And it turns out that I am.
Was.
It’s not that I feel hurt about what he said, so much as I feel humiliated by my own imagination. And that’s not Miles’s problem.
“You don’t have to apologize, Miles. You were honest with me, and I—I hurt my own feelings.”
“But I didn’t mean it like it came out.”
“It doesn’t matter. It happened eleven years ago. It was a dumb question. I shouldn’t?—”
Miles takes a step into my space. “Abby.”
I direct my gaze to his. Our eyes meet, and everything around me disappears except for Miles. I clench all the muscles in my arms to keep from reaching out to touch him. It feels wrong to be this close to him and keep my hands to myself, but we aren’t those people. Even if in this moment it feels like we are.
“Idoregret breaking up with you, Abby. I?—”
“Next!” a voice from the spa shouts. Four people appear at the doors. Suddenly, it’s our turn, and the two people in front of us are guided into the spa with Miles and me. The four of us are escorted into one large room with a row of massage chairs set up. Miles ends up on the other end of the room, but I’m hyperaware of his proximity to me. Just his being in the same room as me is distracting.
Despite the hands kneading my back muscles, I’m still tense. My stomach is in knots. What else was he going to say back there?
I do regret breaking up with you.
His words circle around in my mind, replaying on a loop. I can’t even cut through the noise to figure out how I feel about it. I try to just get around his words.
I feel like I have whiplash from last night’s conversation. He regrets it but thinks it was for the best? He regrets it but doesn’t think that he would have been a good hockey player while he was with me? My head is spinning with the implications and the contradictions. I need more information.
I need to talk to Hazel.
My massage is nice, but it’s over too soon, and I’m the first one in our group to be done. I sneak out of the spa, hoping Miles isn’t trailing me, and head to a bar in the lobby to get a drink, snag a seat, and call Hazel.
I have about an hour before my next resort activity, and although I should eat, my stomach is still all twisted up from this Miles situation, and I need to talk it out with Hazel before I can even think about food.
I dial her number once I’m settled into a wicker egg-shaped chair with deep cushions, a strawberry daiquiri and a bottle of water in hand.
“Oh my god, Abigail Marianne Ashe, how dare you drop a bomb like that and then ignore my texts?!” Hazel answers the phone without so much as a hello.
“I know, but he was like right there and starting talking to me and then I went in for a chair massage, so I couldn’t.”
“Okay, well, spill the tea, sis, because what the hell do you mean your college ex-boyfriend is at the same resort as you?”
I tell her everything: running into him at the pool, at dinner, the conversation we had, and how seeing him again doesn’t just take me back to the heartbreak of my twenties, but also to the one in my thirties. I tell her I’m doing okay, but it was hard at first. I tell her what he said outside the spa, and she gasps at all the right times, sprinkling in her own commentary as I talk.
I check my surroundings, making sure he isn’t nearby, eavesdropping, but there’s no sight of his six-foot-two frame.
“I mean, you have to hear him out, right? Get the rest of whatever he was saying?” Hazel asks, nearly breathless with anticipation.
“I thought for sure you were going to tell me to stay the hell away from him.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say you should hear him out and then close the door on that. Because if I recall correctly, he couldn’t even say ‘I love you’ back in college.”
“That was because of the stuff with his parents,” I say.
“That kind of emotional unavailability takes years of therapy and maturing to get on the other side of. Just be careful, Abs. You’re still tender and being around him is obviously poking at your bruises.”
“I know. He keeps…appearing, though. And asking questions and looking at me like he’s happy to see me.”
“He probably is. You were the best thing that ever happened to him.”
