How to Honeymoon Alone

“I never said he was cute!”

“That’s what I heard, at any rate,” Phillip says and takes a step closer. “The entire flight back home to Chicago, I hated myself for that. For not asking you.”

“I hated you my entire flight home, too,” I mutter.

He smiles. It’s the crooked one. “I would have deserved it, too, if I’d really been speaking about you.”

“How did you find me? How… how are you here?”

“I landed in Chicago, and nothing felt right. We’d had a two-week conversation, and I wasn’t ready for it to end.”

“Me, either,” I whisper.

He reaches out and runs a strand of my hair between two of his fingers. His eyes soften. “You, with your wild ideas and talk of vacation selves, and forcing me out of my comfort zone at every single turn. Your beautiful brown hair, and your quick mouth, and these dark eyes. I could look at them forever.”

I can’t breathe.

“My law firm was hired by a company here in Washington. There’s a tech merger going on, one of the biggest nationwide deals in months. An advisory position opened up.”

“Here?” I ask.

He nods, and this time his words turn cautious. “I sent in my application nine days after I returned to Chicago. It went through just last week.”

“So you… live here now?”

“I’m on a three-month extended stay in Seattle, yeah.”

“Wow,” I say. “Okay. Wow.”

“A good wow? Or a horrified wow?”

“Good, I think. But how did you find me? And my house?”

At that, his expression turns chagrined. “Well, I might have done a bit of investigative work. I wasn’t sure if my postcard would ever arrive, and I…” He breaks off and runs a hand through his hair. “I’ve been thinking about you non-stop since Barbados.”

“Oh,” I breathe.

“I had to know. I had to say the things I didn’t when we were saying goodbye, even if you would want me to leave after. I memorized your address from the postcard, and… here I am.”

I take a step closer. “I really can’t believe you’re here. For weeks, I’ve been thinking that you didn’t care. That saying goodbye for you was easy.”

“It wasn’t,” he says. “Not at the time, and definitely not in the days after. I knew I had to find you.”

“You did.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“I did,” he says and runs his fingers over my cheek. It’s tentative, like he isn’t sure he’s quite allowed to touch me, yet. “There was only one thing that held me back.”

I lean into the warmth of his hand. “There was?”

“You met my vacation self, as you liked to call it. I wasn’t sure if you’d like my normal self, too.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“I do work a lot, Eden. I love it.”

“I know you do.”

“I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt this way about anyone.”

“Me neither,” I whisper. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you, too. Even when I hated you because I thought you’d said those things about me.”

“I’m sorry I ever made you doubt,” he murmurs. He tips my head back, and the intensity in his eyes takes my breath away. “You’re the most wonderful thing I never saw coming. I need more of it in my life.”

He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a thin, glossy guidebook. On it, the word Washington is in bold, black letters. “I need a guide, you see.”

“Oh.”

He smiles. “And this book is shamefully lacking in annotations.”

“It doesn’t even look bookmarked,” I say.

“It’s not. Not a single one.”

“You poor thing,” I whisper and rise up on my tiptoes.

He leans down an inch. “Does this mean you’ll let me take you out?”

“Yes,” I say, and he closes the distance between us.

Phillip kisses me softly, his lips familiar again in an instant. I knot my hands behind his neck and kiss him back. In my chest, my heart feels like it’s pounding out of my ribcage. I’ve dreamed of being in his arms again. With my eyes closed, I can almost hear the ocean waves break against the shoreline, and the distant sound of cicadas.

It feels like coming home and going on vacation, the best of both worlds.

Excitement floods through me. I get to spend more time with him. After weeks of wondering, and worrying, there is a future to this. I’m not going to have to live on memories alone.

His kisses turn even softer and slower, like he’s afraid I’ll break or spook, like this is still too fragile to believe. I want to tell him it’s not.

That I’ve never felt more alive.

But I think time will have to do that for us.

“Where are you staying?” I ask, threading my hands into his hair. God, he smells good.

His thumb brushes over my lower lip. “At a motel in Oakwood.”

“That’s over an hour away.”

“Yeah. Halfway to Seattle.”