by Lisa Jackson
“I didn’t want to get stuck in a happy-for-now thing that went on and on and then fizzled.” She laughed. “That kind of logic made more sense to me then. I was younger, and I had crazy ideas. I thought that true love was what I was supposed to be looking for.”
“It is what you’re supposed to look for,” he said.
“Then you’re lucky you’ve found it.”
The words scalded him. Right now, he didn’t feel particularly lucky. He’d come on this trip hoping to get his life settled—just like he’d mapped it out on his Day Runner. In a matter of days, his heart had pretzeled itself into a confused knot.
Thank God Buttercup’s revenge was putting the kibosh on their trip to Machu Picchu. Maybe those couple of days alone with Gina, away from Meredith, would give him a cool-down period. And time to decide what he really wanted.
Back at the hotel, he and Meredith parted ways in the lobby, and he continued down the corridor to his and Gina’s suite, opening the door quietly to avoid waking her.
He didn’t need to worry about that. The room was a blizzard of activity. Gina was up, striding across the room in her bathrobe. She seemed to have upended all their luggage over the furniture. Her eyes flashed at him with impatience. “Good. You’re back. Finally.”
Something was definitely wrong. “It’s a ways out to that place,” he explained, frowning at the clothes everywhere. “I’m glad you’re up and feeling better.”
“I feel like hell,” she said.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m packing things for tomorrow’s trip to Machu Picchu.”
They were going after all? He swallowed. “So . . . you must be feeling a little better if you still want to travel.”
“I just don’t want to stay behind here. And you’re obviously bored.”
The wire-tautness in her tone alerted him that there was something besides restlessness behind all this frantic repacking. Suddenly, the memory of pulling Meredith into his arms flashed in his mind. Guilt swallowed him. But no one else had been there. Gina couldn’t know about that kiss.
“This morning, you were telling me to get out,” he pointed out cautiously.
She planted her hands on her hips. Another bad sign. Very bad. “And you were more than eager to go off on some group tour this morning. But come to find out, you didn’t go with our group . . . or at least not all of it. You went off on your own, with Meredith.”
Uh-oh. “Meredith just happened to be there.” He cast back in his mind to this morning—it seemed so long ago now—and came up with one exonerating detail. “I bumped into Fran, too.”
Gina’s eyes narrowed. “Believe me, I know. The whole world knows you two chased her away with your lovey-doveyness.”
How? How did she know? Fran couldn’t have witnessed the kiss.
“What?” he asked, feeling confusion now, on top of guilt.
She snatched her iPad off the end table and madly finger-scrolled until she found what she was looking for. Then she thrust the device at him with an outstretched arm. Yogaholic in Manhattan, the blog’s title read. And there below was his and Meredith’s picture with the caption: More pairing off. The plot thickens....
He pushed the device back to her. “That was when we met up at that tour place.” His heart thumped with both relief and a renewed conviction of his own weaseliness.
“Apparently Fran’s been narrating the whole trip to her faithful audience in the blogosphere. All four of them, not that it matters. If you had bothered to read the blog post, she’s talking about you thanking Meredith for last night. And saying how much you needed her.”
He sputtered. That was what Gina was so upset about? “Well, yes. Of course. I was thanking her for sitting with you. And for keeping a cool head when I was so worried about you that I got rattled.”
“Oh, I bet she was very cool. And so happy you turned to her.” Gina stared him down. “You might have told me that you two had been . . . intimate.”
“I told you that we’d been roommates.” As he repeated the words, their evasiveness pricked at his conscience. Why hadn’t he confessed how much Meredith had meant to him? He wasn’t a liar, but he’d been lying by omission the whole trip. He was still doing it.
“Roommates with benefits,” Gina said. “When Janie came in to show me that wonderful blog post, she let me know that you two had been quite an item. In fact, you were the one dating Meredith when she went to London.”
“Exactly. She dumped me. And I hadn’t seen her since until we ran into her at JFK. Believe me, it was not a delightful surprise.”
