Chapter Forty
MARINA
PRESENT
The buzz of people around me fills my ears to the point of bursting.
Everyone is excited to be here, I can feel it in the air.
There’s something about this convention that Caio puts on that everyone loves.
It’s the one time in the whole year when everyone is together in one place, and there’s something about it that just feels special.
I pour three glasses of an apple martini from my mixer when Tamara comes over to the bar we’ve set up at the edge of the ballroom.
“Marina,” she says, her voice wavering, pulling my attention from the drinks in front of me.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t feel too good,” she says, holding her stomach.
Oh no . “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, but something is not sitting right with me and I really don’t fancy throwing up in someone's drink before I can get it to their table.”
“Okay,” I say, beginning to frantically shuffle glasses around me. I didn’t have a backup plan for this .
I always have a backup plan, but not today.
“Go home, get some rest, and update me tomorrow on how you’re feeling, okay?”
She nods, slipping her apron off and slinging it over the bar top with what looks like a lot more effort than it should take.
The fact that she isn’t arguing with me tells me just how bad it really is, because Tamara is one of those people who comes to work, rain or shine.
For better or worse, she’s always there. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” I wave a hand in dismissal, “we’ll be fine, don’t worry about us! Feel better.” I give her a reassuring smile before she disappears through the crowd in the general direction of the door.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Okay, it’s fine. I’m fine . I just need to work at double speed now so I can get out on the floor and serve and then run back to keep mixing in between.
I pull one of the drinks off the tray and take a sip, letting the alcohol burn the back of my throat as it goes down.
Shit, that’s stronger than I meant it to be.
I need to focus.
“Where is Tam going?” Molly appears in front of me.
“Home, she’s sick,” I say, placing the martinis on the tray she just unloaded mindlessly.
“She can’t go home, we need her.”
My eyes look over everything in front of me, not taking any of it in. “She was about half a minute away from serving someone a spewtini , so I think going home is probably for the best.”
Molly’s face contorts. “Oh, ew.”
“Yeah,” I drag my gaze up to finally look at her. “Ew.”
Her face pulls like she’s about to laugh, and then I do. Relieving the tension in my body with a bout of laughter.
Molly joins me, her cackle bouncing through the space. She snorts, sending us even further into the fit we are in. Both of us have our hands on our tummies, wheezing as we stand keeled over on either side of the bar, losing the plot.
“What’s all the fun over here?” A deep voice barrels through our laughter .
Molly just shakes her head, drying her eyes. “Absolutely nothing, we are just laughing so we don’t cry.”
Miles’s face quickly turns concerned. “Cry? Why would we be crying?”
Molly quietly grabs her tray of drinks, letting out one more snort before she slips into the crowd with a sly look sent my way.
“No,” I say, “um, we just—Tamara went home sick, so now we are down a set of hands and my brain can’t even figure out what I need to do next,” I ramble.
Miles strips off his suit jacket in response, rolling up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt as I stand here watching him with an open mouth. “Put me to work.”
“What?”
He grabs the discarded apron and ties it around his waist—looking exceptionally good while doing it, mind you. “Put me to work, boss.”
That word, boss .
It throws me right back to four years ago, the feeling that jumps in my tummy like an illusion.
It’s as if no time has passed at all when those names fall from his lips.
I know in this instance, he’s talking literally, but he used to call me 'boss' often—as often as princess.
Joking about the way I used to throw my weight around, taking the pants of our relationship and buttoning them tight around my waist.
I can’t speak more than two sentences to Miles these days before he’s saying something that reminds me of our past. It used to be jarring, like a wound being reopened.
But now it’s more like a salve, like a soft band-aid covering the wound while it heals, helping it along. I don’t know when it became like that.
“Marina?”
“Huh?” I ask, my mind finding its way back to the present moment.
“I can help. I know you might not think much of me, but I can serve a few drinks,” he jokes.
I drag my eyes to find his warm gaze. “I’ve always thought a lot of you, Miles. Even when I wished I could magic you to the bottom of the ocean, I’d always send you with an oxygen tank.” His eyes twinkle with amusement. “In my imagination, that is.”
“Of course.” He nods, his features pulled into a smirk.
