Better Than Chocolate (Sweet Somethings Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter 9

The Other Side of the Story, Sort Of

Once we reach my beachfront room on the second floor corridor, Sadie describes the amenities while she whirls around, unpacking my suitcase and evaluating my wardrobe. I let her ramble on about the beach, snorkeling, and sea kayaking, and remain silent when she interjects comments about the clothes I brought. In the end, everything meets with her approval, but she insists on taking me shopping tomorrow to pick up a few odds and ends.

“The blue capris with that white tank top will be perfect for dinner tonight. It’s at the beachside pavilion.” She lays the outfit out on the bed for me and nods in satisfaction, stepping back with her hands on her hips. “You’ll probably want to grab a shower. I have a coral necklace that will match the capris. I’ll come get you for dinner and bring it with me.”

I hate to burst her bubbly mood, but I probably won’t get many chances to talk with her alone. And the sooner I tell her about Ryan, the better. Determined not to let her escape, as she’s figuratively done in every phone and text conversation we’ve had in the past month, I turn to the door and slide the deadbolt home, then slap the bar guard over the door plate. For good measure, I lean against the door and plant my feet. Sadie will have to bodily move me if she wants to get out of this room.

“Sadie. I have to talk to you. It’s important.”

Her pleasant expression falls into worried lines. She lowers down to the foot of the bed, careful not to wrinkle the capris she’s chosen for me to wear tonight. “It must be important if you need to lock me in. What’s the matter, honey?”

Expectant silence fills the room. I try to find the right words. But there aren’t any. There’s no good way to tell her. “I met Ryan on the plane to San Juan.”

She turns her head to one side, eyebrows lowered. “Did you?”

Okay, she’s not freaking out yet. “Yeah. Actually, our seats were together on the plane.”

Her eyebrows shoot up.

I plunge ahead. “And we were at the same hotel. He was attending a conference.”

She exhales sharply, then stands and crosses to the balcony door. “Did you talk at all?”

“Well, yeah. He had some down time yesterday, so we went sightseeing and had dinner.” I fold my arms and contemplate her back as she props her hands on her hips again. “Sadie?”

“Did he tell you anything?”

Her careful tone puts me on edge. “About the two of you? Yeah.”

Every time I’ve tried to bring up the break up, she’s gotten defensive. Is she trying to show me she’s in control?

“What did he say?”

“That . . .” I swallow and take a couple steps toward the center of the room. “He said it was pretty mutual. That you’d been fighting a lot and neither of you was really happy anymore.”

Sadie finally turns around. “Well, that’s true, at least. Did he tell you anything else?”

I shake my head. I should tell her about last night, about the strange way he acted on the beach. But I can’t bring myself to mention it. Instead, I hurry toward her and reach for her hands. “Sadie, why didn’t you call me? I mean, as far as I knew, everything was fine. You guys had just gotten engaged, for God’s sake!”

She gives a closed-lip smile and wags my arms back and forth. “Well, you’ve never exactly been Captain Obvious.”

“Sadie, this is serious.” I back away from her and start pacing. “You’re my best friend. If things were getting bad with Ryan, there’s no good reason you shouldn’t tell me about it. Instead, you both kept it a total secret and went out of your way to make me think everything was fine. And the next thing I know, you’re running off to the Caribbean with half of what you and Ryan saved to pay for your honeymoon, and then you tell me you’re getting married to a total stranger!”

“It’s not what you think.”

I spin and fling my arms wide. “What the hell am I supposed to think, Sadie?”

Hurt flashes in her eyes, and I cover my face with my hands. I didn’t mean to yell at her, or to make this about me. If they didn’t want me to know, well, what am I supposed to do about it? I sit on the end of the bed and flop back with a sigh.

The mattress shifts as Sadie eases down beside me. “Carmella, honey.”

“I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

I lay one forearm across my eyes. Her fingers pull at my hair, fanning it on the bedspread, as she lets me get my mental bearings.

