With a sniff, Erin got up from the floor. She stepped out of her shoes then stripped off her dress and underwear, removing from her body all memories of the night before. From here on Dare would be a distant memory, just someone stored away in her collection of experiences. That was all. She stepped into the tub, turned on the shower and submerged herself in the cleansing flow.
Erin was relieved when the girls got up later that morning and seemed to have forgotten about her date. They must have come in late last night, half drunk as usual. They seem to have totally forgotten that she’d even gone out. Only Robyn seemed to be regarding her with some interest. Finally, as Erin was packing the plates back onto the room service trolley, she spoke.
“So,” she said, dragging out the word as she eyed Erin from across the room, “how did it go with lover boy last night?”
“L…lover boy?” Erin’s heart sank as she realized she hadn't escaped. Robyn wanted answers and what Robyn wanted Robyn got.
“Yeah, your date. What? Did it bomb?” The girl looked almost eager to hear bad news.
"Yes. Yes, it did.” Erin seized on the direction the conversation had taken. All Robyn wanted to know was that she’d had a terrible time and then she’d leave her alone.
“Aww, that’s too bad.” Tammy went over and put her arm around Erin’s shoulder. “Don’t let it get you down, though. We can still have some fun tonight.”
Tonight. For her there would be no fun. It would be their last night on the island before heading back to Vancouver and she planned to spend it hidden away in her room.
If she’d spent her time as she normally did, alone and lost in an art history text, she would not have fallen into the trap set by the devil himself. She’d learned her lesson. Home was the safest place to be.
She said none of this out loud, though. She kept her thoughts to herself and pasted a brave smile on her face. “Sure,” she said brightly. “There’s always tonight.”
After breakfast Maria, Tammy and Robyn went down to the beach to take advantage of their last opportunity to tan under the hot Caribbean sun and dip in the ocean. It was also their last chance to preen in front of the many available college guys who had come to the island looking for fun. When they’d hounded Erin to come along she had flatly refused. She would not risk running into Dare again.
As long as she stayed in the villa she would be safe. Thank goodness she’d never told him her last name. He would have no way of finding her. Not that she thought he’d be looking. She had absolutely no desire for him to even consider looking for her. That was what she told herself but the puddle of pain at the pit of her stomach was testament to the lie she’d been feeding herself. She was hurting and there was no denying that.
After a night of packing and contemplation Erin left the Island of Santa Marta early the next morning relieved that she would never lay eyes on this confounded place again.
***
From her seat in the crowd of black-gowned students Erin looked over at the sea of faces - friends, family and well-wishers who had come from far and near to celebrate the special occasion. Within less than an hour the ceremony would be over and each graduate would leave, ready to move on to the next stage in life.
Erin was smiling as she watched the happy faces but even as she celebrated with her batch mates she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sadness. How she wished she had someone, anyone, to celebrate with her.
There’d been a day when she’d had a mother and a father who loved her dearly. They would have been here today to share in this rite of passage but it had been nine years since they’d been torn from her life, the victims of a motor vehicle accident caused by a drunk driver.
With her only living relative being an aunt who lived and worked in South America as a missionary Erin had ended up in foster care, moving from family to family from the age of twelve until she was eighteen.
She’d won her freedom then. By working hard throughout high school she’d won a tuition scholarship to a college of her choice and now, four years later and with thousands of hours of part-time work under her belt, she’d made it. Now to face the real world. She was eager to step over that threshold and start making some real money.
Armed with her degree in liberal arts Erin sent out resume after resume to museums, government agencies, schools and non-profit organizations, hopeful that she would land a job within a few weeks. She had enough money to last her about a month and a half. So this was what it felt like to be just one paycheck away from the homeless shelter. She had to find a job and fast.
But things did not go as Erin planned. Three weeks into her job search she still had not been called for a single interview. It was all due to the recession, the career office told her, coupled with the fact that the market had just been flooded with thousands of new graduates competing for the few limited job openings. Erin acknowledged that might all be true but that knowledge didn’t help her situation, now only about three weeks away from starvation. And how was she going to pay next month's rent?
And if that weren’t bad enough she’d suddenly been attacked by a stomach virus. Two days in a row she'd woken up to a bout of nausea and had had to rush to the bathroom where she’d emptied the contents of her stomach. When the third day turned out to be more of the same Erin knew she had to make the sacrifice and dip into her meager savings to get the money to visit a doctor. Her college health insurance coverage had expired so all medical costs were now her responsibility.
At the medical clinic she grudgingly handed over the eighty-dollar fee then went to sit in the waiting lounge. She picked up the latest copy of Cosmopolitan then put it down again, unable to concentrate. There was just too much on her mind. There were so many things she needed to do. She needed to start pounding the pavement, she had to find a job. Dear God, how was she going to survive?
She glanced at her watch for the fifth time. Why hadn’t the doctor called her yet? She couldn’t afford to waste all this time just sitting around. She had to get back to her job hunting. Unable to sit still any longer she got up and went over to stare at the goldfish swimming serenely in their colorfully decorated house of glass. She envied them.