I’ve never lied so much in my life in such a short time.
Four minutes on the phone with the caterer and after some begging and convincing and an offer to pay a convenience fee, they were able to rework their schedule to squeeze us in for today. I’m assuming Veronica told them the wrong day by accident when she called to verify—I don’t even want to know.
One disaster down, one to go.
Wiping beads of sweat from my forehead caused mostly by the stress and not the heat, I scan the contacts in my phone—ignoring the stream of text messages from Paige—for the number for the band when Paige walks up briskly.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Paige says, a scowl etched in her face.
“What is it now?” I ask, exhausted, afraid of the answer.
Paige stops and motions her hands up and down in front of her, indicating her clothes.
“Does this look ‘suitable’ to you?” She makes quotation marks with her fingers. “These shoes cost more than Mrs. Dennings’s facelift,” she snaps. “Yet it’s still not good enough for her. I think she just has it out for me.”
I put up my hand to stop her, not looking her in the eyes, but at the ground instead.
She hushes in an instant.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” I say, throwing my hands in the air, surprising not only her, but myself. “Paige,” I say more calmly, “just stay as far away from Mrs. Dennings, Veronica, and the wedding as you can, OK?”
Paige blinks, stunned.
“Please,” I say before she has a chance to start with the questions—in addition to everything else that’s gone wrong, I feel like the worst best friend in the world. “Just go to your suite, or hang out with the bartender—whatever you want to do. I don’t care right now. All right?”
Baffled by my reaction, she stands there with deepening creases around her blue eyes.
“But what about—”
I turn my back to her and walk away, leaving her standing in her statuesque form, and with the rest of her words on her tongue.
Where I’m going, I have no idea, but I know it’s not to do any of the things I should be doing. I have to get away. I need to clear my head. Or jump into the ocean and let a wave sweep me out into oblivion, never to be found again. I should be tougher than this! Working in this kind of hectic environment and feeding off the stress instead of letting it feed on me, I’m usually good at. Maybe two years of running my butt off nonstop and trying to prevent disasters has finally caught up with me.
I drift farther away from the building, my feet going smoothly over concrete until the concrete becomes sand and it’s harder to trek through in my favorite blue-mint heeled sandals. Shoes I never would’ve worn to do a setup, but felt obligated because of Mrs. Dennings’s excessive expectations of others.
Steady footing becomes wobbly and uneven as my heels sink into the sand step after step. But I keep on walking, letting the sounds of voices and vehicles and other manmade things fade into the background, replaced by the crashing of the waves against the shore. The light wind brushing through the trees and the nearby bushes are becoming more numerous the farther I drift. The birds. The sand crunching beneath my shoes. I want to shut myself off from the world just long enough to breathe, but the voices and images swirling tumultuously inside my head are too loud and only drown out the peaceful things that nature has to offer.
As unexpected as having the wind knocked out of me, my fuse finally burns to the end and I fall against the sand on my bottom and bury my face in my hands, sweat and all. My eyes begin to burn as I smear mascara into them, but I don’t care. I don’t care if I look like a raccoon when I go back into that building—sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air.
“Are you all right?” I hear a voice say.
Raising my eyes from the confines of my hands, I look up to see a tall, gorgeous guy in red swim trunks standing over me—the same guy who was looking at me across the beach in the red and black wetsuit yesterday. The same guy whose brief glance made my stomach flutter.
FOUR
Sienna
Although I only saw him from afar, he has the kind of face that would be hard to forget: defined cheekbones brushed by a five-o’clock shadow. Deep hazel eyes that seem to contain everything between devotion and mischief, framed by tousled golden-brown hair, short in the back but a little longer on top. It looks like he woke up this morning, shuffled his hand through it a few times, and, voilà, perfection.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say with no distinguishable emotion, wiping underneath my eyes with the edges of my thumbs.
I quickly pull the ends of my skirt farther down near my ankles to make sure I’m not on display.
“I see,” he says, crossing his arms loosely over his plain white T-shirt. “You must not be from around here then.”
I look up at his tall, tanned form looming over me and brace for the same tourist treatment that Veronica received.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My nose wrinkles around the edges.
The guy smiles, close-lipped, and though it’s charming enough that it borderlines infectious, I’m not sure what to make of it.
“Well, people from Hawaii,” he says matter-of-factly, “when they cry like that, it usually means something’s wrong.” He shrugs.
I blink confusedly and just stare up at him for a moment.
I’m not crying.
“Is that so?” I say out loud, my voice faintly laced with sarcasm. “I’m curious to know where you think I could be from then, based on that observation.” I’m usually not this impolite, but he caught me at a really bad time.