Tattoos and Lost Phones

Heat and bright lights radiated through my closed eyelids, waking me from a deep slumber. Pain from the angry, radiating sun sent alarm messages to my throbbing brain, and I felt nausea build up quickly and pulled the trash can to me so I could empty the contents of my stomach. Those contents happened to be a lot of old, slightly processed alcohol and some bits of stuff I didn’t want to think about too much. It reeked. I pushed the trash can away from me when I finally felt I was done. Welp, today was going to be full of baby steps. I needed to clean myself up. I tried to shield my face with my arm as I got up but my forearm was insanely sore. I sat up slowly and realized it was strange that light was shinning from my left. I didn’t have a window on my left in my room. I was not in my room.

I didn’t know where I was.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay. Everything was fine. Everything was fine. I just needed to find out where I was and holy shit, what happened last night. I was on the floor, next to a bed. I quietly got on my knees to look up at the bed and check to see if this was the product of an abduction or sex trafficking.

There was only one person on the bed. I squinted through the pain that threatened to tear my head apart and noticed there was a very nude and pale butt staring back at me. This was a very naked body. I looked down at me and exhaled in relief. I was fully clothed. My jeans didn’t seem to be tampered with. I crawled around the bed to look at the face belonging to the butt. Thankfully, the front was covered by the sheets.

I immediately relaxed when I saw it was just my best friend, Apollo. I didn’t understand why he was naked but the fact that I wasn’t gave me some comfort. His shoulder length hair was framing his face and he was still peacefully asleep. Lucky him for facing away from the sun. At least it seemed we were safe.

I nudged him awake. “Apollo? Gahh..” I groaned at the pain my own voice brought me.

His snores stopped and his eyes fluttered open. He seemed to take my face in and pushed away from the loud noise and the brighter lights. “Dear god, woman,” he groaned at me.

“I know. I know. Where are we?” I whispered.

“What do you mean?” he said, pulling the covers towards his face.

“I mean what I mean. Where are we?” I whispered aggressively. “Why are you naked?”

He sat up very quickly. “What do you mean?” He looked under the covers. “I’m naked. Were you naked?”

“Nope...and I apparently slept on the floor. So we don’t need to worry about that part of all of this. Does this look familiar to you?” I gestured to around the room.

He squinted and his gaze rested on my forearm. “You would think I would remember you getting a tattoo.”

“Huh?”

He extended my arm in my direction, forcefully but gently in my direction. I peeled back the wrapper to get a better look at my arm. There were some intricate five-petal flowers outlined in black. It was overall quite beautiful and minimalistic. BUT HOLY SHIT I HAVE A TATTOO.

My Salvadorean mom was going to kill me.

He looked at my dismay and a humorous smile appeared. “Hey. At least it’s work appropriate.”

I exhaled, not wanting to go down the loop of desperation. “Where are we, Apollo?”

He looked around. “It looks like a hotel room.”

I nodded and used the bed as support to stand up. I went against rational judgement and my complaining brain and walked to the window, using my non-tattooed forearm to shield the glaring sun from my eyes. The heat intensified my headache, but I fought through that and opened my eyes wide until I could see past the bright surrounding. I saw a beach.

“We aren’t in Texas anymore, Toto,” I said as I read some signs with both translations in English and Spanish. It could technically be Texas; I knew areas that were highly populated with Latinos but I thought the line added flair. If there was one thing that Apollo and I had in common, it was our use of humor to deal with life.

I looked around the room for a name for the hotel or whatever place we were at. I walked carefully to the restroom. His clothes were hanging on the shower rod. They looked like they’d been left to dry in there. I touched them and they were cool to the touch. I pulled them all off of the hanger rod and walked over to Apollo, leaving them on the bed beside him.

“I’ll go use the restroom and you can get ready and we can see where we go from here,” I said through the pulsating in my brain. I walked back and splashed water on my face. It was considerably a nice room. I just didn’t know where I was and that freaked me out. I used the tiny toothpaste provided for us and brushed my teeth with my finger. While rinsing, I tasted the water and it seemed safe enough to drink. I spat everything out of my mouth, though, remembering the all-famous phrases and jokes surrounding drinking water in foreign countries.

I checked my pockets for everything. I had a couple of 20 dollar bills. I didn’t have my ID in my pockets. Where was my ID? Oh god. Where was my phone?

I half-ran out of the bathroom. “Apollo, do you have your wallet?”

He was pulling on his shirt and quickly checked his pockets before shaking his head.

“I don’t have my purse or my wallet...or anything but 40 bucks.”

We both looked at each other a bit dumbfounded. What happened last night?

We both started looking in around the room to see if we could find anything. We looked in the cabinets and under the bed. But there was nothing that was ours. Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay.

“Crap,” we both said at the same time.

“What do we do now?” he asked after we stared at each other for a bit, dejected.

I shrugged. “Let’s...let’s go to the front desk and ask what is going on.”

We both stepped out of the room and headed to find the front desk.

There was a lady there, dark skinned and dark haired, flipping through a book and making notes in the margins. I looked at her name tag before I started talking.

“Umm...hi. Do you speak English?” I asked, in a hesitant tone.

She nodded, barely looking up from her book.

“I was wondering, where are we? Like, what city?”

She looked up from her book and did a double take. “Ah. Crazy Americans.” Her accent was quite thick. “Welcome to Cancun.”

“Mexico?!” I overemphasized and I noticed Apollo flinch at the sharpness of my voice.

“Yes.” She spun around in her rollie chair and pulled out of a cabinet my purse and Apollo’s wallet after double checking our faces in our IDs. “You were very drunk last night. You left these in the hallway.” She looked at me. “You look older in your picture. Short hair is not pretty for you.”

I looked away from Ximena, trying to disregard her comment about my hair since I had no ground on which to judge.

“How long will you be staying for?” she asked. “We have an open account for you.”

Apollo and I looked at each other. We didn’t even know how we got here. We were both exhausted and hungry and thankfully, not broke now that I had all of my things back with me.

“Well, we have free breakfast. Decide by 12 if you want to stay or leave. You should be out of your room by that time.”

“Thank you,” I replied and walked into the direction that Ximena had motioned towards.

It was a complimentary breakfast type of situation. I picked up some pancakes and loaded my plate with chorizo, other meats, eggs, and loads of fruit. I grabbed some coffee and poured some milk in the mug and plenty of sugar.

Apollo only got meats for his first round. His philosophy was to allow food to remain warm instead of letting it get cold on the plate. Mine was to eat it before it was eaten by someone else.

My body welcomed the grease of the food and my hangover decreased in potency. I looked at Apollo after we both had a couple of mouthfuls in our system.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Is my phone in your purse?”

I looked around to find my phone first and then his. They were both off. I handed him his and we turned them on. Pieces of the night started falling into place, with flight emails and Discover purchase confirmation messages.

“We had dinner last night,” I said squeezing my eyes shut as if that would make the memories flow easier or the numbers of amount spent disappear.

“According to my phone, we got very drunk.”

“According to mine, we flew here. Our flight back is...tomorrow night.”

“Well, another night here it is,” he said, accepting our reality with another bite.

“Only if you go get a tattoo so we can both remember not remembering this trip.”

He chuckled slightly. “Fine.”

He picked up his orange juice and I picked up my coffee and we sealed the world’s weirdest and shortest vacation with a clink of glass.