Has Anyone Seen My Pants? (4 page)

“Margarita, rocks, no salt?” he asked me.

“Sí, gracias!”

“I’ll have the same,” Jackie interjected. “I see you’ve already made your presence known at the bar,” she continued as he walked away.

“Always.”

Jackie and I spent the day wandering back and forth between the pool and the ocean, margaritas in tow. The drunker we got, the funnier my story from the previous evening became until we were just drunkenly yelling, “Only
UNO
?” at each other while I posed for Instagram photos in my bikini.

“No, not that one. You have to take it at an angle from above; that’s what makes you look skinniest,” I scolded her as I went through the last batch of photos she had taken of me. “Go stand on that rock and take another one.”

“Jesus, this is a lot of work. I didn’t know you cared so much about how you look in a stupid photo,” she said in an accusatory tone.

“I’m single, Jackie. It matters how I look in the photos that I post on Instagram. I have a few possible suitors following me.”

As much as I love my friends who are in relationships, sometimes I feel like they forget what it’s like out there. And now with social media? We’re all screwed.

After settling on a good photo, I told Jackie to get in the water so I could take a bikini picture of her to send to her fiancé, Brandon. We basically had a full-on photo shoot by the sea.

“Oh, that one is okay but I look really pale,” Jackie noted as she scrolled through her options. “I can’t send him that.”

Ah, people who are in relationships are human, too!
I thought happily.

“Don’t worry, I’ll put a nice filter on it—boom! You’re tan!”

Jackie smiled proudly and told me to send the photo. “He’s probably missing me right now, don’t you think?”

“Definitely,” I agreed as I texted it to him. “You almost look Brazilian in this. Damn, Instagram is
good
.”

We went back to our room to get ready to go out. When I was getting dressed, I noticed a few bumps on my stomach. Then I turned around and realized they were on my back and on my legs, too. “Oh my God, bedbugs!” I yelled to Jackie.

She ran over and looked at my bump-ridden body. “Those aren’t bedbug bites. I’ve had bedbugs, remember? I got them last time we were here.”

I did remember. She’d gotten bedbugs when we were in Cabo for our friend Sarah Tilley’s wedding. We were sharing a room and I didn’t get them, which was weird but not something I was going to complain about.

“What else could they be? They’re everywhere!” I yelled, on the verge of tears. I had planned on living in my bikini the next few days . . . this was not good.

“Maybe a heat rash? Or an allergic reaction? I’m not sure. Let’s go down to the gift shop and see if they have some Cortaid or something.”

The woman working at the gift shop was stumped, but she also assured me they were not bedbug bites. “Believe me, I know bedbug bites. I’m Mexican.”

“Well what else could it be?!” I asked.

“Maybe an allergy, yes. Or the heat. This should help clear it right up,” she said as she handed me a Mexican version of Cortaid.

“Do you have the American version of Cortaid? Like . . . Cortaid?” I asked.

“Is fine, trus me. This will work,” she laughed.

We went back to the room and I covered myself in the generic Mexican cream. I put on a dress that seemed to cover all the bumps so that people wouldn’t think I was diseased, and then Jackie and I drank our complimentary Coronas (they just keep bringing them all day!) and headed out for a night on the town. I put on a brave face because I didn’t want to ruin our first night of vacation, but inside my weird rash horrified me. I’m just not a fan of having weird shit on my body—but I guess nobody is.

Downtown Cabo is kind of what you’d expect: a bit of a mess with lots of techno clubs, a few good restaurants, plenty
of bars, and a lot of drunk people. I noticed a lot of them looked like they were in college. Then when one group of super-intoxicated girls threw back a round of shots and yelled, “Spring break, wooooooo!” it dawned on me why.

“Oh my God, we are in Mexico during spring break,” I told Jackie, kind of horrified.

“Well, the good news is, you probably aren’t the only person in here who is going to develop a rash this weekend,” she responded. Then she looked around, ordered us two shots of tequila, raised them up, and yelled, “Spring break, wooooooo!”

