The Unhoneymooners

by Christina Lauren

  Ethan looks up at me, catching something in my tone. “Um . . .”

  “Was it right before they got engaged?” I don’t know what I’ll do with myself if he agrees with this shot in the dark, but it suddenly makes sense that Dane would refuse to commit until he was impulsively ready to enter holy matrimony.

  My brain is nothing but fantasies of fire and brimstone.

  Ethan nods slowly, and his eyes scan my face like he’s trying to read my mood, and can’t. “Remember? He ended it with the other women right around the time Ami had her appendix out, and then he proposed?”

  I slam my hand down on the counter. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Ethan bolts to stand, pointing a finger at me. “You played me! Don’t even pretend like Ami didn’t know all this!”

  “Ami never thought they were seeing other people, Ethan!”

  “Then she lied to you, because Dane tells her everything!”

  I am already shaking my head, and I really want to hurt Dane but Ethan is closer and it’ll be a fantastic rehearsal. “You’re telling me that Dane was sleeping around for the first two years they were together, and he let you think Ami was okay with it? She started cutting out wedding dresses she liked in magazines after a few months of dating him. She treated her wedding like a game show challenge to win as much as she could—and it consumed her. She has an apron specifically for baking cupcakes, for crying out loud, and has already picked out names for their future children. Does Ami seem like the kind of chill gal who would be fine with an open relationship?”

  “I . . .” He seems less certain now. “Maybe I’m wrong . . .”

  “I need to call her.” I turn to head to the bedroom to find my phone.

  “Don’t!” he shouts. “Look, if that’s what he told me, then I’m telling you this in confidence.”

  “You have got to be joking. There is no way I’m not talking to my sister about this.”

  “Jesus Christ, Dane was right.”

  I go very still. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He laughs, but it’s not a happy sound.

  “Seriously, Ethan? What does that mean?”

  He looks up at me, and with a pang I miss the sweet adoration in his expression last night, because the anger here is painful.

  “Tell me,” I say, more quietly now.

  “He told me not to bother with you. That you’re angry all the time.”

  I feel this like a punch to my sternum.

  “Can you believe I wanted to ask you out?” he says, and laughs humorlessly.

  “What are you even talking about?” I ask. “When?”

  “When we first met.” He bends, resting his elbows on his thighs. His long form curls up into an exhausted C, and he rakes a fantastic hand through his mess of hair. “That first time at the fair. I told him how pretty I thought you were. He thought that was weird—that it was weird for me to be attracted to you. Like, it meant I was into his girlfriend or something because you were twins. He told me not to bother anyway, that you were sort of bitter and cynical.”

  “Dane told you I was bitter? Bitter about what?” I am flabbergasted.

  “I mean, I didn’t know at the time, but it seemed to mesh with how you acted. You clearly didn’t like me from the get-go.”

  “I only didn’t like you because you were such an asshole when we met. You looked at me eating cheese curds like I was the most repulsive woman you’d ever seen.”

  He looks up at me, eyes narrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “Everything seemed fine,” I say. “While everyone was deciding what we wanted to go see first, I went to get some cheese curds. I came back and you looked at them, looked at me in complete revulsion, and then walked away to go look at the beer competition. From that point on, you’ve always acted so disgusted around me, and food.”

  Ethan shakes his head, eyes closed like he has to clear away this alternate reality. “I remember meeting you, being told I couldn’t ask you out, and then going to do our own thing for the afternoon. I have no recollection of the rest.”

  “Well, I sure do.”

  “That certainly explains what you said yesterday,” he says, “about not making fun of your body during the massage. Certainly explains why you were always so dismissive to me afterward.”

  “Excuse me? I was the dismissive one? Are you for real right now?”

  “You acted like you wanted nothing to do with me after that day!” he seethes. “I was probably just trying to get my head on straight about being attracted to you, and of course you interpret it as something about your body and cheese curds? Jesus, Olive, that is so like you, to focus on the negative in every interaction.”

