by Ember Leigh
“I would like to continue knowing as little about you as possible.” She sends a sweet smile that is comically at odds with her words. It’s a struggle to remain unaffected. But I am nothing if not born to compete in any challenge invented.
Rhys snorts from the end of the table. “You two have gotten bitier.”
“I think she just likes to argue with me,” I say, crossing my arms as I lean back into my chair. “Some women like walks on the beach. Other women like picking fights they know they’ll lose.”
Nova snorts, and I catch her lips curling up at the corners. The server arrives to take our drink orders, which temporarily pauses our back-and-forth. We all pick our poison, and then we’re given the green light to head to the buffet. Keko and I buddy up, making a beeline for the inside of the restaurant where the long line of steaming pans awaits us. And the bounty is truly glorious: there’s pan-seared salmon, roasted asparagus, colorful quinoa dishes and all manner of grilled meats. I take one of everything, which means I’ve got a plate bursting with food by the time I head back to the table.
I waste no time digging in. Everything is delicious, and Keko, Rhys, Elliot, and I exchange grunts as we ingloriously inhale our food. Nova and Amelia arrive last to the table, their plates arranged carefully with bird-sized portions of food.
I frown at Nova’s plate. She selected approximately one whole grain biscuit and three wimpy stalks of asparagus. “That’s all you got?”
“What? You’ve even got a problem with my food?” She sighs as she slides into her seat. “There is no pleasing you.”
“You don’t have to please me, so strike that item off your to-do list.” I stab the thick sausage on my plate and take a big chomp.
“Thank God,” she mutters. “It would be an impossible task anyway.”
I derive a sick pleasure from our needling. I act like this with no one—and I mean absolutely zero humans—in the world. Especially with members of the opposite sex. To the world at large, I am easygoing and laidback Weston who gets along especially well with women. And to be fair, I am that person normally.
Yet there is something about Nova that annoys the shit out of me. And something else. I just can’t entirely figure out what the something else is. I’m pretty sure it’s something I should run away from.
I’m just incapable of entirely running away from her.
I chew happily, and the table cheers when the server returns with our drinks. The bloated sun is just about to sink past the horizon. I jerk my chin toward the spectacular sight in front of us.
“Are you really about to let this sunset pass by without taking a picture of it?” I sip my whiskey on the rocks. Smooth. Perfectly aged. I take another sip to verify the perfection of it. “That camera is just a prop, huh.”
She sets her fork down and narrows her eyes at me. “Did it occur to you that I might want to simply enjoy the sunset?”
Everyone else at the table is buried in different conversations, so our haranguing is just for us this time. “So the camera is for taking pictures of the food you didn’t eat.”
She sighs loudly. “I’m the wedding photographer. I need my camera on hand at all times.”
“Right, but being the photographer means actually taking pictures.”
I take another bite of sausage as she grabs the camera. She holds it up and snaps a picture of me without consulting the viewfinder or digital screen or anything. Then she sets it down. “That better?”
“Come on. It’ll turn out like crap with that amount of emotional investment.”
She shakes her head. “Nah. It’s all about the subject. And let me tell ya—that was a pretty poor subject.”
“Let’s see it.” When she doesn’t immediately comply, I nudge her. The whiskey is burning hot through my veins. “Come on. I wanna see it.”
“You’re so obsessed with yourself.” But she turns it on and scrolls to the image previews anyway. My unamused face fills the screen, blurry and oddly backlit.
“See. You didn’t fuck with the aperture enough.”
She snorts, sending me an incredulous look. Her green eyes look like gemstones, and for a moment, I can’t force myself to look away. “Are you kidding me? You’re trying to mansplain to me right now.”
“No, I’m trying to help.” Lie. I’m mansplaining, because it makes her react like this.
“You just fucking mansplained to a photographer that I need to adjust aperture. I can’t believe you.” She stabs an asparagus spear, shoving it angrily into her mouth. “You are actually the most annoying person in the world.”
“Most annoying? You’re one to talk. Outrageous.”
