Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Tess
Me
Why didn’t you tell me that Kit came to see you after I left last year?
Gary B
Why didn’t you tell me that you were going on a vacation with the boy?
Because I didn’t know. I start to type the words out but hesitate, fingers hovering above my phone screen. Why, even distraught and, honestly, a little bit annoyed as I am, do I want to protect Kit? I blame the Neanderthalian version of me that thought, “ You, Tarzan. Me, Jane, ” and then mounted him like a tree outside my motel room last summer. It’s obviously her fault I invited him here in the first place.
That’s what I get for going too long without getting laid. The first warm-blooded, delectable-looking creature comes along, offering milkshakes and quick comebacks, and I’m throwing all rational thought to the wind.
When I find myself doing the sad calculation to find out just how long it’s been since I last did the naked tango, I abandon my text thread with Gary and my half-unpacked suitcase in favor of the rooftop bar.
Anxiety weighs on my heart and, beneath it, confusion. How can I be so upset that he’s here and still find myself hoping he’s waiting for me in the hallway when I yank open my door? It doesn’t make any sense.
I know I was right. About everything. I can’t function with him here. And he shouldn’t have come without warning me. But there’s a part of me who relished every second we stood a mere foot apart for the first time in nearly a year. The same part that feels vindicated now that I know for certain I wasn’t imagining the draw between us. Even with all the shock of seeing him, I feel it now, simmering beneath the surface. I’m simultaneously wishing he’d hop on the next plane back to Colorado, and wondering if he’d bottle up his sandalwood scent for me to spray my pillows with later tonight.
No. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
He’s already dangerously confident. There’s no other way to explain the level of absolute cognitive dissonance it would take to think showing up here was a good idea. I’ll give credit where credit is due. The man is really fucking cocky.
Past the elevator bay, the hallway is devoid of hotel room doors. Instead the fogged-glass entry to the spa is on my right and a wall of windows on my left, giving passersby a view into the gym. It’s barely more than a few cardio machines and a weight rack, but it does its job.
I wrinkle my nose as I catch a whiff of the plastic-y rubber mats that make up the gym flooring. A year at Harvey’s was half a year too long.
My boss didn’t really understand when I gave my notice last week. Offered a generous raise for me to stay on, especially since I didn’t have a new gig lined up to take this one’s place. But I never do. I don’t ever know when the timer is going to run out on a job. I just wake up one day and know that I’m ready to move on. Alicia calls me restless. I don’t think there’s a word for what I am.
I’ll find something else. I’m like a cat in that way, always landing on my feet.
The restaurant at the other end of the L-shaped building is suffering from a midafternoon lull. Come dinnertime, it’ll be bursting at the seams. Topwater is the only restaurant for a few miles and therefore benefits from the captive audience of the Carmen’s guests. Their only other option is driving thirty minutes in summer traffic to the nearby outlet mall, where chain restaurants and fried seafood abound.
It’s also Alex’s passion project, which is why I’m not surprised to find him behind the bar as I step out onto the patio portion of the restaurant.
He’s Mauricio’s senior by several years, but the two men are twins in appearance. Dark, coarse hair peppered with gray and brown eyes that warm you up the minute they land on you. The only difference is the goatee he insists on sporting, despite the fact that Mara and I have been trying to convince him it’s uncool for years.
“Still haven’t shaved, huh, Alex?” I climb onto a rattan barstool and drop my purse on the granite counter. The surface is sticky and stained with red splotches. I help myself to a nearby rag and wipe it clean.
He glances up from the papers he’d been going over with a young bartender I don’t recognize, and smiles wide when he realizes who’s ribbing him. “ Mija! ” My daughter.
There’s a reason I keep coming back to this place.
“I swear you look a year older every time I see you,” I tease.
“Perhaps that is because I am.” He abandons the young man, probably freshly twenty-one if I had to guess, with a baby face to boot, and exits the backside of the square bar through a pony door next to the liquor wall that makes up the fourth side. I stand up just in time for his arms to swallow me whole, and though we are the same height, I sag against him for a moment, all the tension of my run-in with Kit finally hitting me at once.
“Whoa, whoa.” Alex pulls back, dark brows pinching tight. “Why so sad, mija? You’re home! Today is a happy day!”
“You’re right. Today is a happy day.” I smile, though it doesn’t reach my eyes. He’s been saying it to me for so many years that I can hardly remember the first time he repeated my father’s go-to phrase back to me. The words Dad would reassure me with when I was anxious for a cheer meet or sad that he had to go back to work after a long weekend spent playing together outside while Mom baked cherry pie for us to gorge ourselves on in the evening.
It’s been my motto ever since. A reminder that, even when I feel like I’m falling apart, my parents would want me to be happy.
Alex pats my bicep. “That’s my girl. What can we whip up for you?” He gestures toward the new guy, who waves awkwardly and tosses his shaggy hair back with a neck jerk that hurts my own. “Sebastian here is in training.”
