Since my dad died thirteen days before my bachelorette party, I have no choice but to bring him on the trip. Before I set off for Cancun, I pack all my white bikinis and show my fiancé my dad’s soul, which I’ve managed to place into a silver clamshell-shaped necklace. I kiss my fiancé goodbye, asking one last time if he’s sure about the whole “no strippers” rule. He confirms he is.

I go to the airport and find TSA has a problem with my dead dad. I watch as more agents are called over to confirm the legality of bringing on board a soul encapsulated in a necklace, which, it turns out, does show up on an X-ray scanner. 

“How different can it be from a soul inside a body?” I ask. Though I know it’s very different. As different as being dead or alive. 

TSA decides this is a gray area. Since his soul is contained in a vessel, it shouldn’t be a problem in terms of haunting, possessions, or other supernatural disturbances that may pose a flight risk. They only request that I check him and my bag.

At the gate, I find the bachelorettes and a plastic, cartoonish human they’ve brought to surprise me. 

I maneuver through the aircraft with an iced coffee in one hand and a fully inflated sex doll in the other. My bachelorettes paid for an extra plane seat so I could sit next to the doll. It makes me feel strangely better about my dead dad riding in the luggage compartment.

I request headphones for both the doll and myself. We sleep until the wheels touch down in Mexico.

I get a sickening feeling when we arrive at the resort. I dig into my bag right there in the lobby, check for the necklace, and am relieved to find my dad is still in there.

The sex doll, my dad and I are banished to sit by the pool alone while the bachelorettes put up penis balloons and scatter dick confetti in the shared room. 

I call my fiancé, tell him I landed, double-check about his stance on the strippers, and tell him I love him more than there are particles in the universe. I love him in the way that I imagine god would love all his children: unconditionally, with pride, perfectly – if only god were real. 

The bachelorettes appear suddenly, all in matching cowboy hats.

I can practically hear my dad ask, What is this, Cancun or Nashville?

I give my silent response. The Cowgirl theme works anywhere. It’s universal.

I sense his scoff.

Up in the decked-out dick room, we take so many shots of tequila, I enter a state of meditative bliss; a blackout some may say, a swirling vortex of color and glitter, then sudden sharp sobriety as I hear my dad say, This isn’t how you’re supposed to grieve. Am I not a big enough loss for you to all but die yourself? Take a boat out to sea with no supplies or maps? Or at least cut up all your credit cards?

“Put a sock in it, would ya?” I try to say, because he’s right and I’m wrong, and it was a mistake to pretend that life goes on when you lose someone so close to you. I don’t even know I’m crying until I’m surrounded by eleven bachelorettes frowning so hard they look like sad giant emojis.

I wave them off. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I say. “I just need more Pinot Grigio.”

We take more shots. Thousands upon thousands of pictures until we run out of memory on our phones.

We don’t go to the strip club, and I don’t get a lap dance where the stripper somehow lifts my entire chair in the air while still grinding on me.

When I wake up the following morning, there’s a spilled liter of Dr. Pepper and a soggy half-eaten pizza in my bed. 

I reach for my neck, but there’s nothing there. Sometime during the night, I must have lost the necklace. 

It may have been when all the bachelorettes made a circle around me and repeated in Gregorian chant, “Bride tribe, bride tribe.”

I know he’s gone; he left, though I still can’t make out why or what happened. I think some things are just lost to us, sometimes.

When the weekend ends, I get home and unpack.

I feign interest in the acts of normality as my fiancé explains what he did while I was away: pickled onions, watered our one plant, finally learned how to Dougie after fifteen years.

I scroll through the photos from the trip and see that I have a double chin in every single one.

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Madeline Kaprich is a Boston-based writer with an MFA in Fiction from UMass Boston. Her short stories explore human connection, characters at their breaking point, and the darkness and humor of everyday life.