During my frantic calls, the rain has lightened. It’s more a faint tapping than a stage full of drums now. Almost peaceful, if you go in for that sort of thing. I inhale deeply, count to five, and exhale the way the instructor guided us in the yoga class I tried for about two weeks before throwing in the towel—literally.
That was back in college. Back when it was totally natural for me to mention that I’d quit to Will the next day. I can still remember perfectly the way he shook his head and tapped me lightly on the sternum like he often did, totally unaware—I hope—of the effect that gesture had started to have on me. “How is it that you’re so tenacious about everything you get it into your head to do, except when it’s letting go?” he teased. “I think you’re a stress addict, Ruby Walters.”
He was kind of right. He knew me pretty well back then, as much as it hurts to admit that. I still don’t know how to align that fact with the way our friendship ended, or with the guy I sat next to on the plane who was totally familiar and also a total stranger. I thought I’d let go of caring. Apparently I was wrong.
Well, as long as I don’t let him see that, I’ll be fine.
The rain has stopped completely when the growl of an engine reaches my ears. I comb my hand through my still-damp hair and step out of the jeep to meet my rescuer. My smile stays in place for the brief moment between the SUV rumbling to a halt and the door opening to reveal the exact last person I’d want to see.
“I hear you’ve had a little car trouble,” Will says, with a gleam in his gray-green eyes and an “I told you so” grin that’s even worse than the one I imagined.
Chapter Three
Thankfully, the first person who runs up when I step into the resort’s lobby is the one I’ve most been looking forward to seeing.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Brooke says, playing mother hen. My bestie wraps me in a tight hug even though I’m going to get her rather smashing sailboat-print sundress damp. Then she looks me up and down, tucking her light brown hair behind her ears in a characteristic anxious gesture.
“It wasn’t that big a deal,” I say quickly. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
She waves me off. “I just finished picking flower arrangements. Did you know it’s possible to get sick of looking at gorgeousness? It’s a good thing Trevor and I found one we really liked early on, because by the end I was ready to hand over my eyeballs and tell the florist to decide with a dice roll.” She laughs. “I’m so glad you’re here, Ruby.”
“And in one piece, after all,” Maggie says, ambling over. She’s wearing a casual Grecian dress that, combined with her curves and the bouncy waves of her chestnut hair, gives her a goddess-like air. Her grin, on the other hand, is all imp. She holds up a key card. “You’re checked in. Come on. Let’s get you to your room and on to the pampering portion of the holiday.”
My room—“Just down the hall from mine!” Brooke says—leaves me breathless. Gauzy curtains float where the open sliding glass door leads out onto a balcony with lounger, private jacuzzi, and a view over the sparkling turquoise water. The bed is covered with a duvet so airy I immediately want to bury myself in it and a thread count probably in the millions. A faint floral scent drifts by, so subtle I’m not sure whether it’s natural or hidden essential oils, but I’m okay with it either way.
The bathroom features both a glass-walled shower stall with rainfall option—hmmm, might need to put that off until the thunderstorm is less fresh in my memory—and a jetted tub. “The toiletries are all natural ingredients,” Maggie comments as we convene there. She gives the same pitch for the cupcakes she makes for a living, and I can vouch that they’re pretty spectacular. Of course, that’s partly because her natural ingredients are frequently of the boozy variety.
“And the water is solar heated,” Brooke says brightly. “Plus they have this special water recycling system so it’s all as eco-friendly as possible.”
“Yes,” Maggie says dryly. “Trevor is in heaven.” Brooke’s husband-to-be is known first for his mad bass skills and second for being the crunchiest eco-geek this side of San Francisco.
I grab one of the hand towels and barely restrain an indecent sigh at the softness. Still, a glance in the mirror tells me it’s going to take at least a shower to fix the catastrophe that is currently my hair.
“Was it awful, getting stuck on the road?” Brooke says. “I mean, with the storm and all . . .” She grimaces.
I don’t want her to worry any more than she clearly already has. “Ah, it was hardly any time before Will showed up.”
Brooke spins toward Maggie. “You sent Will to get her?”
Maggie raises her hands. “I was asking around, and he overheard and volunteered. I figured Trevor’s friends were safe. If he’s a serial killer or something, you really should have told me.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I say, wishing Brooke hadn’t brought it up. “We just had an . . . awkward situation in college.”
“It was more than that,” Brooke says.
“Okay,” Maggie says, waggling a finger at me. “I think you’d better spill, and there are a lot of comfy chairs around here I can torture you with if necessary.”
I can’t help smiling at the Monty Python reference. “I misjudged him,” I say. “I trusted him when I shouldn’t have.”
“They started out at each other’s throats,” Brooke informs Maggie. “Every day Ruby would call me to vent about how he’d been showing off for the prof or correcting her in class—so, of course, I knew it was love.”
I roll my eyes. “He did get on my nerves. He even finagled his way into getting a spot with everyone’s dream advisor at the same time I did, when the guy normally only took on one undergrad a year. But we ended up managing a project for him, and it turned out we actually got along when we were working together. We started hanging out more as friends, and then my mom had a cancer scare back home—he cut me a ton of slack, held my hand when I was freaking out . . .”
“That’s so sweet,” Maggie says, without her usual sarcasm.
“Well, yeah. I thought so. He was still seeing other girls here and there, but nothing serious, and I guess I got rosy-eyed imagining he’d get serious with me.” I bite my lip.
“But he turned you down?”
“Worse,” Brooke says dramatically. “She wrote him a letter confessing all her feelings.”
I cringe, just remembering. “I got drunk, and worked up the courage to go over to his frat house when he was out and stuck it under his door.”
“So far, so good,” Maggie says.
“Yeah, well, the next day I came by the house for the study session-slash-hangout we’d already planned. And . . .” I stop.