Page 3 of Honey Bun
As I stepped onto the pavement and waved, I half expected Arman to get in his car and drive away from me, but he walked toward me. Whatever his cologne was, it made him smell delicious. My mouth watered. I sucked on my bottom lip and wished I’d been stronger when I was younger and had followed my heart and stayed with Arman.
I shook off the thought. “Arman, do you think you can fit us and the luggage?”
He winked. “We’ll make it work.” As Aurora joined us, he clicked his car fob and reached inside his black leather seats. “You look hot. Can I give you some water?” He handed a bottle of water to each of us.
Aurora opened hers fast. “Awesome.” Then she downed it in one gulp. She passed us and slipped into the back seat.
Arman said, “Your daughter looks like you.”
She was beautiful and still innocent and sweet. I’d lost that. But I kept my mouth shut. I realized my heart beat differently when I was near Arman. I decided to tell him a bit of the truth. “Arman, you surprised me. You’re the last person I ever expected to see.”
I handed Aurora my bottle of water, and she gulped it down. Arman stopped, reached back into his car, and opened a refrigerator. “Help yourself,” he told my daughter and handed me another one.
I let out a sigh. “That’s nice of you.”
He tilted his head. “Why didn’t you expect to see me? My family summers here. That’s how we were friends.”
Friendswasn’t how I thought of him. I hadn’t seen or heard his name in well over a dozen years. But it wasn’t his fault I’d moved halfway across the country.
I swallowed. “We’re adults now. You must be married. You probably have a passel of kids. I figured you’d live in New York or LA and not have time to visit the island.”
He opened the car door and held it. I took a seat, and the air-conditioning of his clean car helped blast away some of my veils of doubt. He closed my door, and once he’d taken the seat opposite me, he said, “Nope. There are hardly any new people in Virgin Cove, and everyone knows each other, even the ones from the Persian Palace on the cliff. But you haven’t been back in a long time. What happened to you?”
I sipped water and closed my eyes. My father and his friends had hated the New Yorkers with plenty of cash who’d built that palace on the cliff. I’d made so many mistakes, but my problems had started when my parents signed off on me marrying a man before it was legal for me to do it on my own.
My heart pounded, but I’d already told Arman the tip of the iceberg, so I continued. “I… got married when I was eighteen.”
“Your father told me.” He kept the car in park instead of moving forward. “That’s why you weren’t here the summer before college.”
“Yeah. I married days after graduating high school and never went to college.” I glanced behind me at my ten-year-old. Now that my father was gone and her father was miles away, no one was ever going to sign off on anything like that for Aurora. I would protect her. I smiled at her and then back at Arman. “I was too young. I wanted to say I am sorry for how things ended with us.”
He took off then, and his car zoomed. “I was really disappointed when you didn’t come back the next year.” He glanced at me, and I wondered if he was remembering that kiss when we were seventeen. “I always wondered if I’d scared you off or what I did wrong.”
He must be joking.I shook my head. “You? Never. Honestly, you’re why I always google… never mind.”
He tapped the wheel. “Google what?”
Damn.Arman was the last person I wanted to know about this portion of my life. He wore Armani as casual wear. I still wore clothes I’d gotten from church donations before the people at the church started ignoring me because of… I needed to stop dwelling on the past.
I finished my water. “I looked up your last name and what your family was up to, including some gossip blogs. You weren’t usually mentioned like the others, so I assumed you were stable. When I think about how nice you always were to me, I realize just how foolish those stories are.”
“Joel’s the only one who’s married,” he said.
I glanced at my ten-year-old, who nodded. I smiled back at her. I hoped she would never have the kind of problems I’d had.
Then Arman slowed his car. “Well, it’s good to stay in touch. Here we are.”
And he stopped in front of our yellow colonial. It was exactly how I remembered it. Chips in the stucco had grown, and several roof tiles needed replacing. My mother, Catherine, had never once agreed with me on anything, but she was all I had left, and she hadn’t forgotten I existed.
I got out of the car, and Aurora followed. Once Arman had taken our bags out of his back seat, I took them from him. “Well, this is us. Thanks for the ride.”
Arman said, “Look, if you want to meet up and maybe grab some dinner later, I’ll buy.”
I pressed back the urge to touch him. “Maybe. Look, I’ll call you.”
He winked as he stepped back. “Glad you’re here again, Maddie.”
“Thanks.” I felt more than thankful. The sweet way he’d said my name washed through me.
