Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Van

I've never been a good chess player, thinking multiple moves ahead. I tend to go with the flow, living in the current moment. Choosing to live spontaneously, according to my changing moods or shifting circumstances.

All this lack of forward thinking has led me to this moment, where I'm actually starting to worry about the sleeping arrangements for this impromptu getaway.

Separate rooms , Coach said.

No problem , I agreed.

Only—it might be a problem. Because the hotel is packed, and there is an issue with Amelia's reservation. For now, I'm choosing not to panic, standing by the counter with a bunch of Walmart bags at my feet while Amelia argues with the woman at the desk.

It's almost midnight, but the lobby is still lively. I wander away from the counter, sensing Amelia's need to handle this herself. If she can.

Music spills out of a restaurant on one side, and on the other, a bar is playing several sports games at full volume. Leafy tropical plants and flowers in oversized pots ring the room, making it feel almost like we're outside. The back of the building is a row of doors, all open, letting in a breeze and the faint sounds of a band outside. The ocean isn't visible, but I can see couples swaying under hanging lights.

It's a nice place.

Would be nicer if we could get a room.

Correction: two rooms.

I wander back to the counter, sliding a hand around Amelia's waist. She tenses, then sighs and relaxes into my touch. I tug her closer.

"How's it going?" I ask, not wanting to overstep but also itching to hand over my card, see if money and a charming smile can solve this problem, and move on.

"The suite isn't available tonight," Amelia says, gritting her teeth. "And the reservation isn't in my name, so even tomorrow, I can't check into it."

I look down, noting the tiredness around her eyes. "How about we worry about tomorrow tomorrow. Will you let me take care of tonight?"

Amelia hesitates. I wait until she nods, then pull out my wallet and manage to extract my card with one hand, keeping Amelia close with the other. For her sake or for mine, I'm not sure.

"Two rooms, please."

"Unfortunately, we're almost completely booked." The employee's dark hair is pulled back in a tight knot, and I swear, the uptightness in her manner is rivaling the severity of her hairdo. Or maybe the hairdo is causing it? I wonder if she took it down and shook it out if it would ease the pinched expression on her face. "But you're in luck. We do have one room with a king-sized bed. Not a beach view I'm afraid …"

She goes on about the room, but I stopped really hearing her when she said king-sized bed. It takes me a moment to realize she's stopped speaking and is holding my card, poised to swipe it.

"Will that be okay?"

No. It will not be okay.

But Amelia smiles—a little bit of a wild look in her eyes—and says, "Sounds great."

No. It does not sound great.

What if Coach calls? What will I say when the guys text?

How will I share a room—and a bed—with Amelia?

And is she really okay with this?

I study her while signing my name to the receipt, agreeing to the hold charges, and whatever else the woman is saying. Standard hotel stuff. Amelia's eyes scan the room a little too quickly, like she's searching for an exit.

"Hey," I say, leaning close. "If you want, we can?—"

But my suggestion about leaving this hotel and going back to the mainland where there were dozens of hotels dies when there's a commotion at the back of the room.

A large group enters from the open patio doors, laughing and talking, the sounds echoing off the marble floors. The people at the front of the group part, revealing a man in a suit holding the hand of a woman in a white dress and veil.

A wedding party. Amelia stiffens.

They stop in the center of the lobby and the whole group cheers as the groom dips the bride and kisses her.

And kisses her.

And … kisses her.

I don't think Amelia is even breathing. I give her a light squeeze, my palm curled at her waist, but she doesn't move.

"Here you go," the woman at the counter says.

When I reach for my card, Amelia slips from my arm.

"I just need to use the bathroom," she blurts out.

My chest compresses as her face crumples and she scampers across the lobby, her fists curled tight by her sides. I slip my card back in my wallet, ask the woman at the desk if she can watch our Walmart bags for a moment, and then I jog toward the bathroom.

I walk right into the women's bathroom.

Okay—so I should have knocked. A woman washing her hands at the sink jumps at the sight of me, eyes wide.

"Sorry," I say, though I'm not. "I'm looking for a friend?—"

"Van?" Amelia's voice, a little tremulous, sounds from one of the stalls.

