Page 20 of Beached Wedding

“‘Our vision care diagnostic tools will change the way you see patient outcomes,’” I quoted. “That’s the sort of pun I’m reduced to, in order to keep my sanity.”

He hadn’t laughed. Or pitied me. “Could you do that kind of thing for T&B? Our website is a heaping pile of feces. I know because I made it myself. The good ones are so dear, though.”

It always made me smile to hear him use Aussie expressions in his mostly-American accent.

I had fully intended to find my own place as soon as possible, not continue sleeping with Shane. The house itself had been a worksite since the men were constantly renovating one thing or other in their spare time.

Somehow our arrangement had turned into a quid pro quo, though. I retooled the website and taught them how to stay on-brand with social media. I worked the retail counter and caught up a bunch of filing and other admin in exchange for rent and groceries. That trade-off rescued my pride and allowed me to keep from draining my savings, but the whole time I was staying with them, I’d been anxious to earn my keep. I cooked and swept sawdust and kept my showers under two minutes. I helped Shane organize his parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Actually, I organized it. He paid for it, but at least I hadn’t been seen as a freeloader.

Apparently, I’d been seen as his extremely well-organized, hard-working, gem of a girlfriend who would finally pin Shane’s feet to the ground because, days before I was due to fly home, Shane proposed.

If I was honest, I’d been in a state of anxiety about accepting ever since. I had called it wedding jitters and natural stress overemigrating, but there’d been a part of me that had gone into existential crisis. Was I trying to be someone I wasn’t? Or was this a natural discomfort at stepping outside my comfort zone. Was I being courageous? Or ignoring my gut at my own peril?

In quiet turmoil, I had listened to Mom list reasons it was a bad idea, which only made me dig in my heels and pick up shifts at the bar again, to pay for an overseas move and a destination wedding.

A wedding that wouldn’t even happen.

God, I still had to track down the wedding planner and cancel the ceremony.

Maybe Mom was right. Our family wasn’t meant for reaching high. We just fell farther and harder when we tried.

That wasn’t something I would dwell on now. I twisted to set my empty glass beside the full one.

My movement rocked the hammock and disturbed Fox. He sucked in a startled breath and caught me in tight arms, as though he thought we were falling. His eyes blinked open, confused and hazed with sleep.

“It’s okay,” I said, touching his chest and feeling the knock of his heart through the robe. “Go back to sleep.”

“I’m really sorry, Ash.” The regret and sincerity that husked his tone cut past my turmoil and eroded my lingering anger.

“I know.” I let myself relax, head going onto his shoulder with forgiveness.

He rubbed my back once. His breath exhaled, and he was fast asleep again.

I stayed where I was, not wanting to disturb him, but had to close my eyes against the sting of tears.

No more of that, I promised myself and inhaled the fragrant scent of the nearby flowers and salty trade winds from across the ocean. I focused on the simple human connection of reclining next to another live body. Fox smelled like... I concentrated,trying to pick apart the pieces of his specific scent. Surf and the essential oils Ikaika had used, maybe leftover sunscreen and a hint of something very familiar…

FOX

“Auntie Ashley.”

For the second time today, I snapped awake at Ashley’s voice, completely disoriented. It was like being chundered in the waves and unexpectedly bursting to the surface to catch a breath. I had no recollection of leaving the massage table, yet here I was in a hammock with Ash, limbs stacked and bodies pressed close as a pair of kittens in a towel lined shoe box.

“What?” Ashley stiffened mid-yawn, seeming surprised to find herself here, too.

I shifted to disguise the fact that parts of me stirred that really ought to stay lifeless.

“Everyone is looking for you.” The pretty young girl standing over us sounded exactly like Ash when she was annoyed. She looked outright scandalized.

“Fliss,” I said, recognizing her from the times I’d met her over FaceTime. “G’day. Fox,” I reminded, thinking by her frown that she reckoned I was some rando who’d crawled into this hammock while her aunt was unconscious.

“I know who you are.”

Huh. I’d been under the impression we were on friendly terms, but she skewered me with a cold glare.

“What are you guys doing?”

I was still half-asleep so my filter wasn’t fully in place. “Getting judged by a tween—Ow.”

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