The Unhoneymooners

by Christina Lauren

  Ethan laughs as I jog to retrieve them, and when I pass as he holds the bar door open for me, my elbow slips and digs into his stomach. Oops.

  He barely winces. “That all you got?”

  “God, I hate you.”

  His voice is a growl behind me: “No, you don’t.”

  The inside of the restaurant is over-the-top and kitschy and so positively magical that I pull up short. Ethan collides with my back, nearly sending me sprawling. “What the hell, Olive?”

  “Look at this place,” I tell him. There is a life-size shark coming out of the wall, a pirate complete with pirate ship mural in the corner, a crab wearing a life preserver suspended in a net overhead.

  Ethan whistles in response. “It’s something else.”

  “We’re having such a good day not murdering each other that I’m going to be polite and suggest that we can go somewhere a little more hifalutin’ if you’d prefer, but I don’t see a buffet anywhere, so . . .”

  “Stop acting like I’m such a snob. I like this place.” He sits down and picks up a sticky menu, perusing it.

  A waiter in a Cheeseburger Maui T-shirt stops at our table and fills our water glasses. “You guys want food, or just drinks?”

  I can tell Ethan is about to say just drinks, but I jump in first. “If we’re in this for the long haul, you’re going to need food.”

  “I just had tacos,” he argues.

  “You’re like six foot four and weigh two hundred pounds. I’ve seen you eat, and those tacos aren’t going to sustain you for long.”

  The waiter mm-hmms appreciatively beside me, and I look up at him. “We’ll check out the menu.”

  We order drinks, and then Ethan leans his elbows on the table, studying me. “Are you having fun?”

  I pretend to focus on the menu and not the curl of unease I feel at the sincere tenor to his words. “Shh. I’m reading.”

  “Come on. Can’t we have a conversation?”

  I put on my best confused face. “A what?”

  “The exchange of words. Without banter.” He exhales patiently. “I’ll ask you something. You’ll answer, then ask me something.”

  Groaning, I say, “Fine.”

  Ethan stares at me.

  “God, what?” I ask. “Ask me a question, then!”

  “I asked you whether you’re having fun. That was my question.”

  I take a sip of my water, roll my neck, and give him what he wants. “Fine. Yes. I’m having fun.”

  He continues to watch me, expectantly.

  “Are you having fun?” I ask obediently.

  “I am,” he answers easily, leaning back in his chair. “I expected this to be a hellmouth on a tropical island, and am pleasantly surprised that I only feel like poisoning your meals about half the time.”

  “Progress.” I lift my water glass and clink his.

  “So when was your last boyfriend?” he asks, and I nearly choke on a piece of ice.

  “Wowza, that escalated quickly.”

  He laughs and gives a wince I find so adorable I want to spill his water into his lap. “I didn’t mean that to be creepy. We were just talking about Sophie yesterday, and I realize I didn’t ask anything about you.”

  “That’s okay,” I assure him with a casual wave. “I’m fine not talking about my dating life.”

  “Yeah, but I want to know. We’re sort of friends now, right?” Blue eyes twinkle when he smiles, the dimple makes an appearance, and I look away, noticing that others are noticing his smile, too. “I mean, I did rub your butt yesterday.”

  “Stop reminding me.”

  “Come on. You liked it.”

  I did. I really did. Taking a deep breath, I tell him, “My last boyfriend was a guy named Carl, and—”

  “I’m sorry. Carl?”

  “Look, they can’t all be sexy Sophie names,” I say, and immediately regret it because it makes him frown, even when the waiter places a giant, alcohol-soaked, fruit-filled drink in front of him. “So, his name was Carl, and he worked at 3M, and—God, it’s so dumb.”

  “What’s dumb?”

  “I broke up with him because when the whole thing with 3M and the water pollution went down, he defended the company and I just could not handle it. It felt so corporate and gross.”

  Ethan shrugs. “That sounds like a pretty reasonable reason to break up to me.”

