“I’m ordering room service tonight,” I say, ignoring Damon’s pleading gaze. He opened this box. It’s his chore to unpack it. “I’m positive I’ll be hungover by dinner.”
“Isn’t day drinking the best?” Holly pipes cheerfully between us.
As the tension thickens, she grips Damon’s hand and presses a chaste kiss to his knuckles. “Nap in here. I haven’t seen you in like three weeks. You’ve been working too hard. I’ll keep my voice down.”
He grins down at her with genuine adoration. “Impossible.”
“You love my mouth,” she quips.
“Yeah, I do,” he says before placing a brief kiss on her temple.
“I love you,” she says easily.
“I love you, too,” he says softly, his eyes lingering, as she turns to me and Damon does too. “Love you,” he says, in afterthought.
“Love you,” I reply, my tone more like yeah, bestie, take a minute. “Text me, if you need me.”
“For what? He’s got me,” she boasts proudly. Damon starts to walk away as I debate whether to come clean when she speaks up.
“Do you think he heard us?” She whisper-yells, eyes wide as Damon stops, lingering just outside the cabana again. He’s pushing it too far, so I decide to, as well.
“Would that be the worst thing?”
“Absolutely,” she says, her expression panicked. “Oh my God, what if he did?”
“I don’t know, babe. Maybe he did.”
“I would die. Jesus, full-blown denial starts now.”
“Haven’t you been there long enough?”
“I’m on vacation. You don’t go to Mexico to get your fucking heart broken.”
“He probably didn’t hear anything. I would have seen him.”
The ball is yours, Damon. Please don’t drop it.
“Thank God,” she sighs. Everything in me wants to scream at her to pay attention and that her life is about to drastically change. Damon finally takes his leave, and I again lower my glasses, my happiness for her turning envious as my eyes water.
Last week, I was fine, well, fine-ish, and the week before, and the week before that. As of a month ago, I was starting to come to grips with life as I know it post-divorce from the love of my life.
It’s been months. If I’m honest, just over a year of grieving since that blissful time in Sedona. I’ve been grieving three times as long as I got to love him.
Last week, I was moving, keeping up while burying myself in other’s stories, other’s lives, in headlines. Now I’m on a dream vacation with my best friends after hitting a career achievement I’ve been working toward my entire adult life.
My vision blurs as it comes to me.
The future I fought so hard for feels a lot like settling. And if that’s really the truth, then I have no purpose past getting back to my desk. But that should be enough for me, at least until I can manage to fall in love again.
It should be enough.
I still love being a journalist. That much is a fact. I love writing. I love being editor. I love working with my father. That much hasn’t changed.
“You got quiet,” Holly says as I press my towel to my face.
You’re only having a moment because of what you just witnessed. This is their time, soldier the fuck up!
“I’m just relaxing,” I say. “It’s hot.”
“You asked Damon to be my wingman? Seriously?”
I look over to my best friend as years of their history flits through my mind. The time Max Sutton broke her heart when she was sixteen. Damon showed up as I was comforting her, a pizza and her favorite cupcakes from a local bakery in hand. Damon carrying her across our pasture when she hyperextended her knee after dismounting Percy. Damon’s eyes dimming as she proclaimed she was in love during our first year at UT. He pulled the same move six months later with the pizza and twice the cupcakes when it ended—badly. Holly holding Damon’s hand during his grandmother’s funeral. Not letting go for one second as he openly grieved her in the rawest state he’s ever been in.
“Holly,” I say softly.
“Yeah, babe?”
“I love you,” I tell her with a watery smile as my chest continues to burn. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this. All your dreams came true. I’m so proud of you. It might have been a given eventually, but we all know, Uncle Nate included, that you earned that paper.”