Already I’m starting to regret … everything.
“Like I said,” I finally go on, “I knew what we had wasn’t going to go further than my two weeks on that island.”
Neither of us says anything for a long, tense minute; and for a moment I forget I’m even on the phone with Paige. All I can think about is Luke, and the more I think about him, the more I want to cry into my pillow until sleep gives me some reprieve.
“Things between us felt so real. I just …”
“Sienna.” Paige says my name as if preparing to scold me. “Don’t talk yourself into giving him the benefit of the doubt. Don’t you dare. Just leave things like they are, like you said you’d rather do, because you know he’s lying. You don’t want to believe it, but I think deep down, you know.”
Paige is right. I do feel that way deep down—it’s the main thing that gave me reason to stop him from lying to me further and to get up the courage to finally end it and leave.
After I hang up with Paige and tell her I’ll be heading back home tomorrow, I give my mom a call to tell her how my vacation has been going. I don’t tell her as much as I told Paige, but I do tell her about Luke and how he made me feel.
“But what is your heart telling you, Sienna?” my mom asks.
“I’m not sure,” I answer distantly, thinking about it. “All I know is what I want it to be telling me, Mom.”
“Well, baby, don’t you think that’s pretty much the same thing?”
My mom always knows the right things to say. But that doesn’t mean I’ve always listened. As I lie in bed, missing the feel of Luke’s lumpy pillows pressed against my face, all I can think about are all the things that I knew going into this: We live in different states; Kendra hates me and seems out to make my life a living hell if I trespass on her turf; Luke seems to have a lot of baggage he has yet to unpack and put away.
But what gets me the most, what confuses me to no end, is that even though I’m running away physically from this situation, emotionally I’m not ready to let go. I have to, but it’s going to be hard when I get on that plane tomorrow.
I slept awfully last night. I missed the quiet peace of Luke’s secluded house on Kauai and listening to the rain fall against the earth as I lay in his bed at night, thinking about him being on the couch. One night I came so close to letting him know it was OK to sleep in the bed with me. I don’t know if I would’ve taken it further than that, but the thought of going to sleep with his arms wrapped around me was enough to sustain me probably forever.
But things are so much noisier at the resort. I constantly hear people shuffling by outside my room in the hall, the rolling wheels of suitcases, kids talking loudly, excited to be going swimming. After Luke’s house, I never want to spend another night in a hotel again. After Luke, any guy I meet in the future will have a lot to live up to.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a frothy tooth-brush in my mouth, I hear what sounds like a knock at my room door. I shut the water off and listen, my head hovering over the sink, toothpaste dripping from my lips. Another series of knocks rap against the door and I spit and rinse quickly so I can go answer it. For a second I assume it’s just the housekeeper, but toss that theory quickly when I don’t hear “Housekeeping!” following the knocks.
My heart races just knowing that it’s Luke, because who else could it be?
I press my eye to the peephole and freeze with my face against the coated wood.
What is Kendra doing here? Kendra, of all people.
I move my eye from the peephole and just stand here for a moment, not sure whether I want to, or should answer the door; my arms are rigid down at my sides. She might be here to hack me to pieces or something—crazy comes in many forms and Kendra doesn’t seem far from the farm.
I open the door. There’s a long pause rife with tension between both of us as we stare at each other.
She breaks the quiet. “Can I come in and talk to you?”
“How did you know what room I was in?” That’s the only thing I want to talk about right now.
She seems anxious to come inside, but answers just to get it out of the way. “A friend of mine works at the front desk.”
Oh really? Well, if you attack me, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
“Sienna …” She sighs and hesitates, looking discouraged as her big brown eyes stray toward the wall. Then she looks right at me. “I just really need to talk to you. I’m not here to give you shit, or to make you feel any more uncomfortable than I already have. Can I come in?”
I step aside to clear a path for her.
She wastes no time getting right to the point.
“Seth tried to call Luke this morning,” she begins, standing in the center of the room with her tanned arms crossed over a pink tank top, “and it took forever to get through to him. Basically, Luke didn’t want to talk, but Seth got enough out of him to know that you took off last night and that … well, you might’ve overheard our argument.”
I cross my arms, too, and nod slightly, unable to look her in the eyes. “Yeah, I did. I heard enough.”
“Maybe you didn’t,” she says, and my gaze snaps back to hers. “I think if you did—well, what did you hear exactly?”
My eyebrows stiffen and my defenses shoot up around me. “Well, you said some really hurtful things. Called me a bitch in a roundabout way and basically told Luke he’s better off screwing me and leaving me”—I snarl at her—“And, well, if there was more, I’m kind of glad I didn’t hear it.”