  I meet his high-five without thinking, and then mentally log how awesome it is that he chose that moment to high-five me. “Anyway, so that was . . . a while ago, and here we are.” He’s already put away about half of his mai tai, so I turn it back to him. “Has there been anyone since Sophie?”

  “A couple Tinder dates.” He drains the rest of his drink, and then notices my expression. “It’s not that bad.”

  “I guess not. In my head, I just picture every dude on Tinder is expecting it to just be sex.”

  He laughs. “A lot probably are. Probably a lot of women are, too. I’m certainly not expecting sex on the first date.”

  “Or, what? The fifth?” I say, gesturing to the table, and then clap my mouth shut because HELLO, THIS IS NOT A DATE.

  Thankfully, my idiocy coincides with the waiter coming by to take another drink order, so by the time Ethan turns back to me, he’s ready to move on.

  And as it turns out, Ethan is a really cute, happy drunk. His cheeks turn pink, he’s got a permagrin, and even when we return to the topic of Sophie, he’s still giggling.

  “She wasn’t very nice to me,” he says, and then laughs. “And I’m sure it made it worse that I stayed. Nothing is harder in a relationship than not respecting the person you’re with.” He leans his chin heavily into his hand. “I didn’t like myself with her. I was willing to try to be the guy she wanted rather than who I really am.”

  “Examples, please.”

  He laughs. “Okay, here’s one that might give you a sense of it: we had a couple’s photo shoot.”

  “White shirts and denim with a fence backdrop?” I ask, wincing.

  He laughs harder. “No, she wore white, I wore black. In front of an artfully dilapidated barn.” We both groan. “More importantly, though, we never fought. She hated fighting, so it was like we couldn’t even disagree.”

  “Sounds just like me and you,” I say sarcastically, giving him a grin.

  He laughs, and his smile lingers as he looks at me. “Yeah.” After a pause that seems to hang, heavy and expectant, he inhales deeply and says, “I’ve never been like that before.”

  God, I relate to this more than I can say. “Honestly, I get that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Before Carl—” I say, and he snickers again at the name, “I dated this guy, Frank—”

  “Frank?”

  “We’d met at wor—”

  But Ethan will not be deterred. “I know your problem, Odessa.”

  “What’s my problem, Ezra?”

  “You’re only dating guys who were born in the 1940s.”

  Ignoring him, I press on. “Anyway, I’d met Frank at work. Things were going well, we had a good, sexy vibe ifyouknowwhatImean,” I say, and I expect Ethan to laugh at this, but he doesn’t. “Anyway, he saw me freaking out about a presentation one day—I was nervous because I didn’t feel I’d had enough time with the material to get comfortable—and I swear, seeing me like that totally turned him off. We stayed together another few months, but it wasn’t the same.” I shrug. “Maybe it was all in my head, but, yeah. That insecurity just made it worse.”

  “Where did you meet Frank again?”

  “Butake.” As soon as I say it, I realize it was a setup.

  “Bukkake!” he sings, and I push his water toward him.

  “It’s Butake, you dumbass, why do you always do that?”

  “Because it’s funny. Didn’t they
run the company name through some test audiences or—or—what’s it called?”

  “Focus groups?”

  He snaps his fingers together. “That. Like, Urban Dictionary is right there! It’s like naming a kid Richard.” He leans in, whispering like he’s imparting some great wisdom. “He’s gonna be called Dick. It’s just a matter of time.”

  I register that I’m staring at him with overt fondness when he reaches forward, touching a careful fingertip to my chin.

  “You’re looking at me like you like me,” he says.

  “It’s the mai tai goggles you’re wearing. I hate you as much as ever.”

  Ethan lifts a skeptical brow. “Really?”

  “Yep.” Nope.

  He exhales a little growl and polishes off his sixth mai tai. “I thought I rubbed your butt pretty well, well enough to at least be shifted up into the strongly dislike category.” The waiter, Dan, returns, grinning down at sweet, pliable Ethan. “One more?”

  “No more,” I quickly answer, and Ethan protests with a drunken Psssshhhhhh. Dan waggles his eyebrows at me, like I might have a great time with this one tonight.

