Finding Nicholas

Excerpt:

I went to sleep in Boston and woke up in Old San Juan. Another lucky break for me in a long line of them. No matter how much I screwed up, it seemed, my luck pulled me through.

As I allowed my throbbing head to rest gently on a silky pillow, I wondered how much longer that would be the case. Wasn’t I due for a shit-storm of bad luck? After all, I wasn't getting any younger. And at the rate I was going, I would be old soon enough. Too soon actually.

My brain fuzzed over. I stretched out my naked body on the smooth sheets. Considering my whale of a hangover, I felt pretty good. Allover warm and humid. Like the salty sea breeze wafting in the glass sliders leading out to the patio of the first floor hotel suite. Full, semi-sheer white curtains fluttered in the soft ocean air. My eyes closed of their own accord.

Ahhh, I loved getting away from it all. Too bad I’d taken the old ‘urge to overdo’ along for the ride.

I opened my eyes again, sat up slowly and looked around. Recent events were coming back to me in a tidal wash of memories. The bottle of Italian red at dinner with Matt. The ring on the crushed blue velvet in the tiny Tiffany’s box. The gleam in his heavily lined eyes as he held out the guidebook to Puerto Rico. The limo ride to the airport, complete with a bottle of Cristal. And the seats in first class, the smooth gray leather and ample leg room.

The jet didn't get very far, though, before I blanked out. How many tulip glasses of Champagne had I sucked down on the flight? Or had I slept the whole way?

I propped myself against the satiny headboard, taking care to hold my head straight. Wowie! Would I never learn to control the urge to drown my hesitations? Probably not. A black girl growing up in a less than accepting New England neighborhood, with an Irishman for a father and a mother from The Deep South who resembled Foxy Brown, afro and all, had not helped matters.

Great parents, my mother and father were deeply in love. But that didn't change the ridicule I faced in school as a biracial kid in an uber conservative neighborhood all those years ago.

That hard edge to me, the one I wear across my chest like a bulletproof vest, was borne out of those early years. But something else came from them too: deep down inside, that romantic in me. And I would settle for nothing less than the love, the spark, the romance I witnessed as a child growing up in our household. My parents adored each other, and it was clear to anyone who looked at them.

But early on, after a couple of bad relationships, I decided Cupid was not in the cards for me, so I stopped looking and started living. Part of that living actually did encompass love. But it was not the love of men; it was the love of alcohol.

I’d been overdoing it for decades; it started shortly after college. Why stop now, just because I was over forty? But I couldn't think about that now. I had to figure things out.

Matt’s side of the bed looked like it hadn't been slept in. I checked the digital alarm clock on the marble nightstand. It was after eleven a.m.

Before I had a moment to think about it and realize maybe I'd lost a bit of time due to excessive inebriation, I heard the sound of heavy footsteps on thick carpet. The feet were approaching, then stopping outside my door. Matt?

The knock that followed was authoritative. “Ms. Brennan? It’s the manager,”

The manager knocked again. What an aggressive asshole.

“Coming,” I said, letting the irritation show in my voice. “Asshole,” I muttered. Loud enough for him to hear.