Page 61 of Say Yes to the Hot Mess

Ugh. I need to get my act together. I must be more sleep deprived from midnight feedings than I realized if my pulse is jumping just from a compliment and a little eye contact.

Jude points back and forth between us with his fork. “All the staring and the awkward nicknames. Love has nothing to do with that stuff. It’s about trust and sharing and putting someone else’s happiness before your own.”

Yep—that was spoken like a man who’s truly in love, or at least who’s been in love before. I have no idea what happened with him and his ex-fiancée, who might or might not be Scarlett, but I can’t help but want him to find love again.

“Thank you for your assessment,” Dex says in that dry voice he uses so often. Then he looks back at me. “Now tuck in, sweetie pie. Let’s eat.”

Fourteen

Dex

Maya offers halfheartedlyto share the bed with me when we go to bed that night, but I tell her I’ll sleep on the couch. I can tell she doesn’t actually want to share the bed, for one—she’s just being polite. But also, the second I see what she calls “pajamas,” I know I’ll be better off by myself.

“What?” she says, looking suddenly self-conscious when she sees the look on my face. She crosses her arms over her chest as I step into the small bathroom so I can brush my teeth. “I thought I was going to have my own room.”

I hold my hands up. “No judgment from over here,” I say, and I mean it. “Sleep in whatever you want. I was just surprised.” I pull my eyes away from her short silk nightie, focusing instead on the suddenly riveting task of putting toothpaste on my toothbrush. We brush our teeth in weird tandem—bottom, top, left, right, tongue—though this is something I notice only through my peripheral vision. My eyes are glued to the countertop and the seashell-shaped sink, because I absolutely cannot look at Maya again. I wait while she spits and rinses her mouth, and then I breathe a sigh of relief when she leaves the room. I listen for a second, smiling a moment later when I hear the unmistakable sound of her cooing at Archer, who she must be video chatting with.

Tomorrow. We just have to get through tomorrow, and then everything will go back to normal. I won’t have to be so close and so touchy-feely with a woman who’s so gorgeous and so distractingly full of love and life.

* * *

The next morning,I’m pulled out of my slumber by someone shaking my shoulder. At first I think I’m dreaming, so I try to shrug it off, but when the shaking doesn’t go away, I start to wake up a little more.

Shake, shake, shake.“Dex,” someone whispers.

I groan, squinting my eyes open and experiencing a moment of confusion. Where the heck am I? Why am I not in my bed? And who’s shaking me?

“Dex, wake up!”

And then it clicks. The resort for the wedding, the couch, which means…

“Maya, what are you doing?” I say.

“Oh, you’re awake!”

“I am now,” I groan. “Why are you awake?”

She snorts. “You mean aside from the fact that I woke up leaking milk thirty minutes ago because my poor bosoms are used to nighttime feedings? Which is super uncomfortable, by the way. It’s like rocks hanging off of your chest, and they hurt, and they’re messy.”

I’m not awake enough to handle that information. “I—what? Okay. Well, what else is going on? Is something wrong?”

“No,” she says, and even though it’s still completely dark in our room, I can hear from her voice that she’s excited about something. “I just wanted to see if you want to come to the beach with me. I’m going to see the sunrise. Want to come?”

“No,” I say, grabbing the nearest pillow and pulling it over my face. “I want to go back to bed.” My voice is muffled now, but it’s intelligible, because Maya says,

“Oh. Okay.”

And is that…does she sound disappointed?

My more human self wars with half-asleep Dex, and I remove the pillow from over my face. “Why?” is all I can manage to get out.

“Why am I going to see the sunrise?” she says.

“Mmm.”

“Because I’ve never seen the sun rise over the ocean before, and I’ve been wanting to. And it’s going to be so gorgeous!” she says. “You don’t have to come, but I’m going.”

As my brain begins to wake up more thoroughly, I sigh. I can’t very well send her out alone in the dark. It’s unsafe—but more than that, it’s kind of…well, sad. Plus…she really did sound disappointed. “Wait,” I say, my voice still thick and groggy. “Just—wait for me. Don’t go down there by yourself.”

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