  Look, Dan, I’m just hoping I can get him to the car.

  I can, in fact, but it takes both me and Dan to keep him on task. Drunk Ethan is not only happy, he is exceedingly friendly, and by the time the three of us get out the door, he’s received a phone number from a cute redhead at the bar, bought a drink for a man wearing a Vikings T-shirt, and high-fived about forty strangers.

  He babbles sweetly on the drive home—about his childhood dog, Lucy; about how much he loves to kayak in the Boundary Waters and hasn’t been in too long; and about whether I’ve ever had dill pickle popcorn (the answer is hell yes)—and by the time we get back to the hotel, he’s still drunk off his ass, but slightly more collected. We make it through the lobby with only a few more stops so Ethan can make new friends with strangers.

  He stops to give a hug to one of the valet attendants who helped us check in. I give an apologetic smile over Ethan’s shoulder and check his name tag: Chris.

  “Looks like the honeymooners are having a good time,” Chris says.

  “Maybe too good.” I lean toward escape—I mean, the path to the elevator. “Just taking this one upstairs.”

  Ethan lifts a finger and beckons Chris closer. “Do you want to know a secret?”

  Uhhhh . . .

  Amused, Chris leans in. “Sure?”

  “I like her.”

  “I would hope so,” Chris whispers back. “She’s your wife.”

  And boom goes my heart. He’s drunk, I tell myself. This isn’t a thing he’s saying, just drunk words.

  Safely in the suite, I can’t help but let Ethan collapse on the enormous bed for the night. He’s going to be rocking a pretty serious headache in the morning.

  “God, I’m so tired,” he moans.

  “Rough day of sightseeing and drinking?”

  He laughs, one hand reaching up and coming in for a heavy landing on my forearm. “That isn’t what I mean.”

  His hair has fallen over one eye, and I’m so tempted to move it aside. For comfort, of course.

  I reach out, carefully sweeping the hair across his forehead, and he looks up at me with such intensity that I freeze with my fingers near his temple.

  “What do you mean, then?” I ask quietly.

  He doesn’t break eye contact. Not even for a breath. “It’s so exhausting pretending to hate you.”

  This pulls me up short, and—even though I know it now, the truth of it still blows through me—I ask, “So you don’t hate me?”

  “Nope.” He shakes his head dramatically. “Never did.”

  Never? “You sure seemed to.”

  “You were so mean.”

  “I was mean?” I ask, confused. I scrabble back through the mental history, trying now to see it from his perspective. Was I mean?

  “I don’t know what I did.” He frowns. “But it didn’t matter anyway, because Dane told me not to.”

  I am so lost. “He told you not to what?”

  His words are a quiet slur: “He said, ‘Hell no.’ ”

  I’m starting to understand what he’s telling me, but I repeat it again anyway: “Hell no to what?”

  Ethan looks up at me, gaze swimming, and reaches up to cup the back of my neck. His fingers play with my braid for a contemplative beat, and then he pulls me down with a surprisingly careful hand. I don’t even resist; it’s almost as if, in hindsight, I’ve known this moment was coming forever.

  My heart vaults into my throat as we move together; a few short, exploratory kisses followed by the unbinding relief of something deeper, with tiny sounds of surprise and hunger coming from both of us. He tastes like cheap alcohol and contradictions, but it is still hands-down the best kiss of my life.

  Pulling back, he blinks up at me, saying, “That.”

  I’ll need to see if there is a doctor in the hotel tomorrow. Something is definitely wrong with my heart: it’s pounding too hard, so tight.

  Ethan’s eyes roll closed, and he pulls me down beside him on the bed, curling his long body around mine. I can’t move, can barely think. His breathing evens out, and he succumbs to a drunken slumber. Mine follows much later, under the perfect, heavy weight of his arm.

  chapter eleven

  I open the door to our suite as quietly as I can. Ethan wasn’t awake yet when I finally gave up on waiting for him and went to get something to eat, but he is now. He’s sitting on the couch in nothing but boxers. There’s so much tan skin to take in—it sends my pulse skyrocketing. We’ll have to talk about what happened last night—the kissing, and the fact that we slept together all night, curled in a matching set of parentheses—but it would probably be much easier if we could just skip the awkward talk and go straight to the making out again.

