by KB Winters
“Being a drunken slut,” she filled in with a laugh.
“Dix,” I scolded. “No, no. You were fine. It was that dick-head guy that was with you. Anyways, he got all mouthy with me and Dylan stepped in. He punched the guy in the face!”
“What the hell? Why don’t I remember any of this? Jeez, I have got to stop drinking. I miss all the good stuff.”
I laughed. “Anyway, we got you back to the room and then we went for a walk on the beach, talked about his life, my life, and went back to his room for the night.”
“And then you fucked like wild animals, right?”
“Oh, my God, Dixie!” I could feel my cheeks light up.
“Well?” she waggled her eyebrows at me, “Does he howl?”
“Dixie!” I said in a hushed tone. I could feel my face heat up and then we both burst into giggles.
“That’s what happened, right?” Dixie asked, before taking a bite of her plain toast.
I nodded, stuffing a whipped cream covered pancake in my mouth. “It was so crazy. We did things…like…sexy things that I’ve never done before— or even thought of doing before. But it wasn’t weird or freaky. It was a little overwhelming but, like, to the core, ridiculously fucking sexy.”
“Mmm. Mr. Hot Cock sounds like quite the gentleman. Sounds fun, but I want deets.”
“Not here Dix, I’ll tell you on the way home. It was incredible though.”
”I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little jealous. I’m also jealous of that bacon, gimme some,” she said as she swiped a piece of bacon from my plate.
“Yeah, well don’t be,” I said, dialing down the stars-in-my-eyes feeling as I crash-landed back to reality. “It was a total waste. He let me sleep over in his room and was being sweet, saying all the right things, definitely doing all the right things. And then this morning, out of nowhere, he wakes me up and tells me I need to leave. I threw a fit. God, he probably thinks I am a total drama queen.”
“Fuck what he thinks! He doesn’t matter, remember?”
I nodded but felt tears welling up all over again. I looked up at the ceiling, watching the fan blades spin around to try and wait it out.
“Elle, come on.” Dixie grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to look at her. “He’s not worth your tears. No guy is.”
“I know you’re right. It’s just hard because I thought—God, I’m so pathetic. I just thought maybe there was something there, ya know?”
I hated myself for sounding like some rom-com star, wrecking her mascara for no reason and blubbering on and on about a guy. It wasn’t my style. At all. But I couldn’t seem to stop.
“I’m so pathetic. I’m probably PMS’ing. Wonder if they have any chocolate over there?”
“Ellie, listen to me. You’re not pathetic. He clearly led you on. I mean really, what kind of douche bag buys jewelry and all that, just to send you packing? I mean what the hell?”
“See! Exactly! That’s what I’m talking about. First of all, he had already slept with me. Like seriously. Not just a wham-bam thing, but a full blown fuck—outside! So, he’d already gotten what he wanted. Right?”
Dixie nodded as she munched on her dry toast.
“So, why did he chase me down, invite me to the gala in front of you so that I would basically have to agree, and then, yes, buy me diamond jewelry.”
“I have no idea. This must be some new breed of d-bag.” She was pensive for a moment. “Maybe the necklace was a rental? I know celebrities do that kind of shit for the red carpet. It would still be weird, but maybe less weird if he didn’t actually spend money on it.”
“No, he told me to keep the necklace and the rings.” I shook my head. It was all so confusing. I’d hoped that Dixie would help me figure it all out, but she seemed just as confused as I was.
“Wait. Rings? You didn’t tell me anything about the rings.”
Oh, shit. I felt my cheeks turn fifty shades of red again. “It’s kind of…personal.”
“Ellie, I’m your best friend. I know everything about you. When you started your period, when you got your first kiss, your dirty dreams about Thor.”
“Not Thor! Chris Hemsworth dressed up as Thor!” I corrected.
“Oh, excuse me, you’re right. That is soooo different.” She started giggling and I couldn’t help but laugh along with her.
I looked around for a moment. Our table was fairly isolated since it was past breakfast time and the mad rush seemed to have already dissipated. “All right. They were diamond nipple rings.”
Dixie let out a cackle so loud that everyone that was left turned to stare.
I’m pretty sure my face got even redder…if that was even possible.
“Shh! Shh! Stop,” I pleaded.
“Oh my God! Ellie, are you fucking with me?” she asked, still a little too loud for my comfort.
“No. I wish I was. They linked to the necklace and every time I moved they would pull and…” I felt myself getting wet at the thought. Apparently, my body was still on team Dylan, despite all evidence and good sense showing that was not only not an option, but also just a generally bad idea.
“Wow. I would have paid to see that.”
“Um, that’s a weird thing to say,” I said, crossing my arms over my breasts protectively.
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
I dropped my arms and laughed with her.
She waggled her eyebrows and leaned across the table. “So, can we talk about the rest of the kinky stuff? Or would that make you sad all over again?”
I shot her a dirty look. “I told you, on the flight home. I want to get as far away from this place as I can before I remember what he did to me…”
“You suck.”
“I do and I did. Now stop.”
“Well, excuse a girl for trying. You’re the only one getting any action on this island, so I’m a little starving for some dirty deets.”
