Roatan Plunge | Love Travels #2

Fifteen - Lorena

As soon as I enter the room I know we've waited too long. Carla has already abandoned all hope of us returning and has launched into a story about the man she's sleeping with. Or, that's how she tells it.

The others are all paying rapt attention to her story about going for a walk through a dangerous jungle, but my eyes search the room for the votes. Which obviously are nowhere to be found, because that would be too easy. Why didn't they just let us count them, again?

"And that's when we arrived in Coxen Hole and I saw this strange man, it looked like, walking around without a head. Like this man was full on committed to the Headless Horseman motif, you know? And his jacket was on point so I ran after him."

"You ran after a headless man?" Divya shouts, spilling her tea in the process. "Why are you always running toward the danger? We can't leave you alone for three seconds."

"I wasn't alone, I was with Bryan. Anyway, so I follow the guy to the edge of town and then I turn toward the sea because I swear I saw the guy turn down to the dock, but he's not there."

"So where was he?" one of the groomsmen asks. "Where did he go?"

"Well, that's what I'm trying to explain," Carla says, lowering her voice and beckoning us closer like we're around the bonfire at summer camp. "When Bryan finally did catch up to me, and I told him who I was chasing, he went white as a sheet and fell down right at my feet. 'Plop' right into the water."

"Is he okay?" we all ask at once, and I have to admit, even with my mind mostly on the votes and Óscar's mysterious disappearance, I'm invested in the story.

"Of course he's okay. Are you all listening?" Carla brushes us off. "What I'm trying to tell you is when he came to, I asked him what happened and he told me a story you are going to want to hear."

Carla leans back in her chair and looks at each of us in turn, conspiratorial look etched across her narrow face.

"Well?" I finally ask. "Are you going to tell us? Or am I going to get the result of your votes?"

"We have to wait until Óscar gets back," Divya reasons. "Give us the story, Carla."

"Self-serving," I mumble, earning myself an elbow to my rib.

"Fine, I'll tell you. Don't all jump at once."

We all lean in and I fall into the only empty chair.

"Back in the early days, Pirate Coxen was on the lam from the British Navy, which was not a good place to be, as you know. But he found his refuge here in Roatan, where he hid in the caves and forest around what is now Coxen Hole, but back then was little more than a jut into the ocean."

Carla waits for confirmation before continuing. "Well, he had a sweetheart on the other side of the island where the British had set up a settlement, so seeing her was risky and less frequent than he liked. But he loved her more than anything. Isn't that romantic?"

"Something tells me this is not going to be a good wedding story," Divya says from beside me, pulling her legs under her.

"But it's so romantic," Carla swoons back into her chair. "He loved her every day and while he was away, keeping himself alive, she took up with another man. And not just any other man, either. He was the enemy."

She pauses for us all to gasp, some more seriously than others. And I will not answer as to which camp I was part of.

"So Pirate Coxen, battered and broken but still alive, finds his way back to Roatan only to find his sweetheart had taken up with an English Naval Officer. And he just can't bear to lose her so he finds the guy and takes him out." She pauses to make a death motion with her hands.