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I laughed. “I haven’t told you what my job was in the first place.”
“Doesn’t matter, really,” Meryl countered. “A job in Hawaii is already ten times better than any job anywhere else.”
I smiled and nodded. “There might be some truth to that,” I agreed. “In any case, I was forced to quit yesterday, and I suppose I regret it a little.”
“Why’d you quit?” she asked.
“Uh… It’s a long story.”
Meryl smiled pointedly. “It’s a long flight back home.”
I sighed but conceded. “The job was great, and the people I was working with were wonderful. It’s just…my boss…”
“He was an asshole, was he?” Meryl assumed.
“No,” I said sadly, thinking about Tristan and our day together on his private island. “He was a pretty good boss, actually. But…”
“Oh, don’t tell me,” she cut in. “You fell in love with him?”
I laughed. “Oh, I was already extremely in love with him,” I admitted. “I first met him when I was fourteen. And I’ve been in love with him ever since. He was my brother’s best friend.”
“Ah,” Meryl nodded. “Is he married? Is that the problem?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s not married. He’s just…unavailable.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t think he’s a one-woman kind of guy,” I admitted. It was painful to say, but once it was out of my mouth, it seemed to lose the power to hurt me.
“Ah…and did you know this beforehand?”
I sipped my drink. “I did,” I nodded. “But I thought… I thought…”
“You thought you could change him,” Meryl said without skipping a beat.
“You don’t understand,” I said, feeling the need to defend my feelings. “I always felt like we had this connection, except when we met I was fourteen, and he was eighteen, so it was one-sided at the time. As I got older, I sensed something changing between us, but I still wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not.
“But then, six years ago at this family Christmas party, we kissed. And it was amazing and perfect and everything I imagined it would be. Except, he pretended that it never happened.
“I was devastated obviously, but I had no choice but to put it behind me. That is until a couple of months ago when I came down to Hawaii to stay at the resort that Tristan had just opened.”
“And that’s when things…rekindled?”
“Eventually, he told me that he had lied about not remembering that kiss… He was just scared to get involved with me.”
“Because?”
“I suppose he was scared of himself, too,” I said. “He was scared he wouldn’t be able to be the man I wanted him to be.”
“What happened that made you quit yesterday?” Meryl asked.
“The realization that I had idealized him in my head all these years,” I said. “He was different.”
“I see,” she nodded. “Can I ask you a complicated question?”
I smiled. “We’ve gone this deep into my personal life; I don’t see why not?”
“Despite the fact that this Tristan is not the man you had fantasized about in your head all these years, do you still love him?”
