by DL White
“So, he must have said something that made you act differently this time.”
"He said that if I could admit to myself that I wanted to be back with you, I had to man up. Prove it, come correct. Grow up, stop playing stupid, immature games with you, because not only were you not playing along, but they didn’t endear me to you. That my behavior would drive you away from me, eventually.”
“Nate must be psychic,” I comment, with a laugh.
“What? What do you mean, he’s psychic?”
“I didn’t even tell anyone this, but after we got back to Orlando, I was going to tell everyone that I was moving. Not too far away, so I can still visit my parents when I need to. But far enough that I didn't see you every day. Didn't run into you in every courtroom."
“But you're not still planning that, though? Things are different with us.” When I don't answer, he follows up with, "Right, Angie?”
I pause in thought for much too long. Then I shrug and the tears build again. "After today? It’s the same old game, Preston. Today was all about you and what you want.”
The look that skates across his face is the opposite of his response of, "Okay." Then, “So… you’re still planning to leave. And leave us, you and me and this new thing we’re building behind?”
I sigh a long, deep, loud breath, emptying my lungs. "That's a good question, because what is this thing we’re building? You say that you think you’re in love with me, but… I don’t feel loved, Preston.”
I slide off of the edge of the bed and reach to unzip my dress. It’s gorgeous, but I’m done. I want it off. Preston unzips it; it falls to the floor, revealing a body I’m proud of— size eight pear shaped frame, thick hips and thighs, ample, perky breasts with nipples that harden simply because Preston is in the room.
But I’m not in the mood to let him explore and worship my body, the way he’s explored and worshipped for the past week. He reaches for me, but I step out of his reach, then turn and head to the bathroom. Before I’ve even turned the spigot to turn on the shower, I hear the door to my room slam closed.
I hop in the shower for a long hot soak. The day has been a gauntlet of emotion, from the highest heights to… well, right now, I’m low. When I run out of hot water, I turn the spigot off and step out of the shower, wrapping one of the hotel’s bath sheets around me.
I hear Preston next door and brace for him to burst into my room, but he doesn't. Instead, the ‘ding' of the arriving elevator rings out.
Whether I am being punished or if he's giving me space, I’m nervous about making my way down to the Cliff, where our friends have gathered for post-wedding festivities. Upon my entrance into the sun-lit bar, I spot our group in the back room near the pool tables. Everyone has changed into island chic, comfortable attire.
Preston, dressed in shorts, deck shoes with no socks, a thin t-shirt, and a ball cap, doesn't acknowledge me from across the room. He practically turns his back to me, then turns up the amber bottle he's holding and pours the remaining down his throat.
"Hey, girl." Morgan loops an arm around me and ushers me to the table where she's sitting with Brandess, Jackie, and Jade.
Here we go. The Inquisition.
I slide into a chair and order a drink from the waitress as she passes. I notice Jackie has a margarita glass in front of her. "That better be lemonade."
She grimaces. "With sugar on the rim."
"Good girl."
She snorts. “My ass. As soon as possible, I'm getting all kinds of wasted. I'm so serious."
I laugh. “Make sure to call me. I might be up for that.”
"Come to Prime! I'll do the pouring,” Jade says, lifting a glass of something dark, probably a rum and Coke, which is on special. The Cliff features Bounty, a locally distilled rum that is heavily pushed in the bars on the island. It’s not half bad, if you like rum.
“You’re going back to waitressing, Jade?”
Jade lowers her glass back to the table. "I'm going to pick up some weekends. Uhm, Troy and I might get a place together in the spring. I live with roommates. He still lives with his parents. It’s hard to be alone. We both need to stack some cash."
It takes a concerted effort to bite back the comments that are lodged in my throat. Not my business. Let Troy be happy. But so help me God if she hurts him...
“Yep, spring is a good time for moving. Good for you guys."
