Page 5 of Sucker For You

Shit.

He fished through a few crumpledcolones, his passport, and Baby’s keys until he located his phone in the rear pocket of his jeans. While the device fired up its connection after coming off airplane mode, he tapped into his stored texts with his sister.

Erin Monaghan

You’re photographing kelp with the Monterey Oceanic Research Institute in California for a few weeks?

Wes Monaghan (voice-to-text)

Yeah, until early October.

Erin

Ethan and I rented a beach house in Monterey for most of September! We’ll be working remotely for the month between the wedding shower for his brother and the actual ceremony. Plus, Adrian’s coming to San Francisco for an investor meeting soon. Maybe we can have lunch at some point. If you ever come up for air.

Wes

Sure.

Erin

And—I really thought this bungalow was a good idea, except the booking’s nonrefundable, and Ethan was just invited to a satellite launch at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It’s using the quantum technologies that he’s developed at NASA. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s going to be onsite. But the launch is also in September. . .

Wes

While Cape Canaveral’s in Florida.

Erin

I don’t want Ethan to miss it.

Wes

You want to see Tyson.

Erin

I’m subtle.

Erin

But we’ll figure something out. In the meantime, why don’t you stop by the bungalow when you arrive in Monterey? If your hostel’s got cockroaches, we can probably even loan out our couch for a night. There should be a key available for everyone to use.

Yes, he’d remembered correctly about the beach house.

Just too late.

Cursing his airplane brain fog, Wes opened his phone’s voice-to-text module to alert his sister that he was already here in California on Friday night, when:

Searching for Service

“Christ on a bike!”

In the rush to chuck his clothes into his bag, pack up his lens ports, strobes, and camera housings, then hitchhike to Liberia Guanacaste Airport, he’d forgotten to change his phone off its Costa Rican plan. The screen chirped at him now:

International roaming charges may apply.

Swearing again, he flipped the device back into flight mode.