But as I watch them walk away together, I can also see the familiarity between them. The way they fall into step like people who intimately know each other’s rhythms.
I can’t shake the fear that I’ve lost something I just barely had.
Hope
“Really nice people,” Gabe says as we walk to the meeting point for our ride back to the ship. “And it’s wild that Pear’s friends with Eliza.”
“Yeah,” I say dazedly, because I feel like my skull has been beaten with a sledgehammer. “Small world.”
“She misses you, you know,” he adds.
“Who?”
“Eliza.”
Doubtful. She’s on the long list of people I haven’t heard from since the breakup. I don’t say anything. My brain feels like static.
“Is something wrong?” Gabe asks. “You’re quiet.”
Part of me wants to say: “I’m traumatized because I just had lunch with the ex-boyfriend I have complicated feelings about and the sweet guy I slept with last night.”
Instead I say: “Tired from all the sun.”
I close my eyes on the trip back to avoid talking. Gabe takes the hint and lets me rest, striking up a conversation with a fit elderly couple about their previous surfing experiences and many grandchildren. It’s as though he’s trying to remind me how winning he can be.
I don’t want to be reminded. I don’t want to be back in that headspace.
And I feel terrible about Felix.
I say goodbye to Gabe as soon as we’re back on the ship. He touches my arm to stop me. My body has not forgotten how much it likes his touch. I instinctively turn to him.
“Hey,” he says. “I don’t want to pressure you. But it would be nice if you’d have coffee with Gran. You know how she adores you.”
I don’t remember Maeve “adoring” anyone—she’s more of a towering matriarch than a warm maternal figure—but we did always have a cordial rapport.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll text you.”
But I’m not sure I will. Given how wobbly I feel in his presence, it’s likely unwise.
“Thanks,” he says, his eyes lit up like I’ve just promised to marry him. An irony that is not lost on me.
I go up to my room, praying that Lauren won’t be there. I need to process all this before I hear her opinion. Actually, I already know what her opinion will be: feed Gabe to the sharks.
Part of me wants to.
Part of me is fucking enraged that he could be so friendly, affectionate, even proprietary after what he did to me.
But then there is the other part of me that thinks,thank God. Thank God he still cares for me. That I didn’t just imagine he loved me. That perhaps I’ve lingered with him the way he’s lingered with me.
I have, to be clear, no respect for this part of me. I wish this part of me could be cut out with a scalpel and evacuated in a hazmat truck.
But emotions are emotions. They’re just… there. Whether you welcome them or not.
And right alongside them are my feelings for Felix. The object of my gooey, previously uncomplicated vacation crush. The guy who still makes me feel fluttery even when he’s sitting next to the former love of my life, visibly trying not to glower.
I could tell he was upset, and I get it. I’m upset too.
I feel like I’m fucking with him against my will. That Gabe’s very presence—and my reaction to it—is a betrayal.
