Page 31 of A Quick Stop in Paradise

“Um. I can’t speak to that, but I’ll take your word for it.”

She said what I needed her not to. “You’re looking a bit red in the face there, Ryan. Don’t tell me the food’s too spicy.”

“Yeah… the food. That’s what it is.” I coughed into my hand.

“Point is,” she laughed, “being with a girllooks like all kinds of different things. But I love it.”

“Do you, um… do you go for men or women more?”

“I don’t know if I’d really say I have a preference… I always enjoy it, I think, a little more when it’s another girl, but I think that’s just that a girl is more likely to be putting in the effort. Anyway, I get with girls more often, just because… well, I’ve got a little bit of a queer vibe around me. Attracts more girls than it does guys.”

“Ah… I kind of don’t.”

She laughed. “Still want me to talk about what the sex is like?”

“Um—let’s spare me for today,” I said with an awkward laugh into my hand. “So, do you… do you actually see yourself settling down at any point, or do you like it better like this?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have anything against settling down. I just… can’t, really.”

I paused. “You can’t? How come? Too many girls throwing themselves on you with flowers?”

She laughed, a small and cheerful thing, and—I about had a heart attack in the best way, she plucked a small white baby’s breath flower stem from the bouquet, and she reached across the table, and she pinned it into my hair. My stomach dropped with a nervous, fluttery sensation, but she went on talking casually as if she didn’t do anything. “While that’s obviously part of it,” she said lightly, “it’s more that there’s not really anyone around.”

“Huh?” My critical-thinking functions were not at maximum right now.

She smiled, but it was a little… sad, this time. “Nobodylivesin this place. Just retirees and people who have been here their whole lives… the kinds of grandpas and grandmas you probably saw at Stern’s. And as much as I love them, I’m not into that age range. Everyone I’d actually be interested in is just passing through.”

“Oh…” I frowned. “Doesn’t that get a little lonely?”

She shrugged. “It’s got its perks. If I do something stupid, the people who remember it will leave and I’ll have a nice clean slate. If I get together with someone and it goes badly—end of summer, it all hits reset. And there’s some people who come back regularly…” She paused, a distant look in her eyes, looking past me out to the ocean. “There was this one girl who I almost had a real thing with. She was only visiting, but she spent a week here, left, and came back for another week. Lived basically across the water on the mainland, so it was a quick trip, and we had fun for a while.”

“But that is all in past tense.”

She tapped at her plate idly with her fork, scraping at her sweet potato skin. “She decided she wanted something realer. That’s all. Doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun, though.”

She said that, but… that sad little look in her eyes spoke volumes. Still, it seemed like she didn’t want to pursue the subject, so I went for levity. “Well, as long as you keep getting girls throwing themselves at you, all’s well.”

“As long as my abs hold up to get girls staring.”

“Ah… look, I’m sorry for staring,” I mumbled, looking away, and she laughed.

“Don’t be. Body sculpting is hard work. I do it because I want people to look. Not everyone, butyouabsolutely have permission to.”

That was… hot. I’d have liked to spend a lot of time looking.

I wasn’t like this normally. I wasn’t the type tolustover somebody—even in the early stages of my relationships, where we’d have sex multiple times a week for the first few weeks, it was more about my body seeking urges fulfilled rather than being…turned onby seeing somebody. How was it that the person who got me like this was the person my ex had tried to cheat on me with?

I didn’t doubt there was an element of it that was just that Brooklyn was smolderingly sexy, but there was probably also the element ofrelease.That after all these years trying to put away my attraction to women as an inconvenience, here I was, right in the face of blazing queer sexuality, and I surprised myself more than anyone to find I desperately wanted to take part.

Once we came back from the island and found a way to pave over whatever the hell was happening with my family, I’d probably put this all away, go back to shoving my feelings for women into a corner I could ignore. Even without it, just by the numbers game, I was more likely to end up with a man than I was with a woman. So… for this time outside time, this liminal space far away from my regular life, I found I desperately wanted to do something about it. While I could.

I laughed. I’d been so anxious about the thought that maybe I was expected to have sex while on vacation. Now suddenly I found that—as much as it scared me and I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to do it—Iachedfor it. Just once in my life, I wanted to have sex with a woman.

“What are you laughing at?” Brooklyn said, a smile dancing on her features.

“Maybe Allison’s onto something,” I said, and she scrunched up her face.

“Seems highly unlikely.”

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