BLAME IT ON THE SUNSHINE

CHAPTER 8 (JONAS)

DECEMBER 19

"Joe Bro, can you take a picture of Charlie and I?" Mariana asks, as if I have a choice in the matter. She shoves her phone into my hand and joins Charlie by the railing of the ship.

"You know I don't appreciate the Jonas Brothers jokes," I mutter. I really don't care that much, but it always helps to have a reason to be annoyed when Charlie and Mariana are together. Because then it gives me an excuse to leave.

For now, though, I'm stuck taking this stupid photo. I'll admit, the ocean and Miami shoreline make an excellent background and, fine, Mariana and Charlie look good together, if a little dorky, in their coordinated outfits. They look like tacky tourists, Charlie with his pale green, flower-printed shirt and Mariana with a matching patterned dress. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they bought these outfits at the hotel gift shop yesterday.

"Okay, ready, smile!" I say unnecessarily. They look so genuinely happy with their arms around each other that my heart squeezes, an internal timer indicating it's time for me to leave immediately.

I quickly press the shutter button a few times and start heading to the railing to give Mariana her phone back, but she stops me.

"Wait! I wanna do more poses," she says, looking up at Charlie.

"Uh," I can feel heat rushing up the back of my neck, the anatomical equivalent of me pressing snooze on my little internal alarm. "Okay, sure," I say anyways.

To my absolute horror, Mariana snakes her fingers through Charlie's hair and pulls him into the type of kiss that should not be allowed when family members are present. She and Charlie are completely done for. The blazing heat on my neck transitions into sweat as I take as many pictures as I can without directly looking at the disgustingly happy couple.

I can't let Mariana know anything's up, though, so I force myself to act like a normal person as I give her her phone back.

"Thanks," she says, grinning and scrolling through the pictures I took. "These look great, don't they, babe?"

"Absolutely," he says, planting a kiss on her forehead.

Which is my cue to leave.

"Hey, so, I gotta pee really bad so I'm gonna go to our room. Just tell Mom and Dad if they ask, okay?"

"Uh, sure, but they're literally like fifty feet awa—"

"It's fine, I just really gotta go, okay?" I cut Mariana off and start inching down the deck.

"Do you even know the room num—"

"I'll figure it out," I assure her.

We've only been on the ship for, I don't know, half an hour? and haven't even left the harbor, so I have absolutely no idea what our room number is or how I'd go about figuring it out, short of asking one of my parents. Which is off the table, clearly.

As I continue down the deck, it quickly dawns on me how dumb my plan is. If I'm not going to the room, how am I supposed to meet up with everyone after my little escape? Text them where are u? and have them reply oh we're by the pool like I know where that is? I sigh and turn around. I'll just stick around my other siblings until I have better bearings of the ship.

Now that I know Charlie's planning on proposing, every interaction between him and Mariana seems so much more intense. I never really liked seeing them being all lovey with each other before, but it was much easier to tune it out. Now, everything feels so much different. Even though nothing's actually changed.

The cruise hasn't even started and it's already painfully clear that it's going to be very hard to ignore Charlie and Mariana. But I'll have to make it work, because it's quickly gotten physically (literally) uncomfortable to look at them for too long.