I open my mouth to say hello to Sebastian, but just then he shifts his weight, clearing my view to the other side of the bar.
Where Kit sits, eyebrows raised, with a strawberry daiquiri pressed to his lips.
“No.”
Alex’s nose scrunches. “No?”
My gaze slices to him briefly. “No, not you, I meant—” Back to Kit, who’s smirking. “You.” I point a finger at him and ignore the innocent way he splays a hand over his heart to verify my target. “Not here too. The bar is mine.”
He wets his lips, and I’m ashamed to say it makes my hands sweat.
“I hadn’t realized we were divvying up custody.”
Sebastian decides this is the perfect time to collect the rag I’d snatched along with a bucket of Q-San. He slips out of the bar, heading for the array of tables that line the balcony to start wiping their shiny surfaces one by one. Alex points at Kit and me with his respective fingers, then switches, crossing his arms over his chest. “You two know each other?”
“Yes,” Kit says, sounding amused. I pinch my lips closed. Much as I’d like to contradict him, Alex knows me too well to buy that lie.
Alex scratches at his goatee with his thumb and forefinger. “Hm. All right. Interesting.”
“We aren’t divvying up custody because the whole resort is mine. You can find somewhere else to stay.” I gesture broadly. “It’s a big fucking beach.” I’m ashamed to say my voice cracks on the curse, stealing any heat from it.
“Now, Tess,” Alex says. He raises his hands palm out like I’m a horse in need of steadying. “We could use the revenue?—”
“How many times do I have to remind you that you invited me here?” Kit’s jaw is taut, his thin lips flatlined. Gone is the easy confidence from earlier, and damn, am I ashamed to admit that I miss it.
Though perhaps I like this version of him better. The intensity in his gaze. Tightly coiled muscles visible beneath a linen shirt. It feels more real, somehow.
I don’t acknowledge his question. Can’t, because it pulls the rug right out from beneath my already flimsy argument. Desperation crackles in my veins. I turn to Alex, whose gaze is wild with confusion. “Surely you can do without one room’s worth of revenue, Tio. ” Uncle. He and Mauricio will do anything for me when I start reminding them we are family, if only the kind you find rather than being born into.
Kit huffs, “Excuse me?—”
Alex clicks his tongue. “Can’t, Mija. We’re renovating the pool deck at the end of the summer and need every penny we can find.”
A stone plummets from my chest to my stomach. “What do you mean, renovating the pool deck?”
His gaze softens at the corners. “All the concrete’s finally getting torn up. We’re replacing it with these really nice pavers Jenna found from a wholesaler out of Defuniak Springs.”
“Can we please discuss—” Kit starts.
“Not now,” I bite out, sounding more like a scared, feral dog than the strong woman I’d like to be right now. I just don’t have the energy to devote to this petty argument when I’m struggling as it is to process Alex’s words. “But the handprints?”
“I know, Tess. I’m sorry. But it’s time. The concrete is cracked and unstable. It needs the upgrade badly. Your parents would understand.”
They would, maybe, but do I?
“What handprints?”
This time both Alex and I turn to Kit. “None of your business,” I say, exasperated.
A woman I hadn’t noticed sitting at a nearby table, next to the one Sebastian has washed at least five times by now, turns in her chair. It screams against the slate flooring as her weight shifts. She scans all our faces but narrows her eyes at me specifically. “Do you mind? Some of us are trying to have a peaceful afternoon, and you two bickering certainly isn’t helping.”
“Yeah, get a room,” is the extremely valuable addition the man opposite her offers.
Heat floods my cheeks. I turn back to Alex. “I’m sorry, I?—”
“I’ll move closer.” Kit pushes back from the counter, grabs his drink, and is closing in on me before I have a chance to object. He slips into the seat beside the one I abandoned for my Alex hug, and drags a sip from his daiquiri. “Where were we? Oh! The handprints.”
Alex eyes me carefully. I feel his gaze burning my temple. I know he’s looking for a hint at how much information to withhold, but I’m too busy regaining my footing to offer much.
“Er, Tess was little when we redid the pool deck last. She and her parents stamped their handprints in the concrete the day it was poured.”
I remember it clearly. Dreary gray clouds blotted out the sun. They feared it would rain, so the construction workers—friends of Jenna’s—almost didn’t pour it. In the end, after a lot of radar watching and tense conversation between grown-ups, they forged ahead. I was upset that it meant no pool time for an entire week, but Jenna and Alex sweetened the deal with their offer to permanently memorialize ourselves in the pool deck we’d visit every summer.
Permanent, as it turns out, only equals about twenty years.
“And now you’re going to tear that concrete up?” There’s no attitude left in Kit’s voice. Only concern, and based on the way his hazel gaze cuts from Alex to me and softens, it’s all for me. “Tess,” he breathes, and then he’s reaching for me.