  Blood pulses in my ears. I don’t even know how to process what I’m hearing, or the undeniable ache it shoves through me that I think he might be right. Defensiveness pushes aside introspection: “Well, who needs to see the upside of things when you’ve got your brother telling you that I’m a shrew and to stay away from me anyway?”

  He throws up his hands. “I didn’t see anything that contradicted what he’d said!”

  I take a deep breath. “Does it occur to you that your attitude can foster how people react to you? That you hurt my feelings by reacting that way, whether you meant to or not?” I am mortified when I feel my throat grow tight with tears.

  “Olive, I don’t know how to say it more plainly: I was into you,” he growls. “You’re hot. And I was probably trying to hide it. I’m sorry for that totally unintentional reaction, I really am, but every indication I had—from you or Dane—was that you thought I was a waste of space.”

  “I didn’t at first,” I say, leaving the rest unsaid.

  He clearly reads the I do now in my expression, though, and the line of his mouth hardens. “Good,” he says, voice hoarse. “Then the feeling is conveniently mutual.”

  “What a fucking relief.” I stare at him for two rapid breaths, just long enough to imprint his face in the space marked DICKHEAD in my braincyclopedia. And then I turn, storm back to the bedroom, and slam the door.

  I fall back onto the bed, reeling. Part of me almost wants to get up and make a list of everything that just happened so I can process it in some sort of organized way. Like, not only was Dane sleeping around for the first two years of his relationship with my sister, but he told Ethan not to bother with me.

  Because Ethan wanted to ask me out.

  I don’t even know what to do with this information because it is so at odds with my mental history of him. Until the past couple of days, there has never been a hint of Ethan wanting anything to do with me—not even a flash of softness or warmth. Is he making that up?

  I mean, why would he do that?

  So does that mean he’s right about me? Did I misinterpret everything in that first interaction, and carry it with me for the past two and a half years? Was a single ambiguous look from Ethan enough to send me into this place of no return, where I decide we’re bitter enemies? Am I really that angry?

  I feel my breath grow tight as the rest of it nudges back into my thoughts: Is it even possible that Ami knew about Dane seeing other people? She knew I was lukewarm on him from the get-go—so I have to give some space to the possibility that they had their own arrangement, and she didn’t tell me because she knew I would worry or protest out of protectiveness. Frankly, it’s hard for me to even imagine Ami and Dane in an open relationship, but whether or not it’s true, I can’t exactly call her from Maui and ask. That is not a phone call conversation; that’s an in-person conversation, with wine, and snacks, and a careful lead-in.

  I pick up a pillow and scream into it. And when I pull it away, I hear a quiet knock at the bedroom door.

  “Go away.”

  “Olive,” he says, sounding much calmer. “Don’t call Ami.”

  “I’m n
ot calling Ami, just—seriously—go away.”

  The hallway falls silent, and a few seconds later, I hear the heavy click of the suite door closing.

  • • •

  WHEN I WAKE UP, IT’S midday, and the sun pours brightly across the bed, bathing me in a hot rectangle of light. I roll away from it, straight into a pillow that smells like Ethan.

  That’s right. He slept in this bed with me last night. He is everywhere in this room—in the neat row of shirts hanging in the closet, the shoes lined by the dresser. His watch, his wallet, his keys; even his phone is sitting there. Even the sound of the ocean is tainted with the memory of him, of his head in my lap on the boat, struggling to overcome seasickness.

  For a dark flash I derive some joy out of the image of Ethan sitting miserably by the pool, surrounded by people he’d love to befriend when tipsy, but whom he wants to generally avoid when sober. But the joy falls away when I remember everything about our fight: the reality that I’ve spent the past two and a half years hating him for a reaction he had that wasn’t at all what I thought it was, and the reality that the Ami/Dane aspect isn’t going to be resolved for a few more days, at least.

