Free Acapulco Nights by K. J. Gillenwater

girlfriend. I was an engaged woman, after all. Plus, there were all those bad memories from Mexico—a marriage and a man I had been trying to forget.
    “I can’t. I’m sorry, Janice, but I’ve got so much going on at work. There’s a new software product I have to document by the end of next month and some edits I’ve been doing for one of the other writers—”
    “We’re only going to be gone ten days, Suze,” she begged. “I think your boss can manage without you for a week.”
    “And James would miss me,” I countered, my resolve starting to break down. “He can’t do laundry worth a darn. I know he’d be calling me all the time.”
    “So what if he calls?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Think about it. Let me know by Friday, okay?”
    “All right.” Janice had the tenacity of a badger sometimes.
    My plan had been to avoid her altogether. If I didn’t call her back by Friday, maybe it would be too late to book the flight or maybe it would be too expensive.
    But Janice had other plans for me.
    “Did you think I wouldn’t let you go?” James asked me a few days later when I walked in the door after a late day at the office.
    “Go? Go where?” My mind grew cluttered with the last minute details of a project at work.
    “To Mexico? With Janice?” He handed me a plate of food—James was an excellent cook—and gently pushed me into a chair at the table in our kitchen.
    Darn that Janice! “Oh.” I lifted a fork filled with spinach lasagna to my mouth. I had a short reprieve from answering as I chewed the savory bite.
    James hovered over me, waiting as I finished chewing and taking a long drink of milk. When I set my glass down he prompted, “Well?”
    “I really didn’t want to go, to tell you the truth. I tried to let her down easy.” I quickly scooped up another forkful of lasagna.
    “Why wouldn’t you want to go? Half the time I’ll be in Dallas.” He studied me, then, seeing my blank look, prompted, “The convention?”
    “I forgot.”
    “You forgot? I circled the dates in red on your calendar in your office, and you forgot?”
    “What do you want me to say, James?” I sighed, setting my fork on the edge of my plate. “That I would love to go?  That I certainly don’t mind leaving my fiancé to go hang out with my single friend in Acapulco? In a bikini? With lots of unattached men around?”
    “I think you should go.”
    “Really,” I said, incensed.
    “For our sake, I think you should go.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Suzie, how long have we been engaged?”
    I hesitated, I hoped it wasn’t the same conversation we had so many times before. “Four years.”
    “And how many wedding dates have we chosen?”
    Yes, he headed into familiar territory. My heart sank. “Three.”
    “Three, Suzie. Three.” He paced the kitchen as I watched from my chair at the table, my food now cold in front of me.
    “So? What’s so terrible about that?” I stood up to take my dish to the sink. My appetite had suddenly disappeared.
    “I’m not getting any younger, Suzie. I want us to get married, you know that.” He stopped his pacing and came to stand next to me by the sink.
    We fell into our usual routine. I rinsed, he put the dishes in the dishwasher. We were quite a team.
    “I know.” I was ashamed of myself and ashamed of what I was doing to him. How much longer would he put up with me? What would be the last straw for him?  I hated to think about it. I loved him, I really did, and I couldn’t imagine not being with him. But some things couldn’t be fixed so easily. If only I could get up the courage to tell him why I couldn’t get married.
    “I think you need to take this trip.  I think we both need some time apart to think.” James shut the door of the dishwasher with a click, then dried his hands on a towel hanging from the stove.
    “We do?”
    “Yes.” He covered the remaining lasagna with tin foil. “I told Janice you were going. You’re flying in to Acapulco and