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“Are you okay,ma belle?”
I reached up with an arm that felt like a hundred pound weight. “I am. So good,” I said, reaching for his hand.
“Hey, you’re missing the rest of the party!” Rob called from the beach. “Who’s hungry?”
I was starving. I turned and ran, trying to outrun Jean-Pierre. The four of us took seats, still naked, on the picnic blanket and Rob dug into a cooler of food he’d somehow sneaked to the island earlier in the day.
“This is incredible,” I said, grabbing for one of the mini-bananas that were all over the place in Thailand.
“Well, I did promise you a picnic,” he said, pulling out more delicious Thai dishes.
He’d delivered that, and more.
* * *
9
The Gift
The market bustled,our tour guide making sure the eight of us stayed together as we made our way through the narrow aisles of a giant open-air market. I couldn’t stop snapping photo after photo of fascinating things like scorpions being cooked on skewers over small grills, and pot after pot of beautiful curry dishes.
“You’re very lucky,” our guide said as we rounded a corner. “Normally the market only opens certain sections on certain days. But on weekends like today, over ten thousand stalls open up in twenty-seven sections. If you cannot find it here, there’s a good chance it’s not available in Bangkok!”
We entered another section of the market built along a wider traffic lane, and the smell of the long row of food stalls had my stomach growling.
Our guide was right. It seemed that everything under the sun was on offer, including in the ‘romance’ aisle, where seductive lingerie, sexy dresses, bedroom toys, massage oils, and more were for sale.
And while a few of the members of my group did pause to purchase something, I didn’t. I honestly didn’t feel like I needed to. Instead, I reflected on my island adventure.
I was so exhausted I barely made the shuttle van for the day’s trip. But I regretted nothing. I’d lived out my fantasy, the sort of thing every woman dreams about and most never even get within sniffing distance of.
Still, I was left with questions. Getting dumped is never good for the old confidence, no matter how many hot guys you fuck afterward, and the words of the asshole who broke my heart were never far from my thoughts.
“Tana, I just… I can’t,” my fiancé says, wiping his lips with the napkin. “Look, I know it’s hard, and it’s breaking my heart to say this but… I can’t do this anymore.”
“What?” I ask, swallowing the gulp of water in my throat and trying not to sputter. “Why?”
“Because I want to have kids, okay?” he says, putting his napkin down a little too hard, and the table rattles. He looks around, obviously worried that other diners are starting to pay attention to us.
“I… we’ve been engaged for over a year,” I say, my voice getting shrill.
“Look, Tana, when the doctors said you had this… whatever it is that you’ve got, I tried, okay? I really tried.”
Without waiting for my reply, he gets up and leaves. I sit there, trying to not cry. Eventually I take off my engagement ring and drop it in my glass of water, where it sits in the clear liquid.
“Excuse me?”
I turn to see my waitress, figuring she is going to ask me to leave. “Yes?”
“I know it’s not my place, but I wouldn’t toss that ring if I were you,” she says. “Fish it out, sell it on eBay or something, then use that money to go find yourself a rebound fling. Seriously, you’re gorgeous. Don’t let that dumb fuck tell you otherwise.”
I blinked as the memory faded. The group was still waiting for our last shopper, a woman who’d decided to go back to one of the stalls to buy something that she probably didn’t want anyone else to see.
We finished our tour with a couple more standard tourist sites before heading back to the resort for a final dinner, where I indulged in every item on the resort menu that I desired. For the first time since breaking up with my ex, I didn’t count a single calorie. I let myself be guided by my tongue alone, and as I walked back to my room to pack my bags, I was hoping I’d turned a corner.
Changing into one of the resort’s light cotton robes for comfort as I organized my things, I started preparing to leave Bangkok. I’d just put the last of my things in my suitcase, leaving out just my toiletry bag and what I wanted to wear for the flight home the next day, when there was a knock on my door.
“Jean-Pierre?” I asked, opening the door after looking through the peephole. “What are you doing here?”
