Other People We Married by Emma Straub Read Free Book Online Page A

Justin passed me a joint, expertly rolled. He only looked like a slacker. “What do you do around here for fun? You know, when all the tourists go home?” I asked. The smoke hit the back of my throat like a brick wall, thick and heavy.
    “Man, nothing. You’re looking at it.” We both looked around. The cleaning ladies’ carts weaved in and out of open doors, and all the cars in the lot were rentals. “Only the parking lot is empty.”
    “You know where I could get a pair of sunglasses?’”
    Justin nodded and took two more hits in quick, sharp breaths. “Yeah, man. I can hook you up. One-stop shopping, you know? One-stop shopping.”
    The night was so dark it seemed imaginary—no lights, only stars. A cool breeze made its way through the palm fronds. Goose bumps appeared on my arms, and I rubbed them quickly. “My arms feel like alligator skin,” I said, suddenly high.
    “Oh yeah?” Justin said. He dropped the roach and crushed it under his flip-flop. Before I even knew what he was doing, his wispy goatee was tickling my chin, and his hands were cupping my boobs over my T-shirt. When he turned away, Justin stuck his hand out behind him, silently asking me to follow him. I took his hand and let him lead me back to anempty room in our hotel. There were no sheets on the bed, and I could hear a television blaring in the room next door. Before Justin peeled off my clothes, I said, “Who watches TV on their vacation? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you’re bored at home?”
    “You’re funny,” Justin said. And then I knew I’d let him do whatever he wanted.
    The next morning, I went back to our room to take a shower, and Abigail was already gone. I found her by the pool. She was lying on her back with a towel over her face and her straps hooked under her armpits.
    “Hey,” I said.
    Abigail pulled down a corner of the towel, enough for one eye to peek out. “Bow chicka wow wow,” she said, and covered her eye again. “I mean, good for you and all, but it wouldn’t have killed you to let me know that you weren’t, you know, dead.” All of her blond curls were piled on top of her head like an elaborate wedding cake.
    “I had my cell phone on me. You could have called.” I sat down next to her and looked at my arms. They had already passed through whatever tan zone they may have been in, and were now halfway to bubblegum pink. “I got us some mushrooms.”
    Abigail pulled the towel off her face completely and struggled to sit up. There were fat red marks across the backs of her arms from the slats in the plastic chair. “Does that mean that you stayed out all night
with a drug dealer
?” She leaned forward, close enough that I could smell the lingering notes of her breakfast.
    “Imay have,” I said, and turned toward the pool, waiting an extra beat for comic effect. Abigail gave a long, loud, hooting laugh, and then slapped my knee. Justin, with all of his twenty-two years and suntanned boredom, hardly seemed to qualify. Maybe I could work it into a joke—the only drug dealer I ever picked up sold drugs mostly at his former high school, and spent the rest of his time handing out chlorine-scented towels to pale tourists. A plane flew by overhead, and we both leaned back to watch the tiny object, no bigger than a bath toy.
    Joshua Tree National Park was a forty-five-minute drive away, and the compact car got noisier and noisier the higher into the mountains we drove, as if in complaint. It was only ten in the morning—we figured we’d go, tool around, and be out of there before it was noon and so hot that we’d fry as soon as we got out of the car. Abigail had a water bottle, the stainless-steel kind sold at health food stores, and I bought a big plastic one, which made her wince.
    “I bet you don’t even recycle,” she said, shaking her head.
    “They fine you if you don’t,” I said, which was true, but only if you put your trash out on the street on the days you were supposed