Chapter 8
Trevor
The breeze was cooler that morning than it had been since I got there. I had pulled on my sunglasses to avoid anyone staring at my bloodshot, tired eyes. I stabbed a piece of fruit and put it in my mouth, no longer in wonder at the beautiful flowers and fresh smells floating around me. I sat at a table in the resort restaurant away from the big windows, not wanting to watch the surf. I’d had enough of the fantasy I was living in. Everything had fallen apart in the blink of an eye, and I reminded myself that fairy tales didn’t happen to guys like me. They only happened to people like Emma and Brandt, who’d had to go through hell to find their happily ever after.
“Can I get you more coffee, sir?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said, needing all the coffee I could get to survive the flight back.
My bags were packed and sitting next to me at the table. I hadn’t put much thought into packing and left all the floral printed shirts and board shorts in the trash can in my room. What would I need them for in New York City? I had ceremoniously put my khakis and button-up shirt on for the flight back, realizing that my life was now going to go back to normal. I had no choice in the matter. For the first time in my life, I messed up a relationship, and I wasn’t even trying to. In fact, I was trying desperately not to mess this up, but I did anyway. I had this knack for chasing anything that was good out of my life and replacing it for what was good at the moment like alcohol and one-night stands. I put my fork down and rubbed my face, thinking about the night before.
Everything had been so perfect, so real. We had made love under the full moon and then gone back to my hotel room. I got in the shower, excited to spend the evening with Caroline, thinking about what to do next while I washed the sand off me. I thought I had heard the door but figured it was the neighbors coming and going. I climbed out of the shower and dried off, walking into the room, calling for Caroline, but she was gone. I stood there for a second, thinking that maybe she had just run to get something, but then I saw the note. I sat down on the edge of the bed and read it.
“Trevor,
I had a really great time these last few days. It has been amazing, but I figured we might want to end it before anyone got hurt. Things would never work out in the real world, outside the magic of this place. We both know that. You’re a ladies’ man, a player through and through, and I won’t lie to myself thinking that could change. Have a safe trip back to New York.
Caroline”
She told me to have a nice trip back to New York? I had just spent the most amazing three days with anyone ever in my life, and she was going to end it just like that. I picked up my phone and looked at the screen. There were texts from Eliza, and I immediately knew that Caroline must have read them. Of all the moments to bite me in the ass and for all the reasons, I couldn’t believe it was that. I got dressed and combed my hair, replaying the last few days over and over. I wasn’t going to let things end like that. It wasn’t going to be the way this story played out.
I left the resort and drove over to her place, parking and running up the stairs. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer, so I walked around to her balcony door and looked inside. The lights were off, and everything was the same as it was when we had left for the luau. She had obviously not come back to her place. I ran down the steps and jogged down to the beach, standing in the sand on the edge of the beach, looking over at the luau still going strong. I searched the crowd, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I turned and walked out of sight, figuring it was better that no one found me looking for her. I didn’t want to have to explain what had happened. It was hard for me to even wrap my head around, much less explain to a group of strangers I had met once.
I left there and started walking the beach, not caring how far I got or where I was even at for that matter. I crossed back and forth in front of her bungalow several times, hoping to see her return, but the lights were always off, and there was no change. When I came back across the rocks we had made love against earlier that night, I sat down and kicked my feet in the sand. I leaned back running my hand over something. I picked it up and looked at it, it was an earring, Caroline’s earring. She must have lost it while we were out there. I pushed it into my pocket and watched the waves roll up almost to my feet. The shells scattered across the wet sand and the foam dissipated enough to be replenished as the surf hit the sand again. I pulled my phone out and stared down at the message from Eliza, not believing that of all people, she was the one to ruin this for me.
I had met Eliza at a bar about a year before, and we had hit it off, just like I did with so many before her. We had gone back to her place and fucked several times, and I fell asleep there after having way too much to drink. When I woke up in the morning, she had made breakfast, and I felt obliged to stay. I quickly noticed that in the daylight, she seemed a bit more neurotic than she had the night before. She was almost treating me like I was her boyfriend, and it freaked me out. I texted Brandt, and he got me out of the situation, calling me with a fake emergency at work. Seeing as it was Sunday, I was sure she didn’t believe me, but I didn’t care. It got me out of her apartment. I thought that would be the end of it, but somehow, she had gotten my info and had been stalking me ever since. It was fucking exhausting, and I couldn’t believe she was the person who’d fucked everything up.
In the past, this could have really been something that was true, but it was honestly just really bad timing. If I had been there, I could have explained to Caroline what was going on. I could have scrolled through the hundreds of unanswered texts where she went from begging me to come back to cursing the day I was ever born. Sure, I made a mistake by sleeping with her and staying the night, but I was a single guy, and I didn’t give her any indication that it was anything more than one night. I had sat there on that rock until the sun came up, staring at the texts and telling myself not to do anything rash. I wanted to call Eliza and scream at her, but eventually, I just got up and came back to the resort, packing my things and finding myself right where I was sitting, picking at breakfast and moping in my cup of coffee.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” the waiter asked.
