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“Welcome everyone!” The hotel employee—and the apparent emcee for this event—calls out. “Ready to get started? We have some awesome activities lined up for you!”
What follows might be the most chaotic half an hour of my life. I go head-to-head with eight other women in the noble sport of racing with an egg on a spoon being held in my mouth. And I watch Phillip struggle to shoot darts at the water-filled balloons after spinning around a stick.
By the time we’re grabbing the sacks, he’s forgotten about his promise. We’re doing a relay race.
He rushes across the lawn in his burlap sack, neck and neck with the man in a pink polo shirt who seems determined to win in every single game. In my mind, I’ve deemed him Phillip’s nemesis.
Phillip returns to the start line and quickly kicks the sack off his legs before holding it out for me to step into it. “Come on, Eden,” he urges.
I pull the burlap sack up to my waist and leap, but I get too much momentum too fast. Three hops forward, and I take a fall. Straight onto the green grass beneath the blue Caribbean sky, and I can’t help but laugh, lying there on my back. Everything is so silly. This, me, us. I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard in weeks.
Phillip’s face comes into view. “Eden!” he says. “Come on, we’re losing.”
That only makes me laugh even harder. But I hold up my hands, and he takes them, pulling me up into standing.
“Eden,” he says. His skin is flushed from his own race.
I put a hand on his cheek. “We’re racing in sacks,” I tell him and laugh again.
His mouth cracks into a reluctant smile beneath my palm. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Yes. But I’ll be damned if we lose to the couple in blue over there.”
I race the rest of the course and all the way back amid the frantic cheers of the others. Beside me, the other competitors struggle to do the same and, somewhere among all the voices, I make out Phillip’s.
“Come on, fruit loop!” he yells. “You got this!”
I fall across the finish line. But Phillip is there to catch me. All around us, the other participants are cheering on their partners. I’m struggling to laugh through my heavy breathing. The jasmine-laden air is thick with heat and humidity, and beneath my bare feet, I can feel the softness of trampled grass.
“That,” I say, “was so much harder than I thought it would be!”
Phillip’s hands wrap around my hips. “You looked very graceful.”
“Liar.”
“No, it’s the truth. Like a ballerina.”
I hit his chest. My hand stays there, fingers curling over the collar of shirt. “Did we at least win?”
“They’re tallying the 'scores now,” he says, “but we beat “PDA One” and “Two” over there.”
I peer over his shoulder at the couple in blue. They seem to have given up on the contest all together. Still hovering around the finish line, they’ve got their arms wrapped around one another, lips locked in a display that should really only take place behind closed doors.
“Amateurs,” I say.
“Can’t keep their eyes on the price.”
I nod, something tightening in my stomach. It’s not desire. It’s something else, something much more dangerous, and I know that saying goodbye to this little fling won’t be as easy as I once thought.
Beside us, the woman from earlier loudly clears her throat. She’s stepping out of her sack and smiling at us. “You two are just the cutest,” she says. “Aren’t they, Frank? And to think, you’re a professional juggler!”
I lean my head onto Phillip’s chest to hide my laughter. Above me, I hear his deep voice, laced with amusement. “If only that had been one of the games,” he says.
Today, I’m the one in charge of choosing our activity.But it can’t involve hotel games,Phillip had said the night before.It needs to be something from that guidebook of yours.
The concierge at the Winter Resort had been somewhat surprised when I asked her about the best rental car company. Apparently, most tourists either stay at the resort or go on pre-planned excursions, but she obliged.
Phillip drives. It turns out he’s driven on the left side of the road before, while he was in England for work, and I gladly let him take the wheel.