It hits me all of a sudden.

“Wait a minute.” I sit up and face Sadie, index finger raised. “You planned this.”

She cocks her head to the side with an amused half-grin. “Planned what?”

“Planned for me to run into Ryan on that flight.” I slide backward off the end of the bed, finger waving in the air. “You didn’t have to book me a flight with a two-day stopover in San Juan. There are direct flights available from Atlanta to St. Croix. Hell, there are direct flights here from Savannah.” I turn and take a few steps away before facing her again. “And you’ve only been on your little adventure here for a month and a half. Ryan’s conference had to have been scheduled before you left, travel plans included. You knew what flight he’d be on and which hotel he’d be staying at in Puerto Rico.”

“I did know his travel details,” she answers slowly, resting her palms on her thighs.

“So you wanted me to run into him, because . . .” I lose the thread there. Why would she want us to cross paths?

She stares at me, head tipped to one side, her eyebrows raised as she waits for me to come to some sort of conclusion. “Why would I want―”

I clap my hands together and point at her. “Because you’re still in love with Ryan!”

“Carmella.”

“You are. There’s no way six years together, plus the first three years of friendship—that’s nine years—would just get thrown out because you were fighting a little.” I shake my head when she starts to get up. “No, sit down, listen. You freaked out. You’ve done it before, just not to this extreme. But you know I like to do whatever it takes to fix things, to make the people I love happy. So you figured, if I ran into Ryan, I would be compelled to tell him about your wedding.”

She stands up, despite my hand waves. “Hold on.”

“And if Ryan knew about your wedding, he’d have no choice but to―”

“Stop.” She flattens one hand over my mouth, and her expression shifts between consternation and amusement. “This isn’t a fairy tale. Ryan isn’t a knight in shining armor, ready to ride in and rescue me from some evil sorcerer.”

I grab her wrist and pull her hand away. “But―”

She shakes her head, chuckling a little. “Nelson’s not holding me prisoner. Ryan doesn’t need to come save me from anything.” She leans in. “Honey, I’m happy. Really. I want this.”

“Why?” I step back. “It’s like you ran away from your life. A great life, by the way.”

“I was tired of competing.” She wanders back to the balcony, pulling the sliding door open and stepping into the ocean breeze.

As she leans against the railing, I follow her, bracing myself against the edge of the open door. “Sadie, come on. You’re gorgeous and sweet, and Ryan adores you. What could a woman like you ever need to compete against?”

“He didn’t tell you why we were fighting?” She glances over her shoulder.

I join her on the balcony. “Well, he mentioned you not being happy at your job. And some differing views on kids.”

She sighs and looks out at the view of the ocean. “That’s all he said? He didn’t tell you the part about his promotion?”

“Didn’t he get it?”

“Oh yeah, they offered it to him.” She wraps both hands around the railing and leans back. The breeze snatches at the shortened ends of her hair and swirls the hem of her sundress. “He turned it down.”

I bolt to her side. “What? He waited three years for that opportunity.”

“I know. When they first started grooming him for it, it was supposed to be a lot more hands-on. But apparently the position was redefined before they offered it to him, because it was an office job, intended to lead into a partnership.” She frowns and eases forward again. The back of her engagement ring clinks on the railing as she taps her fingers against it. “It would’ve been a huge raise. But it’s not what he wanted to do.”

I slide closer and thread my arm through hers. “If he wouldn’t have enjoyed the job, then the money was a non-issue.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t the end of it.” She squeezes the hand I slip around hers. “He wanted to start working on that damn house.”

“He mentioned you wanted to move back into downtown.”

“I did. There’s nothing in our neighborhood, and anything worth doing means heading into the city anyway.” She shrugs. “And yeah, we had different opinions about starting a family. Basically, he wanted to, and I didn’t.”

“But you like kids.”

