Page 43 of South Beach Bodyguards

“Okay. Take some aspirin. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I said goodbye and ended the call. I stared blankly out at the ocean. It was so peaceful here, way up high, above the crush of cars and people. It felt like I could reach out and touch the waves. Like I could splash my fingers in it the way you would as a child in the sink.

I didn’t really have a headache. Nope. I had regular old heartache and I had no one to blame but myself. Ryan had tried to warn me that he wasn’t going to be around for the long haul. That he wanted to have sex with me because he was attracted to me, but that he wasn’t any better than any other guy. I hadn’t believed him. Now I wasn’t so sure. It didn’t take a diagnosis from Freud to see he had some abandonment issues. But what never made sense to me was why people who resented their parents exhibited the same behaviors as them.

I would like to delude myself into thinking that he bounced because he knew if he stuck around he would fall in love with me and for whatever weird man reason he had decided he could not do that. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe commitment just wasn’t his thing. Maybe I just wasn’t his thing. I could hear my mother’s warning ringing in my ears and it pissed me off to realize that she was right. Even when I had told myself it didn’t matter, that one night would be enough, I hadn’t been honest with myself. I was going to want more from him.

If he had spent the whole night with me, cuddling, and cute and loving, I would have wanted breakfast. If we’d gone for breakfast, then I would have wanted him to call or text me later in the day. I would have wanted more. I would always want more until he was mine. My boyfriend. That was my shit, my mistake. Not his. He’d been clear as a damn bell about it.

What would Julia do? She would not sit on the balcony alone like a moron feeling sorry for herself. She would get up and leave. Or say to hell with it and go to bed. But more likely she would leave.

Ryan had left his beer on the table and I drained the few inches of liquid left. I could look at staying in two different lights. One, that it was my being defiant and nonchalant. Like I could just enjoy the hotel and the view and to hell with Ryan. But I knew myself well enough to know that wasn’t what it would feel like. It would just be lonely. I would lie in that bed and I would repeatedly sniff the sheets to see if I could find any remnants of his scent and how pathetic would that be? I would end up crying, guaranteed. I would eat every chocolate item in the minibar and I would get drunk on the little wine bottles. In the morning I’d be hungover, sick to my stomach, puffy-faced, and out eighty dollars in minibar expenses.

Better to just avoid all of that. I stood up and went back into the hotel room, stripping off my dress as I walked to the bathroom. I needed a shower. I needed to not be as aware of how amazing sex with Ryan had been. Ten minutes later I was dressed in the clean clothes from my overnight bag and I removed the beer bottle from the balcony table and tossed it, shutting the slider. Glancing around, I realized that Ryan had left his duffel bag. It gave me pause. Maybe he was planning to come back.

Then I thought about his face when he had seen me on the verge of tears and I decided that he had just forgotten about the bag in his rush to get away as fast as possible. I would just take it with me. He could get it later. Or I could leave it downstairs at the front desk. That was even better. Less complicated, because then Ryan wouldn’t even have to see me.

Knowing full well it was nearly midnight I took a deep breath and made my way down and to the desk clerk. “I need to leave a bag for Mr. Harris,” I said. “Room 1325.” I plunked it on the countertop.

After I showed my driver’s license and we sorted that out, I tried not to give a shit what the employee might be thinking about me. It was none of his business and surely he’d seen odder things than a woman leaving the hotel at midnight. I tried to picture what Frank Sinatra would say, and I figured he would tell me to do what you gotta do. And he would call me doll, which would be amazing. Thinking about the old days of the glamour of the Fountainbleau and Miami Beach before condos was a fun distraction from my current emotions. It would have been amazing time to be alive. If you were a movie star or a gangster anyway.

I would not have made the best gangster’s girlfriend, though. Too easily spooked. How had I gotten like this? Prone to panic attacks, more comfortable observing life then living it. I couldn’t blame my mother. That wasn’t her style. My father was definitely a quieter man, more into his business than social niceties. It was what had caused their split- they were just too different. My mother had always joked that she was so much in awe of my father’s intelligence and success, that when he had insisted they should be together, she had believed him.

I didn’t have either of their personalities really. I lacked my dad’s confidence and my mother’s feminine wiles. Nope. No gangsta girlfriend life for me.

Honestly, I would not make the best bodyguard’s girlfriend either. I worried about Ryan as it was. Imagine how I would feel if we were together. I would worry constantly. But it would be worth it to me, but not to him. Clearly. The greater truth was the story of my life. The role of mobster wife suited my mother, not me. She fit into Mickey’s world of wheeling and dealing and guns and money. Me? I pretended none of it existed. I went to school, then I went home to the house that Miami Security had afforded. That was really my sole connection to the danger of keeping celebrities and rich people safe on the Beach.

After the bellman got me a cab I gave him the address of my mom’s house in Coral Gables where we were living. I needed to go home, even if it was Ryan’s old bedroom. I couldn’t stomach the thought of my mother’s prying eyes or Brandy’s endless questions. I didn’t want to be alone in the hotel, but I much preferred being alone at home over in the same room where I had felt Ryan’s tender and powerful touch.

“Were you at a party?” the cab driver asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

“Yes,” I lied, because it was the perfect excuse as to why I would be leaving at that time to go back home. I clearly wasn’t a tourist. “Rehearsal dinner for a wedding.”

“Dude, I bet a wedding there would be sick. And expensive.”

“No doubt.”

“Some people got more money than they know what to do with.” He was young, probably my age, Latin. He shook his head back and forth, like he couldn’t wrap his head around it. “I once drove a hooker to one of them parties. She said she was getting ten grand for the night. I was like maybe I should be a hooker.” He laughed.

I sighed. I didn’t really want to have any conversation, let alone this one. I also thought he was reaching if he thought he could get ten grand for a night with him. He was no Julia Roberts. “She probably lied about how much she gets paid.”

“You think?” He sounded surprised, like that had never occurred to him. “I don’t know, why would she lie?”

That seemed obvious to me, but I didn’t want to sound like I was correcting him.

“There are plenty of rich people who would pay premium for a piece of pus-“ He stopped himself and gave me a sheepish look. “Sorry.”

I no longer felt the need to protect his feelings. “Maybe that’s just what you would pay, if you could afford it. Most wealthy men don’t need to pay for it.”

He gave me a look like he thought I was a bitch and shut up. Fine with me.

At home, I jumped out of the cab and threw the fare at him. Then, my bag over my shoulder, I ran inside the house, wanting to get away from the driver. He hadn’t creeped me out exactly, but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of him knowing where I lived or thinking I was alone. So I crammed the key in, opened the door, dashed inside, and locked it as quickly as possible, heart racing.

Sighing in relief, I turned.

And ran smack into someone.

I opened my mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over it.

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