Free Emily's Reasons Why Not by Carrie Gerlach

camera right out of her hand!
    “Hi. We’re in St. Croix.” Did that just come out of my mouth? Mom hands me the video camera and proceeds to SNAP. She takes my picture.
    I look back at the babealicious guy and he’s smiling at me, giving me a knowing nod … like all parents, at any age, were put on this earth to embarrass and humiliate us.
    I am struggling to strap on my backpack and Mom’s videocamera when Mr. Single-Over-Six-Foot walks past and says, “Nice hat.”
    Flutter, flutter .
    I almost fall on Mom. She shoves me forward down the bus aisle.
    “Was he talking to you?” Mom says, watching him through the window. “He’s kind of cute. Sweetie, where’s his wife?” She has a point. Maybe the wife, girlfriend, gay lover was sick and they didn’t want the tickets to go to waste.
    Maybe his perfect, size-six girlfriend with long beautiful hair and perfect legs minus any visible signs of cellulite is waiting naked in their bangalow bed for her prince to come home.
    The hike begins up the curvy, rocky slope. Mud flies up from Mom’s sneakers and lands on my sweaty shins. Bugs and mosquitoes buuuzzzzzz around me. Panting like a dog, I am anything but glamorous at this moment. I hate hiking. I hate this mountain. I hate this island.
    Crack! Mom’s hand lands hard on my sunburned thigh. “Spider,” she says, showing me the gooey remains on her palm.
    “They’re not poisonous,” Hot-Babe-in-Matching-Hat says.
    “I’m Craig, Craig Kautz from Montana.”
    Nice green eyes, white teeth. His forearm brushes against me as he helps Mom up a steep, rocky slope.
    “Bitsy Sanders, and this is my daughter Emily,” Mom adds, wiping the sweat off her brow. “Do you mind taking our picture?”
    I wish the spider had bitten me and it was poisonous. Wish I would die. I wrap my arm around Mom and smile. “Sure.’He takes the camera from Mom, looks through the lens, and stops to look at me for a good long while.
    I stand, confused, looking back at him. He slowly steps closer, his face next to mine, his green eyes looking deep into me, studying my face, then he wipes a yellowish-brown smudge of something that resembles horrible tropical insect poop out of my hair.
    I feel my heart tighten and constrict as I collapse on the ground and die of humiliation. This trip has become a lesson in humility.
    “Wouldn’t want to tarnish that pretty hair,” Craig says, looking back through the camera lens. “One, two, three, say—we’re almost off this godforsaken hike.”
    “We’re almost off this godforsaken hike,” Mom and I both say, laughing. Click .
    That was the best picture from the entire trip.
    I am pulled back into Dr. D.’s office by the smile on his face. “What?”
    “Nothing. I’m just listening. Please continue.”
    I guess therapists can enjoy a story, too, from time to time. It dawns on me that Dr. D. is human, a man, sitting there listening to my intimate life tale. I file the thought and jump back in.
    On the bus ride back to town I learn that Craig is not married, but I hide my curiosity and refrain from digging any further, as I would like to be kissed at least once on this trip. So much for denying my need for men.
    “Do you play golf?” he asks, pointing at my Ping hat.
    “I played with my ex-boyfriend. He loved to play and Ifound after he dumped me that it was the one thing I still liked about him.”
    “My ex-fiancée hated golf. Hated it when I played. I think it’s awesome that you learned,” he distantly replies.
    Did he say ex-fiancée? What makes a person commit to marriage and then decide to call it off?
    I realize that I have let too much time go by, and there is now an awkward silence. How could there not be when he just threw that word fiancée out there like a damn grenade into my future of eleven days in paradise with Mr. Ping Perfect?
    “Well, after I broke up with my boyfriend I kept playing golf. You figure there’s thirty-to-one odds guys to girls on the golf course, I