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Present Time
At six in the morning, only the sound of lapping waves and the faint murmurs of early morning hikers intruded on the idyllic silence enveloping Teleios. Other than that, everything else was quiet, with most of the island’s transient residents still lost in the oblivion induced by liquor and drugs.
Alone in her corner of the beach, Daria tucked her knees close under her chin and simply...breathed.
She closed her eyes, enjoying the tranquility around her, knowing that she probably had less than an hour before the party island would again wake from its few hours of slumber.
It was Day 5 of her weeklong vacation, and what she sought still managed to elude her.
She was so, so tired of falling in love.
Her vacation was supposed to be her own version of Eat, Pray, and Love, but so far all Daria had been able to do were the first two.
She had eaten. Oh boy, she had eaten. Fern salad with a refreshing mix of calamansi vinaigrette dressing and olive oil, freshly caught tiger prawns with mango salsa, and panna cotta with lemongrass-vanilla infused syrup. And that was just her first meal on the island.
And Daria had prayed, too. She recited the rosary every day, completed a meditation walk in a nearby retreat house, and had fasted on Day 4.
But love?
It refused to make sense to her this time. In fact, she only had to make herself remember the last time she had fallen in love, and her skin would crawl at the mere memory of it.
Love was supposed to be a good thing, but she just didn’t know how to make it work.
How did others get it so easily? Daria wondered. Other girls only had to take one look at a guy and they knew right away if that guy was the one. Why couldn’t it be the same for her?
Staring absently at the way her toes curled and uncurled in the white, powder-fine sand, Daria tried, for the nth time, to figure out where she always went wrong.
Was it because she always happened to fall in love with beautiful-looking guys? But...what else could she do? They were beautiful, and they did make her heart beat faster. Was she supposed to ignore that and purposely date someone who made her heart skip a beat for all the wrong reasons?
Or perhaps it was because most of the guys she dated were obviously richer than her? Daria supposed that made her seem like a gold-digger, but it wasn’t that. She was attracted to successful guys because her dad had been an unapologetic bum his entire life, and he still had the gall to dump Magnolia for a teenage babysitter. Guys who were nice but without ambition just weren’t sexy enough for her.
Were those the reasons why she couldn’t find Mr. Right?
The question played over and over in her mind as she tried to assess her qualities as a prospective girlfriend. Maybe it was all her, not them. But she wasn’t clingy or demanding, was neither an idiot nor a know-it-all. So what had made all those men dump her?
Could it all boil down to the fact that she wasn’t able to give away her V-card so easily?
Daria was already shaking her head even before the thought was complete.
No.
She didn’t give a damn if all the guys she dated believed she had led them on. Fuck them, Daria thought. She had loved them – had genuinely, foolishly fallen in love with each one of them – and yet all of them had only wanted her body.
She had the right to not want to have sex right away, and if the men she dated couldn’t appreciate that, then that only meant none of them were truly right for her.
Right?
Right?
Right?
Daria wanted to say ‘right’ back to herself, but memories of the twenty-eight men who had dated and dumped her since she was fifteen made it impossible. The memories made her question herself, made her question why she was making such a big deal out of sex, and she hated that.
Why can’t I find a guy who would truly love me?
She wished she could ask the question out loud, but the last time she had, most people had jumped down her throat for it. They had made her feel shallow, stupid, and greedy for wanting to be in love.
As Magnolia Everest’s daughter, she had inherited her mother’s looks and fortune. As far as most people were concerned, it was just right she didn’t have everything going for her, just right that she had her heart broken every time she fell in love.
