100 HOURS EARLIER
GENESIS
“You really came here on a private jet?” Samuel’s mouth is so close to Neda’s that they’re practically kissing, and that obviously makes her happy. No one in this tiny Cartagena dive bar knows she’s five pounds too heavy and four inches too short to ever have anything more than her face appear in Teen Vogue, even if her father did design the latest Hermès handbag. In Cartagena, she’s just another hot American tourist. Where everyone else sees anonymity, Neda thinks she’s projecting mystery.
Neda only sees what she wants to see. Cheerful delusion is part of her charm.
The rest of her charm is money.
“There’s no other way to travel.” Her lips brush Samuel’s cheek, and he’s so into it he’s breathing hard. His hand is on her thigh. She’s high on the power she has over him—I can see it in her eyes. “Commercial is so . . . common.”
In the chair to my right, Nico stiffens. He grew up in a five-hundred-square-foot bungalow just outside my grandmother’s neighborhood with his mother and three younger sisters.
As usual, Neda has no clue, but Samuel doesn’t care what she’s saying. He’s probably not even listening. He tugs her into the middle of the bar to join three other couples dancing to the strong, fast beat and brass notes of the cumbia-reggae fusion video playing on a small television mounted over the bar. She stumbles, but steadies herself without his help. She’s okay, for now. But just in case, I finish off her margarita. I’m doing her a favor. She can’t afford the calories and she can’t handle her liquor.
“That’s a tourist drink. Try this.” Nico pushes his bottle across the table toward me. Most of the locals are drinking rum, but he likes aguardiente, an anise-flavored liquor. He thinks I’ve never had it because my dress is expensive, my nails are perfect, and I call my grandmother Nana instead of abuela. But Nico has only seen what I’ve let him see.
He was surprised when I asked him to show my friends and me something outside the touristy Cartagena party scene. But that was the point. People can’t assume they know you if you keep them guessing.
I grab Nico’s bottle and pour an inch of aguardiente into my empty glass, then throw it back in one gulp.
His brows rise. “Not your first time?”
I sweep my long, dark hair over my shoulder, and I know he can’t look away. “Nana sends my dad a case every Christmas. He doesn’t count the bottles.” My dad only sees what I let him see too.
We drink half the bottle while Nico tells me about the hike he’s leading next week, to the ruins of an ancient city in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada. He moonlights as a tour guide because helping my grandmother around the house pays the bills, but it doesn’t pay for college.
“Come on.” Nico leans closer, and his eyes shine in the glow of colored lights strung over the bar. “You wanted to see the real Colombia. Let me take you to Ciudad Perdida.”
“We’re not going to be here that long.” And I am not taking a generic tour with a dozen budget-traveling tourists, even if Nico is the guide. “But maybe I’ll let you show me something special tomorrow. Something . . . secluded.”
He leans back in his chair and gives me a slow smile. Now he gets it.
I take another sip of aguardiente and glance around the bar. The local guys in the corner booth are still watching us, but that’s no surprise. People watch my friends and me everywhere we go.
What is strange is that they’re watching Maddie, in her eco-friendly dress and “vintage” sandals that actually came from Goodwill.
“Your cousin is having fun,” Nico says.
She’s dancing with one of the local guys. The pretty one with bright hazel eyes and a scruffy, square jaw.
Paola, the bartender, pours with a heavy hand, and her generosity has miraculously dislodged the stick from my cousin’s ass. Really, it’s about time. Maddie was uptight before her father died, and since then, she’s elevated the role of buzzkill from a hobby to an art.
Fortunately, I don’t have to watch out for Maddie like I do Neda, because her brother, Ryan, would never let anything happen to her.
“You’re bored,” Nico says, drawing me out of my thoughts.
I cross my arms and lean back in my chair. “Is that your best guess?”
His gaze narrows as he studies me, trying to read my mood. “Is this a game?”
“Isn’t everything?” My glass is empty, so I take a sip from his, watching him over the rim as he tries to make sense of the puzzle that is me and my friends dropping cash in his neighborhood dive bar.
He nods at the dance floor, where Neda and Maddie are now dancing in a sloppy group with three guys. “I thought your friend and your cousin didn’t get along.”
“They don’t.” I raise his glass. “This particular social discrepancy is brought to you by the miracle of tequila.”
“And that one?” His focus settles on the end of the bar, where Ryan and Holden are laughing at some story the bartender is telling them, as she refills my cousin’s glass with straight soda. Every time Paola bends over to grab a glass, they look down her shirt. My cousin is subtle. My boyfriend is not. “Is that also the tequila?”
I watch for a minute. Then I look away. That’s nothing. That’s Holden. I stand and take Nico’s hand. “That’s . . . not what I came here to see.”
MADDIE
The fast, heavy rhythm of the cumbia beat pounds through me, driving every spin and little kick, and each connection with Sebastián. His hands find my waist and I smile at the reckless thrill his touch sends through me. The floor swells around me, then it begins to spin. I stumble. Sebastián laughs and pulls me in closer. Then we’re dancing again.
I am drunk for the second time in my life.
The first time, I almost died.
This bar isn’t the kind of place I expected Genesis to drag us to. There are no bright lights or throngs of international tourists. The bartender isn’t swamped and the local crowd doesn’t care what I’m wearing or how well I move. They just want to have a good time.
For the first time in nearly a year, I’m actually having fun. But Genesis doesn’t get credit for that.
In the pause between songs, I catch my breath, and movement from one of the tables catches my eye. My cousin tugs Nico out of his chair, her predatory gaze locked onto him like some kind of laser target.
