Page 3 of Breakaway Heart
I lowered the brochure and surveyed the same scene from the photograph in real time. Just in time to watch a plump kid with a floaty wedged around his belly, bombing into the very same pool that angelic creature had once found her Zen moment in.
To my left, there was no gorgeous man by the pool, reading with a self-satisfied smile on his face. Instead, there was only a gaggle of families squawking, fussing, and screeching at each other, like a collection of stressed birds vying for their position around a watering hole.
“Excuse me?”
Even with my sunglasses on, I had to lift my hand up to block out the sun and see who the owner of the voice was. Oh. Now hewascute. I sat up as elegantly as I could, and as his taut torso blocked out the glare of the sun, I lowered my glasses and gave him a coy look over the top of them.
“Oh. Well, hi there. I’m Lucy.”
He tilted his head at me, considering how to respond.
“I just wanted to ask… Um, if… You were with someone?”
I smiled broadly.Thank you God for sending me something in my hour of need.
“Oh, no. I’m available.” I told him, my eyes meeting his. It was an odd look he gave me back, though. Not the knowing and excited smile that would usually pass between two strangers who had just met and already knew they would be in bed together before the day was out.
“So. I can take this sunlounger then, yeah?”
I flashed a look at the empty lounger next to me. Each of them neatly set out together around the pool in little white plastic couples.
“That sounds quite nice, actually,” I told him.
Then I watched with dismay as, instead of sitting down and pulling out a well-read paperback (perhaps Keats or Yates or something), he bent over, clutched each side of the lounger, and began dragging it noisily across the floor. The torso didn’t stop until he had reached a table with a youngwoman lying out next to it. Then he sat down on it without taking another look back.
Great. Even the sun loungers don’t want to be with me.
I shouldn’t complain. I mean, people would love to be here, soaking in the sun. And maybe in different circumstances, it could be quite nice. It was thebeing singlebit that stung. I was adrift and unusual here. And alone. Pathetically alone.
Just relax. That’s all you have to do. I took a deep, calming breath, lowered my sunglasses again, and opened my book—Page one. Chapter one—for about the tenth time on this trip.Okay, this time, get into it, Lucy.
A spray of cold water leapt from the pool, and I squealed at the shocking sensation as it splashed across my chest and legs.
“Nathan, stop it, right now! You’re upsetting people!”A red-faced and very un-Zen woman yelled at the boy in the pool, who only laughed back in glee. At least someone was enjoying themselves, I guess.
The owner of the boy gave me a pained look and then a shrug that said both“sorry”and“but what can I do?”.
My idea of some relaxing time, sunbathing and reading by the pool, really wasn’t working out as I’d hoped. I gathered up my things and headed inside to the Eclipse bar.Yeah, great idea, Luce. Drinking alone is definitely going to make things better.
The service at the resort bar was the same as in the restaurant, stuffy and stand-offish. I suppose it was meant to make you feel like you were being served and waited on, as if you were somehow important and being looked after by highly trained professionals, but I’d rather have had a little light conversation and a different kind of attentiveness.
A flamboyantly dressed cocktail was swiftly delivered tomy table, complete with a luridly colored cocktail umbrella and far too many unnecessary pieces of fruit pinned around the rim.
Glancing around at all the couples sitting happily together at the other tables, I grimaced, then pulled my phone out of my bag with a sigh. With Hannah off displaying new forms of bendiness for her new trainer, I decided to check in on work.
Hey John, just wondering how the Hartington account’s going?
Hi Lucy. All good. I’m not meant to talk to you about it, though
Who says? Bill?
You got it!
Ugh,Bill. My boss. If you’re wondering why I’m reluctantly lingering in self-imposed singledom at a resort, there’s your answer right there.
It was a month ago, and I was having one of those days. The kind where you wake up in someone else’s bed and you wonder why you did—and exactlywhatyou did—the night before. Heading into work in the same clothes as the previous day, now tainted with the sharp and sour aroma of tequila, stale beer, and what might have been sweet and sour chicken, I’d picked up a coffee to go. It was as I approached the glass-fronted doorway to my office that a man leaving in a rush pushed the door outward, and my carelessly attached coffee cup lid removed itself against my chest, along with a large splash of blazingly hot coffee.
“Sorry!” The man shouted insincerely over his shoulder as he quickly disappeared into a waiting cab, leaving medripping with java juice on the office steps, and one arm of my sunglasses now hanging halfway down my face.