The waitress delivers a lemon Piton Shandy, another popular local brand. I guzzle a few mouthfuls as soon as she walks away. It doesn’t have much alcohol in it, but it’s refreshing going down.
"So, Angie–"
"Jackie, please don't start. Please."
"I'm not starting,” she protests. “I was going to say that I'm happy for you. And that's all. I promise."
She sips from her margarita glass of lemonade, but her eyes don't leave my face. I know she has something else to say.
"Also that my ears are open whenever you’re ready to spill about Preston fucking you until you don’t know your name anymore. Because just judging from your face, it appears that you haven’t known your name for… a while.”
She pauses, bats her lashes and finishes. “But seriously, that's it. Definitely not starting.”
Maybe there’s more alcohol in the shandy than I thought there’d be. Or maybe I’m too worn out to be embarrassed. Or maybe my friends are fools who would never have malice against me about Preston. All they want is for me to be happy.
Jackie’s shade-adjacent throwback to Morgan’s Bachelorette party makes me laugh until I can’t breathe. The laughter is contagious; my heavy mood lifts as I suck down my shandy and laugh uproariously with my friends.
“So?” Brandess prods. “Let’s get it over with. Spill. You know we’ll give you shit until you tell us.”
“Uh…” Furiously blushing, I tip the last of my drink into my mouth and swallow. “So, that night we all had dinner at Preston’s, to plan the pre-wedding parties? After all of you left me alone with a man I told y’all that I hate… well, he kissed me. And it was…”
I sigh. “It was the best kiss I’d had in a long, long time. That’s where this reconciliation all started.”
“Well, not where it all started,” Morgan interrupts.
“True,” I admit. “But that night… that kiss. It pissed me off—we actually had a huge nasty fight about it, but it also made me think past being mad at him.”
“I saw him kiss you at the engagement party,” says Jackie. “I thought he was just being Preston. He was always…” She shakes her head. “Like, trying too hard to get your attention. If he would have been that smooth the entire time…”
“That night, he told me that he was leaving Perry, and that I was going to win that case where I was up against him. And he asked me to think about giving him another chance, because…”
My eyes tracked Preston across the room, still in deep conversation with Nate.
“He said he still loved me.”
“Awwww…” Jackie swoons, then motions to the waitress that she needs a refill. We order fresh drinks all around.
“And so?” Asks Brandess. “Get to the fuckin’ before he comes over here!”
“Well, that last night at Prime before the trip, where we all celebrated a little too much—”
“And my poor husband had to drive you home?” Asks Jackie.
“Yeah. He showed up at my apartment the next morning after he met up with Keith. He wanted to see if I was as bad off as Brandess.”
Brandess groans. “I think I’m still drunk from that night. Keith won’t let it go.”
“He took me to breakfast. We had a really good talk about us, about the wedding, about…maybe giving this a shot. And when he brought me home…”
I waited until the waitress set down fresh drinks and took the empties to continue.
“He brought you home and…” Brandess waves, moving her hands in a circle to prod me on. “I’m an old married lady. Humor me!”
“Me too!”
says Jackie.
“Oh, me too!” Morgan says.
My eyes roll at Morgan, who’s been married all of eight hours, but I continue. “When he brought me home, he asked if I would take him back. And I didn’t know what to say. So I fucked him on my couch.”
“That’s pretty much how I said yes to Keith.”
“And then there was a lot more fucking… in a lot more places.”
“Y’all been getting it in this whole time,” muses Jackie. “I knew it! I mean, I didn’t know, but I knew you seemed different.”
“I’m not saying anything about the time we’ve been on this island, but we feel really bad that Nate is paying for two rooms and Preston has been in my room since the first night. That’s all you’re getting.”
“Finally!” Brandess pumps two fists in the air with the most joyous, victorious squeal. “If I had to sit through one more petty bickering session where Preston was obviously flirting with you and you completely missing it, I was going to scream. Didn’t I tell you that man wanted to fuck you?”