GENESIS
“You really came here on a private jet?” Samuel’s mouth is so close to Neda’s that they’re practically kissing, and that obviously makes her happy. No one in this tiny Cartagena dive bar knows she’s five pounds too heavy and four inches too short to ever have anything more than her face appear in Teen Vogue, even if her father did design the latest Hermès handbag. In Cartagena, she’s just another hot American tourist. Where everyone else sees anonymity, Neda thinks she’s projecting mystery.
Neda only sees what she wants to see. Cheerful delusion is part of her charm.
The rest of her charm is money.
“There’s no other way to travel.” Her lips brush Samuel’s cheek, and he’s so into it he’s breathing hard. His hand is on her thigh. She’s high on the power she has over him—I can see it in her eyes. “Commercial is so . . . common.”
In the chair to my right, Nico stiffens. He grew up in a five-hundred-square-foot bungalow just outside my grandmother’s neighborhood with his mother and three younger sisters.
As usual, Neda has no clue, but Samuel doesn’t care what she’s saying. He’s probably not even listening. He tugs her into the middle of the bar to join three other couples dancing to the strong, fast beat and brass notes of the cumbia-reggae fusion video playing on a small television mounted over the bar. She stumbles, but steadies herself without his help. She’s okay, for now. But just in case, I finish off her margarita. I’m doing her a favor. She can’t afford the calories and she can’t handle her liquor.
“That’s a tourist drink. Try this.” Nico pushes his bottle across the table toward me. Most of the locals are drinking rum, but he likes aguardiente, an anise-flavored liquor. He thinks I’ve never had it because my dress is expensive, my nails are perfect, and I call my grandmother Nana instead of abuela. But Nico has only seen what I’ve let him see.
He was surprised when I asked him to show my friends and me something outside the touristy Cartagena party scene. But that was the point. People can’t assume they know you if you keep them guessing.
I grab Nico’s bottle and pour an inch of aguardiente into my empty glass, then throw it back in one gulp.
His brows rise. “Not your first time?”
I sweep my long, dark hair over my shoulder, and I know he can’t look away. “Nana sends my dad a case every Christmas. He doesn’t count the bottles.” My dad only sees what I let him see too.
We drink half the bottle while Nico tells me about the hike he’s leading next week, to the ruins of an ancient city in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada. He moonlights as a tour guide because helping my grandmother around the house pays the bills, but it doesn’t pay for college.
“Come on.” Nico leans closer, and his eyes shine in the glow of colored lights strung over the bar. “You wanted to see the real Colombia. Let me take you to Ciudad Perdida.”
“We’re not going to be here that long.” And I am not taking a generic tour with a dozen budget-traveling tourists, even if Nico is the guide. “But maybe I’ll let you show me something special tomorrow. Something . . . secluded.”
He leans back in his chair and gives me a slow smile. Now he gets it.
I take another sip of aguardiente and glance around the bar. The local guys in the corner booth are still watching us, but that’s no surprise. People watch my friends and me everywhere we go.
What is strange is that they’re watching Maddie, in her eco-friendly dress and “vintage” sandals that actually came from Goodwill.
“Your cousin is having fun,” Nico says.
She’s dancing with one of the local guys. The pretty one with bright hazel eyes and a scruffy, square jaw.
Paola, the bartender, pours with a heavy hand, and her generosity has miraculously dislodged the stick from my cousin’s ass. Really, it’s about time. Maddie was uptight before her father died, and since then, she’s elevated the role of buzzkill from a hobby to an art.
Fortunately, I don’t have to watch out for Maddie like I do Neda, because her brother, Ryan, would never let anything happen to her.
“You’re bored,” Nico says, drawing me out of my thoughts.
I cross my arms and lean back in my chair. “Is that your best guess?”
His gaze narrows as he studies me, trying to read my mood. “Is this a game?”
“Isn’t everything?” My glass is empty, so I take a sip from his, watching him over the rim as he tries to make sense of the puzzle that is me and my friends dropping cash in his neighborhood dive bar.
He nods at the dance floor, where Neda and Maddie are now dancing in a sloppy group with three guys. “I thought your friend and your cousin didn’t get along.”
“They don’t.” I raise his glass. “This particular social discrepancy is brought to you by the miracle of tequila.”
“And that one?” His focus settles on the end of the bar, where Ryan and Holden are laughing at some story the bartender is telling them, as she refills my cousin’s glass with straight soda. Every time Paola bends over to grab a glass, they look down her shirt. My cousin is subtle. My boyfriend is not. “Is that also the tequila?”
I watch for a minute. Then I look away. That’s nothing. That’s Holden. I stand and take Nico’s hand. “That’s . . . not what I came here to see.”
MADDIE
The fast, heavy rhythm of the cumbia beat pounds through me, driving every spin and little kick, and each connection with Sebastián. His hands find my waist and I smile at the reckless thrill his touch sends through me. The floor swells around me, then it begins to spin. I stumble. Sebastián laughs and pulls me in closer. Then we’re dancing again.
I am drunk for the second time in my life.
The first time, I almost died.
This bar isn’t the kind of place I expected Genesis to drag us to. There are no bright lights or throngs of international tourists. The bartender isn’t swamped and the local crowd doesn’t care what I’m wearing or how well I move. They just want to have a good time.
For the first time in nearly a year, I’m actually having fun. But Genesis doesn’t get credit for that.
In the pause between songs, I catch my breath, and movement from one of the tables catches my eye. My cousin tugs Nico out of his chair, her predatory gaze locked onto him like some kind of laser target.
