Chapter 11 #2
“Why are you still following me? Stop following me! I don’t want to be around you anymore!
” The funny thing was, as much as she was done and one hundred percent certain she was over the guy, she was more afraid of what would happen when he did stop following her.
Catalina had enough experience with her temper to know she pushed way too hard to win arguments, only to not feel like a winner when all was said and done.
Getting exactly what she wanted in the heat of the moment wasn’t always for the best, and most often left her full of regrets.
“Maybe I want to see what a happy ending looks like,” he snapped back while continuing to trail behind her.
She barked a laugh, stomping away as much as she could in bare feet on sand pebbles. “I can tell you what it doesn’t look like. It’s not accusing your wife of cheating.” Even all these months later, the words had the power to bring the sting of tears to her eyes.
“Come on! I never actually believed you cheated on me!”
“Oh, okay, so you asking the question, Are you having an affair? isn’t a reflection of you wondering if I’m having an affair. Silly me for jumping to that conclusion.”
He finally reached her, grabbing her by an elbow and forcing her to turn around to face him. She attempted to jerk out of his grasp, but he held tight.
“You better let go of me if you know what’s good for you, Trey Schuster. I don’t want to talk to you,” she said through gritted teeth.
“No. I’m tired of this. And since we have plenty of time until you find that tiny divorce lawyer, I want to finally go through with this because it’s been a long time coming.
” He was determined, those blue eyes dark, reflecting fire and heat instead of their usual good-naturedness.
It wasn’t a side that showed up often and always caught her by surprise, usually when he was standing up for something he felt strongly about.
He wasn’t hurting her, but the strength of his grip on her arm gave her an unexpected zing along her spine.
She did her best to ignore the sensation. “I’m telling you to let me go or else.” Catalina didn’t know what she would do, but she set her jaw in place anyways to show she meant business. She could be just as determined as him.
“Go ahead. If that will make you feel better, then fine. You want to hit me, hurt me, because I hurt you? Then okay. Hit me all you want. But after you get that out of your system, we’re going to talk.”
With the invitation on the table, Catalina thought about it.
She considered pounding her fists against him until she was completely worn out and her body had no strength remaining.
It was then she realized she had been wrong about being over him and feeling nothing.
Her chest ached from the hurt and anger and frustration at not being able to move past this, past him.
It felt ten times worse than accidentally being shrunk.
“I hate this.” Instead of growing stronger, her stance softened from the exhaustion of lugging around her guilt and this grudge all the time. “And I hate that you’ve made me hate you.”
His hand loosened from her arm, claiming the side of her face.
The hold was gentle as if, through everything, she continued to be precious to him.
It would be easy to escape him, to keep running until she lost him—to find a way to move beyond hate into real indifference.
Instead she cried, hot tears spilling onto her cheeks, unable to pry herself from him, wanting her comfort person back even if it was just for a short period of time.
“I know,” was all he replied, swiping one of her tears away with a thumb. “I don’t think I’ll ever regret something more than making you hate me. That hurts me more than anything you can do to me, even kneeing me in the balls, which I know you really want to do.”
She released a snotty little laugh at this. All the fury she had pent up in the hopes of giving him a good hard kick was slowly seeping from her frame, weariness fully taking its place. “Why did you do this to us, Trey?”
She could have been referring to a lot of things, including this trip and subsequent shrinking, but they both knew the question went deeper.
He sighed. “I don’t know. I was tired and frustrated and sick of feeling alone in my own marriage.
Don’t think that what I said that night hasn’t echoed in my brain a million times already.
I kept trying to talk to you, and I wasn’t getting anywhere, and you stopped wanting me to go to your functions.
I just wanted you to talk to me—to want me around as much as I wanted to be around you.
“And I never meant it. That’s the worst thing about all of this.
I never believed you were having an affair.
Just in some weird, twisted, jealous way I thought, well, at least if you’re having an affair, then someone out there was finding a way to make you happy, and it wasn’t me.
But I thought maybe I was giving you an out if that's what you wanted, and at least then you’d be talking to me. ”
“You absolute jackass.” The words should have been harsh, but there was no heat behind them. Instead of an exclamation mark, the phrase was as emotional as a series of ellipses.
“I’m not going to argue with you. I’ve been a jackass. And I’m sorry. Trust me when I say I’ve never been so sorry in my life. Being separated from you, like this, has been agony.” He paused, studying her. “Did you hate me before?”
“No, of course not.” At this point, Catalina wasn’t sure she’d ever hated him.
Her emotions and thoughts were beginning to muddle in her head.
She had been annoyed much of the time, not because of things he did specifically, but it was more of a case of feeling so exhausted and burned-out and feeling bad about herself.
Taking these frustrations out at work wasn’t an option.
It was easier to push them onto Trey, who kept asking for more of her than she had to give.
Being self-reliant was easier when it was only herself that could be disappointed.
Looking back at it, he had never asked for much.
But even a small amount was more than she could handle at the time.
She had given so much of herself at work that, by the time she was home, her phone still buzzing with incoming messages and emails, she wanted to shut herself off.
It was more appealing to tuck herself into a book or aimlessly scroll through social media.
