by Piper Lennox
“Again,” I say slowly, gathering my stuff, “maybe you just weren’t meant to run a business this size. That’s not an insult. I’m just stating a fact: it didn’t work for you.” I look at him. “It does for me.”
“Does it?”
It takes every cell of my brain not to look at him again, my hand already on the kitchen door. “Yes,” I tell his shadow, now stretching all the way to the wall in the early light.
“Look at everything that’s going unfinished. The lazy river, the affiliate branding—”
“Those take time, Dad.”
“No, they take priorities. And Paradise Port doesn’t prioritize those things because those won’t make them instant money. They don’t care about giving guests options, as long as they still show up and spend. And they don’t care about giving the affiliates credit. They just want their resources.”
I swing the door open, rattling the key hooks in the wall. “I’ll be at the office.”
In the heat and silence of my truck, I curse at him. Things I’m dying to scream at him in person, but know from experience aren’t worth the counterstrike.
Of course he hates Port. He’s bitter. Couldn’t keep up the pace, landed in the hospital, and got forced into retirement. But that’s no fucking excuse to take it out on me, or even the company. It’s no one’s fault but his own he couldn’t handle it.
When I’m inside the resort, ducking through a back entrance and following the maze of hallways toward the lobby, I work on compressing my anger into a ball. Something manageable, easily tucked out of sight for a while. I don’t have time for it today.
Our old conference room, now the business center (my idea), is already filled with guests. One is a teenager, probably checking social media; the rest are adults. To hell with it: they’re probably checking social media, too.
In the lobby, I look at the concierge desk and gift shop. Also my ideas. Two new arrivals are spinning a rack of keychains, the colors blurring, plastic clacking as they hunt for their names and laugh.
Ace waves from the check-in desk. Iona smiles her hundred-watt, welcome-to-paradise smile.
I hired them, placed them myself. I made the choice of exactly where they’d flourish, here. And they are.
Dad doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. His mistake was biting off more than he could chew: it’s just that simple. In a way, I can’t even be mad at the guy.
But, in a much bigger way, I still am.
Parker catches me outside the elevator. “Not much, for once,” he says, running through my schedule. “Just a managers’ meeting after lunch, and then Trixie wanted to talk to you about the new restaurant.”
I don’t mean to look at him as fast as I do. “What?”
“Um...the new restaurant?” He checks his Blackberry again. “That’s all I’ve got. I just assumed you knew what it was about.”
“No, there’s no new restaurant.” I punch the button for the offices. “She must be talking about another food cart affiliate, like we did with the shaved ice.” His thumbs fumble with the device, trying to correct this information, so I close my hand over the screen until he stops. “Park, it’s fine. It isn’t you. And you know what, it’s okay—I need to talk to Trixie, anyway.” I fix my collar and look for any coffee stains: good to go. Now I just need to pray no one will notice I’m in the same clothes as yesterday, at least until I can get to one of my spare shirts and deodorant in the office.
“You want me to schedule it with her?”
“No, I’ll just talk to her at...when was that supposed to happen, anyway?”
“Two.”
“Two, then.” I straighten my tie and smooth my hair in the reflection of the doors, feeling a strange combination of relaxation and adrenaline, now that I’m back at work. In my element.
And not just back, but equipped with a plan.
Thirteen
Tanya
When Luka and I got back to the resort, we talked for a little longer. But soon, I knew, Oscar would come looking for me.
“Go to the doctor.” I elbowed him. “A real one.”
His hand wrapped around my wrist as I stood. Not hard or forceful, but sure. Like he knew I was going to stay and hear whatever he had to tell me, as long as it took. So confident. So very Luka.
“I’ll go,” he said, his eyes holding the sunset at two points each, an honest-to-God glimmer, “if you let me take you out tomorrow night.”
As he spoke, his other hand found a place on my thigh, just one finger edging under the fabric of my dress. It was this I noticed first, not his face closing the space between us so smoothly, the microscopic part of his lips that, on any other day, would have pulled me in headfirst.
His fingers pressed into my thigh. Just enough to send a neon jolt into me, a visual playbook of all the ways tonight could go, if I just let him start our pattern with this one small step.
I pulled back. Slowly, he did the same.
“I can’t,” I said, shutting my eyes as though that alone could hide the truth from him, the evidence of how badly I wanted this. “Not until things with Oscar are...you know. Definitely done.” At least I had that going for me: some basic decency. I’ve been a lot of things in my lifetime. But never, ever a cheater.
He brushed his thumb over his lips and nodded. “I get it.”
Of course he did. Luka was exactly like me, in that way: all about the casual, but still respectful of the fact that, in a game like this, some people were playing for way more than just a good time.
And I was about to go upstairs and give one of those people the biggest playing injury of his life.
Luka walked me inside, a squeeze of my fingers the only goodbye as I got on the elevator.
“There you are!” Oscar sighed with relief when I opened the door. “I kept calling you, but then I realized you left your phone here.”
“Yeah, sorry.” I shrugged, flipping my key card back and forth against my thumb, as my smile took on something more like a cringe. He didn’t notice.