  “Hey,” I say quietly.

  “Hey.” His hair is a mess, his eyes are closed, and he’s leaning back as if he’s just focusing on breathing or planning to start a petition to ban all sales of $1.99 mai tais.

  “How’s the head?” I ask.

  He answers with a gravelly groan.

  “I brought you some fruit and an egg sandwich.” I hold out a to-go carton of some mango and berries and a wrapped package with the sandwich, and he looks at both of them like they’re filled with buffet seafood.

  “You went downstairs to eat?” he asks. The follow-up Without me? is clearly implied.

  His tone is dickish, but I forgive him. No one likes a pounding head.

  Setting the food down on the table, I head into the kitchen to get him some coffee. “Yeah, I waited for you until about nine thirty, but my stomach was digesting itself.”

  “Did Sophie see you there alone?”

  This feels like being jerked to a standstill. I turn to look at him over my shoulder. “Um, what?”

  “I just don’t want her to think that there’s trouble in our marriage.”

  We spent all afternoon talking about how he’s better off without Sophie, he kissed me last night, and this morning he’s worried about what she thinks. Awesome. “You mean our fake marriage?” I say.

  He rubs a hand across his forehead. “Yeah. Exactly.” Dropping his hand, he looks up at me. “So?”

  My jaw tightens, and I feel the storm build in my chest. This is good. Anger is good. I can do angry at Ethan. It’s so much easier than feeling the tickling edges of smitten. “No, Ethan, your ex-girlfriend was not at breakfast. Neither was her fiancé, or any of the new friends you made in the lobby last night.”

  “The what?” he asks.

  “Never mind.” Obviously he doesn’t remember. Excellent. We can pretend the rest didn’t happen, either.

  “Are you in a bad mood?” he asks, and a dry, sardonic laugh bursts out of me.

  “Am I in
a bad mood? Is that a serious question?”

  “You seem upset or something.”

  “I seem—?” I take a deep breath, pulling myself to my full height. Do I seem upset? He kissed me last night, said sweet things implying that maybe he’d wanted to do that for a while, and then passed out. Now he’s grilling me about who might have seen me getting food alone in the hotel. I don’t think my reaction is overblown.

  “I’m great.”

  He mumbles something and then reaches for the fruit, opening the lid and peering in. “Was this from the—”

  “No, Ethan, it’s not from the buffet. I ordered a freshly made fruit plate. I brought it up to spare us the twelve-dollar room service delivery charge.” My palm is itchy to smack him for the first time in two days, and it feels glorious.

  He grunts out a “Thanks,” and then picks up a piece of mango with his fingers. He stares at it, and then bursts out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  “Just remembering that girlfriend of Dane’s who had a mango tattoo on her ass.”

  “What?”

  He chews, and swallows before speaking. “Trinity. The one he was dating like two years ago?”

  I frown; discomfort worms through me. “Couldn’t have been two years ago. He was with Ami three and a half years ago.”

  He waves this away. “Yeah, but I mean before he and Ami were exclusive.”

  At these words, I drop the sugar spoon I’m holding and it clatters dissonantly on the counter. Ami met Dane at a bar, and by her account, they went home that night, had sex, and never looked back. As far as I know, there was never a time they weren’t exclusive.

  “How long was it again that they were seeing other people?” I ask, with as much control as possible.

  Ethan pops a blackberry into his mouth. He’s not looking at my face now, which is probably good, because I’m sure I look like I’m ready to do a murder. “Like the first couple years they were together, right?”

  Bending, I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to channel Professional Olive, who can keep her cool even when being challenged by condescending physicians. “Right. Right.” I can either freak out, or milk this moment for information. “They met at that bar but it wasn’t until . . . when did they decide to be exclusive again?”