Page 15 of Love, Morgan

As I stepped closer to the railing, the doors of the bungalow next to mine slid open. I hadn’t seen anyone there yesterday, but I wasn’t looking to get chatty with the neighbors, so I wasn’t exactly looking out for them. Besides, most of the view onto their deck was blocked by the wicker privacy partitions.

I leaned on the railing, taking in the burning reds and oranges lighting up the sky. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen such a beautiful sunset in my life.

For one blissful, beautiful, burning moment, I forgot about Iona and the awkwardness and the conversation with Ripley. I forgot about life and responsibilities and everything other than this moment. I felt transcendent and alive, tiny and immense all at the same time.

“Oh, no,” muttered a voice nearby. Familiar and frightful and bringing my moment of pure bliss crashing down around me.

I stood up straight again, turning towards the bungalow next to mine.

There, at her own balcony rail, staring at me with wide, transfixed eyes, was Iona.

And I yelped.

Chapter 6

Iona

Idragged myself over to one of the restaurants for breakfast feeling like I was towing a bag of rocks behind me. Not one part of this trip was going the way it was supposed to. Sure, I’d been here for less than twenty-four hours, but sometimes you just knew. You didn’t need to give it time to know something was a disaster.

The bungalow was perfect—appointed beautifully, the most stunning view I’d ever seen up close, and a bed that felt like melting into a marshmallow. And yet, I’d barely slept a wink.

Whoever the woman in the knee-high socks was, she was in the bungalow next to mine, and she’d screamed upon seeing me on my balcony last night. The kind of scream that echoed across the water and bounced off the mountains at the edges of our shared view. The kind of scream that had saturated my brain all night.

I wish I knew what I’d done to offend her. I wish I knew how to make it better. Perhaps the only way was to leave? But I’d been trying to prove something to myself with this trip. It wasn’t going well, but abandoning it entirely felt worse.

And what would my dad say?

I glanced around the restaurant. It was designed for luxury, for the sense of privacy, so it wasn’t easy to see around the place, but, from the tables I could see through the verdant plants and dark wooden dividers, my neighbor wasn’t here.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, I’d purposely chosen this restaurant because I hoped she wouldn’t. The energy she carried herself with told me she was important. And, in my mind, important people didn’t choose the restaurant with the breakfast buffet. They chose the one with waiters and a made-to-order menu.

I’d thought about ordering room service—refusing to leave my bungalow, even to go on the deck—and just eating every meal there. Living in that thing until I was allowed to leave and go home. But one little part of me was annoyingly stubborn, and that part wanted to be able to look back on this experience and say I’d lived it. I wanted to have something more to tell my dad than that the room service was great. So, here I was. Living. By eating breakfast.

I wound through the path towards the buffet, feeling more like I was walking through a gorgeous forest than a restaurant. On either side of me, amongst the plants, were gentle water features. The sound of them was soothing even when my entire body was locked down, waiting for the woman I’d somehow offended to jump out at me.

Given that the only two times I’d been out of the confines of my bungalow, I’d run into her, it felt inevitable. The stress of it wound tight in my stomach, but there was something close to calmness in my belief in its inevitability, too. Probably something to do with everything else here feeling new and different, so my mind was clinging to the one thing that felt reliable.

So, when I made it through the buffet and to my table without seeing her, I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d been so certain she’d be lurking around the corner at the buffet, and, when that didn’t happen, that she’d end up sitting at the table across from me. But she wasn’t anywhere.

Well, she was somewhere, but it wasn’t here. And I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I was even less sure what to do with how much it was weighing on me.

No part of me should want to run into the woman I’d clearly annoyed. Multiple times.

I was weird on vacation.

I shook my head, looking down at the plate in front of me. Vibrant, juicy fruits, and a rich, flaky croissant. If I was being weird, at least I was being weird somewhere that was beautiful and had incredible food.

“Hey,” said a friendly voice, and I almost choked on the chunk of mango in my mouth.

I gulped some of my green tea down, attempting not to look like I’d just almost died.

My watery eyes fell on Thalia. Of course it wasn’t going to be my temporary neighbor. There was no way she’d be walking over and greeting me like that. Thalia—who had been so nice when I arrived—made so much more sense. So why was my chest a little tight at the fact that it wasn’t my neighbor?

“Hi,” I managed to finally get out.

She laughed apologetically. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

“No, no. Totally my fault. I was miles away.”

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