“Where were you thinking for dinner?” His watch sparkled under the lighting. Just like my ring. “I’m in the mood for something really local. You know? Something we can’t get back home?”
Just tell him, I thought. I’d done this a hundred times before: things aren’t working out, chemistry is a tricky concept, etc. Some took it like good sports, and some didn’t. Oscar probably would have done the former, if we’d never ventured into Official territory.
But we did. And now I was faced with a task so much bigger than a snub.
I cleared my throat, swallowing the words. These things took time, and the least I could do was give the poor guy one more night of ignorance. And myself a few more hours to plan the exit.
“Dinner sounds great.” I didn’t think I had the energy to force another smile today, but there it was. “Wherever you want.”
I wake up far earlier than I normally would. I watch the sunrise in the suite’s living room, coffee maker bubbling. My nerves can’t handle the caffeine, but I drink it anyway, ignoring the way his snores manage to pierce any wall.
I don’t love him. In the end, this is the simplest, clearest explanation I can give. But it’s also the one thing that will destroy him, more than anything else.
By the time he stumbles from the suite, probably after rolling over and draping his arm across an empty space, I’ve moved to the sofa. My hands are pressed together between my knees, and I have to concentrate so my breathing looks composed, instead of the rapid-fire sips of air I took every time I rehearsed my first words. As the sun bloomed from the horizon, I repeated them to myself over and over, until I could say them like lyrics I knew by heart. Not the just words themselves, but the tone and volume to use, the rhythm that would deliver it all best.
“Hi,” he smiles, yawning without covering his mouth. “Good, you made coffee.”
I try to tell him to help himself, but can’t. My lines are crouched against my cheek, ready to leap. If I say anyth
ing else first, I’ll lose them.
“I need to talk to you about our relationship.”
Oscar’s bedhead flops like a feather headdress as he glances my way, still fixing his coffee. He sets it down and moves to the couch, bracing his hands on the back. “Something wrong?”
I pat the couch. He sits.
“I’ve realized,” I say slowly, refusing to look at my audience, “that I said yes to this engagement for the wrong reasons.”
Oscar laughs under his breath, nervous. His eyes follow the line from mine to the ottoman, where I’ve placed the ring in the center of a napkin.
“Oh.” He shifts away from me, facing forward on the couch, and goes silent.
“It honestly is nothing you’ve done,” I’m quick to tell him, when the silence transforms from necessary to brutal. “You’re sweet, and...and cute, and kind—”
“Is there someone else?”
I’d prepared myself for this question. Guys always ask it, no matter how long you’ve been seeing each other, how casual or serious things get, or even how into you they really are. As though that’s the only plausible explanation for why you’d give them up: you’ve got someone else in the wings.
Or, maybe, guys don’t always ask it. Just the guys I date. And maybe it isn’t always for some egotistical reason. Maybe that’s just the kind of girl I am—the kind they expect to cheat, to flutter from guy to guy to guy. The kind they have to guard their ego against, because Lord knows I can shatter defenses like nobody’s business. I did, after all, learn it from the best.
“No. It’s not because I’m seeing anyone else, or...or even because I want to, specifically.” I go to twist my ring, already instinctive, and pinch the webbing of my bare finger instead.
“If it’s just too fast, I understand. We don’t have to get married right away—we can wait a year or two. Or...however long you want.” He turns on the couch to face me again and takes my hand. I still feel the spot where I pinched myself, now throbbing under his thumb.
I close my eyes against that sweet smile, those eyes so full of hope and naiveté. Christ, it’s like breaking up with a baby deer.
“It’s not the timeline. It’s just...I realized, the last few days, I only said yes because I’m—” My lines catch, stabbing into one another like broken stalks of bamboo.
“You’re...what?” he prompts, as I pull my hand away.
Give him at least this one thing. I’ve hidden so much of my past and who I am from Oscar, convinced omission wasn’t lying. He deserves at least one bit of truth here, an explanation he can blame when he’s ready to think of me as A Girl He Used to Love. Not the one he always will.
But even that small piece of myself is too much to give him.
“I think I just wanted security,” I say, finally. The grip of my fingers around the bones in the other hand slips; my palms are damp with sweat.
At least I have that one redemption: I’m breaking a heart, but I do feel bad about it.
The cushions behind him hiss as he sinks back, crossing his ankle over his knee. Like a Ken doll, Oscar has only a few poses. This one, for introspection and watching television; standing with his hands either a) in his pockets, or b) clasped behind his back; and, when lying down, tenting them over his chest, like a cadaver in a casket.
It makes me feel even worse to sit here and flash through every pose Luka has. Too many to count.
Standing on a cliff and faking me out with a lunge and catch of my elbow. Bent at his waist and laughing, looking up at me from under his brow. A thrown glance over his shoulder. Powerful handshakes with his entire arm flexing under his suit.
Wrestling me onto the bed, off the bed, onto couches and countertops and behind groves of palm trees. That upturn of his mouth, orchid-pink in the perfectly engineered twilight of a suite, as he hovers over me and buries all memories of any past lover, extinguishes the desire for any more.
“So...it’s not that it’s too fast,” Oscar says softly. “It’s that you don’t want to marry me at all.” That heartbroken stare turns on me. “Is that what you’re saying?”
