Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Stella
I had a hot, semi-naked man in my bedroom, but the itinerary specified that I had to be semi-naked with a bunch of women.
There was nothing better than a day at the spa.
Usually.
And as well as not being with Beck, I risked having to speak to Karen.
“Stella,” Karen called as soon as I stepped into the relaxation room—a darkened space, lit only by candles that reflected off the gold walls. Whale music played in the background and loungers were organized around a central display of stones and crystals. “There’s a free seat here.”
Typical that she’d be the first person I’d run into.
Before she’d run off with my boyfriend, I would have assumed she was being nice by offering me a seat, but now, I couldn’t imagine it was possible for her to do anything nice for anyone.
Perhaps she wanted to put on a show for the other people, or maybe she just needed to feel better about herself.
Either way, I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of making a scene by refusing her offer.
At least Florence was on the other side of me.
“I was just telling Florence that I hadn’t seen much of you,” she said, patting the chaise longue next to her. “I want to hear all about your new man.”
I had to dampen down a smile instead of the panic that usually came when I had to talk about my fake boyfriend. If nothing else, Beck was now my very real lover. “What is it that you want to know?” I asked.
“Is it serious? What’s he like?” she asked.
“It is from what I’ve seen,” Florence interrupted. “He’s charming, generous, funny, and crazy about Stella.”
Florence was quite possibly the best human being. She knew I was a useless liar. But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel the need for protection. “You’ve not seen anything until you’ve seen him naked,” I added.
Florence’s eyes widened, and I nodded.
“Good for fucking you,” she said, and I grinned. “You know what? With a man like that, I’m not sure I’d make it out of the bedroom.”
“I needed some recovery time,” I said and that was the truth.
After our first night together, I needed some mental space to process the things he’d made me feel.
But after last night, it was physical recovery I needed.
Every muscle and bone ached. And I wasn’t sure if it was from the things we’d done or my desire to do each one again.
“So, it’s just casual sex?” Karen asked.
Nothing I’d said had suggested that. “I didn’t say it was casual.” I grabbed a magazine from the pile on the table between Florence and me.
“But it can’t be all that serious,” Karen said. “You’ve only been together a few months.”
There were lots of things that were unbelievable about me being at this wedding, but Beck was right, one of them was that I’d never confronted Karen and Matt.
Maybe the reason they thought they could betray me so fundamentally and then expect everything to be hunky-dory was because I wasn’t the kind to confront people—that I was too focused on not making people uncomfortable, that I wanted everyone to be happy and get along.
I’d been trampled on for far too long.
“Who cares if it’s casual?” Florence interjected. “Beck’s so hot, I’d take whatever he was offering.”
“Yeah,” Karen said. “He doesn’t look the marrying kind.”
“Well, someone looking for marriage isn’t necessarily the best kind,” I replied, flicking through the pages of my magazine but not taking them in.
I wanted Karen to stop commenting on my love life like she hadn’t stolen my boyfriend.
Clearly Matt was available to be stolen but still—she should have some shame.
“Just a few months ago, I was dating someone who I thought was the marrying kind and look how that ended up.” I put my magazine down and turned to Karen, my pulse thudding in my ears as I tried to gather my courage.
“I spent seven years with Matt and he’s marrying you.
Perhaps I don’t want someone who pretends to want to marry me and then ends up marrying my best friend. ”
I could almost hear Florence’s jaw hit the floor behind me as I blew out a breath and my shoulders slid down from where they were up by my ears.
I’d been keeping all that in, squashed up like a ball, and now it was out, I had more room.
Karen blinked, furiously. “Well, if you felt like that, I don’t understand why you came.”
“Felt like what? Hurt? Betrayed? Devastated?” Did she really think I’d be fine with it? “Given what you did, I don’t understand why you invited me,” I replied.
“I thought you’d be happy for us. It wasn’t like the two of you were still living together.”
I snorted, blown away by her lack of empathy. I’d been trying to find a reason for what happened—if only I hadn’t insisted on the blue lounge chair or agreed to move down to London, but it was obvious now.
