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“Yeah, it’s a good story. I think I could write it well. Maybe…”
“But?” she prompts, and her voice softens. “Is it because you’d have to give the main character a happy ending with him?”
I sigh again. “That makes me sound terribly petty, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not sure it does, since the woman you’d be denying happiness is, you know,fictional.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, you’re right.”
She reaches for another pillow to prop up behind her back, grunting as she does so. “Can we go through what happened one more time?”
“Do we have to?”
She points at her belly. “I could pop any second, my feet hurt, and I’m swollen absolutely everywhere.”
“Okay, all right,” I say with a grin. “We can do whatever you want.”
“That’s right,” she says. “So, the conversation you overheard. Are you sure you heard what you think you did?”
I brace my head in my hands. “Yes, of course, I am. He mentioned reading the contract during his trip.She asked me to,that’s what he said. It was pretty clear who he was talking about.”
It’s easier to discuss now than it had been the first time, just a few days after I returned to Pinecrest and met a bubbly Becky who wanted to hear all about my holiday romance.
It’s still painful, but back then, it hurt on a physical level. A blade slicing clean through the roots of a new hope that had just started to grow.
Becky groans. “I hate that you can’t just call him and ask. What the heck were you thinking, either of you, not exchanging numbers?”
I sigh again. “I don’t know. I thought it was kind of romantic, at the time. We’d just be a vacation fling and a beautiful memory. And I was going to give him my number when I doubled back from the airport—that’s why I overheard his conversation in the first place!”
“Men,” she says and shakes her head.
I pick at the blanket. “The worst part is, I am angry at him, and I know that’s not fair because wasn’t I using him as a rebound, too? Trying to get over Caleb, to be intimate with someone new, to pass the days?” My voice is rising, and I force myself to take a deep breath. “So why am I sofuriousthat he wanted the exact same thing?”
Becky smiles. “Because somewhere between all the snorkeling and rum drinking and sex-having, you caught feelings.”
“Ugh.”
“It’s true. We both know it.”
“I know,” I say and look down at my lap. My jeans are frayed at the hem, and there’s a speck of glitter there from my kindergarten class earlier today. “I didn’t want to.”
“I know, Eden.”
“What really gets me is that now I know how good itcanbe,” I say, pointing a finger at her like it’s her fault. “I know how incredible the sex with a near-stranger can be, but the odds of that happening again are zero. Z. E. R.O.”
She nods, frowning. “Yeah, unfortunately, that’s not super common.”
“So I’ll have to start dating,” I say and throw my hands up like I’ve been consigned to the worst fate imaginable. “And every date I’m going to compare to Phillip.”
She taps her nails against the porcelain of her mug. “Have you googled him?”
“Googled?”
“Don’t pretend you haven’t.”
“Okay, yeah, I have.”
She shines up. “And?”
