CHAPTER 1
6 a.m. – Portland, USA
The thump of her face hitting the floor woke Clara instantly. It took a few more seconds before realizing she’d rolled off the couch. She groaned and pushed up onto all fours.
Damn my head hurts.
Her brain stopped spinning and she peeked at last night’s plaything lying naked on the couch.
Not again, Clara.
He had an adorable mop of sandy hair and deep dimples, but couldn’t have been over twenty-one. The boy-man coughed out a breath stinking of craft beer mixed with seafood chowder. Had she really kissed that mouth? And what was his name? Trent? Todd? It definitely started with a T. Or maybe a B.
Either way, not one of my better decisions.
Sitting on the balls of her feet, Clara rubbed sleep from her eyes and ran fingers through her black, waist-length hair. She fought through the hangover haze to remember what’d happened. The bar hopping session had been Pilar’s idea. Her cousin let her stay over this past week while in town for their five-year college reunion and promised cute guys. Not that you could trust them, in general or in bed. Sex with T or B here hadn’t been at all satisfying, she knew that much.
So why do you keep doing this to yourself?
Clara slid her tongue across her teeth to remove the fuzz, thinking how she needed to give them a good scrub, take a long shower, and just more generally get her shit together. Maybe then she would find a man who could actually fulfill her needs. If such a thing existed…
Spotting her bra and panties bunched under the couch, she pulled them on with a sigh and climbed slowly to her feet. Her cousin’s apartment was a shoebox, covered with thrift shop rugs, furniture collected from sidewalks and dozens of candles. Clara’s mind flashed back to when she used to own stuff—a whole McMansion with five bedrooms, three living rooms, a quarter-million dollar kitchen and two matching BMWs. Well, she’d never really owned it, had she? Not even a cent of it, according to the divorce lawyers. Honestly, she couldn’t imagine wanting to have so much crap ever again. All it’d done was weigh her down.
Now everything Clara possessed in the whole world fit into the red sixty-five liter backpack in the corner of Pilar’s apartment. There wasn’t room, or need, for anything else. Besides, she loved that backpack: stained, bruised, scarred, but still running against the wind—just like her.
Clara stumbled over and picked up a summery yellow dress spilling out its top. The dress had a wine stain near the hem and smelled like it could use a soak, but there weren’t any cleaner options. She slipped it on before spotting her passport on the floor, flashing like a siren.
Oh shit.
What time is it?
Why is there sunlight?
I was meant to leave already!
Clara was sure she’d set an alarm for 5 a.m. She dug her phone out of a canvas shoulder bag she’d bought from a market in Nepal a few months ago. It was dead. The phone had been on the blink since hiking up into the Himalayas where the cold had ruined the battery and she didn’t have money to splash on a new one.
“No, no, no.”
A tsunami of dread crashed into Clara, followed by waves of sweaty panic. She sprang toward a vintage clock on the wall, stubbing her toe on the way.
“Ouch!”
She stuck both hands on the wall to stay upright. Reading analog time hadn’t been a problem when she was a kid but now in the digital age plus a migraine and side dish of regret, it was freaking hard.
The little hand is at the…four, five, six. The big hand is at the…twelve.
Twelve-o-six?
No, other way round… Six o’clock!
Clara spun on a dime. The boy-man was still passed out on the couch. Her backpack was still unpacked in the corner. And she was supposed to be in transit already.
With the sudden clarity a deadline brings, Clara ran to Pilar’s bedroom and threw open the door. It crashed against the wall. Her cousin shot up in bed like a jack-in-the-box.
“Intruder!” Pilar yelled.
“What? No, it’s me, you pokpok. Get up. We have to go!”
Pilar pushed up her sleeping mask and squinted. “Where are we going?”
“The airport.”
Pilar flopped back onto her pillow. “I’m sleeping.”
Clara jumped on the bed, straddling her cousin and shaking her shoulders. “My plane leaves in three hours.”
“That’s plenty of time.”
“From Seattle.”
Pilar tilted her head as if calculating the time it would take to get there from Portland in morning traffic. “You’re too late.”
“No! I can’t be too late.” The scale of the catastrophe continued to unfold in Clara’s head. “Don’t you remember? The competition I won. Meet a travel writer. Fly to India for Holi. Stay at a five-star resort.”
“You hate resorts.”
“But it’s free.”
Pilar exhaled and her lips fluttered loudly. “Fine.”
“Salamat mahal ko.” Clara thanked her cousin in Filipino and kissed her all over the face like a puppy dog.
“Aah, stop it.”
“OK let’s go! We gotta hurry. And we gotta get rid of the guy on your couch.”
