2. Chapter 2
Chapter two
~DARCY~
The thing about Tulum in late April is that the sun has absolutely no consideration.
It doesn't creep softly through the curtains the way a civilized sunrise should. Nope. It arrives all at once—golden, mostly violent, deeply personal, like it singled out my hotel room window and decided today would be the day to commit to my suffering.
And speaking of suffering…
I glance at the clock and groan when I see it’s seven thirty-three in the morning.
Technically, I’ve been awake since six.
And that’s only partly because of the overbearing sun.
The rest of my insomnia has to do with…him.
Specifically, because of the way sea-green eyes tracked me across a resort bar last night and saw right through me.
Saw things I didn’t want to be seen…right up until the moment my best friend Jessica’s ex-coworker Kayla materialized out of the ether with her pink drink, her smile, and her “I love that jacket,” and—
Pressing my face into the pillow, I let out a scream that is anything but dignified, remembering the interruption.
The sound is guttural, tinged with frustration.
It’s the mating call of maid of honor-meets-disaster—the specific caw of a twenty-four-year-old woman who has one job this week, and one job only.
And that would be to get through her best friend’s wedding without blowing the cover she's spent twelve whole months building. To avoid sexy best men and their even sexier flirting.
As for my other goals…those are even harder.
I’ve never been a maid of honor before, and being a decent one to Jessica feels harder than expected.
Outside my hotel room, the resort is already humming—pool staff setting up, blenders crunching ice, the mariachi band warming up.
Preparing. Tuning. Getting ready.
Because my best friend in the whole world is getting married today.
Jessica Riley.
The woman who met a twenty-year-old girl with no support system in college, looked at her and somehow said, I see you, and I’m keeping you.
The woman who, when I called her one year ago from a Miami bus station at two in the morning with one bag and no plan, answered on the first ring and said, “Tell me where you are.”
And I am absolutely, positively, undoubtedly not going to ruin her wedding by spiraling about a man.
I am, I decide, going to fold whatever reaction my body had last night when I faced off with Declan Shaw—and tuck it far, far away.
As if the universe itself is listening, my phone buzzes right then.
With a heavy breath, I reach for it, smiling the instant I read the messages.
brIA: you're awake
brIA: I can feel you being awake from three doors down
brIA: what happened last night
I stare at the screen. Bria Osei has been my best friend for four years, which means she has spent four years developing an almost supernatural ability to detect when I’m trying not to think about something. It is, professionally speaking, her greatest gift and my greatest liability.
ME: nothing happened
brIA: lmaooo
brIA: okay
brIA: I'll just ask the bartender then
brIA: I saw you talking to Quinn's brother
brIA: the silver fox one
brIA: for like twenty minutes
ME: it was six minutes
The three dots appear immediately.
brIA: GOTCHA
I throw my phone face-down on the bed, because Bria is a menace and I walked directly into that, and I have another don’t-screw-this-up maid of honor task: get myself upright and human-shaped before the bridal brunch starts at eight thirty.
With a sigh, I swing my legs out of bed and start to get dressed.
By the time I arrive to the hotel’s courtyard restaurant, the bridal brunch spread is already laid out.
Fresh fruit the color of a Tulum sunrise. Pastries dripping in syrup and cream. Even a mimosa station operated by a man who is pouring perfect amounts of champagne into golden, pulp-free orange juice.
It’s barely eight-thirty, and the April air is already humid. A warm, lush breeze pushes the scent of frangipani my way, and I’m practically salivating by the time I reach Jessica’s table.
The soon-to-be bride is already seated and practically glowing. Turning to me with skin so great it must have its own lighting director, she smiles, tapping the pencil in her hand against a notepad.
“Right on time,” she says, then frowns, blue eyes narrowing at my face. “Though it looks like you sacrificed something to do it. You look tired, babe. You good?”
I paste on a smile. “I’m great.”
"You look like you had a night."
“Yes, I did. A wonderful night. Slept beautifully. No bug bites. Just fresh air and luxury bedding.” I sit, reaching for a mimosa. "You look incredible."
"Darcy."
"Jessica."
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened." I take a long sip. "Where's Bria?"
"Already at the mimosa station, interrogating the bartender." Jessica folds her hands on the table. "Quinn mentioned Declan had a situation with one of the groomsmen last night."
My heartbeat jumps into my throat. “Uh, yeah. Everything turned out fine, from what I can tell.”
Jessica gapes, blinking silently. "You were there?"
"I was adjacent."
