How to Honeymoon Alone

He kisses me like he feels the same way.

“Sorry, you two,” the cab driver calls. “There’s a minibus coming up behind me. Should I park…?”

Phillip steps back, his eyes heated and mouth set in a grim line. “She’s coming,” he says, but his eyes never leave mine. “Bye, Eden.”

“Bye, Phillip,” I whisper.

He lifts my bag into the trunk of the cab, closing the door behind him. I get into the car, but I can’t stop looking at him. I watch him as the taxi pulls away and heads down the Winter Resort driveway toward the main road.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

Phillip remains standing by the lobby doors, watching my retreating car. Stoic, imposing, and alone.

I lean my head back against the seat. My heart is beating fast. I don’t even have his number. He never offered his digits, and I didn’t give him mine.

Maybe this is the way it was always meant to end. Just two weeks. Two strangers who enjoyed some time together, soothing their hurts… even if it means they aren’t strangers at all anymore. Quite the opposite.

We make it ten minutes from the resort before panic sets in. What if my postcard never arrives? What if his never does?

I’ll have no way of finding him.

“Can we go back?” I ask the driver. “Please. Just a quick stop. I forgot… something.”

“Passport?” he asks.

My heart is pounding. “Yeah, I think so.”

“No worries,” the driver says and sends me a smile through the rearview mirror. “Small island. I’ll still have you at the airport in plenty of time.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I promise I’ll be a really great tipper.”

He laughs. “You have the look of one.” He turns the car around on a side street and cranks up the volume of the radio, humming along.

Phillip isn’t in the lobby when I return. I leave my bag in the cab and take off at a run, racing down to the bungalow area. I weave past The Sandpiper and The Green Monkey and head toward The Hawksbill. I rush past the hedged patio and toward the gate. He has to be here, where else would he be? He has to be here.

That’s when I hear his voice.

“-yeah, I’ve just finished it with her. For good.”

I freeze, my heels slapping against the stone path.

“No, I won’t miss her. Genuinely, Tess. It was good for what it was, but it wasn’t meant to last. All I feel now is relief.”

He’s quiet for a few beats. That’s when I recognize the name. Tess. His sister. Are they talking about me? It could be. It might be.

“Right. It was tiring hearing about all the wild ambitions she’ll never follow through on, too. Do you know she asked me to read a contract the other day?”

My heart stops.

Just flat-out stops.

It is me. It has to be. So, it was good while it lasted, was it? And I’ll never achieve my wild ambitions. Just like Caleb used to say. My fingers tingle, as if I’ve touched an exposed live wire.

Seems like I’ve misjudged someone yet again.

“Yeah, I know. I told her to stop-” he continues, but I can’t hear anymore. I turn around and race back up the path, toward the lobby and the waiting car.

This time, it doesn’t stop on its way to the airport.

Three Weeks Later

“Okay,” Becky says. She’s sitting on my couch, her feet up on the coffee table. Her cup of tea is perched on top of her giant stomach. “So, the two sisters who are always arguing. They are the real killers?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, I love that. I suspected them from the very beginning, you know.”

I chuckle. “Of course you did.”

She wiggles her toes. “This is great. I haven’t seen you this fired up in months.”

“It’s a great story,” I say. Maybe that’s just because I’m in the magical phase, only ten thousand words into a new story and a little too in love with my own vision, but I believe it this time. “And you know what? Up until the very last moment, everyone will actually suspect the-”

“Businessman,” Becky says and winks. “I remember.”

“Well, I was thinking of changing him into this foreign banker, maybe in his sixties? He’s just made a terrible financial decision and comes to the island to hide.”

She frowns. “So he’s not going to be our girl’s love interest anymore?”

“No, not in that case.” I pull up my legs beneath me, sitting like a pretzel on my armchair. Then I reach for a blanket and studiously drape it across my lap.

“Eden,” she says.

I sigh. “Yeah, okay, so I can’t figure out the businessman character.”

“Because he’s based on the real person,” she says.

It’s not a question, but I nod anyway. “Yeah, inspired by one, anyway. It would have been awesome if I could still… If I could separate my own experience from the inspiration.”

“Maybe you can use your own experience.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s just… if I write him as the mysterious businessman my main character initially suspects, and then falls in love with on the trip, and they have this whirlwind romance and then he’s wrongfully accused, and they have to work together to solve the murder-”

“-and confront the murderous sisters and then ride off into the sunset together,” Becky says, nodding vigorously. “I love it so much.”

“Yeah, it’s a good story. I think I could write it well. Maybe…”

“But?” she prompts, and her voice softens. “Is it because you’d have to give the main character a happy ending with him?”

I sigh again. “That makes me sound terribly petty, doesn’t it?”