It feels like forever until he comes back. Our eyes hold in silence. He hands me a bottle of water he seems to have fetched from his villa, and I appreciate him not saying anything about my drunkenness. I appreciate him knowing I’m not too proud of my current situation. I sit in a chaise, and he sits down next to me, and I take a sip, then stare at my feet and all the specks of sands that got into my sandals.
I’m so selfish, I realize. I’m so selfish to ask him to stay when he clearly had something better to do. Someone else to do. “I just sometimes want to be with you. I’m sorry,” I blurt out.
“Hey,” he laughs. “Don’t apologize. I like it best when I’m with you. Come here. Have some more water. It will help with tomorrow’s headache.” He unscrews the water bottle for me to drink, but I decline.
“No. No. I just…I thought you were mad at me.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Distant. I don’t like it. I couldn’t…” I wave my hands and shake my head. “I couldn’t breathe right when I felt you were being distant.”
“You couldn’t breathe right?” he asks roughly. “Woman, I thought I was hit by a bulldozer.”
“Why?”
“Why? Regina.” He laughs again gruffly, then glares out at the sea before he turns back to me. “I know every delineation of your curves by memory. I know your every smile, every tiny shade in your eyes. I know when you’re happy and when you’re sad and when you’re feeling sexy. I see you with that guy and you’re none of that, you’re none of that with him and it frustrates the shit out of me.”
“I’m trying, Tahoe!”
“You shouldn’t have to try. It’s either there or it isn’t.” He takes my hand and laces his fingers through mine, fire streaks through my whole body. “It’s there or it isn’t.” He eases his hand away, and I’m drunk enough that I’m not thinking right. But I still say, “Don’t sleep with her tonight. Are you going to sleep with her tonight, Tahoe?”
“Yes, Regina, I’m going to sleep with her tonight.”
I want to scream, Why? What does she have that I don’t? What do they all have that I don’t?
Instead I stand up and shove him. Hard. He doesn’t budge.
He slowly comes to his feet and watches me with a puzzled frown, and when I’m tired of lifting my arms and pushing the unmovable mass that is Tahoe, I sigh. Too weak, I let him carry me inside and tuck me into bed.
HUNG OVER
I wake up certain that I dreamed the night before, uncertain of what really happened and what didn’t. Whether Tahoe kissed my cheek or my chin or my nose before he finally went to his villa. And whether it was, in fact, sex noises I heard coming through the thin walls. Or if my mind is confusing the noises for the sounds of Trent stumbling back from the club about the same time the sun rose.
The hangover beats heavy in my brain as I shove all my things into my suitcase and hurry to make it to the airport. Trent needed to work, so last night was our last night hanging out with everybody. Our flight leaves early today. Everyone is still snoozing by the time Trent and I call a cab to take us to the airport.
We fly back to Chicago with the kind of silence that comes after a very intense weekend, and although he declares this weekend was his best trip ever, I can’t summon the enthusiasm to say the same.
“Did you change something?” Trent asks me after hours of silence and the plane begins to descend.
“Hmm?” I ask as I stare out the window, eager for a glimpse of Chicago below.
“Did you do something to your face?”
I lift my head and blink, then touch my fingers to my face. “I’m hung over. I didn’t have time to…I’m just wearing less makeup.” I stare at him thoughtfully. “You don’t like it?”
He shrugs. “You look different.”
“Different good or different bad?” I’m frowning now.
“Just different.”
I turn back to the window, fishing my sunglasses out of my bag and slipping them on to keep the glare of the sun out of my eyes.
Although being hung over isn’t the best time to make decisions, I know that the man I want to be with wouldn’t have asked another guy to take me back home—drunk—because he wanted to stay and have some more fun on his own. I know that the guy I want will like my hair flat and/or curly and my face with any color I choose to put on it. I know that Trent genuinely likes me but I also know that the guy I want is not flying back in this airplane with me.
Tahoe and I would never work, but that doesn’t mean that Trent deserves a lukewarm relationship like this either.
I also…want more.
So when we get to my apartment, I tell Trent the truth.
That I am utterly and completely confused.
That I want us to work, but that I need some time to think.
We have a big but short Talk—and we decide to take a break for a month or two, to see if we’re really what each other wants.
“Take all the time you need, Gina,” he says confidently, squeezing my hand as he stands at my apartment door. “But I will still call. I’m wooing you so there are no more doubts in your mind.”
MAY