Chapter Three
MARINA
PRESENT
The cottage is next to the general store, right? But it doesn’t match. The red of the general store is a different red. This is more of a cherry red; maybe this is part of the barn?
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth as I scour my coffee table for a little snippet of the general store among the other thousand pieces of the puzzle scattered across the surface of my tiny coffee table.
There’s something about puzzles that relax me after a night in the bar.
For some people, puzzles stress them out, but for me, they help me wind down and let my mind work on something totally random.
It completely takes my focus away from anything that is going on outside this apartment.
Including the absolute joke of a date I just wasted half my night on.
I mean, what kind of guy gets a seafood chowder on a first date?
No one I know thinks slurping is a turn-on.
But apparently, Dario didn’t think of that, nor did he think about the fact that I was getting nowhere near his mouth, unless he wanted me to gag during our first kiss.
I shudder as I think of it, nearly retching as I just sit here imagining it .
I tip my wine glass to take a sip, but when less than a drop lands on my tongue, I decide that’s probably enough for the night anyway, considering I had three glasses with dinner.
I had hoped it would distract me from my lame evening talking about stocks and cryptocurrency, but even the wine couldn’t dull the sound of Dario’s droning voice.
Why is finding someone to spend the rest of your life with so painful? Maybe it’s just me.
My cousin and one of my best friends are getting married next week. They found it—that infinite, all-consuming love. So did May and Rafael, even after hating each other since the day they first met, they somehow turned that around into a passionate love story.
But here I am, the friend stuck sitting on the floor doing a puzzle after yet another shitty date. I can’t seem to block out the little voice inside my head that says I’m falling behind.
When I was a teenager, if I thought about my twenty-six-year-old self, I would have imagined myself running around a big yard, chasing after my perfect little children, my husband watching from beside the pool.
Oh, what younger me would think if she saw me now.
I know they say life never goes to plan, and sure, it can be a comforting phrase, but it’s not comforting to me. I feel as though I am racing the clock, rushing to find my happily ever after before time runs out for me.
I know it sounds ridiculous, some people find their person when they’re fifty, sixty, even, but I don’t want that to be me.
I’ve spent years trying to build the life of my dreams, and yeah, my life isn’t perfect, but it’s mine . I just want someone to share it with, even if another person in this apartment would make it feel like an overfilled jail cell.
It’s probably enough of the puzzle as well.
It’s one a.m., not especially late in my books, not when you own the town's only bar.
Some people want to sit in the corner booth until the wee hours of the morning, meaning I have to stay awake waiting for them to leave so I can lock the door behind them and trudge upstairs before falling into bed.
I unfold my legs from the couch and walk the two steps it takes for me to get from the couch to the kitchen counter, and place my glass in the sink. I catch a look at myself as I pass by the mirror on the way to my bedroom. God, I really should go to sleep if I look like that .
I sigh as I stand in the doorway, looking across the floor for the pyjama pants I wore last night. I pick up piece after piece of clothing off my floor looking for them, throwing the items in my washing basket as I do, filling it enough to know I’ll need to make a trip to the laundromat tomorrow.
When I first bought this place, I thought it was perfect. Owning a bar was my dream. The fact that this building came with an apartment upstairs was the best possible situation when I was twenty-three and eager to move out of my parents' house on the other side of town.
It’s not that I didn’t love living at home; my parents are the best people I know. It was just time for me to do something for myself.
But as the years have gone on, I’ve gotten more and more annoyed every time I clip my ankle on a corner of furniture, overestimating the space in my small apartment.
I dread my trips to the laundromat after my run-in with Riccardo when he tried to steal a pair of my leather pants. They were never going to fit him, and I was not letting them go without a fight. How luxurious it would be to have my own washing machine.
Then there’s my days off, which I usually don’t want to spend here unless I want to spend the day listening to every drunk conversation going on downstairs.
One day I’ll get my own place. A house, where there are multiple bedrooms, a kitchen with more than three cupboards, and a shower without a leaky head. But until then, this is home.
I give up, rifling through one of my drawers looking for something to sleep in. My movements pause when I pull out a worn sage-green T-shirt.
“Put this on,” he said, tossing me his T-shirt through the small crack of the bathroom door.
I shuffled it over my head, letting it hang on my body.
