Chapter 4
Logan
It wasn'teasy for me to be on 'vacation'. I didn't get it. I knew from taking them as a kid and watching TV shows and movies it was supposed to be about relaxing and leaving your problems behind back at home, but that just seemed stupid.
So what if you left them behind for a week or so? When you came back, they'd still be there. Probably bigger and worse than they were when you'd left, like moldy food in the back of the fridge that just got more gross the longer you tried to ignore it and put off cleaning it up.
But unlike leftovers, I couldn't just throw my problems in the trash, Tupperware and all. They were indistinguishable from my life at this point, and as tired as it all made me, it wasn't like I could hide from it forever.
Even being in Greece wasn't enough.
Jasmine had been very into Greek mythology. She was the kind of person who had tons of useless knowledge stored up in her head, and she could whip out a fact about Zeus or Medusa in a second, much to the delight of her friends and family.
I'd thought it was charming. On anyone else, I would have said it was a waste of time to pack her head with that kind of information, but on her... It had just worked.
So being in Greece, the heart of all that history she loved so much, was just a little difficult sometimes.
It was hard not to think about her and the things she enjoyed, even though the point was to relax and leave all that behind.
So yeah, it made me a little surly.
It was the evening of the fourth night when Dan pulled me aside into one of the little sitting rooms in the house. He had some low music on, and two glasses of whiskey already poured, and I raised an eyebrow at him.
"If this is you trying to come on to me, I'm not even remotely interested. I'm lonely, not desperate."
"Aha!" he said, grinning triumphantly. "So youarelonely."
I rolled my eyes and folded my arms defensively in front of my chest. "My fiancé left me for another man," I snapped. "What do you think?"
"I think you're going through a rough time, but you also kind of taking it out on everyone else." He sighed and motioned to the chair across from his. "Sit down."
Part of me wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, and the words rose up on my tongue so easily. I'd never been what some might consider 'a nice person', but it was worse these days. My moods swung dramatically, and when I was tired or didn't have enough to distract me from thinking about Jasmine, it was the worst.
I knew Dan was just trying to help. We'd been friends for long enough that he had seen every step in my relationship with Jasmine, from us meeting to me proposing to her. He knew what she meant to me, and I knew he knew how much it sucked to have her do what she did.
So, I sighed and sat. Picked up the glass of whiskey, poured just the way I liked it, neat with a twist of orange.
"You wanna talk about it?" he asked me.
I looked down into the glass. "What's there to talk about? She's gone. How would you feel if that happened to you out of the blue?"
"Like shit," he agreed. "Have you heard anything since she walked away?"
"She sent the ring back. Nice of her," I replied, voice dry. "There's someone else." I reiterated it, just in case he missed it the first time.
"Yikes. A new someone, or..." He trailed off, but I knew what he was getting at.
"Someone she knew before," I said, almost having to force the words out. I tightened my hand around my glass and took a deep sip, letting the smokey bite burn down my throat.
"You think she was...."
"I know she was."
"Yikes," Dan said again.
“Yeah. Sums it up.”
We sat in silence for a bit, just drinking and looking off into the distance. Dan was a good friend. Most people assumed I'd done something to run Jasmine off when she'd announced she was leaving me and took off in the middle of the night. I worked too much, or I was too grumpy. Something about it had to be my fault or she never would have left.