“You did. And I still say y’all are delusional. There was nothing about him that would make me think that. I only changed my mind when—”
“He slipped you the big one? I mean, I assume it’s the big one.”
“Morgan…” I shake my head, making a valiant attempt at not laughing, but miserably failing. “Not that I would even tell you, but you don’t really want to know things about your husband’s best friend, do you?”
“What I really want to know is why Preston is across the room and not up your ass, like usual. It’s the first time he’s left you alone in years.”
Morgan nods toward Preston and Nate, still deeply embroiled in conversation. Nate’s feet are planted, his stance wide, his fingers woven together. Its too much to hope he’s lecturing Preston about his speech.
“Having sex doesn’t solve the problems I’ve always had with Preston. We had a fight about his speech. About the last twenty years. About… a lot of stuff. He didn’t like what I had to say and he came down here without me. And now he's pretending I'm not here."
Jackie sips from a fresh glass of lemonade with a sugared rim. “Men can be such children, the way they deal with emotion. I hope they talk to each other, because…” She huffs. “Matthew will let something bug the shit out of him, but if I ask him, what’s up? He’s fine.”
“My husband is half Korean,” muses Brandess. “He grew up with a lot of messages from the Asian side of his family, not to mention his strong, Black mama, about being rational, staying even, not getting emotional. Keith thinks that means he need to detach. Like, completely. He works from a place of logic and it drives me nuts. Sometimes a situation requires an emotional response. It’s taken a lot of therapy for us to work together.”
I am only mildly surprised to hear this tidbit about the Liao marriage. They’re not so perfect after all.
“Kind of like Nate. He doesn't let anything bother him,” says Morgan. “Mister Even Keel. I can go from happy to sad to mad in seconds. He's so even-tempered. It must be those years of working with kids."
"And those years of living with you, drama queen,” I finish, to a burst of laughter.
Preston and Nate wander over to the rowdy side of the room. I follow Preston's every move; he watches me watching him. He stops at the table, sets his bottle down next to my glass, bends over me, and drops a kiss on my lips.
When he pulls back, he asks, “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Why?” I ask, looking him straight in the eye, despite a lightheaded, airy feeling from the kiss. “So you can apologize in private, after embarrassing me in public? Why not let everyone hear that you’re sorry, loud and clear?”
“Okay. I can do that.”
To my surprise, he straightens, looking up and around at our friends and families, all who have eyes on us.
“I was wrong. Alright? I took Nate and Morgan’s moment and made it all about me. I realize that. I was thinking about how happy everybody would be for us, finally. I should have waited, as Angie asked me to, until she was ready to let everyone know. I’m sorry. Please…”
His eyes drop to meet mine. The last time I saw the look in his eyes, he sat across from me at my kitchen table and begged me not to break up with him.
“Please forgive me, Evangeline.”
"Maybe,” I respond, after a long beat. But I smile; he knows I’m a sucker.
Preston laughs. "Okay, it’s not a no. But look at it this way. Most of these people have never seen us together. They've never seen us look at each other the way we're looking at each other right now. If I have to perform, that’s a show I'm willing to put on. How about you?"
I nod vigorously. He kisses me again, a light brush of his lips across mine. The crowd around us obnoxiously claps and eggs him on until the kiss goes long. He stands again, then flips the room both of his middle fingers.
“Happy?” He yells.
“Yes!” A unanimous response.
Preston taps my arm and tips his head toward the tables in a more secluded corner of the bar. I get up and follow him, then walk right into his arms and exhale a breath of relief when they close around me.
"I am so sorry, Evangeline. I could say I wasn’t thinking, but we both know I was only thinking about myself. Forgive me?”
“I guess…”
“Angie…”
“Fine, Preston! Yes. I’ll forgive you.”
“Thank you.” A small sigh escapes his lips. He is genuinely grateful. “We can enjoy ourselves now. Openly. But can you do me a favor?"