“You were Meredith’s zero. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“First, because it’s not pleasant to be called that. Also, because defending myself would be like my arguing against Janie’s version of events, and I wasn’t going to stoop to that. And the whole thing just didn’t seem important anymore.” A niggling discomfort sliced through him. To claim Meredith wasn’t important to him seemed like a travesty now, but he couldn’t explain that to Gina. “Anyway, you’re way off the mark about Meredith.”
“Oh, please. She’s probably been dying to get you alone this whole trip.”
This seemed incredibly unfair, given that Meredith was the one who had put a stop to the kiss, and was the one who had reminded him of his nearly engaged state when he had been about to throw scruples to the wind.
“You’re wrong. This afternoon she assumed that we were already engaged because she knew about the ring.”
Gina had the grace to blush a little. “Ring?” she asked with not-quite-convincing innocence.
He crossed to the room safe in the corner, where he’d locked it up the night before. He set the combination, yanked opened the door, and pulled out the turquoise box. Crossing back to her, he snapped it open. “This ring. Which I assume you’re already acquainted with.”
She gasped, pulling her gaze away from the brilliant stone to look up at him apologetically. “I just happened to run across it once, Sam. While you were in the shower. But it’s so beautiful.” She plucked it out of its cushion and slipped it on. “I love it.”
He watched it taking up its new residence with no help from him and felt oddly put out. “I wanted to give it to you as a surprise. I had this big scenario all built up in my head.”
“And I ruined it.” She sighed, but he couldn’t tell if the sigh was a commiseration for having ruined his surprise or love for the ring. She smiled at him. “So this is our moment now. It just caught you unawares.”
She hugged him, and it took him a moment to process what was happening. After all his planning, he’d ended up giving Gina the ring by accident. He’d just intended to confront her with her sneakiness, and by some jujitsu on her part, she’d taken it as a proposal. The jeweled band was on her finger now—his engagement had happened without his even prompting it. At least, he was pretty sure he was engaged.
She hugged him. “Oh, I’m so happy! You are the most incredible, wonderful fiancé ever.”
Fiancé. Yes—definitely engaged. The thought stunned him. This was supposed to be the happiest moment of his life, but all he felt was a gut-churning sense of doom.
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, trying to figure out what to do. What to say. This had been the goal of the trip, and yet he felt blindsided. “Does it fit?”
She held her hand out, modeling it. “It’s a little loose, but that might just be because I’m dehydrated. I can get it adjusted when I get back to New York.”
He leapt at this detail. “Maybe we should put it back and keep it locked up safe until we get back to New York.”
“No way. This puppy’s mine now, and I’m going to wear it.”
She pulled away and practically did a pirouette across the room, tossing a sweater into her small rolling bag. “This is going to be so much fun! Even if I end up puking the entire way up those damn mountains. I’m going to love it!”
“There’s no reason for us to go running off if you’re still
weak. Honestly. I’d be just as happy to stay here.”
Spending two days with Meredith had confused him enough. Meredith and Gina together, on a train and then in a smaller town, struck him as even more problematic.
“I’m not running off,” Gina said. “And I’m just not going to allow my reaction to a few bites of toxic rodent to give people—especially Janie—the satisfaction of thinking I’m afraid of letting you go to Machu Picchu. Especially when I can show them this.” She trilled her ring finger.
He shook his head. “Nobody will read anything into our staying back here. And if they did, it would just be idle speculation and gossip. Who would bother?”
Her gaze turned almost pitying then. Pitying and amused. “You’re adorable. You still don’t know anything about women, do you?”
CHAPTER 7
The ring was the talk of the tour. After receiving it, Gina had left her room just long enough to let it be seen by a few people, including Fran, who’d immediately updated her blog with a correction and a photo.
