“All that food up there, and you ordered something off the menu?”
Sighing, he says, “I don’t like buffets, Olive, Jesus Christ. After what we witnessed two days ago, I’d think you’d agree with me.”
I take a bite of pineapple and am pleased to see him cringe when I speak with my mouth full: “I just like hassling you.”
“I can tell.”
God, he is such a grouch in the morning. “Seriously, though, you think I’m enjoying this vacation too much? Do you even hear yourself?”
He puts the mug down carefully, like it’s taking every ounce of control he has to not use it for violent means. “We did well last night,” he says calmly, “but things just got a whole lot more complicated. My ex-girlfriend—with whom I share a number of mutual friends—thinks we are married. The wife of your new boss wants to have labia-hand-mirror time with me.”
“That was just one possibility,” I remind him. “Could be that Molly’s version of fun is a Tupperware party.”
“You don’t think this is complicated?”
I shrug at him, turning the blame back where it’s deserved. “To be honest, you were the one who had to go and be ridiculously charming last night.”
He picks his mug back up and blows across the surface. “Because you asked me to be.”
“I wanted you to be sociopath charming,” I say. “Too charming, so that afterwards people look back and think, ‘You know, I didn’t get it at the time, but he was always too perfect.’ That sort of charming. Not, like, self-deprecating and cute.”
Half of Ethan’s mouth turns up, and I know what’s coming before it launches: “You think I’m cute.”
“In a gross way.”
This makes him smile wider. “Cute in a gross way. Okay.”
The waiter brings his food, and when I look up, I see that Ethan’s smile has fallen and he’s staring over my shoulder, his face ashen. With a frown, he blinks down to his plate.
“Just remembered that bacon at restaurants is ten thousand times more likely to carry salmonella?” I ask. “Or did you find a hair on your plate and think you’re going to come down with lupus?”
“Once more for the people in the back: Being careful about food safety isn’t the same as being a hypochondriac or an idiot.”
I give him a Sure thing, Captain salute, but then it hits me. He’s freaking out about something other than his breakfast. I glance around, and my pulse rockets: Sophie and Billy have been seated directly behind me. Ethan has an unobstructed view of his ex and her new fiancé.
For as frequently as I want to open-hand smack Ethan, I can also appreciate how much it would suck to continually run into your ex when they’re celebrating their engagement and you’re only pretending to be married. I remember running into my ex-boyfriend Arthur the night I defended my dissertation. We were out to celebrate me, and my accomplishment, and there he was, the boy who dumped me because he “couldn’t be distracted by a relationship.” He had his new girlfriend on one arm and the medical journal he’d just been published in in the other hand. My celebratory mood evaporated, and I left my own party about an hour later to go home and binge an entire season of Buffy.
A tiny bloom of sympathy unfurls in my chest. “Ethan—”
“Could you try chewing with your mouth closed?” he says, and the bloom is annihilated by a nuclear blast.
“For the record, it’s very humid here, and I am congested.” I lean in, hissing, “To think I was starting to feel sorry for you.”
“For being cute in a gross way?” he asks, prodding at his plate, glancing over my shoulder again and then quickly zeroing in on my face.
“For the fact that your ex is at the resort with us and sitting right behind me.”
“Is she?” He looks up and does a terrible job of being surprised to see her there. “Huh.”
I smirk at him, even though he studiously avoids my gaze. With the tiny hint of vulnerability just at the edges of his expression, the bloom of sympathy returns. “What’s your favorite breakfast food?”
He pauses with a bite of bacon halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“Come on. Breakfast food. What do you like?”
“Bagels.” He takes the bite, chews and swallows, and I realize that’s all I’m going to get
.