  Which leaves only one thing for me to chew on, and that’s Ethan admitting that he wanted to ask me out.

  It’s genuinely a rewrite of my internal history, and it takes a lot of mental maneuvering. Of course I found Ethan attractive when I first met him, but personality is everything, and his left a giant gaping hole in the column of positive attributes. Until this trip, that is, when he was not only the best sparring partner but also entirely adorable on several occasions . . . and frequently shirtless.

  Groan. I stand up, walking to the door and peeking out. No sign of Ethan in the living room. Darting into the bathroom, I close the door and turn on the faucet, splashing water on my face. I stare at myself in the mirror, thinking.

  Ethan wanted to ask me out.

  Because Ethan liked me.

  Dane told him I was always angry.

  I proved Dane right that very first day.

  My eyes widen as an additional possibility occurs to me: What if Dane didn’t want me to date his brother? What if he didn’t want me in his business, knowing that he was the one planning all these trips, that he was seeing other women, and God knows what else?

  He’s used Ethan as a scapegoat, as a shield—what if he used the convenience of my grouchy reputation to create a buffer zone? What a dick!

  Bursting out of the bathroom, I turn to the left to begin my Ethan Search and run directly into his brick-wall chest. The oof that erupts from me is cartoon-level comical. He makes it worse by catching me easily and holding me at a distance, looking down warily. I have the comical image of Ethan holding me back with an outstretched hand on my forehead while I try to take swings at him with ineffectually short arms.

  Stepping back, I ask, “Where were you?”

  “Pool,” he says, “I was coming to grab my phone and wallet.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He lifts a shoulder. “Not sure.”

  He’s guarded again. Of course he’s guarded. He admitted he was attracted to me, and up until this trip I’d only ever been rude to him. Then I stormed out of the room after implying he’s still a waste of my time.

  I don’t even know where to start. I realize, of the two of us, I have the most to say right now. I want to start with an apology, but it’s like pushing water through a brick—the words just won’t come.

  I start with something else: “I’m not trying to do that thing I do, where I look for the worst possible explanation for things, but . . . do you think Dane was trying to keep us apart?”

  Ethan immediately scowls. “I don’t want to talk about Dane or Ami right now. We can’t get into it with them while we’re here and they’re there.”

  “I know, okay, I’m sorry.” I look up at him for a beat and catch just a flicker of emotion behind his eyes. It’s enough to give me the bravery to push on. “But should we talk about us?”

  “What us?”

  “The us that is having this conversation?” I whisper, eyes wide with meaning. “The us that is on this vacation together, having a fight, having . . . feelings.”

  His eyes narrow. “I don’t think us is a very good idea, Olive.”

  This denial is good; it’s familiar disagreement. It bolsters my resolve. “Why? Because we argue?”

  “That’s a pretty mild term for what we do.”

  “I like that we argue,” I tell him, willing the sticky, tender words out. “Your ex-girlfriend never even wanted to disagree. My parents won’t get a divorce but don’t speak to each other. And—I know you don’t want to talk about it, but—I feel like my sister is in a marriage where”—I hedge, so we don’t just go down that road all over again and I get angry again—“she doesn’t actually know her husband all that well. But it’s always been safe for us to say exactly what we’re thinking with each other. It’s one of my favorite things about being with you. Do you have that with everyone?” I ask, and when he doesn’t immediately answer, I tell him, “I know you don’t.”

  His brows pull down, and I can tell he’s turning this around in his mind. He may be mad at me, but at least he’s listening.

  I chew my lip, looking up at him. Time for a different tack. “You said I’m hot.”

  Ethan Thomas rolls his eyes at me. “You know you are.”

  I take a deep breath, holding it. Even if nothing happens once we get back home—and it might be smarter for both of us if we keep our distance, because who knows what nuclear fallout there will be when I finally talk to Ami—I sincerely doubt we’ll be able to keep our hands to ourselves for the next five days.