His attention is caught as he pulls his buzzing phone out of his pocket, his brows tugging together before he hits a button with his thumb and deposits it back in his pocket.
I place four margaritas on the tray in front of me, avoiding looking at his beautiful face any longer. “I thought you said you wanted to work.” I nod to the drinks.
“Hey, you’re the one talking about the places you wanted to magic me to, not me. I’m ready.”
I finally meet his gaze again, and I can’t help the way my mouth tugs into a smile, no matter how hard I try to force it down. “Then get out there, hotshot.” He just gives me a wink that makes my knees weak as he heads out into the crowd.
He comes back and forth, grinning at me as he picks up the cocktails I’m serving for the next few hours. It feels easy working alongside him. Bossing him around comes naturally to me.
Isla meets us at the bar towards the end of the night, her eyes darting between us. “What’s going on here? What are you doing?” she asks Miles.
“I’m helping.”
“Such a sweetheart,” she says, pulling his apron off and throwing his suit jacket at him. “But you’re needed on the stage in five.”
“The stage?” I ask.
“For the auction,” Isla says.
“You’re doing the auction?” Irrational feelings of jealousy spear through me at the thought of Miles going on a date with someone else. I know it’s for charity, but my heart doesn’t seem to think it makes a difference.
“Not by my own choice,” he says, his eyes pleading with me to understand. Which I do, I’m entirely aware of how persuasive Isla can be when she wants to be .
“Let’s go,” she says before quickly disappearing into the crowd, Miles right on her tail. But he looks back, mouthing a quick sorry before he’s swallowed up by the sea people surrounding the stage.
I watch from behind the bar as Leo walks across the stage, selling himself to the crowd as women bid on him. He flaunts his charm like it’s him who’s getting the proceeds.
Isla set up this whole auction thing last year for a fundraiser to save Nora’s art studio, and Caio liked how much attention it brought to the fundraiser, so he decided to do it again this year. Today’s cause is the town library that needs a renovation.
Aria, the owner of the small bookstore in town, was talking to May about how the library has been in desperate need of a helping hand for a few years now. May went straight to Caio, and it’s safe to say she can be pretty convincing as well.
But with Rafael and May being infatuated with each other, there’s only Leo, Heath, and Miles who are auctioning off a date with themselves this year.
I can see why they needed Miles, it would’ve been a little bit lame with only Heath and Leo—no offence to them.
But when Miles walks onto that stage with a little swagger in his step, I can’t help but be furious that someone else is about to buy a date with him.
“You know you could make a bid yourself.” May sidles up to the bar, leaning her elbows on the top as she watches the stage. Turning to look over her shoulder at me when I don’t reply.
“I don’t have any spare cash lying around, unfortunately,” I say after a moment.
“I don’t think you’d need to pay to get that man to go on a date with you,” she says, her eyebrows raised with intention.
“Maybe not,” I say, knowing full well it’s the truth. We’ve been on multiple dates lately, even if that's not what we are calling them. “But someone else is about to.”
Paddles fly into the air as people call out prices, bidding higher and higher with every minute.
“You still holding out on him? ”
My mouth pops open. “I’m not holding out on him, May, I’m just…figuring everything out.”
“I know he hurt you in the past,” she says, turning around to face me, her eyes earnest. “But I don’t think he’d be standing up there, staring straight at you while a gaggle of women splash their cash for a date with him if he wasn’t serious about getting you back.”
I can’t argue with her, not while my eyes are locked on the deep forest across the room.
He’s done so many things to prove to me that he’s serious about getting me back.
Setting up an entire outdoor cinema and screening one of my favorite movies, opening up to me under the stars, sitting with me in the doctor's office, and holding my hand while I made the decision to go on birth control.
Miles has shown up for me over and over again, to the point where I can’t deny it anymore.
“He wouldn’t be telling your friends just how important you are to him if he was planning on doing a runner. I think he knows just how easily Leo would find him and put him straight back into the hospital.” I just shake my head, knowing how true that is. “He’s trying, Marina.”
“Sold!” Caio’s voice rings through the air. “To paddle number sixty-nine!”
May snorts. “Well, that’s ironic.”
We both watch as a woman with shiny brown hair runs up the stairs of the stage, bombarding Miles with a hug that says she has ideas about their date tonight. It makes me feel sick.