Chapter Fifteen
MARINA
PRESENT
I laugh as Davide recounts the events of his fifty-year graduation party today.
The guy has lived here for the last ten years and I swear I’ve never heard more than a two-word sentence from him, but here he is, telling me and Tamara about everyone from his high school and who they’re now married to.
I shake my head as he cackles, talking with the man sitting next to him at the bar. “Sounds like it was a good night,” I say.
I subtly slide down the other end of the bar, distancing myself from their conversation as I run a cloth over the slightly sticky bar top.
“Am I good to take my half?” Tamara asks.
“Get out of here,” I say. “I can close up on my own.”
“Are you sure?”
I nod. “It’s quiet enough, go have a good night.” Even if I feel overly exhausted, like I might collapse on my feet if I don’t keep one hand on the bar. But I’ve only got an hour until close, I can survive it.
“Thank you,” she says before making her escape.
Tamara and Molly have both been working here for a few months now; they’re supposed to be my temps, but I am trying to hang onto them as long as they let me.
They’re both young, twenty-one and twenty-three, so I try to give them as many early nights as I can, remembering what it was like to work late nights when I was their age and all of my friends were going out.
But for one summer in Sorrento, I didn’t mind at all. I took all the night shifts I possibly could, hoping to catch sight of the hotshot pilot who would come into the bar and spend the whole night trying to make me laugh.
A cackle from across the room knocks me back to the present.
Tonight has felt like such a long night, and my head is starting to pound just behind my eyes.
Loud conversations are not something I need to add to the mix.
The sound of the bell jingling even less.
I wince as the sound reverberates through my head.
I sink down behind the counter, running the cloth over the fridge door, hiding from the noise. Only one more hour and I can kick everyone the hell out of here and drag my ass upstairs and into bed.
My period was nearly two weeks ago now, and I’m still feeling the effects. The tiredness is what kills me, it absolutely wipes me out.
I was lucky Isla and Caio’s wedding fell two weeks before I was curled up on the couch for nearly six days.
The combination of stomach cramps and back pain alongside the overwhelming exhaustion left me stuck in my tiny apartment for longer than I appreciated being there.
But I could barely function simply making myself a meal before I needed to sit down again, I had no chance of going anywhere.
I was never one of the girls who had an easy period.
Since the very first day when I cried to my ma because I had realized what was happening, it’s been more than uncomfortable.
But in the last year, it’s only gotten worse.
Painkillers do nothing for me anymore, though I still take them—wishful thinking .
The symptoms are only getting worse and lingering for longer than they ever used to. It’s not just a few days of the month anymore, it’s weeks.
God was definitely a man.
I take a deep breath, trying to exhale the headache away before I stand back up, but when I do, I freeze.
Soft green eyes look back at me. Nausea rolls through my body, whether it’s another version of PMS or if it’s my body’s reaction to the man standing in front of me, I’m not sure. “What are you doing back here?”
Miles takes another step closer to the bar, leaning his hands against the wood. It makes the veins in his forearms pop, and I have to force my eyes back to his face. “I decided to take a few weeks off work.”
Why would he do that?
I raise my eyebrows. “And you decided to take them here?”
“Yeah, I wanted to get to know the place a little more.” His sister lives here, meaning that maybe he’ll be visiting more, but Isla isn’t even here now.
She and Caio still have another two weeks left of their honeymoon, so why did Miles decide to take time off now?
Why here? And more importantly, why did he just walk into my bar?
Miles looks around the bar, as if finally recognising it. “When I first came here, I never realized it was yours.”
“The big sign with my name on it out front didn’t give it away?” Why am I even talking to him?
He shrugs, the corner of his mouth tugging in a little smile. I look away to avoid staring at it. “I was more interested in getting through the door to see Isla than paying attention to the building I was walking into. But now… It’s beautiful, Marina.”
I close my eyes now, that headache building. I wish he would stop appearing in my space and talking to me like nothing happened. Yet I don’t walk away either.
“You did it, this is exactly like how you used to tell me you wanted your own place to look. I’m so pr?— ”
“Don’t say that,” I interrupt. “Don’t walk in here and pretend everything is okay between us, because it’s not.”
“I really want it to be.”
“Well, that’s too bad, Miles!” I clear my throat as the conversations around us hush at my outburst. “You walked away. You broke my heart back then, did you know that? Did you think that I didn’t care?
That, oh, you just disappeared, and no worries, I didn’t feel anything for you because it was only a summer fling. ”
I can feel eyes on us, but I don’t have the energy to care. My head is still pounding, but not because of the headache, no, now it hurts because of the jumble of confusion and anger that is bouncing around up there.
