Page 61 of My Favorite Bad Decision
And sure, the clothes are more revealing than anything I’d choose on my own, and there are enough negligees and silk thongs to last me a lifetime, but I can live with it.
I unzip the dress and hang it over a chair, remove my strapless bra, and slip on a negligée before I traipse barefoot to the blue-tiled bathroom, where a toothbrush, toothpaste, makeup remover, and face wash await.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, and climb into the big, soft bed, listening to the quiet roar of the waves and the buzz of insects.
This is the happiest I’ve felt since I left Tanzania.
I’m not going to think too hard about the common denominator in both.
16
KIT
The ocean is the first thing I see, such a perfect blue that it looks as if it was Photoshopped. The sand is powder white—no weeds and no grass—so the view is nothing but shore and sea and a cloudless sky.
On the other side of the door, there are quiet sounds—Miller, I assume. My heart begins to skitter, thrilled to have him back to myself when I’d thought I might never spend time with him again.
I brush my teeth and wrap the robeElitesent around me before I walk into the main room. He’s in baby blue swim trunks and nothing else, his back to me while he does something at the kitchen counter. My mouth waters.
“Good morning,” I say quietly, newly re-aware of the fact that it’s just the two of us here alone.
He turns, with a coffee scoop in hand, and his eyes immediately drop to the tiny robe covering a tinier negligée. He blows out a breath.
“Wow,” he says. “Telling me we’re just here as friends and walking out here dressed like that seems more than a little unfair.”
“Obviously, I didn’t choose the outfit. I’m not sure who was giving them direction, but about half of the suitcase was lingerie. How was yours?”
He takes another glance over me and turns away to hit a button on the coffee maker. “Fine, actually,” he says. “Not a single pair of leather pants in sight, though there was a pair of pink swim trunks.”
I cross to the kitchen and jump onto the counter. “What’s wrong with pink swim trunks?”
He glances at my legs, and a muscle tenses in his jaw. “The Kit of ten years ago would’ve been able to tell you exactly what was wrong with pink swim trunks. In fact, she would have told me in great detail what was wrong, and I guarantee the phraseslittle rich boyanddouche princewould’ve come into play.”
I laugh. “That does sound familiar actually. God, I was such a bitch.”
He pulls two mugs out of the cabinet and looks over his shoulder at me. “You were, but I kind of liked it.”
He pours us each a cup of coffee, and we walk out to the covered wooden porch just outside the open wall.
The breeze is warm already, but the porch roof provides enough shade to keep it comfortable. “This is the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen in my life,” I tell him. I want to know if he brings a lot of women here but that probably isn’t something you ask a friend. “Do you come here a lot?”
He shakes his head. “No. I bought it a few years ago, but I travel so much for work that there hasn’t been a lot of time to get out here, and I don’t necessarily want to be here alone.”
“You say that as if you don’t date.”
“I haven’t dated anyone that I’ve wanted to bring here,” he says.
I wonder if he’d have been willing to bring me here under less dramatic circumstances. Probably not.
“Well, I appreciate you breaking the rule on my behalf,” I tell him. “If you hadn’t shown up last night, I’m pretty sure I’d be engaged right now.”
I’m still stunned by how close I came to making a terrible mistake, and slightly unnerved by the extent to which my mother—and perhaps Maren—were willing to help me make it. They had to have known, just like my dad did, that Blake and I weren’t right for each other. Maybe their willingness to overlook it is just a sign of their loyalty to me—that they took me at my word when I implied Blake made me happy—but it sort of feels like it’s one more way that they’ve just left me out to dry, the same way they do anytime I have to intervene on their behalf.
“Kit went a little nuts,” I once heard my mother telling a friend, without ever mentioning that it happened because I’d just watched a guy swing her onto the floor by her hair.
I close my eyes and breathe out, releasing the memory. Things haven’t always been great, but look where I’ve ended up: I’m in one of the most beautiful places in the world, with one of my favorite people—a man who has my back in a way my mother never did.
“It’s so peaceful here. Like…I don’t hear anyone. I don’t see any other houses, either.”