“Ridiculous,” she shoots back.
“Flagrant.”
“Shameless,” she says.
“Ludicrous.”
It looks like she’s trying to fight a smile now. “Preposterous.”
Across the table, Rhys and Amelia share a private smile before looking our way. “Your feud has definitely gotten more interesting over the years,” Rhys comments, which makes my next retort dissolve on my tongue: ostentatious.
“We’re just preparing for a thesaurus competition, apparently,” she mutters, before ripping into her dinner roll.
I try to squash the smile threatening to overtake my face as I return to my food as well. Bantering with Nova shouldn’t be this fun. She’s an annoying redhead who just happens to be hot.
But the most tiresome thing about her is the fact that despite how much she dislikes me…I still want to know more about this buxom, irritating bombshell.
Chapter 5
NOVA
I wake up at eight the next morning to the sound of ocean waves going hushhhhhh against the shoreline. For a scorching moment, I’m confused. But then reality sinks in.
I am in an insanely comfortable king bed in my own private hut on Aruba.
I stretch out, grinning up at the domed thatch roof. Man, this is the life. There is exactly nothing on my to-do list for the day except for whatever fun, relaxed, wedding-related activity Amelia has planned. I’m basically making no decisions. Amelia and Rhys have already made all of them for us, and they are all equally fantastic. I am just being ushered along from one delightful thing to the next.
Except for my less-than-delightful companion, Weston Daly, who insists on being unpleasant at every turn.
I frown, but it doesn’t stay long. My mind drifts to him, recalling the ghostly remnants of whatever dream I’d been indulging in before waking up. Weston had been there. Of course he had been. He’s the unwelcome dinner guest in the cafeteria of my brain. When my subconscious takes over, watch out—Weston butts to the front of the line, demanding more chicken nuggets. He’s annoying in real life and even in the recesses of my skull.
Which means I need to work harder at ignoring him. I’m hopeful that we got all our arguing and nitpicking out yesterday. After the group got drunk and wandered to the beach after dinner, we fell into a quiet disregard for each other. That’s how it needs to stay. Just mutually pretending the other doesn’t exist.
I yawn and reach for my phone on the bedside. A text message is waiting for me.
JIMMY: Morning, beautiful. How’s the ocean today?
I frown at the words for a few moments. Not because I don’t like thinking about the ocean, but because Jimmy is beginning to circle me like a vulture.
He’s never called me “beautiful,” at least not to my face. We’ve always been the sort of friends who just pretend the other one has no genitals. But apparently, somewhere along the line, Jimmy realized I have genitals. Even though I would like to continue ignoring his.
NOVA: Super large. Very wet. Potentially fatal.
JIMMY: LOLOL. Always a way with words.
I think back to my word battle with Weston, a strange ache forming inside me. The rest of Weston’s personality aside, he’s got one admirable trait. I like a man I can have a word battle with. Someone who turns me on with both his appearance and his mind. Come on, I’m no
t fully shallow. Brains matter. It’s just, so does the packaging.
I roll out of bed and stumble toward the bathroom to wash my face and my brush my teeth. Just as I’m ready to contemplate my wardrobe for the day, Amelia’s sing-song voice wafts through the door.
“Nooova. Are you up yet?”
“Up, yes. Dressed? No.”
“We’ve got yoga at nine,” she says through the door, which helps me choose the sturdy sports bra I’d been eyeing. I’ve got some jugs, and they have no qualms about flopping all over their owner. “Followed immediately by mimosas.”
“You know the way to my heart, love.” I toss on a flowy tank top and some loose linen pants. Perfect beach yoga attire. I fling open the door and hug my best friend. Because it’s been nine hours since I last saw her, and I miss her.
“Good morning,” I say, just as I spy Weston ambling out of his hut next door. Shirtless. Yawning and scratching idly at his perfect chest.
All of my muscles go taut with awareness. I can barely rip my eyes off his tanned shoulders or the way his back muscles ripple as he props his palms on the back of his head and stares out at the ocean. My Ignore and Forget Plan is already unraveling.
