Page 17 of The Other Side of Paradise
When we got outside, I was sweaty and gross and every part of my body was achy, but I felt better for the exercise—I hated that people were right and that a little exercise did feel good in the end, no matter how desperately I wanted them to be wrong—but all of that went out of my mind with a snort and a derisive eyeroll at Ryan and Brooklyn when they both stopped at Brooklyn’s car together.
“Oh, you got Brooklyn chauffeuring you and everything,” I said, my voice as loaded as I could make it.
Brooklyn smiled politely at me. “I’d drive you too if you didn’t spill lemonade in my car.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You still drive Laura around even though she literally threw up in your car twice. You just wanna pick on me.”
She grinned, lighting up in the way she always did when we had our back-and-forth. “Okay, yeah, I do,” she said. “For real, though, Ryan was just at my place before this, so it made sense. Do you want me to drive you home so you can feel special?”
“Nah,” I laughed, waving as I headed towards my car. “You two get yourspecial timetogether. Enjoy your clubbing, weirdos. Text me the updates on how it goes.”
I hated to admit it, but the two of them were cute together. And Ireallyhated to admit how jealous I was.
I kept thinking about it all through the rest of the evening, back to my bungalow and lying there under the moonlight that spilled in through the big window over my bed, the palm trees framing a picture-perfect view of the ocean, my canvases filled with half-finished paintings scattered through the cluttered room, sketchbooks in messy piles, and my head the messiest collection of scattered nonsense of all. Thinking about it—Ellie had fucked me up.
I’d been so… romantic, before all of that. Dreamed of finding the perfect girl and having a magical whirlwind romance.And then I thought it was happening, and the very next morning, the universe laughed in my face, pulled the rug out and kicked me while I was down. Mocking me for believing in something so stupid. I hadn’t even entertained the barest thought of attraction to a girl for the longest time since then.
But… ugh. I missed it. Seriously. I missed the happy daydreams and the nervous excitement when there was a girl I liked. Missed the way I would get my hopes up imagining scenarios where I’d run into her. Missed the way a crush’s name felt on my lips.
Guess it wasn’t really that I wanted a hookup so much as that I wanted to believe in something nice again. But a hookup wasn’t the worst way to get there.
So that night, I let myself think about the things I’d told myself not to—let myself dabble in stupid daydreams, picture myself out on that moonlit beach with another girl next to me, digging our feet into the cool sand, our laughter melting into the sound of the rolling waves.
And I tried really hard not to picture Stella’s face there in those daydreams, but judging by the fact that I came to from my daydreaming and realized I had one of my sketchbooks in front of me with a quick doodle of a girl’s face that looked an awful lot like Stella’s, I didn’t do too great.
“Fuck me,” I laughed, groaned, all at once, as I threw the sketchbook back onto the desk, my pen with it, and I flopped back onto the bed.
Maybe tomorrow, I could try to be a bit more like Brooklyn. I’d never admit to her face that I was thinking something like that, though.
Chapter 8
Allison
Halfway through the morning shift was when I got my confirmation, because Ryan’s expression told me what had happened without her having to say a word. Girl looked a little too happy, even though she was here back at the resort waiting to have an ugly confrontation with her family, from the sounds of things, and when I asked her about it, she snorted.
“Yeah, no, not looking forward to it,” she said, looking around the lobby, quiet on a Wednesday morning.
“I can imagine,” I said, thinking back to Stella—the whole thing with her father out on the walkway next to her room. Stella panicking to get out of the conversation. “Your family’s a lot,” was what I settled for saying.
Ryan gave me a noncommittal shrug, as if to sayno arguments here.“Still,” she said, “they’ve been blowing up my phone, so I figured I should finally have a proper talk…”
And yet she was all too happy right now. I folded my arms on the desk, leaning in with a big smile on my features. “So,” I said, “how did last night go?”
“What?” She went suddenly scarlet, and I couldn’t believe this girl was supposedly a journalist, not with that level offlimsiness in conversation. I’d never seen anything so obviously written on someone’s face. I raised my eyebrows, fighting back a smile.
“The club?”
She stared blankly, eyes wide, and at length, she said, “Ah… yeah. It was… it was nice.”
I snorted. “Damn, you’re losing it. Congrats on it going well.”
She put her hands up, protesting weakly. “It wasn’t—I didn’t pick someone up at the club.”
I laughed. “So you hooked up with BB instead?”
“What—no, I, uh,” she mumbled, looking around frantically, having a complete crisis from the looks of things. “We didn’t do anything,” she said, the most half-assed lie I’d heard in my life.
“You are such a liar,” I snorted. “Just admit to it. I’ve been rooting for it. You two are cute.”
