Page 9 of A Quick Stop in Paradise

“If Shane is probably just under six feet tall, dark hair with stubble, and wearing a dark sport coat over a cream-colored shirt today, then yes.”

My head was fuzzy. I was furious at myself for the wrong reasons—for not being able to be angry, for not having any reaction. I just stared at her, hazy, feeling like none of this was real, like Brooklyn and Allison would laugh together and tell me how it was all a joke, maybe a camera crew would come out of the bushes, or maybe I’d just wake up.

Of course he’d been trying to cheat on me. That was why he’d been so resolute that I shouldn’t go see this friend at the bar. Why he’d told me to nap, to stay in the suite, to go to dinner with my siblings without him, to go enjoy the beach after and he’d stay for somesurprise work tasks.He’d tried to cheat on me.

Finally, I found some kind of reaction, but it wasn’t right—landed on something likeexasperation,like I’d been here with a friend who misbehaved and caused a scene, and all I could think wascan you please just behave.Like I wanted to scold him.

Brooklyn was a professional. Sat in the painful silence I gave her, still giving me that sympathetic look without being patronizing or condescending. I swallowed hard, weirdly self-aware, and I nodded, pushing out the only thing I could think of to say. “Okay.”

She paused. “I didn’t tell him I was backing out because I realized. I didn’t want him to escalate anything against either me or you.”

“Okay. Sure.” I turned back to the bar, staring ahead blankly at a group of middle-aged women laughing loudly together not far ahead, colorful cocktails on the bar while kids that seemed to be theirs played in the pool close by. Two bartenders both fully locked in on the work, one sticking calmly and resolutely to the work, one with a high-energy bounce in her step and a little flair to how she worked. Every detail of the scene was suddenly interesting, worth noticing. Don’t know why. Maybe I couldn’t focus on what was inside my head and I had to focus on what was outside it.

Brooklyn had told me it was okay however I reacted. She probably hadn’t anticipated this—me just sitting there staring blankly at the bartenders. I was supposed to be angry, right? Supposed to be angry or sad or both. Supposed to cry and scream.

“Stella’s going to be insufferable,” I said tartly. I didn’t even know why I said it out loud. Brooklyn was still a professional, because she nodded like it was a normal thing to say.

“How so?”

“She told me I needed to get him to propose already or he’d start… doing things that men do. Cheating, I guess.”

Brooklyn let out a slow, careful breath. “You may not want to hear this right now, and I can’t say for sure, but from the way he went about it and how he rearranged the suite like a professional to make it look like it was just him, I don’t think it’s his first time.”

“Right. Of course it’s not.” Because that made perfect sense. I mean, we didn’t even get a full day in at this place before he tried to fuck the bartender in our bed. Of course he was a consummate professional. We’d had a weekend trip to Valencia just a few months ago where he’d stayed back at the hotel because he was jet-lagged and needed a nap and I went out with friends for dinner. Jet lag my ass. He’d probably slept with the woman from that other couple at the resort we’d been talking to—he’d gotten along too well with her. She was pretty. Prettier than I was, probably—Brooklyn was too. Guess he had good taste in women to cheat on me with, at least. Maybe it couldn’t be helped he’d try to sleep with Brooklyn. A hot bartender or the plain girl who was too busy working to ever have sex anyway?

“If there’s anything I can do for you, I will,” Brooklyn said. “If you don’t believe me, that’s fine too.”

“No, you’re definitely right. Makes perfect sense.” I laughed. “Okay. Sure. I guess he’s been cheating on me for a while.”

“Do you want that drink after all?”

“A whiskey on the rocks, yeah, actually, that’d be great.”

Brooklyn flagged down a bartender, and I had a drink set down in front of me in no time. I sipped it gingerly. Cheap whiskey. Whatever. I wasn’t in the mood to properly appreciate fine whiskey right now. It would do.

“I’m probably supposed to be having a reaction,” I said.

“You are,” she said, with just the right balance of sympathetic without being annoying about it or reminding me that things were shit. “Disbelief and shutting down is completely normal in the wake of shocking news.”

“Okay. Yeah, actually, that makes sense. I’m sort of a journalist… I interview people in crises all the time. It’s pretty normal. A lot of them are so blasé. Hurricane victims standing in the rubble of their own homes, and they just shrug and say,rained a lot.Guess it just rained a lot.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s okay.”

“I’m a boring partner. You’re absolutely dripping sex appeal. It’s normal.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry. That sounds gross. And it sounds like I’m blaming you.”

“Being cheated on is never about you and always about them, Ryan.”

I laughed, an incredulous sound that I didn’t even mean to make—just pulled itself up out of me. “Bartenders, the font of wisdom. So true.”

“It’s true. Firstly, nothing about you suggests that you’re boring. Even on a shallow level, you’re very pretty. But more importantly, the fact that you’re his partner should be reason enough that he’s interested in you.”

“Oh, now you’re not content with just him, you’re trying to flirt with me too.” I didn’t know why I said that. I had no control over what I was saying right now. Brooklyn smiled politely.

“I wouldn’t hit on a woman who just found out her boyfriend is cheating on her. There’s a time and place for everything.”

“My family is going to kill me,” I laughed, cupping my drink in both hands. Passe—I was just heating up the whiskey. Somehow I didn’t care. “They love Shane more than they love me.”

“If they’re halfway decent family, they’ll understand that him cheating on you should be pretty disqualifying for whatever good things they think about him, and they should stand by you.”

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