Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
“You were going to say something about the coconut?” Mila answers, brushing the weird compliment aside.
“It was shrooms.” Sarai says with a defensive flick of her shoulder.
“Shrooms?” Mila repeats. “Who is Shrooms?”
“Not who,” I say, tightening my hold on her. I sense this is going to be a little out of her sphere of reference. “What. What is shrooms. You sent us on a fucking trip?” I say, turning to Sarai. I’m stunned. And stretching the truth, given Mila was tripping on her own.
“Drugs!” Mila squeaks.
Sarai slides her an unimpressed look. “It was just the local stuff—a microdose at best.”
“I can’t believe you’d do this,” Mila says, sounding genuinely hurt.
“It’s not like I didn’t tell you.”
“Tell me? You didn’t tell me!” If Mila’s voice gets any higher, we’ll be surrounded by yapping dogs.
“Yeah, I did. When the photographer turned up and you wouldn’t come out of the bathroom—”
“Because all I was wearing was my underwear and a veil!”
“That was the whole point—it was a lingerie shoot,” the younger woman snipes.
“Wait. There was a lingerie shoot?” Neither woman looks to me. That lucky dog, I think. Then I remember Oliver isn’t the groom in this situation. I guess I could be that lucky dog. I slot the thought away for examination later.
“I told you, if you came out, I would get you something to help your nerves.”
“You didn’t say you were giving me drugs!”
“I specifically said psilocybin.”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Mila protests.
“Shrooms,” Sarai and I reply in unison.
“I would never have agreed to taking drugs—you said it was a local remedy!”
“It is! I gave you the magic mushroom equivalent of baby Tylenol. I was trying to help,” Sarai mutters, unrepentant. “You two were not vibing. And the priest might not have understood English, but he picked up the tone. You were totally spoiling his priestly Zen. I was just trying to mellow the situation before the shit hit the fan!”
“Wait.” I hold up my hand. “You said you microdosed Mila before the ceremony.”
“I did. But then I topped her up. During the ceremony. And . . . I might’ve microdosed you. Inadvertently.”
“What?”
“It was the coconut,” Sarai adds with a touch of chagrin. “Like, a pinhead of the stuff.”
“Sarai.” I draw out her name through gritted teeth. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that Mila had already agreed to it and that you weren’t supposed to take the coconut out of her hand!”
“Do you know how dangerous that could’ve been?” Dosed. She fucking microdosed me! Is this why I . . . No. Mila’s been in my head for months—the choices I made yesterday were my own.
But Mila’s weren’t.
Fuck. My stomach plummets.
“Please,” Sarai retorts dismissively. “I’ve heard all the tales of your ‘dabbling.’” She physically puts quotation marks around the word. “And you do know I’m a chemistry major, don’t you?”
“That’s beside the point. And that other shit? That was a lot of years ago.” When I was young and reckless.
“You weren’t microdosing neither,” she mutters.
“What you did was way out of order,” I retort severely as I try to reconcile what this means and how I feel.
“Everyone on the resort knows—you used to get high with the head chef, and he’d make grilled cheese when you got the munchies!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to decide what’s good for me or for Mila. It’s fucking irresponsible, Sarai!”
“You were an accident,” she persists as tears begin to glisten in her eyes. “I was trying not to blow your covers. You were supposed to be happy and in love, not uptight and scowling at each other.” She throws up her hands in frustration.
“You told me it was a local medicinal,” Mila begins.
“It is! You just don’t get how serious the situation was. The priest sees himself as a channel between heaven and earth. He thought he was there to ask the gods for their wedding blessings for two people planning the rest of their lives together. You were supposed to be madly in love! What would’ve happened if he’d bailed—walked off? I’ll tell you what: buh-bye, wedding; hello, tabloid gossip columns!”
“You could’ve just . . .” Mila flounders.
“What? What could I have done?” Sarai demands, warming to her dramatic theme. “You tell me. I knew how important this was to you—how important it was to the Deubels. I was protecting all of you.”
“Nothing to do with your own fee, huh?” I put in.
Sarai’s mouth pinches. “You know that in the States you can get way stronger stuff online. Freeze-dried shrooms, mushroom teas, truffles, capsules, and even candies!”
“That’s hardly the point.”
The shrooms might be how last night happened but not why. Not for either of us. Not that it makes me feel any better about the situation.
“And I hung around afterward like a good little trip nanny,” Sarai puts in petulantly.