Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
Naomi
M ost of my stuff is at Dom’s house, so that's where I should go, but I just can’t. The thought of Sam following me and watching me climb the stairs of humiliation is just too much.
I steer my cart onto the main road and head for town instead. My suitcase will still be waiting for me later.
I park next to the shipping building like everyone else and walk down the narrow lane that runs through the village down to the beach. It’s quiet at this time of day, all the sane people sheltering from the hot afternoon sun, rather than parading down the street with no hat or sunscreen. I’m lucky to have my wallet with me, as I was coming in to get another coffee when fate ambushed me.
I don’t even have my purse.
Wait, I don’t have my phone.
I pat my whole self down to make sure, a futile exercise as I’m wearing tropical clothes with very few places to hide anything.
I must have left it at my table at The Sands, along with my laptop, bag, and everything else I’d brought to the resort with me that morning for a full day of work.
I keep walking until I reach the beach, flopping down in the sand and shielding my eyes from the overhead sun. I’m just settling into my warm sand bed, content to spend the rest of my life laying here, listening to the waves crash, when someone calls my name.
Or, my last name, anyway.
“Ms. Fuentes!”
I sit up enough to prop my upper body on my elbows and glance around, finding no one in my line of sight.
“Over here,” the voice comes again.
I turn all the way around to find a man smiling at me from a table in the closest café. I recognize him from breakfast with Sam so I smile and wave, hoping that will be enough to satisfy him.
It’s not.
“Come join us for a drink. It must be hot out there in the sun.”
Because it is very hot, and because I don’t have my phone to distract me from all my thoughts and feelings, I drag myself out of the sand and walk over.
The slight, black haired man is sitting at a square table with a round, cheerful looking woman his same age, both of them smiling up at me. I settle into the third chair and immediately feel relief as the shade from the umbrella takes away the heat of the direct sun.
“Thank you. I didn’t realize how hot I was.”
“You young ladies never do,” the woman at the table states, laughing at her own joke.
I watch her, wide-eyed, and my first smile in what feels like hours spreads over my face. “I guess that’s true.”
“The plight of the young. To not know how good you have it,” the man says, his grin as wide as his companion’s. “I’m Max. We met at breakfast the other day. This is my wife, Petunia.” He gestures to the woman, who bows slightly.
“Nice to see you again,” I say to Max. “I’m Naomi.”
“Oh, we know who you are,” Petunia says slyly before sharing a glance with her husband.
“Okay…”
What do they think they know about me?
“You’re Dominic’s little sister.”
I relax. “You got me.”
“Here on a mission to figure out your purpose in life.”
Wait, what?
“I…I’m sorry?”
The waiter chooses that moment to swoop in and get my drink order. I hastily ask for an iced tea to get him to go away.
The two of them are still smiling at me like they don’t have a care in the world when I turn my glare on them. “How do you know that about me?”
Max shrugs. “It’s what you all say when I ask. Seems to be the plight of most of your generation.”
I smile in relief. He wasn’t reading my mind, he was just making a general observation. “Gotcha.”
“But you, my dear, seem to have something deeper going on. It’s just a guess, based on how you threw yourself into the sand, but I would be willing to bet that whatever it was you thought you found isn’t working out the way you planned.”
I accept my iced tea with a smile and try to decide how much of this I want to get into with these complete strangers. I don’t have my phone, and I don’t have anyone I could call even if I did, so what the hell.
“Yeah. I just hit a bit of a bump in the road.”
Neither of them make any signs of speaking as they give me their full attention, so I go on. “I lost my business back in the States by doing something incredibly stupid that I didn’t know was stupid at the time. And then I ran here to hide, but ended up falling for the last guy on the planet I should have fallen for. And it seemed to be going pretty well until I just overheard him telling all his friends what a loser I am, simultaneously breaking my heart and stealing away the fantastic new job opportunity that was about to come my way.”
I almost laugh at my ridiculous summation of the last month of my life, but I’m worried it will come out as a sob, so I just sip my iced tea and wait for one of them to speak.
“I wonder if you could tell your story again, but this time, tell the truth,” Max says finally.
My mouth falls open. This day is just full of surprises. “That was the truth.”
“Was it?”
There’s no malice in his tone. Nothing to make me defensive, so I take a moment and consider. “No, I guess not.”
I glance out at the ocean and try to formulate my true story.
“Okay. I’ve been working for my whole adult life to build a personal brand and channel that represents me. Or at least the me that I want the world to see. I’m good at it, and I’ve been really successful. But I knew that it wasn’t real life, even as much as I wanted it to be. I’ve always struggled with personal relationships. Online relationships are so much easier. Simpler. I almost never have to meet anyone in person, and I can curate how I come across in photos and texts. It was all so perfectly contained. Under my control. Until it wasn’t. I was just working to promote brands, like we all do on the internet, but some people I’d built online friendships with decided to go behind my back and take me down to grow their own channels. It’s something I've done before. We all do it. I didn’t even think it was that wrong until it happened to me. Suddenly I was left with nothing and no one. I’ve never had close relationships with my family, and never made many in-person friends since I had my online community.”
I’m hesitant to get into so much detail about a person I know they know well, but I can’t bring myself to stop now that I’ve started. “But there was one person. One person who I thought would be a safe place to turn. I can’t even say why I thought that. I barely knew the guy. But it was enough. So I flew out here and found him. It was hard at first, but he was exactly as wonderful as I imagined, and I started to see a new life for myself. A life where I belonged and where people saw me as who I really was. In person. I thought he felt the same way.”
I pause to glance down at my hands where they rest on the colorful floral tablecloth.
“Then this afternoon I overheard him telling his friends that he didn’t want me to come work with them because it would put the resort at risk. That I was untested and possibly untrustworthy. It sucked because I didn’t even want the job they were discussing offering me. I would have turned it down, the main part of it anyway. But to hear him say those terrible things about me, like he had just been pretending to care about me all this time.”
“That sounds bad. What did this mystery man have to say for himself?” Petunia asks.
I smile up at her, even though I feel like I might cry as I try to tell the next part. “He said that he was just trying to keep me all for himself. That the other guys take everything, and he’s always let them, but this time he wanted to keep me for himself. And that he was sorry, and he didn’t mean any of it.”
They let me cry in silence for a long moment, not offering me comfort or a napkin or anything. The wave of sadness passes on its own, and I look back up into their kind faces, already feeling better.
Already knowing what Max is about to say.
“Now that you’ve said that aloud, does it seem like the truth?”
I nod.
He and Petunia nod as well.
“But what can I do? Tell Dom or let him tell Dom about us? It will ruin that lifelong friendship and put his whole job, his whole life in jeopardy. I can’t ask him to do that for me.”
“Is that the truth?” Max asks.
I narrow my eyes accusingly at him as I prepare to take him to task.
But my anger quickly sees reason. I flop back in my chair and sigh. “No. Probably not.”
“It’s a fun story, though. Very dramatic.”
I can’t help but smile and shake my head. “Yeah, yeah. I get it.”
“Being afraid is sometimes easier than doing hard things. Especially if those hard things go against what we’ve always done. Sam has never stood up to his friends because he sees himself as less. You refuse to fight for what you want for the same reason.”
Petunia claps her hands together, excitement lighting up her face. “I can’t wait to see what happens.”
“I agree,” Max concurs, smiling at his wife.
I want to be mad. I want to be annoyed as hell at the way they’re making light of the crushing reality of my situation. But even in the lowest place of my life, I can see the futility of it. “Yeah, I guess I’m looking forward to it as well. At least, I am now.”
They beam at me.
It’s impossible not to smile back.