I run a hand through his hair like I had on New Year’s Eve and wonder if he’s thinking about that night too.
“Fifty-three minutes,” he says. He lifts himself up on the edge of the bunk and kisses my cheek, then disappears out the door.
The dress feels heavier in my hands once he’s gone. I stare at the waves of tulle on the skirt until they blur together. I like to tell myself there is nothing new for me and Ollie to say to each other.
But now... now I’m not so sure.
***
“A grocery store? That’s your big romantic gesture?”
We stand before the entrance of Le Grand Marché,the grocery store where we’d gone provision shopping our first charter season together.
Ollie’s shoulder bumps against mine when he leans closer. “I want a do-over,” he says.
“For what?” We’re the only ones standing still in a swirl of people whose voices ring out around us in the Saint Martin sun.
“C’mon, Neen. You remember.”
Of course I do. I could never forget how he tried to brush me off or how I followed him here like a gnat, ruining his boat shoes in the process.
A decade has never felt longer than it does in this moment. I expect déjà vu, but it doesn’t come. Standing here with Ollie now doesn’t feel like that day at all. Yes, Le Grand Marché has changed, but I’m different too. Not whole or healed from what brought me here the first time, but changed because Ollie loves me, and because I love him back, even if I’ve never had the courage to say it.
When I first stood here, I thought Ollie was nothing but a chef with an ego, someone who could see nobody but himself. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When we met, I was wounded and angry. He was the first to push through my defenses, with his brooding looks, and teasing demeanor, and well-timed insight. He cracked my heart open, just wide enough for him to squeeze through.
He was the first. And every other love in my life is because hetunneled his way in. Jo. Xav. Alex and Greyson. Lord help me, even Britt and RJ.
I take his hand in mine. “You’re still as delightful as a grocery bag,” I say.
When Ollie looks at me, it’s with a knowing awareness in his eyes. I’m not sure how he does that. How he seems to understand what’s happening in my head at the same time I do, sometimes before. “I’m still convinced you like grocery bags,” he says.
Someone bumps into Ollie as they charge past us into the store, knocking us out of our moment and back into the present.
I drop his hand once we’ve stepped inside and waltz ahead as he grabs us a cart. When he catches up to me, I’m in the produce section, weighing a melon in my hand.
“This has got to be the size of a baby’s head,” I say.
“I’ve got you thinking about babies already? That was easy.”
“Depends on how big you were as a baby. Though with you being a mere five feet eight inches tall—”
“Nine,” Ollie says.
“I can’t imagine your offspring would have a head the size of this melon.”
Ollie rolls his eyes, and I set the melon back with the rest. I don’t seem like the type, but the truth is I love kids. If my life had turned out differently, I think I’d have a large SUV full of them by now. Emphasis on the SUV, because I refuse to be caught dead owning a minivan.
I walk alongside Ollie as he wheels the cart to the nearest aisle. “How is taking me provision shopping a date? I thought you were more creative than that.”
“This is provision shopping for pleasure, not business. I’m your man. I have to cook for you on your birthday.”
“You don’t belong to me.”
“But I do, Nina, there’s no pretending otherwise.”
He might be right about that. No matter how many people we try to forget each other with, it never works. All I notice is how they aren’t Ollie. Maybe there will always be a part of Ollie that belongs to me. And even more frightening, maybeIwill always belong tohim, whether I want to or not.But you do want to, the voice in my head says.But I shouldn’t, right?
Ollie pauses in the cereal aisle and pulls me in front of him so that I’m standing between his arms, boxed in between him and the shopping cart.