The woman washing her hands makes a hasty exit as I stride down to the next-to-last stall, which is the only one fully closed. It's also the only one with someone sniffling behind it.

I rap my knuckles against the white wood door. "Mills? You in there?"

"Maybe. Why are you in here?"

I lean against the door, crossing my arms. "Open up."

"What if I'm pooping?"

I snort. "Are you?"

A pause. "No."

"Then let me in."

A longer pause. Then I hear the shuffle of movement and the solid clack of the lock sliding open. Amelia cracks the door open, meeting my eyes with red-rimmed ones of her own. My stomach dips.

I have a knee-jerk visceral reaction to tears, stemming straight from childhood and three sisters.

Callie, my older sister, swears she never cries, but I've seen it. Once. She made me swear it never happened. It was beyond terrifying to see the sister who seems made of indestructible material break down over a particularly horrendous breakup.

I've tried but couldn't quite forget the way her normally impermeable facade cracked and fell.

Alexandra cries when she's happy, when she's sad, when greeting card commercials come on or when a sports team or athlete shines. "I just love seeing people succeed with their gifts," Lex told me once while wiping her eyes after watching an Olympic gymnast's floor routine.

And while my youngest sister, Grey—short for Greyson—isn't quite to Lex's level, she cries a normal amount and also whenever anyone else is crying. But Grey hardly ever stops smiling—even if she's also crying.

The sight of tears immediately cloaks me in an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. Combined with an irrational and powerful urge to fix whatever it is. Whether that's scaring the pants off a stupid boy who hurt Callie or turning off the TV so that Alexandra won't cry over someone dying in "Grey's Anatomy," a show all of my sisters obsess over and in which a main character seems to die every other episode.

With Amelia, the tears hit me harder, though it makes no sense. I both want to pull her into my arms and also go hunt down Drew and tear his head off. Probably but not definitely metaphorically speaking.

I choose the hug instead.

"Come here."

I tug Amelia into my chest, dropping my chin to the top of her head. She doesn't hug me back, her arms hanging limply by her sides. Her whole body trembles, and my hands tighten into fists, my knuckles brushing against her spine.

When I hear what sounds like someone approaching the bathroom, I duck further into the stall, spinning us until Amelia's back is to the door, which I lock.

She sucks in a breath.

Not two seconds later, a woman walks inside and the water starts running. Amelia and I both hold still. I'm glad these stalls have fancy doors that extend all the way to the floor. Because it would be really obvious two people are inside this one.

The woman washes her hands for an excessively long time, and when she starts humming a One Direction song Amelia makes a small sound—stifling a laugh by the sound of it. I bite my lip, trying to hold in a laugh. She shakes in my arms.

I give her the tiniest pinch. She shakes harder.

I pull back so I can see Amelia's face, which makes it worse. When her eyes meet mine, she almost loses it. I cover her mouth with my hand, still biting my lip, and her eyes dance even as a leftover tear drips down the slope of her nose.

The moment the woman turns off the water and exits the room, still humming "Best Song Ever" under her breath, we both lose it.

Amelia clutches my shirt as she cackles, pressing her forehead to my chest. I love the sound of her laugh and the feel of her happiness.

It's like holding sunshine cupped in my palms.

When Amelia finally looks up at me, my laughter stills. Her smile fades, replaced with something totally different as the moment between us shifts.

Remembering why I'm here, I ask, "You okay, Mills?"

Her teeth worry her top lip, and I refuse to let my gaze fall there. Instead, I keep my eyes on her crystal blue ones. But as I watch, they fill with tears again.

I shouldn't have opened my stupid mouth. Should have stuck with laughter, pulled her out of the stall and taken her to dinner, pretending like I never found her crying in the bathroom to begin with.

"Hey," I say softly. "You know it's okay if you're not okay right now? Because you're going to get through this."

"Yeah?" she demands. "How do you know? You barely know me."

It doesn't feel that way. It didn't even feel that way on the night we met. More like … we'd known each other forever and just reconnected after a long absence, with lots of catching up to do.

The hours today have only added to that feeling. It's as though our time together runs on a different plane, slow and languid like taffy, stretching minutes into years.