We spent the next couple of hours barhopping, yelling, “Spring break, woooooo!” It got funnier every time we did it, and we did it a lot. There were definitely tons of spring breakers around, but two guys our age zeroed in on us and offered us some seats at their table. One of them was really cute and the other one seemed to have a nice personality. If they had been girls, he would have been considered the “fat friend.” He wasn’t fat at all, but you know what I mean.

The cute one was flirting with Jackie, but she made it clear she was happily engaged. He seemed kind of disappointed but continued to train his attention on her.
Why am I stuck with the fat friend?
I thought.
Did the cute one notice the rash?

We spent the rest of the night hanging out with cute guy and fat friend, the four of us getting pretty drunk. When the bar started to close Jackie suggested they come back to our hotel and drink. “We have an infinity pool, it’s awesome!” she told them.

I grabbed Jackie by the arm and excused us to the bathroom. “You aren’t doing anything bad, right?” I asked her when we were safely out of earshot.

“Fuck no! I just thought they were fun and maybe you can get some action. I’d never cheat on Brandon!”

“I know! I was just making sure because we’re drunk. But I’m not getting any action; the cute one likes you and I’m not going to hook up with him just because he can’t hook up with you. That’s sad . . . for me.”

“Well, what about the other guy?”

I realized then that neither of us had called them by name, because we had no idea what their names were.

“It’s too late to ask,” Jackie said. “So what about the other guy? You can hook up with him. He’s totally into you.”

“The fat friend?”

“He’s not fat,” Jackie laughed.

“I know, but he’s technically the fat friend.”

“Okay, fine, are you going to hook up with the fat friend?”

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling up my dress and looking in the bathroom mirror to see if my rash had spread. It had. “Oh my God, look! There are more bumps. That Mexican Cortaid made it worse!”

“Just give it time, it’ll go away. Seriously, I think you should hook up with that guy, he’s really nice.”

“Lots of people are really nice; it doesn’t mean I should hook up with them.”

“You haven’t had sex in almost a year,” she reminded me.

“Good point. I’ll hook up with him. No sex, but he can finger me. And I have to keep the lights off because of the rash.”

“Done,” Jackie agreed.

When the four of us got back to the hotel, Jackie immediately cracked open the minibar and started pouring drinks. I put my iPod on and started blaring country music. The cute one asked if I had any other music, which I did.

“Nope,” I replied. “If you don’t like country music you can leave.” I said it with a tone that made him think I was being hilarious, but in reality I was being mad because he didn’t like me. Then I put Luke Bryan on shuffle and turned the volume up as loud as I could.

“Is that going to piss off your neighbors?” Fat Friend asked.

“We don’t have neighbors!” I yelled, excited about the fact that the room next to us was vacant.

“If we did they’d have to learn to love Luke Bryan,” Jackie threw in. “It’s not really an option not to when Sarah is around.”

“True that,” I said as I attempted to high-five her but stumbled and ended up slapping her in the face.

We both laughed hysterically and I began to croon “Buzzkill” while Cute Guy and Fat Friend looked on in horror.

I kept drinking while periodically disappearing into the bathroom to check on the progression of my rash. It wasn’t getting better, but it wasn’t getting worse. I tried to let that stasis put my mind at ease.

Since we only had one room, letting Fat Friend finger me
was going to be tricky. I turned up “Country Girl” extra loud and pulled Jackie aside.

“Okay, how is this going to work?” I asked.

“Easy! Cute Guy and I will go in the infinity pool and I’ll close the doors to the patio so Fat Friend can fiddle your vagina.”

“You’re going into the infinity pool with Cute Guy?” I asked, half-jealous.

“Yes, it’s fine. All I’ve been doing is talking about Brandon, and I got him to talk about his ex-girlfriend so now he’s just Sad Friend.”

“Okay, perfect.”

Jackie and Cute/Sad Guy splashed around in the infinity pool while Fat Friend awkwardly tried to dance with me to Luke Bryan’s “Do I.”

“We don’t need to dance,” I told him. I actually kind of wanted to, but he kept stepping on my feet and I had just gotten a pedicure.

He took my dance refusal as an invitation to do other things and went in for a kiss. It was a pretty decent kiss, so it turned into a full-on make-out session, with us tumbling onto the bed and me awkwardly trying to guide his hands around my rash.