"What?"
"I need to ask you not to make any decisions about leaving until we talk. Okay?”
"Okay…”
“Promise me.”
“I…yes, but why? What do you have to talk to me about? Is it the super-secret reason you left Perry?"
"Maybe," he answers, hiding a smile. Cagey and mysterious, this man. "I have an idea. I can’t talk about it yet for… reasons. When we get back, and I get some things settled, I can fill you in. Hold on until then. Okay?"
“Fine. Whatever."
"I love you. This is… really hard, but I am committed. You know that, right?"
"Yeah. I know."
He pulls me back to our group, where we squeeze together into the booth where I’d been sitting before. Preston groans at the popping in his knees.
"This destination wedding is taking a lot out of me."
Nate nods toward a table a few spaces away from us. “We may have one more in us. The question is..."
Jade and Troy are deep in conversation, fingers intertwined. Troy must have cracked a joke because Jade collapses into giggles and looks up to find the entire room staring at them.
“True love or new love? Which Reid brother will it be?"
30
I awake swaddled in a cocoon of high thread count sheets that smell as fresh as rain, with thick manly arms wrapped around me and soft breaths on my forehead. I am rested yet exhausted. Bone tired.
The last few months have been a whirlwind. So much work, so much planning, so much worrying that things wouldn’t go according to the well thought out plan. In no way should two amateurs have been in charge of this affair, but we pulled it off. Nate and Morgan had a beautiful, memorable wedding in a dreamy, decadent venue. Except for a snafu with the Best Man’s Speech and the ensuing drama, it was perfection.
Preston has, admittedly, been the most tiresome element of all. Until last night, I didn't realize how tense I've been about him, around him. I couldn't stand him, but I could never relax because he was always around, ready to pounce. I'd go to lunch, and he'd drop in and sit at my table. I'd go to the grocery store or the gym or drop by my best friend's house, and he'd be there. I could never get away from him.
When we got back together, it was important to me to keep things under wraps, not just because of Nate and Morgan, but because of me.
And now everyone knows. By the time we get home in a few days, everyon
e back in Orlando will know.
I roll my shoulders, tamping down rising anxiety. My movement stirs Preston. He lets me know he’s waking up by sucking in a deep breath through his nose and clearing his throat. He tightens one arm around me, drawing me up against him. His other arm strokes from my waist to my thigh and back up.
“What’s wrong? You're all bunched up.” His voice is gritty, his tongue thick.
“I’m fine.”
"Whatever,” Preston mumbles. “Don't tell me."
"Preston, I—”
"Angie." His tone stops me from talking. "You’re still worried about everyone knowing about us?”
I frown. "If you already know, why do you ask?"
“Because you need to stop holding your tongue with me. And you need to find a way to let shit go. We bicker. Two headstrong people that need to be right—that’s who we are now. It’s what we do, and that isn’t going to change. I'm a big boy. In more ways than one."
Preston pauses to laugh at his joke. I try hard not to, but I can't help it. "I can take it, whatever it is,” he adds, more softly than I expected.
“I know I shouldn't be worried, but I am. I know everyone is happy for us. I know everyone's excited about us being back together. It's like you said last night, some of our friends have never seen us get along, never seen us love each other. I don't know how to act around them. And I know I'm going to hear I told you so for a long time."
"We weren't going to be able to avoid it, no matter how long we waited. We’ve got to face the music.”
I whimper into his well-formed chest. He flexes, which makes me laugh. "Can we hide up here for the rest of the trip?"
"Nope. We are going to enjoy every second of being on this island with our friends. We're going to enjoy every second of being together, on this island, with our friends."
Together. On this island. With our friends.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m moping and tense and anxious because my friends know I'm dating someone they've been begging me to date for as long as I can remember? I’m embarrassed that Troy was right, and that if it was obvious to Troy, it was obvious to everyone?