I can feel my eyes watering as resentment floods my eyes with tears. Miles’s eyes only soften from across the bar, and it just makes me angrier, makes one of those tears escape and roll down my cheek.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marco, my cousin’s security guy at Hotel Dolce, move in his seat so he’s directly facing us.
This whole bar is watching us, even if they’re pretending not to, but it doesn’t stop Miles from reaching for my hand that’s resting on the bar top.
“Don’t.” I take a step back, my voice coming out stern.
I could just walk away, I should walk away, but I don’t.
“It was more than a summer fling for me, Miles, and maybe it wasn’t for you, but…
” I shake my head, at a loss for words on what to even say right now. If I should be saying anything at all.
“It was more than that for me too and you know it,” he says.
“Do I?” I whisper shout.
His eyes are laced with pain as he says, “I was just as hurt.”
“Well that was your own damn fault!” I close my eyes, willing myself to calm the fuck down before I scare any customers away.
“Look, I don't even care anymore. Please just—thank you, for letting me get all of that out, but please just leave me alone, Miles.” I pick up the rag from before and swipe it over the already clean counter .
“I want to fix this, Marina. We are going to be around each other more and more, we need to figure out how to exist in each other's presence.”
“No,” I say. “You need to figure out how to respect my boundaries, Miles. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I only want to see you when I have to, nothing more than that.”
His eyes soften and my instincts tell me to take it back, but I can’t.
This is how it needs to be if I want to keep my sanity in check, because as I say the words out loud, I realize that I need to respect myself enough to enforce those same boundaries, because here I am talking to him when I said I didn’t want to.
“Please,” I say. “Just leave.”
His shoulders sag in defeat. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” I have to draw my gaze away from his before I do something stupid like say it’s okay, because it’s not.
“Marina,” my attention snaps to the other end of the bar where Marco stands, “is everything okay?”
My eyes automatically cut to Miles, to the flicker of hurt in his eyes that he quickly masks. He pushes off the bar. “Everything’s fine, I’m leaving.”
Wait, I want to say. But I don’t.
I hate the way my instincts want me to walk around the end of this bar and right into his arms. God, I’m fucked up. But I can’t help the way my body remembers him, no matter how hard I try to make my mind forget.
The way his knuckles felt against my cheeks, or the way his smile sent the butterflies in my tummy wild every time I saw it. Or his laugh. God, his laugh .
“I’m staying at the Lost and Found, just so you know where to avoid,” he says as he backs away from me. For whatever reason, it hurts to hear him say that. Knowing even as I kick him out of my bar, he’s still looking out for me in one way or another.
It might seem so simple, him telling me where he’s staying, but it’s giving me the control, giving me the knowledge so that I can stay as far away from the bed and breakfast as possible in a town the size of a postage stamp.
Marco drifts back to his table as Miles pushes on the door and escapes out into the warm night.
Why do I feel guilty? I know Miles would never hurt me, well, not like that.
I know I said that he needs to respect my boundaries, but deep down, I know he does.
That’s why he just left without a fight.
I know that all he wants to do is talk to me, but I don’t want to talk to him.
I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll forget why I was mad at him, and I can’t do that.
That hurt that I carry with me is the only reason I’ve kept myself together all these years.
He broke my heart, but I never let myself break down.
I focused on the anger over the hurt, and that’s the only thing that kept me from falling apart, and I’ve never quite let go of it.
I trudge up the steep staircase that leads from the bar to my apartment, fumbling with my keychain until I find the one that I have to jiggle at the right angle before I can push the door open.
I chuck my keys in a bowl just beside the door before I collapse on the couch with a groan.
I spent the entire rest of the night thinking about Miles and his stupid green eyes. No feeling will ever come close to the way it feels to have those eyes focused solely on you.
The Lost and Found is a bed and breakfast right at the edge of Ruby Cove. It’s settled in a corner between the water and the small forest of Aleppo Pines, giving it a cozy feeling like it’s tucked away. He will love it there.
God, I hate that I know that.
I hate that I know he will probably adore Donna, and she will adore him and his kind manner. I hate that I know that he will probably participate in Scrabble Thursdays and charm them all with his gorgeous smile. I hate that I know him at all.
Sometimes I wish he’d never walked into Bub’s, wish he’d never smiled at me, wish I’d never put on his stupid hat.
I wish he’d never kissed me the way he did and made me feel dizzy sitting atop that sticky bar.
But I especially wish he hadn’t walked into my bar tonight.
Because that is what is going to be replaying in my mind for the entire night, that defeated look in his perfect green eyes.