I have to close my eyes again. Not because I can’t bear to see the sadness on his face; I prepared for that. It’s because I’m afraid, if he looks into mine too long, he’ll somehow see the thoughts of Luka there.
“Yes.” I grab a tissue from the box I put on the table for his benefit. I’m not crying much at all, numb from rehearsals, but as I dab my eyes and sniff, I notice Oscar looking slightly less sad. Good. He deserves to think I’m devastated, not just guilty.
“I’m sorry,” I add, throwing in some more sniffles for him. “I should have been honest from the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
Shit.
I ball up the tissue in my palm and grab another, this one for ripping. Piece after piece flutters into my lap as I ramble through the one part of this I didn’t rehearse. “Yeah, I mean…I’ve never had a long-term relationship before, and I guess I thought...it was time to have one. To really try and see where things went with someone, instead of moving on to the next guy, like I always do.”
“Then why are you breaking up with me? Why not keep trying, see where things go?”
If I didn’t know better—if I weren’t so sure Oscar is about as capable of anger as he is of original proposal ideas—I’d swear he was pissed.
“Well,” I hear myself challenging, a sarcastic laugh already tumbling out with it, “you’re not exactly the ‘just see where things go’ type, either. You proposed after only six months.”
“And? You said yes after only six months.”
“You’re missing my point. I’m saying that neither of us is the type to let things play out in their own time. We’re just…at different extremes about it.”
He sits up, hands on his knees, and inhales. “Well, I guess I have to hand it to you for dumping me before you hopped into bed with somebody else.” I see his eyes slide to me again. “At least, as far as I know.”
“I never cheat.” My tears, fake and real combined, dry up in an instant.
“I’d love to believe that.” Oscar shakes his head as he stands, headed for the coffee maker again. “But based on what I know about you—which I’m starting to realize, wasn’t much at all—you like sleeping around.”
“Don’t reduce me to some stereotype, all right? It isn’t about sleeping around. I like independence.”
“Yeah. You’ve got that in spades.” The coffee pot slams back into the machine. “And I’m willing to bet you’ll have it forever.”
“Since when is independence a bad thing?” My voice rises to match his. I definitely didn’t rehearse for this.
“When you use ‘independence’ as an excuse for ‘doing whatever the hell I feel like.’” He tears open a creamer cup and pours it in. “When you tell yourself you’re independent, instead of what you really are.”
The force that propels me from the couch is familiar. I’m not just angry. I’m determined. To fight, defend. To prove everyone wrong and show them I can take care of myself, because I always have.
“And what am I?”
“You don’t want me to say it,” he mutters. I can tell his laugh and the jump of his shoulders are fraught with fear, not amusement.
Good. He should be afraid.
“A miserable bitch?” I prompt, striding closer. “A giant slut? Come on, tell me—I’ve heard them all. Guys all say they want the wild, sexy girl, but what they really want is to be the one who can tame the wild, sexy girl. And when they can’t, they get angry and call her names, make her think it’s her fault. So go on. Say it. I’ve already apologized for leading you on and saying yes when I shouldn’t have, but if calling me names will make it easier for you, do it.”
Ah, this is more like it. When did I lose this—the set of my jaw, the molten blood? Six months ago, I was the kind of girl who never let a guy get to her. I knew they weren’t worth losing yourself over. Then Oscar comes along, and out go my rules, my resolve?
I don’t know what happened to me. But I do know it feels damn good to be back.
He skates his fingers past me for a stirrer like reaching around a snake, braced for the strike. “It is what it is. If you don’t want to be with me, I can’t change your mind.”
I’m surprised to find I was hoping for at least a little fight. Some indication that he wants me so much, he won’t let anything, even me, get in the way. But I guess I should be grateful for the clean break. And prepared. This is Oscar.
The guilt slips back as I watch him return to the couch. His shoulders slump; he sighs at his coffee on the table, untouched for all his meticulous preparation.
“I am sorry,” I tell him again, and perch myself on the armrest with a safe distance between us. “I don’t want you to think I don’t care about your feelings in this, because I do.”
“So…so what was it about me? Did you just want my money?”
“No,” I assure him, slipping onto the sofa. I’ve closed the gap between us, my hand on his. He keeps it tensed into a fist. “Like I said, I just thought I should have a long-term relationship, because I never had—”
“And I was the unlucky bastard who happened to be in the picture when you decided that.” He draws in a breath. “Great.”
“Oscar—”
“But the engagement,” he goes on, “that’s what I’m talking about. Did you say yes because I make good money? I mean, you said you wanted security. What else would that mean?”
“Maybe security was the wrong word to use.” I lift my hand from his. The tension radiating from him is too much to handle. “I should have said...I don’t know, stability, maybe. Because....”
Because of my childhood. Tell him.
“Why didn’t you tell me you lost your job?”
I look at him. He stares back, unflinching.
“How’d you know that?”
“Your boss called yesterday, when you were out. I picked up thinking it was some emergency at your office.”
“John called?” I hate that a shell of hope bursts in my chest. That dick doesn’t deserve to have me back at his paper. “What did he say?”
