How to Honeymoon Alone

Maybe that’s why I don’t text her about the last night’s kiss on the beach. It exists in its own separate universe, beneath a starlit sky and to the sound of waves. In a place where two people became something very unlike themselves for a glorious few minutes.

I head down to the beach after breakfast. Surprisingly, it’s another warm, sunny day, and I can’t believe I’ve already been here for over a week.

I bathe myself in sun lotion and grab a lounge chair that has an umbrella, just to be safe. Then, I google surfing lessons Barbados and best hiking trips to avoid giving my brain any time at all to linger on the events of the previous night.

Distraction is a great tactic.

I’d employed it heavily right after Caleb and Cindy, where, if I just kept having podcasts playing in my headphones at all times, I could almost drown out the sound of my heart breaking.

Almost.

After a swim, I return to the plot I’m trying to figure out for this resort murder mystery. Why are the main characters so hard for me to find? They’re not like side characters. I can’t just look around me and get inspired, not when there needs to be great depth to them.

But I know this is the process. It had been the same way when I wrote my first book… the one I actually found a publisher for. It had started out as the best thing that had ever happened to me, which is probably why the fall felt so much harder.

My very first book. My debut. The one I’d written throughout college, the one I’d rewritten, and rewritten again, and again until I knew the words of it better than my own name.

Selling a book, not to mention a debut, is nigh-on-impossible. Traditional publishers have a needle-sized hole to pass through… but I’d done it. One Fatal Step had sold, and my publisher had been so excited that we’d planned a release party. Roughly six weeks after the launch, the high had started to wear off.

Hard.

They wanted me to market. They wanted me to magically have a social media following over night. And, as it was made very clear to me, they weren’t willing to invest more into marketing… because the book hadn’t performed.

To this day, it still hasn’t earned its advance.

My publisher doesn’t want to buy more books from me.

Which means, I write my stories now for an audience of me, myself, and I. No editor to appease and no publisher to bow down to. No readers, either. But, clearly, they weren’t there the first time around.

I close my eyes and lean back in the lounge chair. Think, Eden. Think. How can I make this story work? What main characters do I want to spend the coming half a year with?

My thinking is interrupted rather rudely a few minutes later by the arrival of a tall man standing next to my chair. I shield my eyes from the sun to see who it is.

It’s Phillip.

I can’t make out his eyes behind his sunglasses. “Hey,” he says.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

I struggle to pull myself up into a sitting position and glance down, sneakily, to see that all my bikini pieces are in the right spots. They are. “Um, hi.”

“Hungover?”

“A bit this morning, but I’m good now,” I respond.

He’s fully dressed. Shorts and actual sneakers, and in another button-down. The silence between us stretches out for a beat and okay, we’re going to pretend like yesterday didn’t happen, I think, and that’s absolutely the right call. Definitely.

“I was just heading out, but I thought I saw your pink bikini,” he says.

“It’s purple,” I say. “Lilac, really.”

Phillip looks down at the said bikini, and my body, and I regret my clarification immediately. But his lips curve just slightly. “Right. My bad. So, I’m heading to the golf course, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I have a tee time in… thirty minutes. It’s just ten minutes from here.”

“The one we drove by yesterday?”

“Yes, the Winter Resort has a partnership.” He shrugs. “I can see that you’re busy tanning, but if you want to come, there’s a spot.”

“To come with?”

“Yes.”

“To golf?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know how to,” I say. “Well, I’ve played mini golf a few times. That’s not really the same thing, right? Although I guess the balls are the same size, though.”

There’s that curve to his lips again, just barely there. “Yes, I suppose they are.”

I swing my legs over the edge of the lounge chair. Golf. With Phillip. He must have been heading out from the bungalow and changed his mind on the spur of the moment when he saw me on the beach.

“As long as you can promise me there’ll be no rum, I’m in,” I say.

“No rum? You had your fill yesterday?”

“Yes. I think I need at least a few more hours before I may want another rum sour.”

He snorts. “Look at you, the picture of moderation.”

“That’s me. Okay, I’m in. But I just brought a cover-up to the beach. Can I go change quickly?”

He glances down at my bikini again but looks away just as fast. “Yeah. I’ll be in the lobby.”

“Inside it? Or right outside?” I ask.

I can’t see him roll his eyes, but I can practically feel it. “Inside. Now go.”

“I’m on it. Back soon!”

Digging through my suitcase a few minutes later, I face an imminent problem. What do you wear to golf? The question is pretty irrelevant at any length, because whatever the answer is, the likelihood of me having accidentally packed it was zero.

I pull on a tank top and a jeans skirt that ends halfway down my thighs. It looks vaguely tennis-y, and I have a notion that people who play tennis and golf usually wear similar things.

I only brought sandals and flip-flops, though, so my sandals will have to do.

Phillip is indeed waiting in the lobby. I catch sight of him with his back toward me, hands in his pockets. For a second, I want to retreat to my room. Last night had made things real, somehow. The cotton candy cloud of embracing the unknown, being vacation me, and the why not? attitude I’ve tried hard to live on and with for the past week are all shaking beneath me.