NFH Honeymoon from Hell II (11 page)

Thanks to his fuck up, their bags were gone
along with Zoe’s identification, credit cards, cash, their boarding
tickets and her medication. They still had their phones and he had
his wallet, but that was it. It had taken them five hours, a dozen
phone calls to his Uncle, Jason and the Massachusetts Registry of
Motor Vehicles before the airport would accept that Zoe was who
they claimed she was, but by the time that they did they’d already
missed their flight and the two heading to Boston after it.

While they’d waited for the airline to
confirm her identity, they’d used the time to file a police report,
report her credit cards and debit card stolen and found out that
their travel insurance didn’t cover any of the shit that had been
stolen. They’d also discovered that the cruise line hadn’t bothered
to buy travel insurance for their plane tickets so he was going to
be forced to replace the tickets on his own dime. The airline had
been willing to honor his original ticket, but that would have
meant abandoning Zoe and there was no way in hell that he would
ever do that.

So, they were stuck here until they could
grab two standby spots, which was just fucking perfect. Spending
the night in an airport was the last thing that he wanted to make
his pregnant wife do, but if they went to a hotel there was a good
chance that they would have to go through all this bullshit to
confirm Zoe’s identity again tomorrow.

Twenty-five minutes later his arms were
loaded up with ginger ale, orange juice, candy bars, chips, a bunch
of snacks, two throw blankets and a small Eeyore stuffed doll that
he hoped would put a smile on her face. When he found her in the
same exact spot that he’d left her in he realized that there was
absolutely nothing that he could do to make this right for her and
that made him feel like the biggest asshole in the world, because
he’d failed her. Biting back a sigh and having absolutely no idea
how to make this better, he placed the shopping bags filled with
junk food and blankets and sat down next to her.

Dropping his head back against the wall, he
repeated the only thing that he could think of saying since this
whole thing started. “I’m sorry.”

“
Stop apologizing,” she
said, sighing heavily as she raised her head and let it drop
against the wall, mimicking his position.

He chuckled without humor as he looked around
the abandoned terminal. “There’s not much else that I can do.”

“
It wasn’t your
fault.”

“
No?” he asked dryly. “I
should have never brought you on this trip.”

“
So, you keep saying,” she
mumbled quietly, resuming her position and going back to ignoring
him.

Shaking his head, he wrung his hands in
frustration, desperately trying to figure out a way to fix this and
make this right for her, but he was out of options and they both
knew it. The only way to fix this now was to get her home and that
might not happen tomorrow, not if they couldn’t get their hands on
two tickets heading north and with the way things were going, he
really didn’t see that happening.

“
Look,” he said, rubbing his
hands roughly down his face, “I’ll make this up to you. I promise,
but for right now we’re just going to have to make the best of
this. It’s not like this could get any worse,” he added with a
shaky laugh as his words sank in and when they did, he got to his
feet, trying not to think about exactly what could go wrong trapped
in a steel contraption flying through the air thousands of miles
above the ground as he grabbed Zoe’s hand and pulled her towards
the exit.

*-*-*-*

“
Are you really planning on
driving the entire night?” she asked from where she sat, curled up
in the passenger seat, doing her best to ignore how upset her
stomach was.

“
Yes,” came the firm answer,
which didn’t really surprise her since he’d obviously lost his mind
a few hours ago when he’d dragged her to the rental car counter,
rented the last car on the lot, which also happened to the be the
one without a working radio or air conditioner and announced that
he wasn’t taking a chance on the curse getting them while they were
stuck ten thousand feet up in the air and decided that driving for
the next twenty-two hours would be safest course of
action.

Normally she would have argued, but with the
way things were going they probably would have been stuck at that
airport for a few days before they were able to get two seats on
the same flight home. Now she just wanted to get home and she
didn’t care if that meant sitting in a car for the next twenty-two
hours with a man, who for the most part, was still ignoring her.
The only time he’d spoken to her over the last ten hours was to ask
her if she was okay, thirsty, hungry or if she needed to use a
bathroom. They’d only stopped once so far and that was to get gas
and for Trevor to make a few quick calls to make sure that she had
a new bottle of pills waiting for her at home.

“
Oh, come the fuck on!” he
suddenly snapped, drawing her attention to the fact that he was
slowly steering the car over into the breakdown lane.

Almost too afraid to ask, but knowing that
she couldn’t pretend that something was seriously screwed up with
this honeymoon, she forced herself to ask, “What’s wrong?”

“
Everything
,” he snarled, throwing the
car in park, threw on the hazard lights and before she knew what
was happening, he had her out of the car and walking towards the
next off-ramp.

As they walked along the litter decorated
highway, Trevor started making phone calls. She only half listened
since every other word that came out of his mouth were colorful
curses, some of which she’d never heard before. Apparently the
rental car place had given them a lemon and the game plan was to
find a hotel and stay there until Jason, who’d volunteered to come
get them and bring them home so that they could, and she was
quoting both men on this one, “Put an end to this seriously fucked
up honeymoon.”

Yeah, that made her feel great, she decided
as she stepped around what appeared to be a small pile of used
condoms. She didn’t say anything and he didn’t ask her to as they
kept to the side of the off-ramp and followed it until they came to
an intersection that sat directly in front of what she could only
describe as a flea motel. She didn’t need to ask to know that was
their destination.

When he took her hand into his and led her
across the deserted road she simply went with him, too exhausted
physically and emotional to argue at this point. Twenty minutes
later, they were standing in a room that hadn’t been renovated
since the early eighties. It even had one of those fat little
televisions with bunny ears set up in the corner alongside a VCR
that was flashing the 12:01.

