8. Melody
— ? —
Melody
The resort sets up bonfires on the beach every few nights, and tonight the flames are painting everything gold.
I’m sitting in the sand with my knees pulled up, watching sparks spiral toward the stars, when Noah drops down beside me and hands me a drink I didn’t ask for.
“Mango something,” he says. “The bartender insisted.”
“The bartender who keeps giving me free desserts?”
“That’s the one. I think he’s decided you need feeding up.”
I take a sip. It’s sweet and cold and tastes like vacation, like these surreal weeks I never planned to have.
“I still can’t believe I’m here,” I say. “I was supposed to fly home over a week ago.”
“And yet.” He stretches his legs out, ankles crossed, looking impossibly relaxed. “I’m glad you decided to stay longer. Though I suspect it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with that waterfall.”
“It has something to do with whoever extended my room.” I watch the fire instead of him, because it’s easier.
“My credit ran out three days ago. I went down to settle up and the front desk told me my stay had been extended, compliments of management, and then looked at me like I was crazy when I tried to argue. That was you. Your mysterious owner friend.”
“I told you I’d sort it out. I know the owner. He owed me a favor.”
“Nobody’s ever met this owner. I asked the bartender. He got very busy polishing a glass.”
“He’s a private man.” Noah says it with a solemnity so complete I almost believe him.
“I don’t take free rooms, Noah.”
“It’s not free. Somebody’s paying for it.” He looks at the fire, and something crosses his face, there and gone. “Just not you. Not this time. You’ve paid for enough this year.”
I let it go. I shouldn’t, probably. But we’re leaving the shouldn’ts on the beach tonight.
“The waterfall is very compelling.” I change the topic.
“More compelling than me?”
“It doesn’t talk as much.”
He laughs and I lean into his shoulder without thinking about it, and his arm comes around me like it belongs there.
“I keep waiting to wake up,” I admit. “Every morning I open my eyes and think, okay, today’s the day reality crashes back in.
The lawyers, the apartment, all his stuff I’m going to have to sort through.
But then I look out the window and the ocean’s still there, and you’re still here, and it feels like I’m living in someone else’s life. ”
“Maybe it’s your life now. Maybe this is the upgrade.”
“Life doesn’t work like that.”
“Why not?”
I don’t have an answer for that. The fire crackles and pops, sending another shower of sparks into the darkness. A few other guests are scattered around the beach, but they feel miles away, background noise to whatever this is between us.
“I wonder if he actually left,” I say quietly. “Leo. I haven’t seen him since the restaurant, and I keep expecting to run into him around every corner.”
“Would it matter if he stayed?”
“No.” I realize it’s true as I say it. “I don’t care where he is. I don’t care what he’s doing or who he’s doing it with. I just don’t want to see his face.”
“Then don’t look for it.” Noah’s hand finds mine in the sand. “Look at this instead.”
He tips his head back, and I follow his gaze. The sky is ridiculous, thick with stars in a way I’ve never seen at home, the Milky Way a smear of light across the darkness.
“I used to want this so badly,” I whisper.
“Thailand. The water, the temples, all of it. I saved pictures for years. And now I’m actually here, and it’s everything I imagined, and it’s also nothing like I imagined, because I thought I’d be here with him.
I thought this trip would be the beginning of something. ”
“It is the beginning of something.”
“Something I never planned.”
“The best things usually are.” He turns to look at me, and the firelight catches in his eyes.
“I didn’t plan you either, you know. I wasn’t looking for anything that night.
I was just trying to get through another sleepless stretch.
And then you defended pineapple on pizza like it was a hill worth dying on, and something in my chest just... shifted.”
“Shifted how?”
“Like a door opening. Like suddenly there was a room I didn’t know existed.” He brings my hand to his lips, kisses my knuckles. “I know this is fast. I know you’re still in the middle of everything. But every day you stay feels like a gift I didn’t earn.”
“You’re earning it.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “Every stupid joke about jazz fusion bands. Every time you make me laugh when I think I’ve forgotten how. Every morning you show up with coffee like you knew I’d be there.”
“I did know. You’re predictable.”
“I am not predictable.”
“You are. Adorably so. You always sit facing the water. You always order the same breakfast. You always have that little crease between your eyebrows when you’re thinking about something you don’t want to talk about.”
“I do not have a crease.”
“You have the crease right now.” He reaches over and smooths his thumb between my brows, and the touch sends warmth spreading through my whole body. “See? There it goes.”
I catch his hand before he can pull it back, hold it against my face. “This feels too good to be real. That’s what scares me. I’ve spent the last week waiting for the other shoe to drop, for you to turn out to be something you’re not, for all of this to fall apart the way everything else has.”
“I understand. But I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can promise to try. I can promise that whatever happens, I’m not going to lie to you.
I’m not going to make you feel crazy for trusting your own instincts.
I’m not going to text someone else while you’re asleep on my shoulder.
” His voice goes serious, the teasing gone.
“I know I’m asking you to trust again when trust almost destroyed you.
I know that’s huge. But I’m asking anyway. ”
The fire is dying down now, the flames lower, the crowd thinning out.
In a few hours the sun will come up and another day will start, and eventually I’ll have to go home and face everything I’m avoiding.
But right now there’s just the warmth of his hand in mine and the stars wheeling overhead and this feeling in my chest that I’m terrified to name.
“Ask me again tomorrow,” I say. “And the day after that. Keep asking until I stop being scared.”
“I can do that.” He leans in and kisses me, soft and slow, tasting like salt and mango and something that might be the beginning of everything. “I can do that for as long as you need.”
We stay on the beach until the bonfire burns down to embers, talking about nothing and everything, and when we finally walk back to the resort with our shoulders touching, I let myself believe, just for a moment, that maybe the best things really are the ones you never planned.