Chapter 7
MILES
I’m about ten years too old to be at this beach party right now, although there are people here twice my age and everywhere in between.
I only came because Carlos invited me and because I didn’t have to leave the resort to attend.
He said he was DJing, and I said I’d come support him.
But I’ve been here an hour already and the man hasn’t started his set yet.
It might not be a work night, but I’m no night owl, and it’s pushing nine o’clock.
I’ll give him another hour and then I’m out.
There’s enough going on to keep me occupied: a seafood buffet complete with a salad bar, and more side dishes than my stomach can hold. Two tiki bars with specialty drinks are set up at each end of the stretch of beach hosting this party, both busy with people lubricating for a night of dancing.
There’s a dance floor set up in the middle of it all.
String lights, strobe lights, colored lights.
The beach is awash in purples and bright blues, dotted with tiki torches to help light the walking paths designated for the partygoers.
Scattered around are high-top tables for people to socialize, eat, and drink.
Supposedly there’s entertainment planned for the evening, but right now, people are simply eating and drinking and warming up for the rest of the night.
I’m just hoping to spot a familiar face. Destiny said she might swing by, but I’m holding out hope that Abby will show up.
After the pasta class earlier today, we went our separate ways, and for the first time in three days, she didn’t rush away from me in tears. It was an amicable parting, and if it was the last time we’d ever see each other, there would probably be a lot of peace for her.
There will be no peace for me as long as Abby Ashe is here.
Hell, I don’t think it will be any better once she leaves.
I’d forgotten what it was like to just be around her.
In those brief flashes of conversation where she forgot to be mad at me and she would tease me, joke with me, I remembered.
I remembered the way she and I could flow between serious and silly and intimate with ease.
Being with Abby again is as comfortable as it was all those years ago, like putting on an old denim jacket.
Even being vulnerable with her was easier than I thought it would be.
I wasn’t good at that in college. I couldn’t even tell her I loved her.
She knew I did; she knew how I felt. I tried to show her in all the ways I couldn’t say it.
She understood. This is one of the things that makes Abby beautiful—it isn’t just her ocean-blue eyes and the way they sparkle when she laughs; it’s her patience.
Even giving me the time of day to explain myself last night shows that she hasn’t changed in all the ways that really matter. She is as patient with me as she was in college.
By the time I met Abby in our junior year, I was two years removed from my parents’ divorce and my dad was living his new life. The scandal in our small town had finally died down, but I had a shattered heart and a bitter view of love.
As strongly as I felt for Abby, I could never say the words she needed to hear because I was so jaded by the callous way my own father had treated the woman he claimed to love for decades.
I swore the day my dad told us about the affair that I’d never fall in love, and then of course Abby came into my life.
Sweet, precious Abby. With her hands almost always stained with paint color and her migraines and her soft kisses. She almost loved all of the hurt of my past out of me, and all I ever did was choose hockey over her.
That woman deserved more from me then, and she sure as hell deserves better now.
There were a couple of moments in the last few days that made me wonder if there would ever be a chance for us again, but even if I did want her back, there isn’t a world in which she would want me back.
And rightfully so. I could live 150 years and I’d never do enough to deserve her attention or love again.
As if I conjured her with my thoughts, my eyes land on her while scanning the beach.
Standing at a tall table by herself, frozen margarita in her hand, she’s no more than twenty feet away from me, the wind whipping her walnut-brown hair around in a way that’s probably annoying her, but I think gives her an ethereal quality.
Her white sundress, with its thin straps and bow in the back, swirls around her legs.
She clutches the fabric with a free hand, surveying her surroundings.
I’m tempted to walk over and talk to her, but I spent the whole day basically following her around, so she deserves a little space from me.
She catches my eye, lifting a hand to wave at me.
Her lips curve into a sweet smile, and I lift my hand to return the greeting.
She drops her gaze to her drink, takes a sip, and continues her survey of the crowd of people.
It doesn’t take but a few seconds for her eyes to find mine again.
I never looked away, and she seems to clock that and waves again.
I wave back again, trying to fight my growing smile.
I feel like I’m seeing my crush in the hallway at school.
Again, she looks down at her glass, but this time she looks back up right at me.
I’m waiting for her to look away again, but instead she starts to walk toward me.
“What? No J?ger shots?” she asks as she sets her drink at the table I’ve been standing at for the last twenty minutes.
“That was one time. And it wasn’t shots; it was a bottle of J?ger. Someone should have told me not to have that much.”
“I did tell you, and you said to me, and I quote, ‘Only squares say shit like that,’ and then proceeded to chug half the bottle.”
“I fear I had already blacked out by then,” I say.
Abby’s giggle is the kind of sound I want to record on my phone and listen to on a bad day.
“You did black out, and you don’t remember the color of everything you brought back up later that night, but I do. It’s seared into my memory.”
“You know what helps with forgetting things like that?”
Abby raises her eyebrows at me skeptically.
“Alcohol,” I say with a wink.
“Well, it’s not J?ger, but hopefully this does the trick.” She raises her glass and takes a sip. “So you said you live here because you’re building a house nearby. How’s that going? Are you almost done?”
“It’s coming along. We should be closer to being done, but Doug’s wife keeps changing things. It’s extending the timeline, but it’s not like I have anything to get home to. House is gorgeous, though—you should come see it.”
The invitation slips out of my mouth before I can stop myself.
I won’t pretend that I wouldn’t love for her to come see the house.
To watch her oooh and ahhh at my work, to see her eyes light up when she sees the view from the balcony out back.
But this interaction is already a tentative one; it’s stepping onto thin ice.
Inviting her to hang out with me, and especially off-resort, was not just bold—it was dumb.
“That sounds really cool. You don’t miss home?”
She breezed past the invitation, thank god.
“Nothing to miss. I just sold a house that I flipped back in Pittsburgh before moving here. Bought another one to flip when I’m done with this job, but I’m still waiting on the inspection reports, so I’m not rushing yet.
I was living with my mom before that, and before that I was…
where was I? Nashville? Did another job for a hockey acquaintance. And before that—”
“Wow, you move around a lot.”
“I take opportunities as I get them. I don’t like to stay in one place for too long.”
“Is that like from your NHL days? Traveling a lot for games and such?”
I open my mouth to answer, but realize that I don’t know the answer to her question.
I never really thought that hard about why I move around so much.
I get antsy being in one place for too long, and usually by the time I’m moving, I’m ending another casual relationship with a girl who wants more than I can give her.
I always figured I’d settled down when a place felt like home, but so far I haven’t found that feeling.
Maybe it doesn’t really exist. Maybe it’s one of those things like soulmates. Some people will say they found it because they found it, but that doesn’t make it real. Like the people who claim to have seen Bigfoot.
“Maybe,” I say. “It’s hard for me to stay still.”
Abby laughs, but it’s half huffed out.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s just…that’s always been true for you. You get restless easily. If you had a practice get cut short, it would always put you on edge. And the few times I saw you sick, you were so bad at resting. I don’t know if you’re still like that?”
Now it’s my turn to snort-laugh. “Yeah, I’m still like that. I go to the gym every morning. Sometimes I swim at night or go on a run. So I guess you could say I have trouble being still.”
I like that Abby remembers things about me, that she still seems to understand me in a way that took me years to grasp.
“And here I am, living ten minutes from the house I grew up in, in the same job I’ve had for eleven years. I’m at the edge of change, digging my heels in to keep things the same, even if it kills me.”
She mutters the last bit into her drink, maybe thinking I won’t hear it.
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic,” I say. “Even if it kills you?”