As Trevor once again pulled out his phone and
started making calls, she took in the rest of the room, idly
wondering if he had any quarters on him since that’s what the
television operated on and apparently so did the bed. She couldn’t
even say that was all that shocked when she looked up and saw the
mirror above the bed. When she pulled open the top drawer of the
nightstand and saw the collection of condoms and empty condom
wrappers surrounding a worn copy of the Bible, she decided that the
chair by the door would make an excellent bed for the night.

First thing she needed to do though was to
lower the heat. It had to be ninety degrees in here. She walked
over to the thermostat and turned it down only to discover that the
cover spun freely and there was no way to set it. She also
discovered that she was wrong. It wasn’t ninety degrees in here,
but a crisp eighty-four degrees. Turning around, she walked past
Trevor, who was now pacing the length of the small room while
arguing with Jason about whose honeymoon had been more fucked up,
and attempted to open the window only to discover that it was
painted shut.

Shaking her head, because she really should
have expected it, she walked past Trevor, headed into the bathroom
and closed the door behind her. She focused on doing what needed to
be done and not on the questionable state of the bathroom. After
five minutes of inner turmoil and deep soul searching, she decided
to risk it and take a shower in the rust stained tub.

She closed her eyes and did her best to
ignore the feel of the hard water coating her skin and hair. After
two minutes she decided that she was clean enough and shut off the
water. She grabbed a threadbare towel, telling herself that it was
clean, and did her best to dry off before she reluctantly wrapped
it around herself. She stood there for another moment,
contemplating her choices, put her clothes back on that she’d been
wearing all day and take the chance of contaminating her only set
of clothes with whatever was out there or wear the towel, pretend
that the hotel was clean, the linen freshly washed and that she
wasn’t going to have to jump back in the shower first thing in the
morning and scrub her skin raw to kill whatever bacteria she’d
picked up during the night.

Deciding that the idea of sleeping in her
clothes and then being forced to wear them tomorrow once they were
freshly coated in whatever that funky smell was coming from was not
for her, she resigned herself to scrubbing her skin off tomorrow
morning in the rust coated tub. She grabbed another threadbare
towel to use as an added layer of protection between her and the
chair and opened the bathroom door only to groan in disappointment
when she spotted Trevor, shirtless and asleep in her chair.

Great, just great…

For a few minutes she stood there,
contemplating shoving the large bastard off the chair and
reclaiming it as her own, but it would probably only earn her a
glare and another one of those apologies that made her want to beat
the shit out of him with one of the lumpy, yellow stained pillows
on the bed. Shooting him a glare of her own, she turned around and
carefully laid the towel on the bed and then added the one that she
was wearing, deciding that Trevor’s discarded shirt would have to
be sacrificed this night to save her skin from the questionable
stains and odors decorating the bedspread.

Praying that she didn’t end up contracting
lice, bed bugs or worse, she walked over to where Trevor’s shirt
laid on the bureau and-

“
I’m sorry,” he said,
wrapping his arms around her and pulled her against his warm body.
“I’m so sorry about this whole fucking trip, sweetheart,” he said,
kissing her bare shoulder before he added, “but don’t worry, I’ll
make it up to you.”

Closing her eyes, she sighed, hating herself
for what she had to do, but he’d left her with no other choice, now
had he?

Chapter 13

“
What the hell are you doing?” he snapped, doing
his best to avoid her next assault even as he tried his best not to
do anything that would make the crazed woman get hurt while she was
attacking him with the lumpiest pillow that he’d ever seen, or
rather, felt.

“
Stop saying that you’re
sorry!” she yelled, landing an impressive blow to his back with the
pillow that was starting to give off the scent of urine, vomit and
some other unknown and equally offensive odor with every
blow.

Unable to take another second of that
nauseating odor, he grabbed the pillow from his wife, pretending
that he didn’t notice the greasy texture coating the stained
pillowcase, and tossed it over his shoulder. “What the hell is
wrong with you, woman?” he demanded as he was forced to place
himself between her and the bed when she went to grab the other
pillow.

“
Stop saying you’re sorry!”
she repeated with a vicious glare that had his balls pulling up
tight in a desperate attempt to get out of her reach.

“
Why?” he snapped,
frustrated beyond belief that he had absolutely no idea what to say
to this woman to make this right for her.

“
Because even though this
trip wasn’t perfect, it was still the best trip that I’ve ever been
on and you ruined it!” she snapped through trembling lips as she
yanked his shirt on and roughly wiped away the tears beginning to
spill down her face and making this a thousand times worse for
him.

“
I didn’t know that I was
going to get sick!” he snapped right back, having absolutely no
idea how to talk to her when she was this pissed and praying like
hell that he didn’t end up saying something stupid that was going
to end up pushing her away.

“
I’m not mad because you got
sick, you jerk! I’m pissed because you were so damn determined to
focus on what went wrong with this trip that you didn’t even try to
enjoy it!”

“
It’s pretty fucking hard to
enjoy something when I’m locked in a bathroom, our luggage getting
stolen, being unable to stand without feeling like shit or
being forced to watch my wife suffer since I
couldn’t fucking get your pills because I was fucking
dying!
” he shouted and he would have said
more, oh so much more, but the little snort of amusement had his
rant coming to an abrupt halt and his eyes narrowing suspiciously
on the small, deliciously curved woman in front of him, desperately
trying to hold back her amusement, but he could see it in her eyes
that it was a quickly losing battle.

“
Yeah, it was a close call,”
she managed to get out with a snort of amusement as she bit her
bottom lip and looked away, clearly struggling not to laugh, which
of course pleased him.

It was the closest that she’d come to smiling
in days and he’d be damned if he was going to let her keep it from
him. So, biting back a smile of his own, he did what he had to
do.