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“Well, I sure do.”
“That certainly explains what you said yesterday,” he says, “about not making fun of your body during the massage. Certainly explains why you were always so dismissive to me afterward.”
“Excuse me? I was the dismissive one? Are you for real right now?”
“You acted like you wanted nothing to do with me after that day!” he seethes. “I was probably just trying to get my head on straight about being attracted to you, and of course you interpret it as something about your body and cheese curds? Jesus, Olive, that is so like you, to focus on the negative in every interaction.”
Blood pulses in my ears. I don’t even know how to process what I’m hearing, or the undeniable ache it shoves through me that I think he might be right. Defensiveness pushes aside introspection: “Well, who needs to see the upside of things when you’ve got your brother telling you that I’m a shrew and to stay away from me anyway?”
He throws up his hands. “I didn’t see anything that contradicted what he’d said!”
I take a deep breath. “Does it occur to you that your attitude can foster how people react to you? That you hurt my feelings by reacting that way, whether you meant to or not?” I am mortified when I feel my throat grow tight with tears.
“Olive, I don’t know how to say it more plainly: I was into you,” he growls. “You’re hot. And I was probably trying to hide it. I’m sorry for that totally unintentional reaction, I really am, but every indication I had—from you or Dane—was that you thought I was a waste of space.”
“I didn’t at first,” I say, leaving the rest unsaid.
He clearly reads the I do now in my expression, though, and the line of his mouth hardens. “Good,” he says, voice hoarse. “Then the feeling is conveniently mutual.”
“What a fucking relief.” I stare at him for two rapid breaths, just long enough to imprint his face in the space marked DICKHEAD in my braincyclopedia. And then I turn, storm back to the bedroom, and slam the door.
I fall back onto the bed, reeling. Part of me almost wants to get up and make a list of everything that just happened so I can process it in some sort of organized way. Like, not only was Dane sleeping around for the first two years of his relationship with my sister, but he told Ethan not to bother with me.
Because Ethan wanted to ask me out.
I don’t even know what to do with this information because it is so at odds with my mental history of him. Until the past couple of days, there has never been a hint of Ethan wanting anything to do with me—not even a flash of softness or warmth. Is he making that up?
I mean, why would he do that?
So does that mean he’s right about me? Did I misinterpret everything in that first interaction, and carry it with me for the past two and a half years? Was a single ambiguous look from Ethan enough to send me into this place of no return, where I decide we’re bitter enemies? Am I really that angry?
I feel my breath grow tight as the rest of it nudges back into my thoughts: Is it even possible that Ami knew about Dane seeing other people? She knew I was lukewarm on him from the get-go—so I have to give some space to the possibility that they had their own arrangement, and she didn’t tell me because she knew I would worry or protest out of protectiveness. Frankly, it’s hard for me to even imagine Ami and Dane in an open relationship, but whether or not it’s true, I can’t exactly call her from Maui and ask. That is not a phone call conversation; that’s an in-person conversation, with wine, and snacks, and a careful lead-in.
I pick up a pillow and scream into it. And when I pull it away, I hear a quiet knock at the bedroom door.
“Go away.”
“Olive,” he says, sounding much calmer. “Don’t call Ami.”
“I’m n
ot calling Ami, just—seriously—go away.”
The hallway falls silent, and a few seconds later, I hear the heavy click of the suite door closing.
• • •
WHEN I WAKE UP, IT’S midday, and the sun pours brightly across the bed, bathing me in a hot rectangle of light. I roll away from it, straight into a pillow that smells like Ethan.
That’s right. He slept in this bed with me last night. He is everywhere in this room—in the neat row of shirts hanging in the closet, the shoes lined by the dresser. His watch, his wallet, his keys; even his phone is sitting there. Even the sound of the ocean is tainted with the memory of him, of his head in my lap on the boat, struggling to overcome seasickness.
For a dark flash I derive some joy out of the image of Ethan sitting miserably by the pool, surrounded by people he’d love to befriend when tipsy, but whom he wants to generally avoid when sober. But the joy falls away when I remember everything about our fight: the reality that I’ve spent the past two and a half years hating him for a reaction he had that wasn’t at all what I thought it was, and the reality that the Ami/Dane aspect isn’t going to be resolved for a few more days, at least.
Which leaves only one thing for me to chew on, and that’s Ethan admitting that he wanted to ask me out.
It’s genuinely a rewrite of my internal history, and it takes a lot of mental maneuvering. Of course I found Ethan attractive when I first met him, but personality is everything, and his left a giant gaping hole in the column of positive attributes. Until this trip, that is, when he was not only the best sparring partner but also entirely adorable on several occasions . . . and frequently shirtless.
Groan. I stand up, walking to the door and peeking out. No sign of Ethan in the living room. Darting into the bathroom, I close the door and turn on the faucet, splashing water on my face. I stare at myself in the mirror, thinking.