“Am I doing something wrong?” he asked after the forty-seventh time I shoved his hand off of my stomach.

“No! Not at all!” I said, trying to reassure him. I was actually kind of enjoying the make-out session; it
had
been a long
time since my last one and I didn’t want to ruin it. “I’m sorry, I have a rash.”

“Huh?” he responded, as expected.

“I don’t know. I went to the beach today and I came back with a rash. I don’t know what it is and it’s really gross and I’m sorry—if you want to leave it’s totally fine.”

“A rash? It’s Mexico. Of course you got a rash. Can I see it?”

“No!” I yelled, and slapped his hand away.

“Just let me see it. I’m not going anywhere.” Fat Friend slowly pulled up my dress as I covered my eyes in shame.

“Those are bites. Maybe sand fleas, or what my mom used to call ‘no-see-’ems,’ because . . . because, you know, you can’t see ’em.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve had them. I come here all the time. Trust me, they’re no big deal.”

“Well, Jackie didn’t get them and we were at the same place all day.”

“Her skin probably doesn’t smell as sweet as yours . . .”

Fat Friend had
game.
I quickly forgot about my “no-see-’em” bites and let Fat Friend finger me as planned. I didn’t even touch his penis, so it was a perfect night . . . for me.

T
he next morning, Jackie and I ordered an uncomfortable amount of room service and immediately began drinking again. Cute Guy and Fat Friend were long since headed to the
airport to go home, wherever that was—in addition to never having learned their names, we also never learned where they lived
or
what they did for a living.

“Pool time?” Jackie asked as she poured us both a Bloody Mary.

“Yes!”

I changed into my bikini, noting that the bumps had not gotten any better.

“Fuck!” I complained.

“They haven’t gotten any worse either,” Jackie said encouragingly. “Glass half full!”

“My glass actually is half-full. Can you fill it before we head down to the pool?”

We spent the next couple of days doing exactly what we’d planned to do: drinking, tanning, reading, drinking, and posting pictures on Instagram to make our friends jealous. Something also attacked Jackie, but it appeared to be mosquitoes and they were only interested in her hands. So in every photo we had to make sure nobody could see my rash or her swollen knuckles. We were a real mess.

Time flew by and before we knew it, we were having our last night of dinner at The Office, a local restaurant with pretty good food and really great people-watching. A guy in a sombrero approached our table, shot glasses in hand and a whistle around his neck.

“We’re good, we’re in our thirties,” I told him.

“Ignore her,” Jackie interrupted. “Spring break, woooo!”

I giggled and we both did like four tequila shots, the waiter blowing a whistle and clapping after each one.

“Oh, Fat Friend just texted me,” I called out to Jackie as I checked my phone. “I didn’t even realize I gave him my phone number.”

“What did he say?”

“That he had a great time and to stay in touch.”

“Are you going to stay in touch?”

“No.”

“Why not? You guys seemed to get along,” she countered.

“We got along fine, sure. But that was mostly because I wanted to get fingered and he had a finger.”

“Well, why not just see him again?”

“He was really nice, and it was a fun night, but it’s not like there were real sparks or anything. Plus, he lives far away.”

“Where?”

“I have no idea.”

Jackie laughed. “Have you ever thought that maybe you stop relationships before they can start?”

“Are you trying to ruin my buzz?”

“I’m serious! You say you want to date someone, but then when you meet—”

“You’re a buzzkill every time you come around, those beers might as well have been poured out
. . 
.
”
I drunkenly sang my favorite Luke Bryan—who else?—song to her.

“Okay, fine. We don’t have to talk about it . . . tonight.
By the way, I really like that song and I think Brandon might break up with me over it.”

“Fat Friend didn’t know the words, and that’s how I know we aren’t meant to be.”

A
s we packed for the airport the next day, we decided to go have one last morning margarita before heading out. We got our favorite seats by the pool and the waiter brought us drinks that we didn’t even have to order.

“I love this place,” I told Jackie as I dipped my toes in the pool.

“Me too,” she agreed.

“Thanks for coming with me. I know you have a boyfriend who you could go on vaca—”

“Shut up,” Jackie interrupted. “I had a blast and just because I have a boyfriend doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend time away with you.”