“It wassupposedto be my honeymoon. My fiancé left me six months ago and the trip was non-refundable, so here I am.”
A pained look crosses his face—a quick furrow of his brow, something in his eyes softening. But it’s gone as quickly as it was there and his expression returns to neutral.
“And Hazel isn’t here with you?” he asks.
I’m taken aback by his memory. Hazel used to hang out with me and Miles all the time in college, but he and I broke up eleven years ago. That he remembers my best friend’s name is a surprise, and I am, begrudgingly, a smidge impressed.
“No, I’m here alone,” I say. “What are you doing here? Bachelor trip? Honeymooning?”
He raises an eyebrow at me, probably considering whether he’s going to call me out for digging into his relationship status. But Miles has never liked the taste of his own medicine.
“I’ve got work nearby. Client wanted a house in Cabo.”
That doesn’t tell me what he’s doing at an all-inclusive resort. He wants me to ask more questions, to talk to him more, to keep me here in conversation with him, and that makes the flame in my belly heat my blood to a low level of frustration.
It doesn’t help that he’s still dripping wet, and the sight of his half-naked body is incredibly distracting. His shorts are slung so low that the V of his hips is visible, and it is making me think the most unholy things. Which is creating a different kind of frustration in me.
And all of the swirling frustration is probably why it takes me a second to really register what he said.
“Client?”
But he’s a hockey player…?
“I’m a contractor.”
Can you have side jobs as a professional athlete? When would he have time? I feel like I’m missing a piece of information…
“Don’t you…aren’t you—what about hockey?” I ask.
“I don’t play anymore.” His tone is clipped, his eyes ice cold.
Surprise lances through me, like I’ve been whipped. Did he quit? Was he injured? How long did he play? Was it worth it in the end? Choosing his career over me?
“I can’t do this, Abby. I can’t do… I can’t be a hockey player and be your boyfriend.”
All the flames inside me extinguish at the memory of our breakup. His last words a eulogy to our two years together delivered over the phone, etched in my memory like an engraving on a headstone.
After Miles smashed my heart to pieces, I had hoped to never see him again, and the universe has been kind to me for eleven years, but apparently the cherry on my shit sundae of a year is being confronted with my college ex-boyfriend on what should have been my honeymoon.
It might be funny if it wasn’t so…unjust.
“Well, it was…nice to see you,” I say, even though it really wasn’t that nice and I would like to tell him to please go away, but that feels rude. Even if he does deserve it.
I go for a more subtle message, propping my e-reader in front of my face and blocking him from view.
Instead of getting the hint, he somehow sees this as an invitation.
Or, more likely, he doesn’t give a shit that I have no interest in continuing a conversation because he’s not done.
Classic Miles.
The scrape of plastic across concrete as Miles brings the chair closest to me even closer sets me on edge. He props his elbows up on his thighs.
“Man, has it really been ten years?” he says.
“Eleven.”
I don’t even look up from my book, but I’m not reading the words—how can I when he’s this close to me? His presence is magnetic, like he’s got his own gravitational force and everyone who touches it gets swept away. That’s what I remember about meeting Miles in college: feeling like I got caught in his charm, his wit, his playfulness, his undercurrent. I had no interest in getting out of it then, but I’ve got enough going on right now without also having to fight the riptide that is Miles Barker.
