Page 7 of Beached Wedding

“This morning. At the airport. The good ones that the sales rep gave me.”

“The cute one? Too bad. That’s really gross.”

“Tell me about it.”

She sighed and picked up the bottle to return it.

“Wait.” I took my bagged sandwich from the clerk. “You want a bacon and egg sandwich?”

She stared with longing at mine. The corners of her mouth wobbled. “I won’t fit into my wedding dress if I eat that.”

Ah, shit. I closed my eyes.

“I haven’t eaten anything but salad forthree months. No alcohol, no bread. No cream in my coffee. It’s disgusting without cream, by the way. Your mouth is a dead zone. And why did I bother? My boobs have disappeared and I still have an ass like a delivery truck. Now I’m not even going to wear the dress that maxed out my credit card?”

“Extra bacon, extra cheese,” I said to the clerk so he wouldn’t see Ashley blinking her damp lashes. “And a mocha frap with whip cream and caramel. If you have chocolate shavings?—?”

“Fox, don’t. What if?—”

“Ashley.” I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “If you tell me one more time that you’re afraid to eat because it makes your ass look fat, I’m going to send you for shock therapy. Your ass delivers.” I met her gaze and something like vertigo hit me, as if I’d rolled over a speedbump unprepared, rattling my brain.

Her eyes went wide and her hand flexed in mine, but she didn’t pull away.

An impression of having overstepped hung in the air between us. This had only happened a couple of times before because I didn’tletit happen, but I was suddenly thinking about the way she turned a regular day into Valentine’s Day by putting on a pair of yoga pants. I nearly swallowed my tongue trying to find my voice.

“We’re going to eat a sandwich, get our heads on straight, then talk,” I said, releasing her hand and mentally pushing away those very wrong thoughts. She was myfriend. Not...

No. Just no.

“No offense, Fox, but I don’t want to talk to you.” She hugged herself. “I want to talk toShane. I keep thinking I could fix this if he would pick up, but I’m so mad, I would probably make things worse. I don’t understand whathappened?”

I drew a breath that burned. Words crowded into my mouth, some that wouldn’t entirely make sense, but I didn’t want to get into it here where men with short haircuts and stiff bearing would witness a White woman reaming a Black man a new one.

“C’mon.” I headed toward the cash. On the way, I threw some potato chips and a few pieces of fruit into my basket, grabbed the first pair of sunglasses I saw that had a polarized sticker, and started on my tongue-scorching, crude-oil coffee while I paid.

Life-force seeped back into my bloodstream one cell at a time, bringing with it profound humility. I took the keys and ate as I drove. Five minutes up the coast, I saw a sign for a state park and pulled in.

Ashley lowered her frothy coffee and glared at the van across the parking lot. It had a wedding bell logo on it. “Seriously?”

I polished the last bite of my sandwich and went to the trunk to dig through my duffle—which was when I realized I had grabbed Shane’s bag from the taxi.

Fucking brilliant.

I found a pair of board shorts and jerked my head to steer Ashley to the mostly empty beach where I stripped to my boxer briefs.

“Fox!”

I had no pride left. No fucks to give. I walked straight into the water.

A reef protected the bay so the water was a glassy, shallow aquamarine. Almost too warm. When I was waist-deep, I threw myself forward in a shallow dive, swimming as far as I could without taking a breath, letting the worst of my travel grime and hangover rinse away.

When I felt marginally less disgraceful, I slogged back to the beach.

Ashley was waiting with the straw of her coffee tucked into one corner of her mouth.

“Sins all gone?” she asked.

“Where do you think the garbage island came from?” I jerked my chin toward the ocean, then slicked the water from the tight curls I kept trimmed to a quarter inch so my hair actually had a chance at drying between dips. “Turn.”

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