“Insanely gorgeous,” one of the yoga moms declared it during drinks the last night in Cuzco. Everyone at the table had swiveled toward Meredith in unison, a Greek chorus of pity for the woman shunned. They traded glances with one another, and in the next moment changed the subject to preschool admissions.
Subsequently, Meredith tossed back one more glass of the local corn beer than was good for her. Both the drink and the news about Sam left her numb. Of course, she’d known the kiss they’d shared had just been a moment’s madness. She certainly wasn’t expecting him to break up with Gina over her.
But she hadn’t expected him to go directly to the hotel and get down on his knee to Gina, either.
The next morning, only four people showed up for sunrise yoga, which Meredith dubbed hangover yoga. She tried her hardest to banish her headache and all thoughts of Sam. Every time she remembered their kiss now, she was filled with equal parts desire and horror. For a moment, she’d sunk against his chest and let herself respond to him as if she actually belonged in his arms. As if they existed in a vacuum where the past didn’t exist, where Gina didn’t exist. All her arguments to him about why they shouldn’t take the kiss seriously had been for her own benefit as well as Sam’s.
After yoga, Claudia approached her, blocking Meredith’s path to the breakfast bar. Meredith’s stomached gnawed both from hangover and nerves.
“Do you see what’s happening?” Claudia’s usual mask of calm showed a fracture of impatience. She obviously wasn’t pleased with dwindling attendance.
Meredith glanced around. “People are realizing they don’t want to get up at seven thirty during vacation?”
“Is that really what you see?” Claudia’s earnest tone beseeched Meredith to grasp the gravity of the situation. “Have you looked inside your house lately?”
Meredith shuffled uncomfortably, pretty sure that question had something to do with matters spiritual and not architectural. “Not this morning . . .”
“I think you should. You’re carrying Sha Chi.” When Meredith failed to comprehend, Claudia shook her head, more in sadness than recrimination. “Corrosive, attacking energy. It’s spilling off of you and rubbing off on the tour. You need to examine that, both for yourself and the others. Negative Chi hurts everyone and causes friction. It’s bad for morale.”
That was so unfair. She was causing negative thoughts? She was just doing her own thing. She wasn’t writing Peyton Place–type blog posts like Fran, or gossiping like practically everyone else, or holing up in an entirely different hotel as if the rest of them didn’t exist, like the Goddess Claudia here.
By the time Meredith could begin to form a comeback that didn’t sound like the negative, corrosive spew Claudia was clearly expecting from her, the woman had turned and was floating toward the lobby.
Meredith glared at her until Claudia was gone before scuttling in that direction herself. Normally she didn’t believe in things like auras and Chi, but Claudia had spoken with such conviction, Meredith couldn’t help feeling like a kind of fifties sci-fi monster. Attack of the Bad Chi Creature.
At the beverage table, Fran sidled up to her. “What was Claudia saying?”
“Oh . . . nothing much.” Meredith couldn’t quite own up to being called the group’s morale suck.
“Must be a tough day for you, huh?”
“Just because of the rush to get ready to go.” Meredith reached for an orange juice, then thought better of it. This morning called for a taste of the strong stuff. Grapefruit.
Fran eyed her almost apologetically. “Honestly, I never would have written that about you and Sam if I’d known that he was about to give her a rock bigger than a basketball.” Her brows knit together in annoyance. “Clearly, I need better sources.”
“You shouldn’t have written it anyway.”
Fran drew back. “Oookay. Someone’s a little touchy this morning. Why would that be, I wonder? Methinks because the one that got away just got away again.”
“Because it just wasn’t true.”
At least, not as far as Fran knew.
“Whatever you say . . .” Under her breath, Fran added, “Which isn’t what other people are saying, by the way.”
Meredith splashed coffee into a to-go cup. I’m not taking that bait. For once, though, she wished Janie were here to play big sister and give someone a verbal smackdown. But Meredith hadn’t seen Janie since last night.
Fran appeared to hesitate, but then asked, “Have you seen the ring yet?”
