How to Honeymoon Alone

His phone starts to ring again.

Phillip doesn’t react and doesn’t change the tight grip of his hands or the press of his body against mine.

“Another one of your colleagues?” I murmur, weaving my fingers into his hair. “Do I need to tell Briggs off again?”

Phillip chuckles. There’s a flush on his face, staining his skin beneath the tan, and the eyes on mine are all pupils. “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”

I grin and push against his chest. He gives a low groan of disappointment, and I laugh, wriggling out from beneath him.

“Eden,” he says.

I walk backward towards his phone, smiling. Adrenaline pumps through me. “You’re on vacation!” I say. “They should learn.”

I reach for his phone and hit reply. “Phillip Meyer’s phone,” I say sweetly. “Is this an emergency?”

There’s silence on the other end. I wait for a response and watch Phillip pull himself into sitting. There’s a carefully neutral expression on his face.

A woman’s voice comes through the phone. “Who is this?”

“A friend of Phillip’s,” I say. “He’s on vacation.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says. Her voice is hard now. “Tell him to call me back, will you? Whoever you are. It’s important.”

“His office was notified that he would be on vacation,” I say, “but I’ll let him know all the same. And who should I say is calling?”

“His fiancée,” she says. And then she hangs up.

I take a moment before I lower the phone. Phillip is beside me now and he takes it from me. “Eden.”

I cross my arms over my bare chest. “I shouldn’t have answered that.”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

“It’s fine,” he says. “You okay?”

I nod. “Yeah. Maybe I should find my bikini top…”

He stops me with a hand on my shoulder. There’s a furrow between his brows again, drawing them together into an angry line. “What did she say? Eden?”

“You knew who it was?”

“I suspected,” he says and runs a hand through his hair.

Staring at the devastatingly serious expression on his face, I hear the word fiancée echo through my mind.

I push past him toward my chair. My bikini top is lying across one of the armrests, and I snap it up.

“Eden,” he says again. “I’m sorry I let you answer that.”

“No, no, I was the one who insisted,” I say, standing with my back to him and tie up my bikini top. Shame and something else, something painful, burns in my stomach.

I knew he’d been about to get married just weeks before coming here. That was nothing new. So why does it hurt so bad to be reminded of that fact?

“She’s been a nuisance this whole week,” he says. “Calls with thin excuses about logistics, only to start with apologies or to pick fights. I’ve started to ignore her.”

“Yeah,” I say, nodding so fast my vision goes blurry. I turn and reach for my cover-up. After quickly pulling it over my bikini, I stick my feet into my sandals.

Fiancée. The word feels heavy with possibility. Could they have decided to take time apart, instead of breaking up fully? Maybe they’re still planning to figure things out. But he had said he didn’t love her… My brain fractures, spiraling in ten different directions at once.

Besides, that should be okay. Because he’s only a distraction from my own pain, isn’t he?

“Eden,” he murmurs, hand landing on my shoulder again.

“She said she was your fiancée.” I shift from one foot to the other.

“Well, she’s not.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“In no possible way,” he says, voice hard. “Zero.”

“What happened between you?”

He looks at me for a long moment. Beneath the beard, his jaw is tense.

I sigh. “Look, I’m sorry. I should not have answered. I shouldn’t have… thanks for today.”

“She left me at the altar.”

My breath whooshes out of me. “Oh. You never told me.”

“Yeah, because it’s pretty fucking humiliating.”

I chuckle. It’s half astonishment, half shock. “Phillip, my fiancé cheated on me for months with one of my best friends. That’s embarrassing as hell, too.”

“No,” he says. “That just proves he’s a dipshit.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That… I’m sorry. It must have sucked.”

Because despite it all, I’m glad I found out before I ever had to put on my wedding dress, and before the venue filled with all of our relatives.

He hadn’t gotten that courtesy.

Phillip looks over my shoulder, at some spot in the distance. “It is what it is. Honestly, I’m… relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Yeah. I was pissed off at first, but now I’m pretty sure it was for the best. She and I are better off apart.”

“Why did she call herself your fiancée?”