  At least I know I won’t. My anger toward Ethan has melted into a fondness and attraction so acute it’s hard to not throw my arms around him in this hallway, right now, even when he’s wearing his surly face—furrowed brows, mouth a hard line—and his hands are curled into defensive balls at his side. Maybe every time I wanted to smack him in the past, I really just wanted to press my face onto his.

  I narrow my eyes back at him. I am not afraid of relying on cheap seduction.

  I reach for his hand, and the movement accidentally presses my boobs together.

  He notices. His nostrils flare, and his eyes move higher on my face, as if he’s trying to keep them from sinking. Ethan Thomas is definitely a boob man.

  I bite my lip, saw my teeth back and forth. In response, he licks his own lips, and swallows, holding steady. I’m going to need to work for this.

  I take a step closer, reach out, and rest my other hand on his stomach. Holy lord it is firm and warm, and spasms slightly beneath my fingertips. My voice shakes, but I sense I’m getting to him, and it gives me the confidence to press on. “Do you remember kissing me last night?”

  He blinks to the side, exhaling slowly, like he’s busted. “Yes.”

  “But do you remember it?” I ask, taking another step closer so that we’re nearly chest to chest.

  He hesitates, and then looks back at me, brows drawn. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you remember the kiss itself?” My fingers scratch lightly at his stomach, down to the hem of his shirt, and I slip my thumb under, stroking. “Or do you just remember that it happened?”

  Ethan licks his lips again, and fire erupts in my belly. “Yes.”

  “Was it good?”

  I can tell his breathing is accelerated now, as well. In front of me, his chest rises and falls rapidly. I, too, feel like I can barely get enough oxygen. “Yeah.”

  “Did you forget your words, Elvis?”

  “It was good,” he manages, and rolls his eyes but I can see him fighting a smile, too.

  “Good how?”

  His jaw ticks, like he wants to argue with me about why I’m asking him this when I was obviously th
ere, too, but the heat in his eyes tells me he’s just as turned on as I am, and is willing to play along. “It was the kind of kiss that feels like fucking.”

  All the air is sucked out of my lungs, and I’m left staring up at him, speechless. I was expecting him to say something safe, not something that would send my libido spiraling out of any controlled orbit.

  Running both hands up his chest, I relish the exhaled little grunt he can’t seem to keep contained. I have to rise on my toes to reach him, but I don’t mind the way he’s making me work for it. With his gaze locked on mine, he doesn’t bend until I’m right there, at the limit of where I can reach.

  But then he gives in to it entirely: with a soft moan of relief, his eyes fall closed, his arms come around my waist, and Ethan covers my mouth with his. If last night’s kiss felt like a drunken impulse, this one feels like a complete unburdening. He takes my mouth slowly, and then with more vigor until his deep groan vibrates all the way to the marrow of my bones.

  It’s heaven to dig my hands into the silk of his hair, to feel the way he lifts me up from the floor so that I’m at his level, high enough for me to wrap my legs around his waist. His kiss makes me come undone; I can’t be embarrassed that I fall so quickly into wild hunger because he’s right there with me, nearly frantic.

  I speak the single word into his mouth: “Bedroom.”

  He carries me down the hall, maneuvering me easily through the doorway, toward the bed. I want to eat his soft little grunts, the bursting exhales he gives when I tug on his hair or lick at his lip or move my mouth to his jaw, his neck, his ear.

  I pull him over me when he lowers me to the mattress, taking his shirt off before his chest even touches mine. All that smooth, warm tanned skin under my hands makes me crazed, like I’m feverish. Next time, I think. Next time I’ll undress him slowly and enjoy every inch revealed, but right now I just need to feel his weight over me.

  His mouth makes its way down my body; hands already familiar with my legs now explore my breasts, my stomach, the delicate skin beside my hip bones, and lower. I want to take a picture of him like this: his soft hair brushing against my stomach as he makes his way down, his eyes closed in pleasure.