. The seatbelt sign was illuminated and flight attendants were running through the final steps in their pre-flight routine. I didn’t want to make a fuss. I didn’t want everyone in the vicinity staring at me and wondering why I was switching seats at the very last minute. I wanted to tell this middle-aged woman that if she’d booked her flight earlier, she wouldn’t be having this issue, or that she should stop being a helicopter parent and let her teenaged son sit by himself.

  I wanted to say all of these things and more, but I didn’t. I unfastened my seatbelt instead. “Of course,” I conceded.

  I collected my belongings in the immediate area and waited for the teen boy to unfasten his safety belt. Our movement set off a domino effect, disrupting the elderly woman who sat in the aisle seat and the two passengers in the seats next to the suburban mom.

  A flight attendant rushed up to the congestion in the center aisle. “We’ll be taking off soon.” Her look of annoyance gnawed at my conscience. “Please return to your seats.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I felt obligated to apologize for the entire group.

  More shuffling and maneuvering and knocking my knees and nearly my head transpired before I successfully exchanged seats with the overprotective mom.

  Once in my new seat, I fastened my safety belt and prepared for takeoff. Even though I sat in coach, each seat was equipped with its own miniature monitor. I couldn’t help noticing that all the other touch screens in my row were illuminated except for the monitor directly in front of me. I jabbed my index finger against the blackened screen, but it failed to respond.

  “Great,” I muttered aloud.

  Yet again, my inability to say no to inconveniences had resulted in more inconvenience. At least I was still by a window. I would have never been able to relax in the center seat, too worried that I might unintentionally drift across the invisible seat boundaries, and the beverage cart always rammed my elbows when I sat in the aisle seat.

  For the next few hours I tried to lose myself in my novel. I rarely had time to read for fun anymore. Not having a traditional 9 to 5 job made carving out free time a challenge. As a teacher there was always grading to do or lesson plans to construct.

  My reading was periodically interrupted by the snoring man seated next to me. Unlike myself, he appeared to have no qualms about spreading into my personal area. I found myself shrinking closer and closer to the airplane window to evade his creeping form.

  He seemed to choke on a particularly violent snore, and in the process, woke himself up. I observed him out of the corner of my eye as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He reached that same arm across me to pull up the shade covering the small airplane window. I felt his shoulder press more tightly against mine as he leaned even closer to the window.

  “Where are we?” he asked, as if I’d be able to tell by looking at the nothing but blue ocean below.

  “I’m not sure,” I mumbled before returning my attention to my book.

  He leaned back into his allotted space, but continued to invade my mental space. “Huh. I haven’t seen one of those in a while,” he observed.

  I had no idea to what he was referring, and I really didn’t want to engage in conversation, so I simply raised an eyebrow.

  “Your book,” he clarified. “Most people read on their tablets these days if they even read at all. I’m a Candy Crush kind of guy myself.”

  My seatmate continued his attempts to draw me into conversation, asking questions about where I was from and what I did for a livi
ng, but my resistance proved stronger than his curiosity. Eventually he returned to intermittently snoring until we reached our destination.

  The flight had tested my patience, but I felt my mood lift when our landing gear kissed the pavement of the tarmac. As the pilots taxied toward our gate, I pressed my nose against my tiny window to the outside world, eager to see Curaçao for the first time. I would have to wait a little longer to start my vacation, however, as the passengers around me reclaimed their carry-ons and we collectively inched towards the airplane’s exit.

  I shouldered my carry-on bag and scanned the vicinity for directional signs. I always felt a little overwhelmed upon exiting airplanes. I needed a moment to regain my bearings. I spotted the familiar sights of airport concessions and travel-oriented shopping, but a small part of my brain registered that we were in Willemstad, Curaçao, nearly 2,500 miles from Boston.

  Racy’s excited grin and a blast of refrigerated air greeted me when I finally de-boarded the plane. She waved at me a few yards from our gate. We’d been on the same flight from Boston, but she preferred the luxury of First Class while I didn’t see the point of overspending for a little extra legroom.

  “Wow, you didn’t waste any time getting into vacation mode,” I remarked with an amused chuckle.

  Her black leggings, sweater, and Uggs from earlier had been replaced with an aqua-blue romper, wedge heels, and an oversized sunhat.

  “You were taking forever,” she explained, “so I changed in the bathroom.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “You make it sound like I wanted to be at the back of the plane.”