"I know not many people would be able to make it through a day like this. And you did. You are ," I tell her. "There will be hard days to come. But I can already tell that you will sail through them, Mills. You will . You hear me?"

She nods, the tiniest of smiles curling her lips up at the corners. But two tears slip from her eyes, rolling slowly over her cheeks. Without questioning the impulse, I lift my hands to cup her face, brushing the tears away with my thumbs.

"I hate seeing you sad," I whisper.

She shakes her head, still cupped within my hands. "I'm not sad," she says, even as another tear spills over.

I wait, biting the inside of my cheek so I don't fill the silence with something stupid. A trick I learned after years of doing it wrong with my sisters, making bad jokes or offering ill-fitting advice. "You just need to shut up," Callie told me once. It was Lex who had her heart broken, and I'd just said something ridiculous I don't even remember now.

"Okay, I'm a little sad," Amelia amends. "But not because I wish things turned out differently with Drew. I'm not sad about losing him ."

It shouldn't make me so happy to hear how vehemently she says this, and how his name comes out of her mouth like a curse. But it does.

"I'm more sad about the idea," she goes on. "My parents had this amazing marriage …" She pauses, draws in a deep breath, then continues. "They wanted more kids, but mom couldn't get pregnant. So, we had this little, happy family of three. Until we lost her. It was important to my dad—you know, seeing me married and happy like he had been. He wants that for me. I want that for me."

Her words crack something open in me. I can almost imagine it. The picture of a perfect little family, and then Amelia in that white dress, beaming as she walks down the aisle on her father's arm.

Why she's beaming and walking toward me in this image, I don't know. Clearly, I'm not marriage material.

I let my hands fall from her face, sliding them down her arms to squeeze her hands. When I should let go, I don't. So we stand here, chest to chest in the bathroom stall, hands clasped together.

"So, you were marrying him to make your dad happy?"

"Not completely. I mean, I am a people pleaser. But it wasn't just because of my dad. It all kind of spiraled away from me. Drew ticked all the boxes," she says with a shrug. "I did like him. I convinced myself I loved him."

"You didn't?"

"No."

The word comes out with conviction. And it makes something buoy up inside me.

"Maybe it makes me sound crazy to say that when I was supposed to be marrying him today?—"

"It doesn't." I squeeze her hands.

"It makes me feel crazy," she says. "Like, how could I not know how I felt before? Or how did I not have any signs he was cheating? I think I realized it the second you dragged him in there. I was so relieved. Disappointed and humiliated and angry, but relieved."

"Sometimes I think we see what we want to see," I say. "What we hope for."

She nods. "I definitely saw something other than reality. Especially when I had my dad right there, encouraging and supporting my choice to marry him." I frown, and she speaks quickly. "He didn't push me. You have to understand—losing Mom so young made Dad a huge proponent of doing things now and soon . Before it's too late. It's why he and I take big trips in the off-seasons, why he's been sky-diving and wants to climb Kilimanjaro. He even tried to convince me to swim with sharks in Australia."

"You don't want to have quality time with Jaws?" I ask.

"I'd like to keep my legs and arms, thank you very much."

"Good choice."

Amelia sighs and drops her forehead to my chest. "I can't believe I'm talking to you about all this. In a bathroom stall, no less."

"Overall, the ambience isn't so bad."

She giggles, lifting her head to look at me again. Without asking any kind of permission, my heart decides to kick into a higher gear.

"Thank you," she whispers. "You're a good listener."

"The guys would be shocked to hear you say that. They're always telling me to shut up."

"Don't shut up. I like what you have to say."

"Good," I say lightly. "Because you're stuck with me."

Her stomach chooses that moment to let out an unholy growl. She squeaks, yanking her hands away from mine and pressing them over her abdomen.

"How embarrassing," she says, but she's smiling. "I mean, we didn't eat that long ago. Did we?"

"It's been hours. The hotel restaurant was still open."

"Are you hungry?" she asks.

"I'm always hungry. Now, come on," I tell her, unlocking the stall door and stepping out. When I hold out my hand, she takes it with no hesitation. "Let's get you fed, Mills."