Chapter Twenty
Abby
If I just kept my eyes closed, I could go back to sleep. I didn't know what time it was, but it was morning, and it was early. I knew that for sure because my body was wide awake, and I had been trying to get back to sleep for the past half hour. I had tried sleeping on both my sides and my stomach, keeping my eyes closed, but it hadn't worked yet.
I wasn't tired, I knew that, but how did other people do it? Just stay in bed even though it was time to get up? I didn't want to get up. I was trying to mope.
The last time I had seen Nate was Friday, and I had spent all of Saturday doing my best not to run into him by accident. I'd made the mistake of finally getting him to come out of his hotel room, and now I got to pay for it because I didn't want to see him.
Come on, Abby; there's no way he's in bed right now rehearsing what he's going to do on the off chance that he sees you today, I tried to convince myself. Of course, he wasn't. He wasn't the one who had been left hanging. He wasn't the one who had begun to think that this had been deeper than it had really been.
I had done it to myself. I had nobody to try to peg the blame on but myself. I'd told myself things that he had never said or promised me. I had let myself believe promises he had never made.
This was why I didn't do this. It was risky, and it was stupid. There was no way to win. There was no way to save yourself from feeling like this. It would always happen: whether it was small or big, you always got hurt.
I rolled onto my stomach. Face down. At least I wasn't crying anymore.
I heard a knock at the door. Squeezing my eyes shut tighter, I ignored it. It came again, louder that time. I knew who it was, and part of me was dreading seeing her. I dragged myself out of bed and went to let Makani in.
"Hey," she said, carefully stepping inside.
"We haven't had a date in so long. I at least expected breakfast," I joked half-heartedly. She gave me a smile and didn't push it. I walked directly back to my bed and burrowed under the blanket. I heard her walking around for a bit before her footsteps approached.
"Scoot over," she said, climbing onto the bed. I uncovered my head, seeing her sitting on it with two steaming cups of coffee. "I know it's bad if I'm out of bed before you are," she said. I took the coffee and sat up against the headboard, scooting down so she could sit next to me.
"You sleep in all the time, I don't know why it’s a bad thing when I do it," I said, sipping the coffee.
"Because you haven't missed a sunrise in your life. Can you tell me what happened?" she asked. I took a couple long sips of my coffee.
"You were right," I said, looking down into the creamy liquid instead of at her.
"Right about what?"
"I let myself get carried away. I shouldn't have expected anything of him."
"Did he say something? What happened?"
"He took me out to dinner," I started. She nodded, remembering. Yet another day I had bailed on her to go pretend with Nate. "We spent the entire day together. He bought me a dress and had booked this amazing place for us to have dinner that night."
"He took you on a date," she said.
"He said it was to show his gratitude for me taking him around the island, and I should have believed him," I sighed.
"We're there, and it's gorgeous, but he gets this phone call. Someone keeps calling him, and he keeps turning it off because he doesn't want to take it. I told him he could because it might be important if the person was trying that hard to get in contact with him.
“He leaves, and when he comes back, and it's like someone poured cold water over him. He was so distant and distracted the whole dinner. We got back to his suite, and he says he thinks it would be better if I went back to work."
"He asked you to leave?"
"He didn't ask me anything. He told me he wanted me to leave. He basically said he didn't want me there anymore. It would have been one thing if he just didn't think I should sleep in his suite, but he wanted me gone. I thought..."
I paused because it was the first time I was admitting it to myself out loud. "I thought that maybe there was something there. You don't need a tour guide to sleep in your suite with you. We used to sleep in the same bed. We even-" I stopped and shook my head because I felt I was going to start choking up.
"You feel like he broke up with you," she said.
"Everything was so good, Makani. It was great and then out of the blue after he takes this mystery phone call, he tells me to fuck off."
"I'm sorry he did that to you, Abby," she said. "You shouldn't beat yourself up if he doesn't even have the decency to tell you why he did it."
"You wanted to know why I don't date? This. This is why," I said.
"In a couple months, he's going to leave, and you never have to see him again."
"Yeah, but I still love his band. That's going to be a problem."
"How about we do something tonight?"
"I don't feel like going out. You go."
"Let's stay here, watch some movies, and have a girls’ night," she suggested. I drank some more of my coffee. It wasn't hot anymore.
"Do we have to watch rom-coms?"
"Of course. It isn't a girls’ night if we don't," she said, grinning.
"Can I pick?" I asked. She agreed and pulled me out of bed to eat some of my leftovers for breakfast before going to work.
The day wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. It was just hours of thinking every tall man with dark hair was Nate, and then panicking, and then calming down when I found out it was not him. That and wondering what he was doing, where, and with whom. Wondering whether he was shooting again, trying to tell myself it was none of my business since he had told me he didn't want my help anymore, and then circling right back to worrying again.
Was he giving you this much thought, Abby? I asked myself. I couldn't just turn it off. I still cared about him, even if he didn't care about me.
I was tired by the time we were clocking out, something that rarely happened. Makani sent me home before she left to shop for our provisions. I spent the time she was gone browsing for good movies to see. I had always thought 50 First Dates was funny before I came to Hawai’i; that wouldn't do it. I needed something really sappy. The Notebook or better; that was the only thing that would give me a good enough cry to get over him.
Makani brought the snacks. Saturated fats were the only thing that could fix this, or at least give me a food coma bad enough to forget. We used my laptop since I didn’t have a television. We discussed the pros and cons of each movie I had selected before we chose The Proposal to watch first.
I liked a good rom-com. Everything always worked out, and in the end, love conquered all. The romantic in me wanted to believe it, but I had doubted ever being able to find something like that for myself in my life. Not where I was now, at least. I’d pull myself out of this; I just needed about a straight month of nights in with Makani, and maybe I’d feel okay again.
"I can't believe she fell for him," Makani said watching Sandra Bullock lose every shred of common sense she had over Ryan Reynolds.
"I know," I said, eating another spoonful of ice cream right out of the carton.
"She could do so much better," Makani said. "He was her assistant."
"Should have paid attention to the terms of her visa," I tutted.
"Could you imagine? Marrying a guy for citizenship?" Makani said dramatically.
"Like Canada's a barren wasteland or something," I laughed.
That felt good. Maybe it was a little hostile to attack the girls on screen for falling in love, but it made me feel better about what I had made the mistake of doing. I hadn’t fallen in love, it hadn’t gotten that serious, but given more time and more nights with Nate being that open and sweet, who knows what might have happened.
Maybe it was cathartic for Makani, too. She had her whole thing with Keno and as far as I knew, she hadn’t spoken to him yet – even though she totally wanted to. We were sort of in different boats, but I could still empathize with feeling bitter about someone else’s happy ending, even if it was just in a movie.
We decided against The Notebook at the last minute because it was too much of a bummer, but got through two more Kate Hudson movies before we turned in. We had work the next day, but Makani stayed over. I was glad she did.
Was this what it was like for Nate? I wasn't trying to compare me trying not to think about him to him trying to stay clean, but now that the light was off and Makani was asleep, I couldn't help wondering how he was.
It wasn't all for nothing. Even if I wasn't helping him anymore, he was still taking care of himself. At least, I hoped he still was. Whatever that phone call was, I hoped it hadn't pushed him back into using. I didn't have to be part of the equation for him to be healthy. I just hoped that if he was done with me, he at least kept his sobriety.