31. Thirty-One

This is different, though.

Back then — all of two days ago — I followed him because I wanted to know his secrets; particularly the one that made him decide not to mention his extremely recently broken engagement to me.

But now I know.

I know he’s engaged. I know he lied to me when he said they weren’t still together. And I know she’s here right now; somewhere in this very hotel, where he just kissed me for a second time, when he had absolutely no right to.

Which, now I come to think of it, makes me all kinds of mad.

“Where is she?” I ask, whirling around to face him. “Where’s your fiancée, Alex? Is she still up in your room, waiting for you? Did you lie to her, too, when you came to find me?”

Alex rakes one hand through his hair, making it stand on end. We’re standing by the side of the pool that’s furthest from the hotel, and although there are still plenty of people milling around the complex, this area is much quieter, the distant sound of the karaoke merging with the gentle lapping of the water against the side of the pool.

“She’s gone, Summer,” he says at last. “Rebecca’s gone. That’s what I was coming to tell you. But when I got to the bar, you were up on the stage, and, well, I guess I got a bit distracted.”

He smiles in a way that I’d normally find disarming, but, under the current circumstances, I just find suspicious.

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” I ask, finding it easier than listing all the other questions I’d currently like answers to: like why was she here in the first place, and how does he feel about her? Most of all, I want to know what her being ‘gone’ means for me; but I can’t bring myself to ask it just yet, so I allow my original question to stand.

“I mean gone as in ‘not here,’” Alex says helpfully. “Probably at the airport by now, if she’s not there already. I called the taxi for her myself, and I watched to make sure she got into it. So she’s gone. And she’s not coming back.”

He reaches for me, as if he’s about to take my hand, but I step quickly back, narrowly avoiding falling into the pool.

“She was here, though,” I point out, somewhat unnecessarily. “In your room. I mean, you can see what that would make me think, can’t you?”

Alex nods. “I know what you thought,” he says quietly. “But you were wrong, Summer. I didn’t lie to you. Rebecca and I aren’t getting back together. That is why she flew out here,” he adds, in response to my unasked question. “To apologize — or so she said, anyway. But I didn’t accept her apology, and I’m not taking her back, either. She knows that. I think she knew it before she even left the UK, but she was getting a lot of pressure from her family to try to sort things out, and she went along with it. I told her she shouldn’t have bothered.”

He rubs his eyes wearily.

“And she just accepted that?”

I know I probably shouldn’t even be talking to him right now — it’s only going to end with me getting hurt — but I really want to know.

“Honestly, I think she was relieved. She didn’t want to try to make it work any more than I did. And we shouldn’t have to, you know? All that bullshit people talk about making relationships work, even when it’s hard. It shouldn’t be like that. Relationships shouldn’t be hard. But ours was, and that’s why I’m glad it ended. Maybe not how it ended, obviously, but still.”

He gives a wry smile, which I can’t bring myself to return. It’s not that I don’t believe him, because I can’t think of any reason why he’d lie. We’re going home tomorrow. He’s never going to see me again, so why would he go to the trouble of seeking me out and telling me yet again that he’s single if he doesn’t actually mean it? There’s no reason. But, all the same, that very fact — the ‘going home tomorrow’ bit, not the ‘single’ thing — makes me feel like it doesn’t really matter, anyway.

“Summer?”

Alex is watching me warily.

“Look, I know this is a lot,” he says, running his hands through his hair again. “But can you please say something? Anything at all?”

“I don’t know what to say,” I admit, turning away from him and trying to focus on the reflection of the palm trees in the still water of the floodlit pool instead. “I’m glad you told your ex it was definitely over before you kissed me for a second time? Is that what you want me to say? Sorry, I’ve never really been in this kind of situation before; you’re going to have to forgive me for being at a bit of a loss for words.”

Alex frowns.

“I told her it was definitely over before I even came out here,” he says. “I wouldn’t have kissed you the first time if that hadn’t been clear, let alone the second. Trust me, her turning up here was as much of a surprise to me as it must’ve been for you.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” I say ruefully, remembering the way I’d waltzed into his room to find her sitting there. “I really, really doubt that.”

Alex sighs again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I really am. I wish she hadn’t turned up. I wish I’d never met her, in fact. Then when I met you at the airport last week, there would only have been Jamie Whatshisface standing in my way, rather than all of this mess.”

“You hated me when you met me,” I point out. “And on the plane. And at dinner that first night. And —”

“I’ve never hated you, Summer,” he interrupts, frowning. “Not even close. You must know that by now, though?”

“Maybe not hate, exactly,” I admit. “That’s too strong a word. But you thought I was ridiculous and annoying. You thought—”

“I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen,” he says. “But from the moment I met you, you were banging on about how you were flying here to meet the love of your life, so it was obvious you weren’t going to be interested in me. Especially not once you found out this was supposed to be my honeymoon.”

