Chapter Six
MARINA
PRESENT
The bell above the door jingles and my eyes catch on Caio and Isla, her smile beaming when she sees me.
I smile back and nod my head toward the bar, signalling for them to sit while I finish serving this table.
“This is your last round before I have to cut you off, boys.” Booing noises echo around the table. I shake my head. “Sorry, but you can go find your next round somewhere else.”
I unload my tray of drinks to them before snaking my way back through the bar to where Caio and Isla sit. We all know they’re not going to find their next round anywhere else, considering there’s nowhere else open this late in Ruby Cove. That’s why this place is always so busy.
“Hey,” Isla’s voice isn’t as cheery as usual as I lean across the bar.
My eyebrows draw together. Over the last eight months, I’ve learned how to read this girl like a book, and something is off. “What?”
“What what?” she chirps back, further indicating to me that there’s something on her mind. Something she needs to spit out .
“That ‘hey’ wasn’t very Isla of you.”
She tips her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I just frown back at her. She’s playing dumb, and I have no idea why.
Caio just shakes his head, smiling down at his feet as he sits beside her. “It’s taking all of her not to ask how you’re feeling about Miles being in town for the wedding.”
She whips her head to look at him and jabs him in the side with her elbow. “Caio!” she hisses. But he just grabs her by the wrist, placing a kiss to the palm of her hand, and her gaze immediately softens. My lungs tighten as I watch the two of them, the sour taste of envy on my tongue.
I push my hip out, folding my arms across my chest. “You had to tell him?” My eyes flick to my cousin.
“She is going to be my wife,” Caio says. Isla’s cheeks blush at the label. “Did you really think she’d be able to keep the fact that you and her brother were a thing to herself?”
“Not really,” I say. “I just wasn’t planning on having any conversations about my love life with my cousin.” Isla snorts, and the way Caio looks at her has her resolve disappearing.
I put my hands on my hips, trying to stay serious when those two make my insides flare with pride. Even if it’s followed by unwarranted jealousy. “Isla, I’ll be fine. I promise.”
She sighs. “Are you sure? I really just want everyone to feel comfortable, especially you.”
I feel my face heat with embarrassment. I am the last thing Isla should be worrying about right now, yet here she is.
“Your brother will likely be equally as uncomfortable.” Even the thought of saying his name makes me feel sick, like my body at its core knows something isn’t right. So I stick to calling him Isla’s brother, even though he was almost my everything long before I ever met her.
I feel the need to reassure the girl who’s sitting across from me with worry creasing her forehead. “Look, he’ll be there… I’ll be th ere… We can just pretend we don’t know each other. Sounds perfect to me.”
Even if the thought of seeing him again has been plaguing me for weeks now. She doesn’t need to know that, nobody does.
Isla tips her head. “Yeah,” she mutters. “I don’t blame you for how you feel about him at all, but you’re both going to be a part of the bridal party, and I don’t want… I don’t know, I just?—”
The last time I saw Miles, he was auctioning himself off at the gallery’s charity event. I froze. Then I ran. But this is Isla’s wedding, I can face the man who broke my heart for one night, for the most important night of her life.
I grab a hold of her hand. “You won’t have any drama from me, I promise. We both know each other is going to be there, we can both be civil, I’m sure.”
Miles was always respectful. Until he left, he was probably the best man I’d ever known, so I couldn’t imagine him doing anything to ruin his sister’s wedding.
“How did he, uh…respond?” I ask. I saw Miles the night of the auction, and when he surprised Isla by walking into my bar on her birthday. But he never once saw me. He had no idea his sister and I were so close, and Isla didn’t tell him, not until last week.
Isla hums in response. “He, uh…” She fills her mouth with air before blowing it out in a long sigh. “I think he was fine.”
The change in her tone and the way she scrunched up her nose as she spoke tells me she’s lying. “He freaked out, didn’t he?”
“No!” Isla shakes her head quickly. “Not at all.”
Oh yeah, she’s lying.
“I’m not surprised if he did,” Caio says, shuffling in his seat when both of us look at him. “It’s a big blow.”
I just frown over at him. “You do recall that he is the one who left, right?”
He holds his hands up in surrender. “I know, I’m just saying,” he rests his arms on the bar top. “No one expects their siblings to be best friends with their ex. I can see how he’d be…shocked. ”
I just slide down the other end of the bar, taking a drink order and mixing it up right away to take a second away from the conversation.
Just talking about Miles makes me twitchy.
I can’t help the way my mind plays me ten different versions of how the wedding night could go.
Him trying to talk to me, him ignoring me. I don’t know which scenario is worse.
Caio’s right though, it is an oddly karmic situation. If it wasn’t happening to me, I think I’d be amused by it. But I am far from amused.
The worst part? He looks fucking good in a suit.
I place my classic strawberry margarita down in front of the pretty woman who ordered it and it throws my mind straight to a place I wish it never went to.
Is he dating someone else? Someone like this tall, gorgeous blonde woman dressed like she just came from some kind of business meeting?
I have no reason to think that way, but I can’t help the way my brain keeps coming up with all of the different things Miles could’ve been doing all these years.
I hope more than anything he’s been on a myriad of shitty dates, even more than I have.
I hope someone has thrown a drink at him or pushed him into a pool, or run over his toe in their fancy SUV.
And right in the very back of my mind, in the place I don’t visit often, I quietly hope he hasn’t had any luck.
Because I think if I saw him at that wedding with a woman on his arm, I might have to play the bolter one last time.
I know I have no right to feel jealous of an imaginary woman, but I do anyway—even if I hate myself for it.