“No.” Meredith reached for a piece of bread.
“It’s un-effing-believable. Seriously. The diamond is bigger than your breakfast roll.”
Meredith was careful not to react. “It must be beautiful.”
“Plus, they barely came out of their room last night.”
“Well, Gina’s sick.”
Fran chuckled. “Right. They were in bed together last night because she was sick.”
Meredith turned on her, a smile bolted in place. “I’m going to take this back to my room. Got to finish packing.”
The bus that was going to take them to the train station was due to pick them up in less than an hour.
As she headed for the door leading to the corridor, she heard Fran belting out the chorus of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” which Meredith always thought of as a psycho-girl stalker song. Great. After yesterday, probably most people thought she was trying to throw herself in Sam’s path to remind him that she was still carrying a torch.
She couldn’t wait to be on the train and out of here. Yesterday when Sam had told her he wouldn’t be going to Machu Picchu, she’d felt a pang of loss. So far, their meetings had been awkward and bittersweet, but she’d enjoyed talking to him. He might not have been in her life for seven years, but she had the feeling that he knew her.
But now—what a relief it would be to get away from him and Gina. And that damn ring.
When, balancing her breakfast, she pushed through the door of her room, Janie was perched on the unslept-upon bed. “Here you are!” Her sister hopped up and rushed toward her. “I’m so sorry about everything, Mer.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. “Not you too. Once and for all, I don’t care. We both knew about the stupid ring.”
“Yes, but he hadn’t given it to her yet. Now it’s so permanent. Irreversible—at least for a few years, until they start thinking divorce.” She took the grapefruit juice from Meredith and sank onto the bed. “And what an idiot, to choose her over you.”
“It was never a contest,” Meredith insisted. “I was never in the running.”
“But after yesterday . . .” Janie was the one who’d discovered Fran’s blog—and from her account, she’d taken not a little glee in pointing it out to Gina while the woman was lying sick in bed. Now that her concern trolling had backfired, Janie looked deflated.
“Why do you care? You don’t even like Sam.”
“True.” Janie drummed her fingertips against the gla
ss. “Although . . . he is better than he used to be.”
She didn’t say it, but obviously Janie couldn’t help thinking that no man was all bad who gave a woman a ring with a retail value that would put a married couple above the poverty line. It was infuriating. “Sam was always great,” Meredith said. “I was the one who was mixed up. I was stupid.”
“Oh dear.”
This time, Meredith didn’t contradict Janie’s fretting. Oh dear about summed it up. She’d been fighting it since Tipón, or maybe longer. A lot longer. If Sam had been available, she never would have broken off that kiss. The world was filled with stories of couples getting second chances. Why not them?
Gina, that was why. Gina was an undeniable fact. An undeniable, beautiful, size-four barrier whom Sam was in love with instead of her. Go figure.
“You blame me, don’t you?” Janie asked.
“ No.”
“You do. That’s what you’ve been so upset about—you like him and you’re afraid to tell me, because of what happened all those years ago. Maybe I was wrong. And now if you die a spinster, it will be all my fault.” A look of genuine anguish crossed her sister’s face. “But things seemed so different back then.”
“I know.”
“You were so young. For that matter, I was younger too.”
Meredith laughed. “We’re not ancient now.”
“That’s true.” Janie brightened. “Well, maybe we’ll just have to set up house together someday. We’ll be the crazy old spinsters of our building.”
Meredith tossed her nightshirt into her little duffel bag. “I’m just glad we’re getting away from this town, and getting away from them for a while.” Getting away from Sam and Gina.
Janie looked stricken. “Haven’t you heard? They’re going.”
“To Machu Picchu?” Meredith’s voice looped up in alarm.
“I thought you knew. I’m so—”
“Please don’t say you’re sorry again.” Meredith struggled to regroup her emotions. “There’s no reason to be. I’m on vacation. Everything’s great. I’m going to one of the places on my bucket list. What could be better?”