A lump rises in my throat.

“But it was supposed to be your honeymoon,” I say hoarsely. “It’s all so complicated. You just got out of a serious relationship. And you live in Brighton.”

“True,” he says. “It’s definitely not the best time to start a new relationship, I’ll give you that. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to convince myself I wasn’t falling for you. But I was. And I wouldn’t blame you if you just wanted to run away from me, like … well, like you just did. But I’d run after you, Summer. In the least creepy way possible, I mean. Because I get that we’ve only known each other for a week, and there are so many reasons to just let that be it for us, but I just… I don’t want to. I don’t want to leave here tomorrow and never see you again. I don’t want to never get to hear you sing that song about the scarf somewhere other than in the shower. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life knowing you’re out there, and not knowing what you’re doing, or how you are, or whether you managed to change your life or not.”

He stops suddenly, as if he’s worried that he’s said too much.

“Sorry,” he mutters, staring at the ground. “I guess what I mean is that I know it’s messy and complicated, and there’s a lot of stuff we need to talk about first, but can we at least do that? Because I’m not ready to say goodbye to you. I know how crazy that sounds.”

“It does sound crazy,” I agree. “We barely know each other. And we don’t live particularly close, either.”

“No,” he says solemnly. “We don’t. But we can get to know each other. That’s all I’m asking. That we get to know each other. The rest is just detail. We can figure it out. But only if we can put Rebecca, and Jamie, and… Fairy Godfolk… and all the rest of it behind us, and start again. So… what do you say? Can we?”

He looks down at me with so much hope that it melts my heart. “I don’t think we can put the Fairy Godfolk behind us,” I say seriously. “They’d never forgive us.”

“And the rest?”

I smile up at him.

“If this week has taught me one thing,” I tell him, “It’s that you can always start again. And if it’s taught me two things,” I add, “It’s that you shouldn’t trust your 13-year-old self to know what it is you’re supposed to do with your life. Or who you’re going to end up with.”

Alex chuckles.

“You know, I did lie to you about one thing,” he says, suddenly serious. My entire body goes tense with dread, but he smiles and takes a step towards me.

“Remember that night I saw the shooting star from the balcony?” he says softly. “Well, I did make a wish on it. I wished I could kiss you. ”

I allow myself to relax as he pulls me into his arms and kisses me until all thoughts of ex-fiancées, teenage crushes, and everything else disappear, and there’s just me and him, and an endless number of possibilities.

“I knew you believed in that stuff,” I murmur when he pulls away at last. “You were just pretending to be a cynic all along, weren’t you?”

“Nope,” he chuckles. “I’m afraid I’m still a hopeless cynic. But I’m willing to let you convert me.”

“I’ll do my very best,” I promise. Then he kisses me again, and all I can think is that she may not have known much, but I have a feeling my thirteen-year-old self would definitely think this was super cool.

And as we stand there holding onto each other, it occurs to me that I hold all of those other selves inside me; the starry-eyed 13-year-old, the not-so-sweet 16, the heartbroken almost-18. I’m all of them at once. And I don’t think any of them is ‘cool’, exactly, but that’s okay, because, all of a sudden, that doesn’t seem even remotely important.

“So, will you go back to the call center?” asks Alex, as we turn at last and start to walk back towards the hotel. “What’s next for Cool Girl Summer?”

“Definitely not that,” I reply, shuddering. “I’m going to hand in my notice as soon as I get back. I’ve got some savings that’ll tide me over for a while until I figure out what I want to do next. I guess that falls under the banner of ‘some other things, TBC’.”

Alex holds out his hand, and I take it as we walk.

“Now that I’ve checked off most of my list of resolutions,” I say, “we should probably make a start on yours. Remember I said I’d help you write it?”

“Oh, I already did that,” he says, grinning. “Number one: kiss Summer Brookes from the hotel room next door.”

“I think you can check that one off already,” I reply, laughing. “What’s number two?”

“That’s it,” he says. “There’s no number two. Both of our lists are complete.”

He stops and kisses me again, just to be sure.

“There is one thing I want to do when I get home, though,” I say when we finally come up for air.

“And what’s that?”

“Track down my Fairy Godmother, of course,” I tell him. “So I can thank her for the warning. If it wasn’t for her, I might never have come out here. Then we’d never have met.”

I say it lightly, but my hand curls a little tighter around his all the same. I have no idea where this is going to go yet, but it’s still strange to think of how easily it might not have happened at all — and stranger still to know that, despite all the things that could’ve stopped us finding each other, we somehow did.

You could even say it was meant to be.