This is the guy that broke my heart, the guy that hurt me in a way I wasn’t prepared for, yet I still feel things for him.
It makes me hate him even more because even after everything, he still has a hold over me, and that’s exactly why I need to steer clear of him.
I straighten my back, clearing my throat and my mind as I walk back to where Caio and Isla are sitting. “Now do you two want a drink? ”
Caio’s face says he can see right through me, but I don’t have anything more to say.
Yes, I’m nervous. Yes, I’m scared shitless to see Miles.
Yes, I don’t know how I’ll react in the moment, especially because I pulled a Houdini every other time he’s popped up.
But I don’t have any other choice than to suck it up.
I’m a twenty-six year old woman, I can be mature, I can keep my shit together for the sake of Isla and Caio.
They deserve to have the perfect day, and I sure as hell am not going to be the one to ruin it. I just hope Miles thinks the same.
It’s ironic, his name. Because he fled miles away from me, and here he is, about to fly miles back, right into my town.
Only two more days, and I’ll be face to face with the guy I planned my future with. The guy who poured a bucket of cold water over that plan when he never came back for me.
“I can’t understand what we are doing going to a line dancing night at the bar. We are in Italy, not Texas.”
“Becauseeeeeee,” I drawled as I skipped towards the bar. “It’s fun. And a good excuse for me to wear these boots.” I kicked out my toes from the hem of my long black skirt.
Miles grabbed my hand, pulling me flush to him. I was so close that my nose brushed his with the slightest movement of my head. “You do look damn good in your little honky-tonk outfit.”
My mouth fell open and I squirmed to get my hand in front of me. “It is not honky-tonk. It’s cowgirl chic.” I jabbed my finger into his chest with every word, trying to be serious, but he just smiled wider with every second.
“Only you could convince me to do this,” he said, his eyes looking at me with what I think is wonder.
I bit the inside of my cheek, forcing my smile to stay hidden, but it snuck out anyway. “If you keep blabbering on, we’ll miss all the fun.”
His hands dropped from where they rested on my waist, slipping under the waistband of my skirt. “There’s fun to be had out here too. ”
This time, my teeth bit straight into my bottom lip. “In the parking lot? I thought you were a little classier than that, hotshot.”
He just beamed his gorgeous smile at me, and my stomach dropped at the sight of it. It did that every time. I’d never seen anyone with a smile like Miles’s. It was contagious, I didn’t know how anyone could keep a straight face when he smiled. It was like a secret weapon.
“Oh my god, are you a part of the mile high club?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But I could be,” his smile turned suggestive, “if I ever get my princess on board a flight, I could be persuaded.”
“Do you know how to fly those little planes? Like in Top Gun?” I was getting way distracted here, but I was running with it. “Can you go upside down like Tom Cruise?”
He just laughed. “Yeah, baby, I can go upside down.”
I tipped my head. “Don’t you get disoriented?”
“I thought you wanted to go line dancing?” he said, his hands drifting back up to my waist as country music blasted from inside the bar.
“Oh my god! I love this song! Come on,” I said, dragging him across the parking lot with me.
He just laughed again, and this time, I decided I thought it was my favorite sound I’d ever heard. “Is this a bad time to say that I hate country music?”
I gasp as I open my eyes. When I find myself looking at the pillow next to me I screw them closed again, rolling onto my back and throwing a hand over my chest where my heart is beating like it wants to jump out of there like a fish out of water.
I haven’t dreamt about Miles in years. I used to, a lot. In those first few months after he left, I used to dream of him coming home. Not home, at least not to him. I dreamt of him coming back to me. And every time I woke up, another little piece of my heart crumbled away.
But this wasn’t just a dream, a figment of my imagination. This was a memory. A memory of the night I realized I was in love with him.
Seeing him struggling to fall into place when we were line dancing was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
And in that moment, all I could think of was that I was in love with him.
There was no other way to describe that feeling deep in my core every time I just glanced at him.
It was love. And it was crazy, it was so fast, but nothing had ever felt more right .
But here I am. Four years later, alone. That feeling in my core long gone, those butterflies in my tummy limp.
I throw my covers off my legs and haul my body upright, looking over the mess that litters my bedroom floor.
I’ve never been tidy, as much as I wished I was. A s much as my ma wished I was . She’d force me to clean my bedroom when I was a teenager, watching me while I did it. I hated it.
“You’ll understand when you have your own home, principessa,” she used to say. And yeah, I understand it, but nothing has changed. I still end up with clothes thrown around my room at the end of the week.
I sigh as I set my feet down on the hardwood, the boards creaking as I stand.
I just stand there for a second, taking in the way that the sun is streaming into the room through the gap in the curtains, bathing one sliver of the room in full sun.
I walk over to the window, yanking the curtains open and letting the sun fall on my face.
I take a deep breath, letting it warm my newly awoken body as I close my eyes. Another breath.
Meditating always seemed silly to me, like something someone takes up when they’re having a midlife crisis.
That was until I went on a wellness retreat with my best friend, Rosalie, in Sorrento.
She won some two-person gift voucher online and forced me to go with her.
It was around a month after Miles left, and at the time, I would do almost anything to try to quiet my mind.
That’s when I realized just how powerful mindfulness can be, how you can dictate your mind, calm it, quiet it.
I don’t practice much anymore, but today feels like a day that I need to start off on the right foot.
I take deep breaths, counting steadily as I slow my breathing, trying to focus on the way my lungs fill with air, followed by the way they empty.
But I can’t focus, my counting jumping from three to five. I can’t quiet my mind, not today.
Because today is the wedding.