It was so big that anyone would think it was made for a giant; I was drowning in it.
But the feeling of the soft sage fabric brushing against my thighs was comforting in a way.
I opened the door, leaning up against the frame as I posed in the oversized T-shirt. “How do I look?”
“Like mine.”
I blushed as I ran over to the bed, jumping back under the sheets and settling into the warmth of his big arms. “You can’t say things like that, Miles.”
The pad of his index finger traced the outside of my arm. “Why not, princess?”
I used my finger to trace the birthmark just below his collarbone, giving my hands something to do. “It makes this feel real.”
“This feels more real than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
I forgot that shirt was even there, but it always was, buried away where I knew I wouldn’t go looking. Yet here I am.
I look up to the ceiling, searching for help. In less than a week, I’m going to see the human this shirt used to belong to, and I don’t know how in the world I’m going to be able to keep my cool, but I’m going to have to.
I couldn’t be happier for Isla and Caio. I love Caio like a brother, and in the last eight months, Isla has become like a sister to me too. I can’t wait to see them tie the knot. I’m just not so excited to see the new bride’s brother.
When I met Isla a year ago, I had no idea that she was the sister of the guy who walked away from me just over four years ago. Yes, I know the date. I’m that much of a loser. But I’ll never forget the day that I felt like my heart was torn in half.
I never talked to Isla about Miles, not until a couple of months ago when our friend Leo basically forced us to talk it out. I was happily content to pretend one of my best friends isn’t related to the guy who broke my heart.
I roll my shoulders, shoving the T-shirt as far back into the drawer as physically possible. I could just get rid of it, throw it out the window, and let the wind carry it away, but I don’t.
That little part of me that is sentimental enough to keep every Christmas card or birthday present I’ve ever been given doesn’t want to let it go, no matter what happened between us.
I grab one of my own T-shirts off its hanger and throw it over my head, not wanting to risk finding anything else hidden in my closet.
I tie my hair into a braid before lying down on my silk pillowcase. I groan as soon as my head hits the soft fabric, my mind taking me right back to a night that I haven’t dared to think about in the last four years.
My heart starts to race as I remember the way I felt when I walked into Miles’s bedroom and saw a silk pillowcase on one of the pillows on the bed.
I had complained once about the way that the cotton pillow slip at my new apartment had messed up my curly hair, and the next time I saw him, he had gone out and bought me a silk one for his place.
That was when I knew I was falling. I’d been trying to ignore it before then, the way I felt closer to him than I ever had to any man.
But that night, that gesture, I couldn’t keep ignoring it after that.
That stupid silk pillowcase was the last nail in the coffin of my feelings for Miles.
I grab my pillow and throw it over my face, screaming into it. When I move it away, I pull the finger at my ceiling.
Fuck you universe for putting me in this situation.
The worst thing about this whole situation is that I know.
I’ve seen Miles twice now. And both times, I bolted, not being able to face those beautiful green eyes.
But those green eyes never noticed me. Two times over the last year, I’ve been in the same room as him, and he didn’t even know it. He never saw me.
Maybe I should see it as an advantage that the wedding won’t be the first time I see him again.
The place where I notice how he’s even more attractive than he used to be all those years ago.
Maybe I should be glad it won’t be a surprise for me.
But I can’t stop thinking about how he will react, what he will think when Isla tells him he will be standing across the aisle from me on the biggest day of her life.
I can’t help but wonder if it’s better if it throws him into a spiral, or if he doesn’t even care at all.
If what we shared really meant so little to him as I thought it did when he ended things between us.
I lied, maybe the worst thing about the whole situation is that in the two times I’ve seen him, my heart has surged in my chest like no time has passed at all, like he wasn’t the one who shattered it.
Both times, my mind played a highlight reel of all the amazing moments I had with him, before reality slammed into the forefront of my mind and reminded me how empty I felt in the months after he left.
That is definitely the worst part.
My eyes lay open in the dark, staring at the ceiling above me, wondering how I’m supposed to face him.
How I’m supposed to stand there and smile, watching two of my favorite people on the happiest day of their lives and pretend that Miles isn’t standing so close to me.
Closer than he’s been in years, and ignore it.
But that’s the only way I’ll get through this, by ignoring him. I just hope my heart gets the memo.