"Darcy—"
"I had the situation seventy percent handled—" The words slip out before I can catch them; they’re not mine, they’re his, which means he now lives in my vocabulary before nine o’clock in the morning, which is frankly unacceptable.
Jessica guffaws, tossing her honey-blond hair over her shoulder before leaning forward.
I lift a hand. “Do not.”
“What? I didn't say anything."
"You're smiling."
"It's my wedding day."
"You're smiling specifically."
Just then, Bria arrives in a cloud of good energy and a wrap dress she has absolutely no business looking that good in before I’ve had my first cup of coffee.
Brushing her fingertips across her pixie-like hair, my other best friend drops into the chair across from me, already sliding a fresh mimosa my way.
"So, what are we talking about?” she grins. “Lemme guess—Declan Shaw?”
"Is the man paying people to say his name at this resort?" I scoff. "I've been here two and a half days and he seems to be all anyone can talk about."
"For good reason. The man is fine. Fine with a capital F. And apparently very good with his hands."
“The man used those hands to punch a groomsman out last night.”
Bria’s eyes widen. “So you were there? What did he do? What did he say?”
“I wasn’t there. I mean, I was around, and—Come on. It was nothing." I pick up the mimosa. “That Todd guy got a little handsy. I told Declan I'd had it handled. We had a brief professional disagreement. That was that. Seriously.”
Bria and Jessica exchange a look that could start a forest fire.
“A brief disagreement,” Bria repeats.
"Very."
"The bartender said you were there for twenty minutes."
"The bartender," I say, "should mind his business."
"He also said," Bria continues, with the calm of someone reading from a prepared document, "and I'm quoting, 'the tall one with the silver hair looked at her like she was the only thing in the room.' End quote."
"The bartender," I repeat, “clearly thinks he’s a poet and his services are not required."
Bria opens her mouth, and Jessica—who knows exactly where this road goes—places a hand on her arm.
"You know what, she's right," Jessica says. "New topic. Does anyone know if the florist confirmed the centerpiece height? Because I have thoughts."
Bria looks at Jessica's hand on her arm, then at me, before staring back at our bride-to-be.
"We're really doing this?" she whines. "We're just…moving on?"
"We are absolutely moving on.” Jessica smiles brightly. "Centerpieces. Go."
"The centerpieces are fine, Jess," I say, with profound relief.
"I'm not sure they are." She flips open her notepad. "I asked for forty centimeters and Rodrigo said forty centimeters, but I've seen Rodrigo's forty centimeters before and—"
"Jessica." Bria pulls her arm free and leans across the table toward me. "Austin Holmes was a situational anomaly and it was three years ago—"
And there it is.
The table goes quiet.
Austin Holmes. Junior year. Jessica's then-boyfriend's roommate.
A smart, slightly nerdy senior with dirty-blond hair and warm eyes; he’d been the crush I spent four months trying not to have feelings for.
And I failed.
When those feelings detonated in the middle of our friend group like a grenade, I spent the rest of junior year trying to pick up the pieces.
It had been awful and awkward.
The split dinners. The divided loyalties. The six months it took Jessica and me to stop being careful with each other.
I will not do that again.
Not to myself, and definitely not to the woman who is one of the few people I now consider family.
Especially after I worked so hard to escape my own back in Miami.
“Anyway, ladies, I’m getting married in twelve hours." Jess gestures at herself—the hair, the glow, the general bridal magnitude. "I am a woman with exactly one agenda today, and it is not this."
"Thank you," I say.
"However," she adds, turning a page in her notepad, "I will say, for the record and then never again, that you are allowed to want things that aren't on your five-year plan, Dar. Just saying…” She looks back down. “So, centerpiece height. Final answer—forty or forty-five?"
Desperate to move on from any talks of men or plans, I answer, grabbing a pastry as I look at Jess’s list.
With that, the morning moves the way mornings move at destination weddings—in bursts of organized chaos separated by pockets of extraordinary beauty.
Hair and makeup arrive at nine. Someone loses a false lash and it takes eleven minutes and Jessica's reading glasses to find it on the bathroom tile. Kayla, the blonde bridesmaid who was all over Declan last night, cries twice before noon, both times for reasons that are not entirely clear.
Not that I can blame Kayla entirely.
For the last few hours, I’ve been doing my own version of a mental crisis—less visible crying, more internal catastrophizing.
Somewhere between the second mimosa and the hot roller set, my brain has been running a very unhelpful loop. A loop around a man I have no business looping around.