I rolled my eyes. As far as I knew, Dixie’s longest dry spell was two weeks.
“What do I do now?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to do. Ellie, listen, you had a fling. It’s okay. Just chalk it up as a new experience in your life, learn from it, and move on to the next. That’s what I do.”
I was listening to her, but found little comfort in her advice. I didn’t care what Dixie did, as far as relationships went, but I certainly wasn’t striving to be like her. I wanted a relationship someday. I wanted to get married and have a family. I figured that Dixie would eventually settle down, despite her protests to the contrary, but she was going to party like a rockstar for as long as she could.
“All right. Well, I’m stuffed. What do you want to do for the rest of the day? How are you feeling?” I asked her. I pushed my plate away and leaned back in my chair.
“Let’s go lay out and get a drink. I need something to take this headache away and the pills aren’t cutting it.”
We spent the afternoon lying out on the beach, soaking in the sun and trying to store it away for winter. I even dropped the sarong and let my cheeks get full exposure. I no longer cared what people would think. It was my last day of vacation and I was going to enjoy it.
***
By dinner time, I calculated that I’d squashed ten million, four hundred thousand and three thoughts about Dylan as the day had progressed. Trying to keep him out of my head was turning into a full-time job. I had no idea what I was going to do once I got back to school. My class load left little time for daydreaming about tall, dark and scruffy men in a tropical paradise.
Which really was a shame.
“How ya hanging in there?” Dixie asked as we sat down to our dinner in the hotel restaurant.
“Meh. Other than a sunburn on my ass, I think I’m fine.”
Dixie ordered us two margaritas, just the way Dylan had ordered them when he first came up to us on the beach, and my heart sank a little lower.
Make that ten million, four hundred thousand and four thoughts to squash.
; I sighed loudly.
“Is everything all right, ma’am?” the waiter asked as he brought over our full-to-the-brim drinks.
“Yes, thank you.” He offered a smile and then left. “Great. I’ve attracted the concern of the masses,” I added when he was out of earshot.
Dixie rolled her eyes. “If anyone should be moping, it should be me. We’ve been on this fucking island for five days and I haven’t gotten any action. What a waste of my new bikini.”
I laughed. “Well, I’m sure you could figure something out if you really put your mind to it. But, I’ll remind you that we do have a very early flight tomorrow morning. I was thinking of staying up through the night and then crashing on the plane. Whaddya say? An old fashioned sleep-over?”
Dixie wasn’t paying attention to me. I turned in my chair to see what she was staring at and wasn’t at all surprised to find that her eyes had locked on a guy coming into the restaurant.
“Dix?”
She snapped her attention back to me. “Sorry, what’d you say?”
“Our flight leaves really early tomorrow, remember?”
“Uh huh.”
I sighed. I’d lost her. There was no point in trying to get her to focus now. So I sipped on my drink and nibbled at the appetizer plate that had been deposited a few minutes before.
Without fail, the guys sent over a couple of fresh drinks. Dixie went over to thank them personally, but I stayed behind, preferring to offer a friendly wave of thanks. I took a sip of the new drink and decided that was enough. It certainly had nothing on the drinks Dylan had ordered for us on the beach.
Ellie, you gotta let him go. I told myself.
Logically, I knew that he was probably back in New York by now or at least at the airport. In his little speech, he hadn’t given a specific timeline. Not that it had been needed. All I’d needed to know what that I’d been cut from the line-up.
Thinking back on it again, I realized that he’d probably slept with the two hoochies who had shown up at his door and then lied about it when I pressed the issue. I decided to hang onto that as fuel for my self-induced hatred of him. If nothing else, it should make it easier to forget all about him.
So I thought.
Chapter Four — Ellie
“Ellie! You won’t believe it!” Dixie said, rushing back to the table.
“Let me guess. He’s single, interested, but there’s just one catch. He needs someone to babysit his wingman if he’s going to be able to go out with you?” I rattled off, watching Dixie’s smile fade with each word.
“For fuck’s sake, Ellie. You make it seem like I do this to you all the time.”
“That’s because you do.”
As Dixie’s roommate, I was often her party friend. I mostly went along to keep her out of trouble and to occasionally drink a little and meet new people. It wasn’t really my thing, but she was my best friend, so I did it anyway. It seemed that the guy she was most interested in was always with a buddy, and therefore, if she wanted to sneak away with the guy, it fell to me to keep the friend occupied so he wouldn’t know he got ditched.
If girls travel in packs, then guys definitely travel in pairs.
I looked past her to the two guys sitting at the other table. They were good looking in the tan, blond, surfer sort of way. Unfortunately, my palate had recently become a tad more interested in tall, dark and perfectly stubbled.
“Well, if you don’t want to, I’m not going to drag your ass over there. But I will say, I think you should come with us because it will be fun and it might help you purge what’s his name dick head out of your system.”
She had a point. I knew the responsible thing to do would be to go back to the room and start packing, but I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts any more than I had to, and I knew that if Dixie got her wish, she wouldn’t be going back to the room anytime soon.
Knowing her, she would get tangled up and forget all about our flight. I would have to pack her bags as well as mine and track her ass down in time to catch the first shuttle back to the airport.
