Bad Behaviour

Kelly stirred. “Did someone say alcohol?” she inquired wistfully, and with a bit of effort levered herself upright.

Delaney set her quartet of plastic cups on the little wooden ledge that encircled the center pole of the palapa, one of a collection scattered down the beach like giant drink umbrellas.

Appropriate, now that she thought of it.

“Okay, one virgin margarita for our little newlywed mama-to-be.” She handed it to Kelly, who was still hardly showing in a hot pink tankini. “And here’s one unvirgin margarita for our oldlywed.” Delaney passed a second cup to Cilla, who sat up, chunky gold earrings swinging.

“I’ll have you know I’m younger than you,” she informed Delaney.

“Marriage ages you artificially.”

“Not at all. Regular orgasms have documented health benefits.”

“Do I look like I’m missing regular orgasms?” Delaney asked.

Cilla considered. “Hard to say. It might just be that your new cut looks so good we don’t notice.”

Delaney had had her shoulder-length hair cropped the week before into a pixie, driven by one of her characteristic bouts of impatience. Life was too short to spend twenty minutes blow-drying and styling, she figured. The first time she’d showered and found her hands closing on air at the back of her head had been a shock, but Delaney wasn’t much for regrets.

Life was too short for them, too.

“I love it. It takes five minutes to dry. I’m in the bathroom and out.”

“It makes you look like Tinkerbell, all eyes and cheekbones.”

“Tinkerbell, huh?” Delaney laughed. “Yeah. Drink a few more of those margaritas and you’ll see my wings.” She picked up another cup. “Are you sure you really wanted a beer, Paige? I never once saw you drink it before you took up with that guitar player. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s been a bad influence on you.”

“Oh, I hope so.” Paige sank back on her lounger in the shade. “Zach’s introduced me to the finer things in life.”

“Here, here,” Thea put in, taking a sip of her own beer. “Although I’m not sure you can call this beer. Or fine.”

“You’re prejudiced because you live with a Pacific Northwest brew snob,” Delaney told her, handing a frothy white drink to Trish.

“Brady introduced me to the finer things in life, too,” Thea said.

“Back to that regular orgasm thing, are we?” Delaney studied her friends around her, all of them married or in long term relationships now, absorbed in their lives, moving on or moving away. Not just Paige and Thea, but the rest of them: Sabrina married to her college sweetheart Stef Costas, Kelly married to Stef’s partner Kev, Trish living with Sabrina’s cousin Ty. Even Cilla, who’d played the field about as much as she herself, had tied the knot.

Only Delaney remained resolutely, stubbornly single. But it wasn’t the same as it had once been. Life didn’t feel the same, she realized with a little twinge, as if she was being pushed to the cliff to jump off into grown-up land, whether she wanted to or not.

To hell with that, she decided.

Golden sand stretched down to the pale aqua waves. The sky arched overhead, periwinkle blue. Paradise. She set her margarita in the sand by her sun couch and untied her bronze sarong to reveal a leopard-spotted bikini. She was young, she was unencumbered. Life was good. Water, sun and fun, that was what she needed to think about, not the shifting sands of her own life.

With a sigh of bliss, Delaney lay back and took a sip of her margarita. “Okay, I am now officially on vacation,” she announced. “Effective immediately, I intend to party like mad, eat myself silly, and do absolutely nothing worthwhile.”

“Except go to the opening of my boutique,” Cilla reminded her.

“Except that.” Delaney took another swallow of her drink. “God, that’s good.” She closed her eyes and held up her cup in a toast. “Okay, here’s to the perks of being over twenty-one.”

“Being over twenty-one?” Paige repeated. “I thought you were the one who always said you didn’t want to grow up.”

“Who said anything about being grown-up? I said here’s to being of legal drinking age.”

“Being an adult does have some other benefits,” Trish observed.

“Name one,” Delaney demanded.

“Good sex,” Kelly said immediately. “High-school boys are clueless.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The best kisser of my entire life was my first boyfriend,” Delaney countered.

“Your first boyfriend?”

“Jake,” she added. “Jake the Snake.”

Cilla, in the middle of a swallow, spluttered. “Don’t tell me that was what he called his—”

“No,” Delaney said positively. “At least I don’t think so. I don’t know. We never got past the kiss and grope stage, but man, that boy could kiss. He was a surfer. Made me melt.”

“Ah, young love,” Trish said, fanning herself.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

Sabrina raised her eyebrows. “Not your first love?”

“Come on. I mean, I was fourteen. Two years before that, I was ready to go all the way with Donnie Wahlberg. If I’d ever met him, of course, and if I could have figured out what going all the way actually meant.”

“You were nothing if not adaptable.” Paige tucked her tongue in her cheek.

Meanwhile, Trish rolled on her stomach to look at Delaney. “So who was your first love?”

Delaney laughed lightly. “I’ll tell you when I meet him.”

“You will, one of these days,” Trish said positively.

“I suppose. I can’t say it keeps me up at night.” She studied a couple of shirtless guys playing volleyball up the beach and licked her lips. “I’ve got other things to do that. So come on, I’m still waiting for the tide of benefits to being an adult.”

“Independence,” Trish said.

Delaney made a derisive noise. “Show of hands, how many people had to ask or check with their significant others before making plans to come here?”

“Well, you had to get permission for time off work,” Trish countered.

Delaney made the sign of the cross. “Back, demon. No talking about work. It’s officially a four-letter word this week.”

“Something wrong?” Paige asked.

“I work for Janet Whitcher. Of course something’s wrong.” Delaney’s job at Vision Quest Marketing defined the love-hate relationship. Love for the work, loathing for her boss. “Right about now, DataStor, fondly known as the client from hell, is filming a last-minute commercial they demanded I oversee.”