“No, thank you,” I said with a smile, handing him a tip.
“Thank you, sir, have a good trip back,” he said, nodding his head.
A good trip back, that seemed like something that couldn’t go together even if it tried. I picked up my orange juice and finished it off, looking at the time on my watch. If I left, then I would get to the airport really early, but I figured it was better than sitting there in the resort feeling sorry for myself. I opened my tickets and looked at them, not wanting to go to New York but not wanting to stay in Hawaii either. I was miserable, absolutely miserable, and I didn’t know what to do about it. In reality, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Caroline had gone out of her way to not be found, and I couldn’t spend the rest of my life searching the beach for her.
I picked up my bags and made my way to the front of the resort. I turned in my rental at the kiosk in the lobby and requested a car to the airport. They took my bags, and I walked out the front doors and waited for the car to pull around. I watched the happy tourists loading and unloading from the transport buses, some couples in love, some families on their vacation, and others there by themselves, looking for something missing in their lives. I wanted to see Caroline so badly, to hold her, to make her listen to me, but it was a lost cause. I didn’t even know how to find her, and by that point, she was probably resolute never to see me again. It was too late, and I had to learn to live with that fact. I had done the best I could to try to find her, and nothing had come of it. Obviously, the universe was giving me a really strong dose of karma, and I was going to have to swallow every dose of it.
When the car pulled up, I hopped inside and sat back, looking out the window. We drove along the ocean for a while, and I watched the surfers riding the waves. I thought about Caroline and how she looked that first time I saw her on the water. I had just gotten there, grabbed some clothes from the resort shop, and headed out to her bungalow. When I walked up, I stood at the top of the hill, watching her moving through the waves on her board, the sun sparkling in the water around her. I sat there on the beach for a while, watching her floating through the water, gazing out at the dolphins off the shore. It had been the perfect scene, and I had really thought everything was falling into place perfectly after that. My heart was broken. I could feel it, and there was no one but myself to blame for it. I didn’t dot all my i’s and cross all of my t’s like I should have. I jumped in headfirst, and I drowned really fast.
As we turned to go toward the airport, I watched the ocean leave my line of sight. It was back to New York City, to the grind of people, the never-ending onslaught of women who would never live up to Caroline. It was back to my desk with my tail between my legs and to a world where I was going to have to tell Brandt what happened and how bad I fucked up with his future wife’s best friend. I knew eventually, it would blow over, that people would forget about the time I up and left to chase a girl only to watch her walk away. I just didn’t know I was ever going to be able to fully move on from this. It was the first girl I had loved in a really long time, and I was still all alone.
Chapter 9
Two Weeks Later
Caroline
Camden was always the place I ended up. It was the place I had grown up in, the place I had left a hundred times, and the place I always came back to. Every time I was away, I couldn’t think about how I could possibly come back, but then when I drove in through the city limits and saw all the familiar faces, I couldn’t help feeling at ease and comforted. It should be a shock going from somewhere like Hawaii to a small town like Camden, but it never felt that way to me. It just felt like going from one home to another. That day, I had found myself at the café that I always frequented, lounging on the couch, attempting to read a book, and sipping a vanilla latte. My mind was wandering, though, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.
I kept thinking about my time in Hawaii and how much fun it was. I always had a good time when I was there, but this time was different. Trevor was there, and it made everything so much more vibrant and alive. Our time together was amazing, and I had never fallen for someone like I had for him. I wasn’t the kind of girl who moped over guys or milked a broken heart, but I was struggling to get past everything that had happened. I knew I should have probably stayed and faced him, asked him why he would do something like that to me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to hear the excuses or the lies. I couldn’t bear to have him tell me I was way more into him than he was into me. I didn’t even go back home that night. I had driven out across Oahu to the other side and sat watching the sun come up.
I couldn’t help wondering what Trevor thought when he got out of the shower and found that note. I wondered if he was angry, if he was sad and hurt, or if it was just a shrug of the shoulder. I wondered if it even bothered him at all that I left like that. I wanted to believe that I didn’t make up the way were together in my head. I wanted to believe that he wasn’t the kind of man who would travel all that distance just to get laid, but those texts made everything really hard to believe. There was a girl out there with a broken heart because he did the same thing to her. Maybe he didn’t travel all that way to do it, maybe just a stroll down New York Avenue, but he did it nonetheless. I breathed deeply trying to control the emotions bubbling up in my chest. Visions of Trevor dancing next to the bonfire holding me tightly were haunting me at every turn. It had been two weeks, and I was still struggling to get through it.
Emma had called me a couple days after I had gotten back and asked me about everything. I guess Trevor had told Brandt, and it trickled down from there. She had said he was apparently really beat up over it, but she said Brandt didn’t know all of the details. I decided to let it lie, making up an excuse about not being able to deal with a long-distance relationship. I didn’t want to make her angry at him. She had to live that life and see him on a regular basis. I don’t know if she believed me, but that was the story I stuck to. I closed my book and picked up my latte, pulling myself upright and taking a sip. Part of me wanted to see him again, if for no other reason but to tell him he was a horrible person. At that moment, something moved in my peripheral vision, and I looked up at the front window, freezing with my coffee to my lips. Trevor was standing outside, staring at me through the window, waiting to get my attention.
