Page 54 of Date and Switch

After yoga, Bryce joined the men on the terrace for coffee and business talk. Over the course of the cruise, the group had become pretty tight knit having numerous overlapping business interests. I’d declined and opted instead to return to our cabin for a shower. A gigantic garment bag hung from the curtain rod, which I assumed was my opera dress from Isabel. While she’d told us it would take her weeks upon weeks to assemble it, given fashion week quickly approaching, I reasoned that because of their friendship she’d decided to do me a favor and rush the production.

It wasn’t my opera dress. The garment bag overflowed with a very ornate lace and silk wedding dress. A dress that one hundred percent was not intended for me. It was a size two for one thing. A single one of my thighs wouldn’t fit in that bodice let alone both. I’d spent every day since meeting Bryce telling myself under no uncertain circumstances was I to Google Sarah Miller. I didn’t need to know a damn thing about her. I felt like I’d been living with her ghost though. Especially during the first half of the cruise. Now that her demon had finally been exorcized, memories of her returned like the ghost of relationships past.

I Googled. More than Googled. The FBI would probably want to hire me with the intense level of research I’d done. Let’s just say I know her and someone named Ashlee took turns buying each other coffee and she had eyelash extensions applied once a month at a place called Wink. Was I proud of what I’d done? That was a hard no. Could it have been prevented? Maybe if the cabin wasn’t equipped with internet, and we hadn’t been stuck at sea for quite a long stretch.

She wasn’t just a successful architect. She was also gorgeous. Like America’s Next Top Model gorgeous. Her honey-colored hair was perfectly styled in every single picture I saw of her. I never even saw her with a ponytail or messy bun. Her nails were manicured into sensible ovals and painted in modest colors. She had brilliant white teeth, and a wardrobe that screamed preppy Brahmin. She was Boston born and raised.

“What on earth?”

I’d been so deep in my internet stalking I never heard Bryce come in. I must have been quite the sight with his super skinny ex-fiancé’s wedding dress draped across the sofa, and me furiously typing into my laptop, iPad, and phone, internet stalking her.

“I thought it was my opera dress,” I offered as an explanation.

Bryce didn’t say a word. Instead, he gathered the dress, rehung it on its fancy silk hangar, repacked it in its garment bag and carried it out. For twenty minutes I felt guilty he’d discovered me like that in our room. Then I argued myself out of those feelings instead, leaning toward annoyed that her stupid dress threw a storm cloud over our good time. Especially since it was her that hamstrung Bryce and not the other way around. After two hours I began to worry. I had no idea where he’d gone off to with the offending object.

My questions were answered on the first pass around the ship when I found him in the piano bar, a bottle of Johnny Walker at his elbow. Omar tinkered at the piano, nodding at me, and raising his eyebrow in question toward Bryce. I waved him off and took a seat next to Bryce.

“It’s gone.” He told me. “The dress. I took care of it.”

I didn’t know what to say. Thank you seemed weird. So instead, I just stayed silent.

“I forgot about that stupid thing. I ordered it on a whim at Penn’s wedding. I saw it in a store front as I was heading toward the hotel. There’d been a three-month waiting list for the dress anyway, so I told them ‘that’s okay just send it to the ship. They’ll hold it in my name until I board.’ It was a dumb whim. One in hindsight would have probably blown up on me, because Sarah was a planner. She would have wanted to have her gown commissioned.”

He didn’t come up for air, so I continued to let him unburden himself, choosing instead to hold his hand and listen.

“I’d thought ‘How cool would it be if I proposed at one end of the earth and got married at the other.’ That would be a story for the ages. And not many people would have that experience. She fucked me up Angel.”

“I think that sounds incredibly romantic.”

Despite how gutted he looked, just hearing him talk about those kinds of plans caused a flutter low in belly. To be that loved by someone. She really missed out. I wouldn’t mourn for misfortune though. Not only did she not deserve to have someone so wonderful, it was her choice to leave.

“Never mattered anyway.” He took another long drink, before resting his head on his hand. “She didn’t want me.”

I wanted him. I saw how special he was. So many tiny things that had nothing to do with the money spent, but the thought behind him. Never in my life would I ever fathom someone would go through all the effort to track down a perfumier to get a scent to match the one I broke. Or to source dresses for me after reading a buyer the riot act. So many details replayed in my head and kept a small flame burning for Bryce, despite the pain of watching him pine for someone in his past.

“Hey,” I touched his elbow, trying to get his attention, “it’s okay. You have to feel sad in order to feel better, right? Why don’t we go back to the room? We can order something to eat. Maybe we can get Penn on a call, what do you think?’

He shook his head with such vigor I thought he’d give himself motion sickness.

“No. He loves being proven right. He told me I needed to pump the brakes on getting involved with you.”

His eyes were bloodshot, but he didn’t look like he’d been crying. There were so many emotions behind that sentence I wasn’t sure which to focus on.

“He said I was still fucked up inside. I think he’s right, Seraphim.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked. I’d meant as far as heading back to the room, not calling Penn, trying to get him sobered up.

“I need to think about that.”

thirty-five

Hiding out in the conference room working was the chicken shit way out. I knew this. After Sera found me fall down drunk in the piano room, I couldn’t look her in the face. I’d told myself working would help me figure out what to say to Sera. How to apologize.

“Laura just texted.” Teddy broke through my rumination’s, bringing me back into the present meeting with he and Penn, “I guess the ladies have been hanging out by the pool this morning and Sera just ran out crying. No one knows where she went. But I figured you’d want to know. It’s not my business, but is everything all right?”

This was why I didn’t like mingling things. Friendship and business should be lineated. I didn’t need to reminded of home shit from near strangers during work, and vice versa.

Penn’s know it all smirk showed in the Zoom box on my laptop. I knew the second Teddy left he’d be all on my ass.

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