“We’re going paddleboarding!” Abby cries. “It’s going to be so much fun!”

“Oh, now you want to go paddleboarding.” Unbelievable. But maybe I can work this to my advantage. “Can I . . .” I lower my voice. “Cut in with you?”

Abby gasps. “You want to cut in the line?”

Now everybody in the line is glaring at me.

“No, no,” I explain. “We’re sisters. You were saving my place.” My gaze meets Afton’s. “Because that’s what sisters do.”

She stares at me a moment, considering. “No,” she says flatly. “You can’t cut with us. But if you want to swap, that’d be okay.”

“Swap?”

“You take Abby. You get to go paddleboarding. I get to go see Michael. We both get what we want. It’s a win-win.”

Yeah, maybe, but it also sounds like a lose-lose.

“No.” I reject her offer without even giving it too much thought. Pop would call this cutting off my nose to spite my face.

But this is my day. Mom assigned Afton to be the babysitter today, because Mom’s finally recognizing—too little, too late, perhaps—that I deserve some time for myself.

“Have a good time, you two,” I say to my sisters. Then I walk off. Back to the only place I can think to go.

Back to the room.

I don’t want to go back there, of course, the scene of my mother’s crime, but it’s too hot to go anywhere else. I don’t have my usual hundred dollars, so I can’t go shopping, or out to eat on my own somewhere, or to the spa. So the room seems like the reasonable choice.

On the way, I stop at one of the gift shops to peruse the toiletries section. Nick was right.

No condoms.

Using my peripheral vision, I glance at the cashier. He is currently, like everyone else, engrossed in his phone. He’s also, like everybody who works at this hotel, tan and tall and fairly attractive.

I try to imagine myself going up to the counter and asking this man if they sell condoms.

I picture the look on his face when I ask.

And what if they’re expensive? As we’ve already established, I don’t have much money.

“Can I help you?” the cashier asks.

“No, I’m good.”

He nods and smiles politely and goes back to his phone, but I get the sense that he’s also watching me now, out of his peripheral vision. He must think I’m going to try to shoplift or something.

I abandon the condom quest and go back to the room.