He perked up immediately and waved at me, smiling sweetly. He slowly lowered his hand and stuck it in his pocket, looking down at the ground and kicking at something. I sat there for a minute looking around me for some sort of support, but there was no one I knew. I took another drink of my coffee and set it down on the table next to my book. I didn’t really have any choice but to go out there and face him. I knew he would stand there waiting to talk to me all day until they kicked me out of the shop. Every emotion I had that night after leaving his resort room came flooding back to me, and I could feel myself turning my hurt into anger. Not only was I afraid to talk to him, but I was now afraid that when I went outside, I was going to completely blow up on him. I tried to take several deep breaths to calm myself, but with him standing there waiting for me, it was no use. I forced my resolve and stood up, walking over to the doors and stepping outside. I nodded for him to walk away from the door, and he followed me over. I turned to him and shook my head.
“Seriously? You come here now? You didn’t call me, you didn’t say a word to me for the last two weeks, and you come here now? Why didn’t you just walk over to that Eliza girl’s place? She was a hell of a lot closer than Camden. You are a real piece of—”
He shushed me, and I stood upright surprised by his response. No one ever told me to be quiet.
“I need you to be quiet,” he said. “I know that’s hard for you, but just try for a minute. I want to start by saying I think you’re the most interesting and amazing woman I have ever met. You light up the room everywhere you go. You bring something to the table that no one in my life ever has, and I cannot just walk away from that. My time with you in Hawaii was the best thing that has ever happened to me. It was one of those moments I will carry with me when I take my last breath. It is the wild that you talk about, the wandering, except you were there by my side, and it never felt more real. As far as the texts, Eliza is a girl who as a single guy I slept with one night. I never promised anything or led her on in any way. She found my information and then started to stalk me. When I got back to New York, she showed up at my apartment, and I had her arrested. I now have a restraining order against her. I brought it if you would like to see it.”
I stood there wide-eyed, listening to him talking, watching the way his face curled up in anger as he talked about Eliza. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a court-ordered restraining order against that girl, signed by a judge and stamped by the state of New York. I realized in that moment that I’d made a mistake. I’d jumped to conclusions without giving him time to explain.
“If you still don’t believe me, scroll through these messages,” he said, handing me his phone.
I looked at him for a moment and then down at the phone. I scrolled through, shocked at what I was reading. There were hundreds of unanswered texts ranging from her sweetly asking him to come over, to her freaking out in the next five minutes when he didn’t respond. The texts were all hours of the day and night. I handed the phone back to him and sighed, knowing that even if he wasn’t a player, none of it was going to work, not with the way I lived my life.
“I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions,” I said. “But that doesn’t take away from the fact that you live in a different world than I do. I love to travel. I cannot sit still, and that is my life. It has always been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I get that, but I love my life. I can’t be Emma, living in some high-rise in New York City, waiting for you to get home, taking care of babies. Maybe one day, I’ll have a family, but for now, I want to live my life from country to country. I want to see the world, and I—”
He put his fingers over my lips and stepped forward. “Just be quiet for once,” he whispered. “I love you, Caroline.”
I froze again, feeling his fingertips sliding down my lips. I looked at him with wide eyes, unable to even comprehend what he just said. I was supposed to be angry at him, pushing him out of my life because it would never work. Then I thought about that dance under the stars, the love we made on the rocks, and the way he made me laugh until I cried. I thought about the butterflies in my stomach when he kissed me that first night, and even how excited I was when he was the one sitting on the beach in front of my bungalow. I thought about the dolphins, swimming together, connected as they traveled through life. I realized that I was angry and scared for one reason and one reason only. I was in love with him too.
“Dammit, Trevor,” I whispered. “I love you too.”
“Look,” he said, pulling me over to a bench and sitting down next to me, taking my hands. “I know you’re a wanderer through and through. I saw how much that life brought you to your peak. I saw the excitement and lust you had in your eyes at every turn. I saw the relationships you built with everyone around you, and I know that you can’t do without that,” he said. “I don’t want to change you, to make you a housewife in New York. The spark in you is what I love the most about you. That spark is what brings me to life, what makes me want to dance to Fleetwood Mac, jump on a plane and fly to Hawaii at the last second, and do a dance to the gods with the native Hawaiians at a luau. I know you cannot commit to an everyday life with me in New York, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for you in my home. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a relationship that can’t be stoked by that wanderlust.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you fool.” Trevor laughed. “Yes, a million times over. I would rather travel with you, have you in New York sometimes, and video message with you a million times than not have you at all.”
I sat there staring at him, completely ecstatic to hear those words. I never thought in a million years that someone would ever feel that way about me. I never thought that someone would love me enough to let me be the woman I was, to not try to change me and mold me into something they really wanted. I leaned forward and kissed him hard because I had no words to say back to him to tell him how happy I was. He chuckled and pulled me close to him, making me feel more at home than I had ever before in any place I had ever gone. I couldn’t believe I was going to have my own happy ending.