“Nova, are you okay?” Amelia looks concerned as she pries me off of her. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“No, no. Yes, fine. No ghost.” I swallow hard, finally jerking my eyes off Weston and back to Amelia. “Yoga, right? Tell me it’s girls only. I don’t want men seeing me at a class in the light of day.”
“You were at a class with men last night.”
“Yes, but we were in a darkened hut. And we were sending our sensual love vibes toward you and Rhys, which is very different.” I grab my phone before locking the hut. Amelia and I begin a slow walk through the warm sand, coming up on Weston’s hut. There’s no hope of ignoring him now. He’s got bleary eyes as he looks our way, jerking his chin into a nod.
“Morning.” His voice is raw, gritty. Pure just-woken-up man. I steel myself against the wave of desire that crashes through me. It’s not fair.
“Morning, Weston,” Amelia purrs. “Did you sleep well?”
He grunts, running a hand through his hair. “Not exactly. Keko and Elliot and I made some new friends last night.”
Disappointment pings through me. It’s probably a reference to sex—I’m sure he hooked up with someone last night. I force myself to watch the sand as we head for the boardwalk, even though I’m dying to peer inside his cabin and see if there’s an unexpected bedmate in his tiki paradise.
“Well we’re going to yoga right now if you want to rejuvenate your morning,” Amelia offers. I jab her in the side with my elbow.
Weston laughs a little, his gaze sliding back to the horizon. Once we hit the boardwalk, I say, “We don’t need to invite him to everything, right?”
Her laugh lilts through the air. “Trust me—he won’t come. Those boys aren’t the yoga types.”
I am only distantly relieved. Though I will never be fully relieved, because the memory of his six-pack is not something I will soon forget. “So what else is on deck today? Do I need costume changes?”
“Well, the rest of the girls are arriving this morning.” The girls refers to the bridal party, which includes our other best friend from college, Laney, and Rhys’s two sisters, who have since become extremely close to Amelia.
“And dinner is on a sailboat,” she goes on, excitement brimming in her eyes. “I think we should get our best yachting attire ready for that one.”
“You’re lucky I brought my designer anchor with me.”
“I hemmed silk sails specifically for the occasion,” she says in her best haughty, transatlantic voice, which makes us both break into laughter. Right near our side of the resort, a different teacher—with a far more normal voice—has laid out yoga mats facing the ocean on a cement patio lined with potted flowers.
Amelia and I do gentle stretches on our mats closest to the instructor while a few more women trickle in. The class begins with all of us facing the ocean while the instructor leads us through a mental exercise about imagining gulls and the swell of our equanimity. I’m not entirely sure if I’m doing it right, since I envision gulls going bloated until they explode. But hey—there’s probably no wrong way to do it. Unless you’re somehow doing it with Weston.
On a long exhale, we all bend forward with our legs spread wide. I peek at the world through my legs—and I gasp.
Weston is behind me.
He can’t see me, of course, but he’s been behind me the whole time. That sneaky sneak—why would he come to this yoga class? He probably just wants to pick up some new girl. Maybe he’s already tired of whoever he took to bed last night. And really, isn’t that how it goes with men?
By the time we come to standing at our mats, I have completely lost all my chill. Weston is behind me, which means that he has a front row view to my enormous ass every time I bend or move. I can only take comfort in the fact that he surely does not care about my ass, or any part of my body. Therefore, he won’t notice it. Right? Right.
The instructor is unaware of my racing heart as she guides us through some familiar poses, and then into weirder poses. Weston’s unseen presence behind me burns like I’m standing too close to flames. Once we’ve been guided into squatting, twisting, and making prayer hands, I’m feeling a little gassy. Like all this bending and early morning movement has got something else moving too.
I spend each eternal second focusing on the fact that I will not, under any circumstances, fart. This is a truth I know so intensely that nothing else can be true. I focus on tightening my gut, on clenching my ass cheeks secretly, on having a quiet, intense conversation with my intestines.
