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I chuckle. “Wow. Just the other week, I spent the evening making participation trophies for every kid in my class.”
Across the wooden table, Phillip makes a sound of disgust and cuts into his fish. My eyes land on his large hands. One of them had been on my bare thigh.
“—that’s wrong with society today.”
I blink at him. “Sorry. What?”
“Participation trophies,” he says and raises an eyebrow. “You okay?”
I take another big gulp of my rum punch. “Yes. This is strong.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, it sure is, Eden.”
We get two more drinks, rum sours this time, along with a slice of rum cake. I feel full and happy and sway in tune with the music blasting from the stage. A man plays on the drum kit while another sings. People, locals and tourists alike, dance in front of the stage. The whole place feels filled with life.
When it’s time to leave, I slip my arm through Phillip’s and sing along to the music. The band is covering an old pop song now.
He keeps walking. “Told you the rum was strong.”
“I’m not drunk,” I say. “I’m tipsy. There’s a massive difference.”
“Mm-hmm,” he says, and we come to a stop next to the busy road. “Now, I’m going to insist on this—we’re taking a regular taxi back to the resort.”
“You didn’t like your job as a seat belt, did you?”
He gives a non-committal harrumph and raises his hand. A taxi slows to a crawl, and Phillip opens the back door for me. As I’m sliding across the back seat, I hear his muttered reply, half of it is lost to the haze of music and traffic.
“—liked it far too much.”
I rock back on my heels, standing on the Winter Resort dock. It’s a beautiful day. The sun shines down on me from a cloudless sky.
Phillip should be here soon.
He has an excursion booked for today on his planned itinerary. This time, it’s a private boat tour out to one of the many shipwrecks along the coast of Barbados. The ruins have long since been reclaimed by nature, and it is now a teeming coral reef. The tour guide will let us snorkel above it.
You’re not nervous,I tell myself. I’m my brave vacation self, one who doesn’t need a playlist of forest sounds to fall asleep, and the one who loathes routine and who throws plunges headfirst into every adventure.
In another week I can go back to my safe existence, my new house, my job, and writing in my spare time.
You’re not nervous. You’re excited.
But it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that, my anxiety refuses to go away.
Something had shifted yesterday, in that route taxi, as we drove over the streets of Barbados toward the fish market. Amid the deafening beats of soca music and the curves hastily taken...
We’d touched.
And, somehow, that has turned Phillip from merely a person I’m having unexpected fun with during my vacation to anactualman with a capital M. The kind of man I haven’t let myself think about since my engagement had ended.
Not that he likely sees me as a capital W woman. Or if he does, it’s a new thing, and it might even run counter to his own instincts.You’re one of the strangest women I’ve ever met,he’d said during our midnight swim in the pool. That can’t exactly be a recipe for attraction.
But do I even want him to be attracted to me? The question sets off another burst of nerves in my system. That would turn this whole little enjoying-my-not-a-honeymoon project on its head.
“Hey,” a voice says.
I startle. “Oh. Hi!”
Phillip pushes his sunglasses up and comes to stand beside me on the dock. “You’re daydreaming?”
