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“Right. Well, didn’t want you to forget this.” He held up the fake tree she’d dropped on his porch. “I also don’t want you parked here all night.”
“Um, sure. I mean. No. I wasn’t planning on—” She couldn’t put together a single complete sentence. “Can you… it’s just, I was trying—” He gave her the same look she’d seen on long-suffering store clerks faced with an indecisive elderly person. “Could you recommend one of these places to stay? I can’t reach Zach and I thought I’d be staying here, so I don’t have a reservation…” Just like her mother always chastised her for, she had no back up plan, and she was babbling. She made herself stop and instead of talking held out her phone to him.
He took it, his fingers grazing her palm as he did. “Sorry.” His apology was immediate, if perfunctory.
“No worries!”Holy cow. Just that tiny touch had sent tingles sparking up her arm. It had obviously been way too long since she’d seen Zach, if the smallest brush of skin—a total stranger’s skin, no less!—had that kind of impact.
Crab-Cake Grinch Guy angled her phone’s screen towards himself. He was squinting at the map when the phone rang, making him startle. Man, the guy was jumpy.
Lena’s heart, on the other hand, was racing for a different reason. “Who is it?”
“It’s Zach sparkle-heart emoji.” There was derision in Grinch Guy’s voice, but she couldn’t care less as she made grabby hands at him.
“Oh! It’s him!” In a matter of moments, Zach would be wrapping his arms around her, and the tingles she’d gotten from Crab-Cake Grinch Guy’s touch would be a dim memory.
Grinch Guy shoved the phone back at her, practically dropping it in her lap before stepping away.
She punched the answer button, her hands shaking so badly it took two tries. “Hey you!”
“Lena?” Her name on Zach’s tongue practically made her melt. The fight that had been building drained out of her just a little. “What’s going on?” He sounded tense. Worried. Because of course—her messages were weird. And had gotten increasingly frantic. She’d fix that.
“I’m here! In Bindarra Creek! At the cottage!” There was a pause. A too-long pause. She pulled her phone away from her ear and looked at the screen, then punched the button to put it on speaker. “Hello?”
“Yeah. I’m here.” Zach’s voice had gone even weirder. Toneless. Wary. In the background there were other voices. He must be out somewhere. “I don’t understand—you’re where?”
“In Australia. At your house—the cottage. The one you told me about! It’s really cute!”
“What? You’re kidding. Lena…” The way Zach said her name was different than he’d ever said it before. Different in a way that made her stomach feel like she’d swallowed a nest of tentacled things. “I wish you hadn’t… I had no idea you were…”
“Yeah, I know. That’s the point. Surprise!” She put as much sparkle into her voice as she could muster. Instead of responding in kind, Zach was silent. She could practically feel the wheels turning in his brain, even through the phone. She was the one to break the awkward tension. “So… where are you? You’re obviously not at home, and your roommate”—she threw a glance at Grinch Guy, who was back on the porch—“did a really good job of pretending he had no idea who you are.”
“Lena, look. I’m not—I’m in the city. What I mean is…” She did not like the tone of his voice. Not one bit. He was supposed to be excited. Thrilled. He was supposed to drop everything and come find her.
A woman’s voice sounded in the background. “Who is it, Zed-baby?”
Zed-baby?
“Who’s that?” The little voice of doom in her head blared a warning at her.Oh heck no. No no no nononono. This was NOT happening.
“Lena. I— wow. This isn’t—I mean, this is quite a surprise.”
“Yeah. I know! That’s kind of the whole point!” Her voice was still pitched higher than normal with what sounded like excitement but felt more like panic. The conversation wasn’t going at all the way she’d expected it would. Nothing was. Just as an example, someone with a soft, breathy voice and an Aussie accent was calling her boyfriendZed-baby.
“It’s just—What I’m trying to tell you is… I mean, I should’ve told you sooner, but I know how much you love Christmas, and I didn’t want to ruin the holidays and I didn’t think…”
Her brain snagged on the phrase ‘ruin the holidays.’ That was when she knew what was happening. She wanted to tell him to shut up, only the words wouldn’t come. She wanted to hit pause and give herself time to think her way out of what was happening. She wanted to hang up and pretend nothing was wrong at all. But Zach ‘Zed-baby’ was still speaking.
“See, the cottage—I never—” Zach took a deep inhale. The steadying kind. The kind she’d heard him take just before making a big announcement. Just like the one he’d taken when she’d thought he was proposing and instead he’d told her he’d taken a promotion (yay!) and a transfer (what?). To Australia (are you kidding me?!?). And here’s a dog to keep you company until I’m settled! (Awwwww!) “I found someone. Here. Someone else.”
The words were a knife that sliced through her, reopening the gash that last Christmas’ announcement/non-proposal had made across her heart, almost a year earlier. It was exactly what Carissa had warned her about.Manage your expectations.But she hadn’t. Because she wanted to have high expectations of her boyfriend. She wanted him to meet them. Only he wasn’t meeting them. Hadn’t. Not for a long time. In an instant, her expectations transformed into unmanageable emotions. Her guts churned, the tentacled thing inside her twisting and writhing. She was going to throw up. Or scream. Or hang up. Or all three.
She held it together enough to spit venom at Zach. “You found someone else, and you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I just figured, with me being in Australia…we’d never be—I mean, how would it ever work, Lena?”
“Don’t.” The word that filled her head burst out of her mouth. “We could’ve made it work. I’m here trying, aren’t I?”
“But with your riding, and the dog… It’s impossible.”