She glances at me, releasing a short laugh. “I like other people’s kids. But I never wanted any of my own. Ryan never brought it up until after he proposed.” She laughs again, a little brittle. “Getting engaged was probably the biggest mistake we ever made. We should’ve cut our losses and split up instead.”

I pat the back of her shoulder. “Sadie-lady, you loved each other. That’s a perfectly good reason to get engaged.”

“We were competing against each other to see whose goals would win out. That’s no way to live.”

Moving away from her, I rub my palms over my face. “You stopped communicating with each other the right way. That doesn’t mean―”

She shakes her head, holding up one hand to cut me off. “You’re right. We did stop communicating, but it happened way back in college when we decided to start dating. I always knew I would have to fight with Ryan to get what I wanted, because deep down I was never
what
he wanted.”

“Sadie, that’s ridiculous. I remember when you first got together. You two were bliss personified.”

“For a while, yeah, it did seem like it would work.” She spins around and leans back against the railing, arms folded. Her frown deepens, a hint of regret registering on her face.

A defensive sense of my own hurt starts to surface. Again, a vital part of the breakup equation is being kept from me. Tentatively, I touch one fingertip to her upper arm. “Ryan wasn’t cheating, was he?”

Sadie covers her mouth, her shoulders shaking. It takes a minute to realize that she’s laughing. Next thing I know, she smothers me in a hug.

“Oh, Carmella. I knew I could count on you to help me keep things in perspective.”

“You’d tell me if he was, right? Because that would explain a lot.”

She waves both hands between us. “No, Ryan wasn’t cheating on me. Mr. Marine Corps code of honor? No, that was the problem. If he had cheated, at least I would have had the courage to let it all go a lot sooner. He’s too damn honorable for his own good. And mine, turns out. Maybe that’s part of why I ran, so he’d be free to go after what he really wants. You know?”

I shake my head again. I feel like one of those bobble-head dolls people glue to their dashboards. “Ryan never said he wanted to go after something else. Why would he?”

But when I replay last night’s conversation, I wonder if that’s what he was talking about when he said he hadn’t wanted me to notice certain things during my April visit.

Sadie tugs me back into the room and deposits me in the easy chair by the bed. “If he didn’t tell you, then he had a good reason. It’s not my place to say anything.”

I catch her wrist as she straightens. “You, of anybody, have the right to tell me.”

She gazes down at me, her blue eyes filled with a strange understanding. She’s never been the deepest person in the world, at least not that she ever lets most people see. But there’s something in her face, some altruistic sort of peace I’ve never seen before.

“Okay, Sadie, you’re freaking me out a bit.”

“Carmella,” she says, squatting in front of me and taking my hands. “You are my best friend in this whole world. And I need you to understand. I’m not having a mental breakdown. I’m not being brainwashed. I love it here. I love Nelson.” Her smile breaks, color coming into her cheeks. “Yeah, it did happen really fast. But he’s a wonderful man. You’ll see. He’s smart, he’s generous. He already has two kids from his first marriage, and they’re great. They want to be friends with me, and I’m okay with that.”

I start to interject, but she stops me.

“Enough about Ryan and me. Enough about Ryan altogether. I want you to have a good time this week.” She drops onto her knees and gathers my hands under her chin. “Please, Carmella. I need you to try and understand.”

I don’t. I probably never will. But she stares up at me, pleading, now pushing out her lower lip in that old pout. She does it whether she’s asking for something serious or not, but her lost puppy-dog face gets me every time.

I roll my eyes. “Okay. Okay, I’ll try.”

Sadie squeals and launches another hug at me. “Wonderful! It’ll be amazing, Carmella, you’ll see.” She scrambles to her feet, leaves a smacking kiss on my cheek, and dances to the door. “Take a shower and get changed. I’ll come get you in an hour to go down to dinner.”

The door slams behind her, and the air in my room settles, only the echo of ocean waves breaking the silence. I slump back in the chair, hands limp over the armrests, and groan.