When she couldn’t take it out on him, she had her breakdown at work, snapping at the office’s receptionist and then crying in the bathroom because she couldn’t keep doing everything she had on her plate and was worried about losing Trey as well.
She’d apologized to Jenny, the receptionist, but the damage had been done.
Like Trey had expressed earlier, she’d never been more sorry in her life, and this didn’t seem to be enough.
Now she was stuck here, in Cancun, at a height too small to notice, probably about to be eaten by a sand flea, and all she could think was, thank God I don’t have to be awkward around Jenny anymore.
Thank God all the stuff left at the office is going to be on someone else’s shoulders.
Her priorities may have been screwed up because being lost on a beach in constant danger shouldn’t bring such a feeling of relief.
“What are we supposed to do now?” she asked.
He tucked a single strand that had escaped her hair tie due to a sea breeze behind her ear. “Maybe you’ll let me stick with you until you find that tiny lawyer.”
She sighed but gave him a small smile as she played with the hem of his T-shirt. “Okay, but only because it might be hard to finalize paperwork if we have to spend a lot of time searching for you. It’s a big beach now.”
“True. After everything, I guess I shouldn’t make it too difficult for you to find your happy ending.”
A small wave of water brushed past them, soaking the ground at their feet.
In their rush to escape the sargassum jungle and Catalina stomping away, she had inadvertently taken them closer to the shoreline instead of further away.
They were lucky this wave only kissed the sand nearby.
Any larger and a wave could sweep them into the ocean.
Maybe Trey wasn’t the only one who recklessly got them into sticky situations.
This may have proved she was as imperfect at making decisions as he was when she was upset.
She was about to kick up her heels and yank them to a safer distance when surf bubbles sprouted nearby.
Some were small, but many of the bubbles were larger and taller than both her and Trey.
The refracted sunlight piercing through the bubbles caused a prism of rainbows to spill around the couple.
It was a wondrous, breathtaking sight to behold.
Trey appeared as taken by the sight as she was.
His arms dropped from her body as they stood in the midst of a giant rainbow bubble wonderland.
She poked her finger into one, and it took more force to penetrate it than she had expected.
When it popped, a light mist of salt water sprayed over her and Trey, eliciting gasps and giggles from both of them.
“Wow, beautiful,” she said dreamily. How could something be both worldly and unworldly at the same time?
“Exactly my thoughts.”
When Catalina turned her gaze to him, he had his phone out as though he’d snapped a picture of her before quickly shifting the camera in a new direction.
She eyed him suspiciously, keeping her opinion to herself about how silly it was to take pictures of their vacation.
What was the point? Who would ever see these images?
It’s not like they’d ever be posted on a @TinyTrey Instagram account.
And if they weren’t rescued in a few days, the phone would be dead and completely useless.
Catalina didn’t always understand Trey’s reasoning but, for once, chose to keep the peace of the moment and let him be.
“Stop it,” she said, lifting a hand to block the view when she caught him again turning his phone in her direction for another picture.
She was a dirty, damp mess with no makeup and messy hair.
She realized how ridiculous the thought was, especially when the chance of anyone seeing this was slim.
Plus, Trey had seen her in worse states plenty of times before this.
Even during those periods, he’d never looked at her with anything less than adoration, something he was doing right now.
She couldn’t help but blush in response.
“Come on,” she said, pulling on his arm. “We shouldn’t risk being this close to the water.”
“What do you think we should do? Think we should try to make it to the dock?”
“It’ll probably take us too long to get there and we don’t even know where that is from here. By then, everyone will be long gone. And how would we even get on a boat?”
“If someone walks by, we can grab onto their shoe, and they can carry us to the dock.”
“How are we going to be able to do that? Remember, we’re not superheroes.”
“Oh, yeah.” He frowned as if disappointed with reality once again.
“I think we should make our way back to the hotel.”
“You think there will be someone there who’ll be able to help us?”
In her gut, she knew this was a foolish thing to hope for, but they didn’t have a lot of options, and this was the best one they had.
“I don’t know. But we can’t stay out here.
We might at least be safer and have a chance of finding food, shelter, and water.
The stuff in my bag is only going to last us so long.
” She squinted toward where they needed to start walking.
The resort appeared like an insurmountable mountain in the distance, in what she could only guess was the equivalent of miles away from where they were at their current size.
“How long do you think it’s going to take for us to get there? ”
He tipped his head one way and then the other as though working through some complex formula in his head. “Days, if we’re lucky. Probably longer.”
She dropped her shoulders, feeling defeated. “Well, that doesn’t make me feel very good. We haven’t been lucky yet.”
His gaze slid to hers, taking on a thoughtful expression. “I guess it just depends on how you look at it.”
She wasn’t going to ask him to expand on this further.
Catalina didn’t want to dig into his thoughts, afraid she’d find herself hating Trey less and less, even while being unsure how to get on the path toward forgiveness.
Her determination to stay angry at him was making less sense, but it was hard for her to switch over.
Catalina readjusted the bag in her arms and mustered her strength. “Welp, we better start walking then. It’s still early in the day, and that tiny lawyer isn’t going to wait around at the tiny bar forever.”
“It should give me plenty of time then.”
“For what?”
“To get you to fall in love with me again.