He ducks his head a little closer and says softly, “I think you still are.”
I am distracted, it’s true—flustered by his smell and his warmth and the golden-sand color of his hair and the surf-blue of his eyes. “I’m fine. Totally fine.”
Tilting his head, he studies me as if I’m a puzzle. “Is that a problem, me being in California?”
“I live in California,” I blurt. “San Francisco. I mean, it’s not like you live in San Francisco. Right?” Why can’t I stop talking? “It’s not as if we both happen to live in the same place. What would be the odds of meeting somebody on an island and it turns out that they’re practically neighbors by California standards?”
I try to laugh at the whims of fate, but it comes out slightly maniacal. Desperately, I wrap up with “So, you must be from someplace else?”
Caleb’s expression has gone from surprise to bemusement to neutral . . . ish. “Yeah. I’m in San Diego. So, not someplace we’re going to keep running into each other.”
“No, of course not. I mean, we’re totally not going to keep seeing each other. That would be silly.”
There’s a beat where we’re both surprised I said that, then Caleb recovers with a forced-sounding laugh. “Yeah, that would be ridiculous. That’s not what we talked about.”
“Not even remotely. None of this”—I gesture from him to me—“is about anything but here and now. I didn’t even know you were from California. It’s not like I met you and thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to meet somebody, and we’ll date when we go back to California, and everything’s going to be fabulous.’”
“Of course not. You wouldn’t be thinking that, because you’re on a man-batical. And I wouldn’t be thinking that, because of my ex and work and all sorts of things.”
“Exactly. And I’m not going to go all stage five clinger on you. I’m totally not like that.”
“So, California is irrelevant. You might as well be from a foreign country,” he says, nodding as if to convince me, or maybe even himself.
“Right, totally. Absolutely. California is huge. We couldn’t be farther apart.”
Then, there’s silence. I’d expect to be relieved, but, unbelievably, the heavy quiet between us is even more awkward than the talking.
Caleb breaks it first. “Except . . . there are flights.”
My breath catches at the possibilities. “True. Pretty frequent ones, really. It’s not hard to go between cities.”
“A little bit of an effort, but not impossible.”
“A little bit of planning if . . .”
But I’m not brave enough to say it.
“Yeah, if . . .” He swallows hard. “The big if.”
Another silence, full of another kind of tension. “Except,” I say tentatively, softly, “this was just a one-night thing on an island. Right?”
He holds my gaze and doesn’t let go. “Well, two nights. It was going to be two nights.”
I frown. “But you just canceled. Your work meeting.”
He shakes himself as if coming out of a trance. “Right, yeah. The work meeting. Super important.”
Try super unconvincing.
He lied to me—cancelled our plans because he didn’t want to see me again.
A shock of emotion hits and leaves me with two options: cry in front of him or get the hell out.
I paste on a bright smile. “On that note, I’m going to go check out some waterfalls.”
Get the hell out it is.
15
Caleb
Alone in the shuttle, I groan and scrub my hands through my hair. “Caleb, you idiot. Work meeting? What was I thinking?”
I catch the sound of a footstep and snap my head toward the rear of the bus. Mrs. Wainwright stands in the aisle, one hand on the back of a seat for balance. Her hair is mussed, but her eyes are bright.
“Mrs. Wainwright?” I choke on surprise and chagrin. “Where did you come from?”
“Right here.” She waves to the seat beside her. “Buses always put me to sleep. And then your conversation was so cute, I thought, who’s going to notice an old lady napping?”
“Okaaaay.” Where to even start to . . . explain? Apologize?
She takes the decision away from me. “It’s obvious you two have it bad, but you don’t know how to let the other know, so you’re acting all weird. You should tell her you want to see her in California.”
“But I don’t,” I insist.
She tuts, and I feel five years old. “You won’t help matters by lying to me or to yourself. You just need to sort things out in your relationship.”
“Mrs. Wainwright, I’m afraid you have the wrong impression. We’re not in a relationship. We’re just having a . . .”
Her penciled eyebrows arch. “A vacation fling?”
I wince at how that sounds, especially from someone who looks like my grade-school librarian. “It’s a tropical tryst between two adults without expectations. And it ended. Amicably.”
She gives me a long, pitying you poor, deluded man kind of look.