No, it would be better to keep her close. That way, I could make sure she didn’t stay out all night.
“All right, let’s go,” I agreed.
Dixie squealed in delight and I tried to put on a happy face. I stuffed the last artichoke dip covered chip into my mouth before getting up and following her across the room. I had no interest in the friend and figured some garlic artichoke cheese breath ought to make sure he didn’t get too close.
“Ellie, this is Steve. Steve, my friend Ellie.”
“It’s Steph, actually, Stephan,” he corrected.
Dixie just giggled.
“Nice to meet you.”
“And this is my brother, Brad.”
Dixie arched an eyebrow in my direction. I knew just what she was thinking. We had never pseudo-dated brothers before. It was probably on some sort of bucket list of hers, though. She would think it was cute, and knowing her, kinky in some kind of way.
My nipples were still aching from the diamond rings that Dylan had clamped on them, and my skin still showed the faint outlines of the bruises he’d left. There was no way I was going near kink anytime soon. With Dylan, it had been easy and exciting. The thought of trying to replicate that rush with someone else not only seemed impossible, but was also a kind of a turn off.
“We were going to get a drink at the hula-looking bar on the beach. Have you ladies been yet?”
I started to shake my head but Dixie interrupted. “No, but we wanted to! That sounds so fun. Ellie, don’t you think so?”
I quickly changed my gesture to a nod. “Yeah, fun.”
Dixie grabbed a hold of Stephan’s arm and the two of them clung together as we all made our way out of the restaurant.
Brad offered me his arm, but I ignored it and walked in front of him a couple of paces. I had to keep him occupied—there was nothing in the roommate agreement that said I had to flirt with him.
***
“Can I ask you something?” Brad asked me. He was on his third beer and I was still sipping on my first cocktail. We had been making small talk for nearly an hour while Dixie and Steph got nasty on the dance floor.
“Sure,” I answered. To his credit, Brad seemed to accept the situation and my off-limits status fairly quickly. He hadn’t tried to force some relationship out of thin air and I had decided he wasn’t a bad guy, but stuck to my original assessment that he wasn’t my type.
“Is it me, or is it you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Ya know, like that He’s Just Not That Into You. Is it you’re not into me? Or, I’m not into you?”
I laughed. He was obviously past his personal alcohol limit, but I decided to humor him. “It’s me, Brad. Don’t worry. I just got out of this weird thing, and I kinda need some down time to figure out what the hell I’m doing.”
“Ahh.” He took another pull off his beer, seemingly relieved at my answer. “Ya wanna talk about it? My ex always said I was a good listener. Listener.”
I hesitated for a moment, unsure that I wanted to unpack my personal drama to a virtual stranger. But, then again, he likely wouldn’t remember the conversation anyway.
“I met a guy here—at this bar, actually. He’s some rich dude from New York. Anyway, we hit it off. Or, at least I thought we did. We had some…fun,” I said, not wanting to reveal too much. He might be a stranger, but I still didn’t want him to think I was a slut. “But then when it was all over, he told me he wasn’t interested in anything like a relationship. I just don’t get what is with guys and the mixed signals.”
“What did you want to happen?” he asked.
“I don’t know. He was really attractive and we had this…this connection. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever had before. You know?”
Brad nodded, but I wasn’t sure he understood. But then again, I didn’t even understand it, so how could I possibly convey it to another person?
“Anyways, one minute h
e was buying me flowers and even diamond jewelry, and then the next morning, he’s kicking me out of his room and telling me it was a fling. What the hell is that?”
“Maybe he got scared.”
“Scared of what?” I asked. Dylan seemed to be one hundred percent in control, all the time, over everything. I had to assume that meant his emotions as well.
“Well, a lot of guys won’t talk about their feelings, you know. So, maybe he was putting up a wall, to not have to talk about it.”
“But what was there to talk about? We were just having fun. I wasn’t expecting a proposal or anything. But the guy wouldn’t even give me his phone number.”
Repeating the whole sad tale just made me feel more pathetic. I was about to try and change the subject when Brad opened his mouth to continue.
“I don’t know what he was afraid of, could be anything. I once told a girl my roommate didn’t approve of house guests because I was afraid of what she would think of my apartment. I didn’t have much money at the time and was embarrassed of it, so I lied. Maybe it was something stupid like that.”
Hmm. An insightful drunk.
I highly doubted Dylan was lying to cover up a messy apartment. But, maybe this Brad character had a point. Maybe there was something Dylan was trying to cover up. There were no less effective walls that I could think of than telling a girl she was just a meaningless fling.
Not that there was anything I could do about it, even if he was right. Dylan was gone. I wasn’t about to go scouring New York for every hottie named Dylan in a power suit. And even if I could get to the bottom of it, would I want to? I certainly didn’t want to be with someone who lied and couldn’t communicate through problems in a relationship.
I refused to be one of those girls who let some guy drag her along, thinking she would eventually find a way to change him. If Dylan didn’t want to change, to push out of his boundaries, then that was just fine with me. I’d be more than fine to let him stay there.
Really, I’d probably just dodged a huge bullet.