“Forgive me for being nostalgic, but I couldn’t help myself,” Michael said.
The bartender sat the tumbler in front of him and then turned and slid the wine glass toward Mena. She would need the liquid courage sitting in front of her to endure a trip down memory lane. Tipping her glass toward Michael, she took a sip as a hint of a smile played on his lips.
“Guess it’s too much to hope you’ve come to your senses and will sign off on the divorce papers while you’re on the island,” Mena said, turning towards Michael.
“Just like it’s too much to hope that you’ve told your new boyfriend that you’re a married woman.” Michael gulped the rum in one motion, then rested the glass on the bar.
“You’re delaying the inevitable,” Mena said.
“So are you. Tell me. Why haven’t you moved back to Florida? Six months isn’t a long time, and with it being a no-fault state, I’d be hard pressed to come up with ways to contest the divorce. You could be a free woman in that short time. For some reason, though, you haven’t done that. Can’t help but get hope from—”
“Six months? If you agree to sign the papers, I can get our divorce processed right here in St. Basil in six hours,” Mena said. “Why should I disrupt my entire life just to be free of you?”
“I’m not trying to disrupt your life. I’m sorry for everything I put you through,” Michael said. He raised a single finger, and the bartender rushed over to refill his glass of rum.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Mena said, annoyed. Michael had some nerve to show up on the island where she lived and try to force her to listen to his apology. Saying sorry wouldn’t change everything that happened between them. How he destroyed her faith in love and her trust in men. She only got both back when she’d met Julian and realized what real unconditional love was.
“It does to me. I still remember the red strapless dress you wore when we first met. When you came up to the bar, I would have sworn you were one of the models prepping to walk the runway on the beach that night. We laughed. We talked for hours.”
“I thought you were a kind bartender taking pity on the girl whose purse had been stolen in the crowd,” Mena said, remembering the night like it was yesterday.
“I didn’t let you think that for long. The truth came out when … I’d gotten you safely back to your apartment,” Michael said, a slyness in his gaze.
The truth had come out the morning after they’d had sex in her apartment. Mena hadn’t been able to resist the charismatic bartender, his chivalry, the late night conversation on the beach as the sun rose over the ocean or the blistering sexual attraction building between them. The neurologist subbing in as a bartender for his friend. Back then, it seemed like the perfect beginning for some romantic comedy.
A romantic comedy that turned tragic. If she could go back in time, she would never have allowed him to walk her home that night. How her life could have been changed if she’d just made a different choice.
“We were perfect back then and we could be again. The next morning, when I held you in my arms and you told me why honesty was so important to you, something in me broke. Everything you felt about how you were conceived. That changed me.”
Mena’s teenage years had been rocked by learning her father was an award-winning journalist who cheated on his wife during a month-long whirlwind romance with her mother. Her mother had been devastated when she’d learned the truth and had left the island. Months later, her mother realized she was pregnant. At sixteen, Mena finally learned the truth. From that moment, she refused to tolerate liars or cheaters in any of her relationships.
“It didn’t change you enough. You still duped me into the same situation. Being lied to and manipulated by a married man just like my mother,” Mena said, gulping more of the wine. “I shared everything with you, Michael, and all you did was lie to me over and over again.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to understand. When you told me about your mom, I knew my situation. I was wrong for having multiple wives at the same time. But there was no way I was letting you walk out of my life. I needed to see you again. To be with you. You were my future,” Michael said, his eyes pleading. “By the time we were on our third date, I had put everything in place. If Courtney hadn’t been a lunatic, I would have been divorced, free to be with the most amazing woman I’d ever met.”
Cringing, Mena reached for the wine glass. It was empty. Setting it back on the bar, she tried to ignore the earnestness in Michael’s words. She couldn’t forget that he was a master manipulator, twisting the truth to fit the story he wanted others to believe.
Mena said, “Maybe things would have been different if you’d told me back then you were married or separated or something. But you didn’t.”
“I never wanted to lose you. You and I had the commitment, the love, the family that I’d always wanted. The kind that is worth risking everything to keep and to hold on to. You have to understand why I can’t just let you go without a fight,” Michael said.
“My love is not something you can win in a fight, Michael. You never had a stable family, not once in your entire life growing up.”
Bouncing from foster home to foster home, he’d fallen in love with families repeatedly, but never had the chance to stay with any of them for very long. Mena felt sorry for what Michael had to endure during his childhood. But that didn’t excuse the lies he’d told her.
Mena continued, “So, when you were an adult, you made sure you always had a backup family and a backup to the backup by marrying multiple women. You were determined to never lose your family again—”
“Until I met you,” Michael said.
Mena shook her head. “You let me believe that I was free to fall in love with you, when I wasn’t. You knew you were married to three other women while I was falling in love with you. That wasn’t fair to me.”
“Now, I guess you’re the one not being fair,” Michael said, resting an elbow on the bar as he stared at her.
“What does that mean?”
“To Julian Montgomery.” Michael spat the name as if it was something foul in his mouth.
Mena recoiled, his words slamming into her. She inhaled sharply.