None of this was my fault.
The elephant that had been sitting on my chest since I received the invitation had moved on to rest his arse somewhere else.
“If that were true then you would have had the decency to tell me to my face that you were marrying my boyfriend. I wouldn’t have found out when I opened the invitation.
” She didn’t think I’d be happy for her; she just didn’t care.
“People can’t help falling in love, Stella. I thought you’d understand.”
She thought I’d understand because I always had. I’d always excused her selfish behavior, constantly put her happiness ahead of my own—I did it with everyone. And I’d had enough.
“I was in love with him for seven years, or did you forget?” I asked. After all these years, Karen’s motives for most things still flummoxed me. Was it possible that they were truly in love?
Either way, I didn’t have to pretend I was happy for them.
She looked at me, her eyes wide and her mouth parted as if she didn’t know if she should run or scream at me.
“Was it worth it? Are you happy?” I asked, genuinely wanting to know. Would marrying my ex-boyfriend fulfil her? Had losing a friend she’d had since she was five years old made her feel good?
“Of course,” she said, and I could almost see her feathers bristle. She checked her watch. “I think they might have forgotten about me. I’m going to see what the delay is.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “They shouldn’t be keeping the bride-to-be waiting.”
My limbs were floating, like I’d already had my massage. I always assumed confrontation brought anger and frustration but for me, telling Karen how I felt seemed to have instilled some kind of peace.
“Well, good for you,” Florence whispered as we watched Karen leave. “I’ve been waiting for years for you to stand up to her. I can’t believe she thought you’d be happy for her.”
“That’s how much of a doormat I’ve been,” I said.
“It says far more about her than you, but I do like this new Stella. Has spending time with Beck made you brave?”
“I’m not sure brave’s the word.” Time with Beck hadn’t given me courage, but it had given me a little bit of distance and perspective, away from the drama and debacle.
Beck was an outsider, who had no skin in the game.
Florence had been telling me for years I should stand up to Karen, but somehow seeing myself through Beck’s eyes changed things.
“If Beck doesn’t make you brave, how does he make you feel?” Florence grinned so wide I couldn’t help but smile back—because of Beck but also because I had a friend like Florence who wanted me to be happy. Friends like her were rarer than I used to believe.
“Like I have more room to breathe,” I replied. “He’s . . . I mean, it’s nothing—we’re stuck up here together and it’s . . . convenient. But I’m twenty-six and I’ve never had a fling, so I guess this is the holiday romance I never had.”
“It’s way overdue. And you never know, it’s not like he’s Marco Russo and heading back to Italy in a couple of months.”
I laughed. Marco Russo—how did Florence remember things like our Italian student teacher when we were fourteen?
Every girl in the school had been utterly distracted by his swarthy looks and had completely underperformed in the end-of-school exams. “Back then you were all about going to Italy when we finished the exams.”
“Like he would have even remembered our names at the end of the year,” she said.
“Right? He never knew our names in the first place.”
“I’d never seen a man so attractive,” Florence said. “I was sure that if I could find him in Italy, he’d fall in love with me, we’d get married, live in Tuscany, and paint and be happy forever.”
We’d all had childhood fantasies that seemed ludicrous now. Just like the thought that I was going to marry Matt seemed now like something that had always been utterly impossible.
“You seem happy,” Florence said. “When you’re with Beck.”
I guess I was. But I wasn’t going to let myself think that it was something more than it was.
“You’re ridiculous.” I tossed my magazine back on the table between us.
“Beck is a stopgap. He’s a something that happens before real things happen.
Like the anesthetic before an operation or the canape before the main meal.
” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. I wasn’t sure that was true for me.
Beck felt like the start of something, but I didn’t want to be that na?ve girl who tumbled into something and got taken advantage of, again.
If Beck wasn’t my future, he was a whisper of a future—a hint that there could be something after all that had happened. For the first time in a long time, I was starting to wonder what would make me happy.