Chapter Thirty-Six
MARINA
PRESENT
“Okay, try that one.” I slide a drink across the bar.
“You might have to put me in that basket on the front of your bike to get me home after this, I don’t think it’s safe to drive after…how many does this one make it? Five cocktails?” Miles says before he takes a sip of his drink.
“You’ll be fine,” I say. “You’ve got enough body mass, the alcohol probably doesn’t affect you one bit.”
He smirks and I realize I just boosted his ego without meaning to. “Thanks, princess.”
“Yeah,” I mutter.
The more time I spend with Miles, the more I hate myself.
I hate myself because I love spending time with him and I am finding it so hard to keep pretending like I’m not.
I know I don’t have to do that, pretend like I’m not enjoying his company, but I don’t want to admit it.
I’ve spent every other day with Miles over the last few weeks, and with every smile he throws my way, my resolve crumbles.
I nearly gave in a few nights ago when we were under the stars, when he opened up to me. I nearly leaned down to kiss him, nearly told him we could work this all out, but I stopped myself.
I feel like I’m letting myself down in some fucked up way. Like I’m setting myself up for failure. Letting the man who left me right back into my life like it was nothing, but I just can’t help it. Every day spent with him is like a drug; I always want just one more.
It was always so effortless with him, so easy. Our personalities just fit like puzzle pieces, and that hasn’t faded with time, even when so much has changed between us.
He goes quiet on the other side of the bar while I mix up a new cocktail silently, my thoughts loud around me. I mix it up in the shaker before pouring it out into a new glass. “There.”
Miles looks up at me, concerned. “I haven’t even finished this one.”
“You can finish it after,” I push the new one towards him.
Caio asked me last week if I could run the bar at The Ruby Cove Business Convention this year.
It’s something he does every year, more as a town get-together than anything else.
Usually, I attend, but this year the team that ran the bar and catering services dropped out, and I couldn’t say no to my cousin.
Miles shakes his head but does what I say, he’s never been able to say no to me, and as he takes a sip of the new drink, I remember the ways I used to take advantage of that.
“Fuck!” A cough interrupts my thoughts. “How much tequila did you put in this?”
A laugh bubbles out of me as Miles pulls a face and puts the glass back on the bar, pushing it back over to me.
“Jesus fuck,” he coughs. I laugh again, a snort slipping out.
Miles goes still, looking at me with wonder.
“What?” I ask, taking that drink and tipping it down the sink behind me before turning to see him again.
“I just never thought I’d hear that again.”
“What? My snort?”
He smiles. “Your laugh. ”
That makes me pause. I can feel the flush creeping up my chest. “I’ve laughed around you.”
“Not like that,” he says.
He’s probably right. I haven’t let myself laugh like that with him. I’ve been trying for so long to hold back, to protect myself, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up, and I think Miles knows it too.
He smiles, taking another sip of the drink. “You know, through all these years, I’ve never really had any cocktails. None were any as good as yours. Especially not that apple martini you made the last time we did this.”
My heart stops. I hadn’t even realized that we are playing out something we used to do all the time.
It came so naturally to me that I forgot. Forgot that he's always been the person I've tested new cocktails on. That we used to do exactly this four years ago, just not here. It makes me feel sick in my stomach.
Here I go again with this back and forth.
My mind and my body can’t agree on what they want, can’t even agree on what they feel.
It’s like I’m in this never-ending loop of not knowing what the hell to do when I’m in this man’s presence.
He’s trying to earn back my trust, and I’m finding it hard not to hand it all over to him.
“Can I tell you something?” he says, his voice quiet as he rolls his empty glass on the bar top. It’s so similar to the question I asked him only nights ago that I wonder if this is going to be another one of those moments. The ones where I nearly hand my heart back to him.
“Depends, is it going to make me feel better or worse than I do now?” I say, knowing I can be brutally honest with him.
“I honestly don’t know.”
My stomach didn’t know the definition of sick until that sentence was just spoken aloud.
“Miles?”
He finally looks up at me. “I came back. ”
“What are you talking about?” My voice sounds muffled through my own ears, like I’m drowning underwater.
“I came back for you. I went back to Sorrento, back to the bar, but you were gone.”
I shake my head, refusing to believe what I’m hearing. Not understanding a single syllable that’s left his mouth. “What do you mean you went back?”
“I went back for you, Marina. I spent a month back at work, thinking of you every single minute, regretting what I did, and hating myself for it. I couldn’t get you out of my head. His eyes are pleading with me to understand, like I don't know that exact feeling.
“I knew I had just fucked up the singular best thing in my life, so I came back. But you were gone. I asked Rosalie where you were and she said you’d gone home, but that she didn’t know where that home was. You never told her, and you had never told me.”
My breathing turns quick as the image he’s describing plays out in my mind. I can see it so clearly. Him walking into the bar like he did that first night, and every night after. A look of hope on his face, waiting to see a glimpse of me.
“But I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t believe that I had lost the chance to tell you how sorry I was, and how wrong I was,” he shakes his head.
“I stayed there for over a week, getting stuck at the bottom of a whiskey glass waiting for you to come back. I knew it didn’t make sense, and that you were long gone, but I wasn’t going to take the chance that you would show up when I wasn’t there.
So I waited until I got called back to work, and I knew you weren’t coming back. ”
A singular tear rolls ever so slowly down my cheek. Everything that I thought about him leaving… It was wrong. Or was it?
He still left in the first place. But knowing he came back, it changes things. I don’t know if it should, but it does.
“So I let go, or I pretended to. I tried to accept the fact that I was never going to see you again, and I had no one to blame but myself. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t accept it.
I couldn’t touch anyone else, I couldn’t think of anyone else, I couldn’t sleep without dreaming of you, Marina.
You have consumed me from the moment I met you, not knowing where you were, or being thousands of miles away from you never changed that.
You still consume me,” he says plainly, as if it’s so obvious.
Another tear drops from my eye. “Please don’t cry,” he whispers.
I just shake my head. “You were always so good at pretty words, weren’t you?”
“Let me prove to you that they aren’t empty,” he begs.
I drag the sleeve of my shirt across the apple of my cheek, trying to wipe away the dampness. “I don’t know how to let you back in.”
He just shakes his head, resting it on his palm. “I’m sorry I did this to us, princess.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Me too.”