With This Fling (Summersweet Island 5)

LaVon is still laughing at me after I had to windmill my arms to stop from face-planting on the floor as I turned and ran back to the front desk, practicing everything I want to say to Dean in my head before I get up to his room.

“Sorry!” she apologizes while I try to catch my breath. “You look like you’re in a hurry. I promise this will just take a second.”

I rest my hands on the counter and continue going over everything I’m going to say to Dean, my body bouncing with anticipation. And a little bit of annoyance when LaVon turns and disappears back in the office. Before I can say “screw it” and take off toward the elevators again, vowing to apologize to her later for being rude, she pops right back out with a large box in her hands, walking up to the counter and setting it down.

I immediately recognize the box, and a spark of worry hits me right in the chest as LaVon pushes it across the counter toward me.

“I know you gave these to him, so I figured you’d want them back.”

LaVon smiles as she opens one of the flaps of the box and chuckles to herself when she peeks inside, while my spark of worry turns into full-blown panic.

“I don’t know who in their right mind would just leave a box of dicks behind when they check out, but he did.” She continues to laugh as she closes the flap… until she looks up at me. “Oh no! You don’t have to take them if you don’t want to. I could definitely give them away at our next book club meeting if you’d prefer.”

As she mistakes the tears in my eyes for sadness that I don’t want a fucking box of dicks, I swallow them back as hard as I can and force the words I don’t want to say out of my mouth.

“He checked out?”

LaVon nods, and my heart drops right into my stomach as she walks over to the phone when it starts ringing at the other end of the counter.

“Probably about two hours ago by now,” she tells me as she reaches for the phone. “Didn’t say much. Just left his key on the counter, asked me what time the next ferry left, and told me to have a good day.”

I barely hear what she says as she picks up the phone and greets whoever is calling with an energetic voice, while everything inside of me feels like it’s withering and dying.

If I wasn’t standing in the middle of a hotel lobby, I would let my legs give out, sink down to the floor, and curl up into a ball so I could get all of these unshed tears out of me.

“I can keep the dicks then?” LaVon shouts after me as she holds the phone against her chest when I turn away from the front desk and start walking, not even understanding how my feet are moving me and my legs are working when my whole body feels numb.

He left.

If I thought I was sad waking up without him this morning, it’s nothing compared to the misery I feel that he checked out of his hotel and he’s gone, and he didn’t even say goodbye. I can’t even be mad at him for doing it. I treated him like a fling who didn’t mean anything to me, so he left like a fling who didn’t mean anything to me.

Telling LaVon I don’t care what she does with the dicks, I walk out of the hotel in a daze much slower than I entered it, knowing I more than fucked up at this point.

And knowing I lost my chance to find out what would happen if Dean said yes.

Chapter 24

Laura

“Well, that’s certainly good news.”

“You should go home.”

I ignore Wren and continue wiping down one of the picnic tables under the awning of the Dip and Twist, until she puts her hand on top of mine and makes me stop.

“Seriously, Mom. Go home.”

“We’re closed. I don’t really care now if my face is scaring away customers,” I tell her, moving my hand out from under hers to finish cleaning off the table.

“You know I was just kidding when I said that.” Wren laughs softly, taking a seat at the table I’ve now washed three times.

I know she was kidding and was trying to make me laugh when I got here earlier, but she really was right. I look like shit, and I feel like shit. My eyes are red and puffy, and I look like I’ve been crying all day. Which I have. Until I decided to get up and go to work because being curled up in a ball on my couch feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to bring Dean back. And neither did driving all over the island after I left the hotel, hoping maybe he was still here, feeling even worse when I never found his bike parked at anyone’s house or in front of any of the businesses in town, and everyone I asked said they hadn’t seen him since the wedding.

“Don’t lie. Her face is about to scare me away, and nothing scares me.”

I finally stop wiping down the table to glare at Tess, sitting back at the girls’ purple picnic table designated for Sip and Bitch, inhaling a hot fudge sundae.

“Be nice to Mom. She’s sad,” Bodhi sticks up for me from next to her on the bench.