Page 6 of Somebody To Love

“Auntie Piper, this is going to be the best vacation ever.”

“Sure is,” I said with false cheer. I was a loser. The biggest loser. I was going on vacation with my niece because the man I had trusted was a cheating asshole.

“Sorry about your boyfriend. Mom said he was a big loser.”

Pretending it was no big deal, I just shrugged and kept my eyes on the road. “Yep. That’s putting it lightly.”

“Is it true he has another family?”

“Who told you that?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Have you been eavesdropping on your mom’s conversations again?”

“Maybe. Well, yes.” She was honest to a fault. “I sort of overheard Mom telling Carter. So yeah.”

I didn’t bother to get angry. I wasn’t really the angry type. I was easy-going in nature, carefree even. Plus, it’s not like Meredith planned to post my disgrace online somewhere. I was free to wallow in shame without the world knowing that I was a disaster at love.

“Thanks for coming with me, kid,” I said, hoping to change the subject without any resistance from Meredith.

Gratefully, she obliged. “No problem. And plus, I really needed to get out of the house. The twins are driving me crazy. Who knew siblings would be so much work? I know babies don’t come from storks, but if they did I would totally send the twins back with them.”

I smothered a giggle. Meredith had always been a precocious little girl and I thought it was hilarious how she talked about the twins as if they were her children instead of her siblings, as if she was the one responsible for feeding, clothing, and taking care of them. She sounded like a long-suffering single mom. I tried not to laugh.

“Being a big sister sounds tough.” I figured why not play along.

She sighed deeply. “They keep me up twenty-four seven.”

“Such a hard life for an older sibling.”

“You have no idea.”

I smothered another laugh and then we were both lost in thought. I didn’t know what Meredith was thinking of, but the scenery grabbed my attention.

We were traveling through the mountains, but had descended into a valley area. Nothing but forest stretched out around us as far as the eye could see. It was a beautiful sight: Radiant green that stretched on for miles. I had visited the Amazon in Brazil when I had lived abroad and that was probably the only place on Earth that could possibly compare to the beauty that was around us now.

And just when I had thought the beauty around me was something I would never forget. The trees disappeared and a gigantic lake with the sun in the distant horizon greeted us.

“Wow,” Meredith whispered. It was definitely a wow moment. “This place is beautiful. It’s too bad your boyfriend sucked, because this place must be so romantic for couples. Maybe Mom and Carter can come here for their next anniversary.”

As Meredith planned her mom and stepdad’s next kid-free getaway, I tried not to get too depressed. Yeah, I hadn’t had a functional relationship in a long time, but that didn’t mean my romantic situation was hopeless, right?

Sometimes I felt my whole family was cursed to have bad relationship after bad relationship. My parents had been miserable in their marriage. My brother couldn’t make a relationship work. And then there was me: hopeless at love.

I hadn’t wanted that to be me. I wanted the whole fairy tale. I wanted the elusive happily ever after. And I was proud of myself for never settling, but I couldn’t help but wonder why all my relationships failed. Was it me? Was it them? Was it both of us?

I thought about seeing a therapist, but I was way too cheap to pay someone to listen to my problems. I figured that’s what Dana and Carter were for.

My thoughts shifted to the lake in front of us as the GPS navigated us to a large hotel right off the lake that had several other smaller hotels in its vicinity. It was like a little magical town hidden from the rest of the world. Yeah, I thought to myself, this will be a great place to decompress.

I pulled up to the large hotel and Meredith and I piled out. There was a valet and he quickly took my keys and had someone else grab our luggage. I smiled in gratitude. Once inside, Meredith and I exchanged impressed glances.

“This place is awesome.”

I nodded and the receptionist gave us a broad smile. “I take it you haven’t stayed here before?”

“Are we that obvious?

“Yes,” he said, “But in a sweet way.”

I gave him my information and he entered it into the system, searching for our names from the guest list.