I step back just as his fingertips brush my bicep. The touch shrink-wraps my lungs, which are already struggling in the damp Florida heat. I duck my head, hoping I can hide what he does to me and how this news has me reeling, in one fell swoop.
“I’m sorry, Tess. Really.” Alex steps closer, and I allow him to loop an arm around my shoulders. More for his comfort than mine. “We will still have their picture in the lobby.”
Ah, yes. The memorial plaque. I avoid it like the plague. A black-and-white photo pulled from their obituary, that the Ortiz family surprised me and my grandparents with the first summer we returned after the accident.
I know they meant well, but every time I see it, it’s like a shard of glass gets lodged in my heart. The handprints are different. They are proof that my parents were living, breathing people who loved this place so much they left their mark on it. It’s a physical reminder that they really were here. I didn’t just imagine all those happy years before the really, very unhappy one.
I can’t say all this to Alex, though. He and his family have been nothing but kind to me. If their resort needs updating, I can’t expect them to refrain forever on my behalf.
“Sure, Alex. It’s totally fine.” I shrug, lifting his arm along with my shoulders.
Kit’s expression is unreadable. His lips part, but he’s cut off by the nasal voice of the woman whose bad graces we’ve earned.
“Can I please get a pina colada?” she asks, having hobbled over to the bar while her husband waits at their table, nose buried in his phone. They’re in their midsixties, likely snowbirds who’ll head back North in a week or two, based on the visor holding back her bouffant hair and his Hawaiian print shirt/tall white socks in sandals combo, if not her unmistakable Boston accent.
“ Mierda. I haven’t taught Sebastian how to make those yet.” Alex’s gaze dances from me to Kit as his arm slips from my shoulders. “Can I trust you two to behave?”
“Yes, sir,” Kit replies with a salute.
“No promises,” I add with an honest eyebrow raise.
Alex pinches my chin. “Why am I not surprised?” Then he’s gone, cutting back into the bar alongside Sebastian and making a beeline for the blender on the opposite countertop.
“Can we declare a truce long enough for me to ask if you’re all right?” Kit asks.
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” I climb back into my chair and fold my arms onto the counter. “Besides the fact that I still haven’t gotten a drink.”
Without hesitation, Kit slides his half-empty daiquiri in front of me. “Don’t do that.”
I take a sip of the too-sweet cocktail and wince as the cold hits my teeth. “Do what?”
He leans close. So close that his sandalwood scent is making it hard to breathe, let alone swallow my next sip. “Pretend you’re okay when you’re not.”
My mouth freezes on the rim of the glass, and not because of the cold. He has no right. He thinks he can waltz in here, not knowing me from Adam, and pretend in the minuscule amount of time we’ve spent together he’s learned to read my tells?
Nuh-uh. No way.
“Good night, Kit.”
He glances toward the beach, where the sun is nowhere near setting. “It’s, like, five p.m.”
I grab my purse and lock eyes with Alex, who has a million questions in his eyes and enough courtesy not to ask any of them. “Catch up soon, Alex?”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little thrill from the daggers he starts shooting Kit. “I’ll have dinner sent to your room. It’s just you, right?”
Okay, so he let one question slip. Can’t blame a man after the show we put on. “Yes. Just me.”
“Tess—” Kit starts to rise from his barstool alongside me, but his movement is halted by the hand I place on his forearm.
I’ll have to boil that hand later, if the way it’s tingling is any indication.
“Stay.” I must glare convincingly enough, because his ass finds the seat again. “Good boy.”
He scoffs. I turn away, remind Alex of my usual (scallops and his signature pasta recipe, a pink sauce I’ve never been able to recreate at home), and then push into a blast of air-conditioning. The restaurant is filling up with early bird diners. I dodge their curious glances, practically jog back to my room, and flatten my spine against the door once I’m safely inside it.
I’m sticky from the humidity or the nerves of being around Kit or both, and my heart is about to beat out of my chest. I quickly strip off my tank top and jeans, which I leave in a pile by the door with my discarded purse, and step into the bathroom.
A cold shower. That’ll fix all my problems, right? It works for the athletes I see on TV, at least.
Wrong. So wrong. Within a second, I’m turning the water two degrees shy of blistering. Why the fuck would anyone subject themselves to the misery of a cold shower?
The tension melts from my muscles. For the longest time, I don’t even bother with the shampoo or soap. I just wither beneath the stream of boiling water, hoping this is the thing that will fix me. Praying it’ll wash away the sadness and desperation both, leaving behind some version of me I can actually be in front of Kit, since he’s obviously not going anywhere.
When thoughts of him standing before me in the sea-green glass-tiled shower, all long, muscled limbs and bare, steam-pinkened skin fill my mind, when the temptation to touch myself just to ease the ache between my thighs becomes all consuming, I realize all hope is lost. There’s no fixing this kind of insanity.
There’s no choice but to endure. Or to get out of the shower.
I’m ashamed to say I choose the former.