Please do not pass gas in public. Not now. NOT NOW.
When we’re told to whoosh to standing, my efforts to retain my internal rumblings fail. A fart squeaks out of me, and every muscle in my body goes rigid. It’s the only thing preventing me from melting to the ground in a puddle of mortification. I stand in a daze, wondering if anyone heard it. Maybe the waves of the ocean drowned it out. Maybe it was a trumpet. Maybe it flew directly into Weston’s mouth.
I don’t even register the rest of the class, I am so hung up on my public farting incident. I have certainly never farted in the middle of a yoga class, and I have definitely never farted straight into the face of the hottest man I’ve ever tried to hate.
When class wraps up, I ignore the smiling and sweaty-faced Weston and breeze toward Amelia. “That was so fun and relaxing. Let’s go get breakfast now. I’m starving. I feel like I could digest an entire pineapple just by looking at it.”
That is an exceptionally weird thing to say, which I realize when Weston scoffs off to our side. He’s dragging his forearm across his forehead, which shouldn’t be allowed when it makes his biceps bulge like that.
“You’ll need more than a pineapple after that class,” Amelia says, then sends a bright grin toward Weston. “I can’t believe you came! Did you enjoy it?”
“It was a rootin’-tootin’ good time.”
I can’t even hide the scowl that creeps over my face. I would glare at Weston, but that would be confirming the fact that I know that he knows that I farted. Instead, I glare at the nearest palm tree.
“I’m sooo sweaty,” Amelia says. “I think it’s the humidity more than anything that killed me.”
I’m nodding, herding Amelia back toward the boardwalk and away from Weston. “Humidity is strong. Extremely humid. Can we do mimosas now?”
“I love mimosas,” Weston says.
Everything inside me groans. “That’s cool. I’m sure they have some for you somewhere else in the resort. Amelia? Can we?” I jerk my head toward the boardwalk.
“Why are you being so weird?” Weston asks me, point-blank. Post-yoga-fart directness is on par with violating an accord of the Geneva Convention. We all silently agreed that this would never be acknowledged, OR ELSE.
“I’m hangry,” I say simp
ly, offering him a fake smile. “Low blood sugar problems. Thanks for being so sensitive about it.”
It’s not entirely false, but it’s also not entirely true. My phone buzzes from inside the huge pocket of my linen pants. I swear to God, if this is Jimmy calling to ask about the ocean…I’m tense as I fish it out, and then all the air leaves me in a relieved whoosh. No. It’s not Jimmy. It’s just Gram.
“Graaaam,” I say, and before I know it, I could cry. I don’t know why. My grandma is practically my mom, and we live together, and I just farted in some guy’s mouth. I need my Gram.
“I’ll make this quick.” Her smoker’s growl is both familiar and hilarious. “You get kidnapped by pirates yet or what?”
Laughter rolls out of me. If there’s anyone who can bring me back to center, it’s my grandma. I would have brought her along as my plus one, but she’s deathly afraid of the pressurized cabin part of air travel. “Not kidnapped yet. But I’m working on it. I hear the Bermuda Triangle is nearby.”
“Nah, the Bermoota Triangle is overhyped. It sucks up airplanes but not much else. If you’re looking for a real good time, I think you should go for the pirates. Or maybe a shark.”
Gram is both inspiration and cautionary tale. She is the only one in my family pushing me to see the world, live my life, and have a helluva time doing it. But she also serves as a reminder of what can happen when I ignore my impulses and curiosity. I’m convinced that she and I are the same person, separated by fifty years. Except I was raised in a world where I could access cheap plane tickets, and she was raised in a world that kept her pregnant and in the kitchen.
“Are we talking, like, a love affair with a shark?” I ask, trailing behind Amelia and Weston as they lead the way toward breakfast. “Or something else?”
“Sweetcakes, that’s what you’re there to figure out.” A rickety laugh escapes her. She stopped smoking years ago, but still sounds like she smokes a pack a day. “Everything okay down there? You alive and everything?”