Nina was right that I couldn’t imagine Beth being upset. But this wasn’t aboutBeth. It was about me. How could I forgive myself for moving on with my life when Beth was stuck? How could I leave her behind?
We dropped the subject as we neared the entrance to Coral Castle. The girls sat on their bags and talked about alien conspiracy theories, and Alex stood nearby, expression serious as he stared at the limestone walls.
“Finally,” Mia said when she saw us. “Alex won’t let us go in without you guys. What took so long?”
“We needed supplies.” I held up the bags on my arms.
“I’ll clean your car,” Alex said. He took the bag of cleaning supplies and walked away before I could get a word out.
Nina leaned in close to me and sniffed. “We need to deal with your hair situation.”
I handed Nina two bottles of water and flipped my head down, yelping when she poured the frigid water over me. As she rinsed my hair, Mia and Kitty filled us in on everything we missed in the fifteen minutes we’d been gone, explaining how the event planner, a blond woman in anI believe in aliensT-shirt, had come to unlock the gate soon after we’d left.
“She did that forearm-touching thing to Greyson’s dad,” Mia said. “Which means she only wants one thing.”
Greyson, back in her usual good humor, smacked Mia on the arm. “That’s mydadyou’re talking about! You’re gonna make me hurl again.”
I was pretty sure she was joking, but took a step back, just in case.
Alex returned carrying a backpack on each shoulder and wheeling a cooler behind him.
“Yes!” Nina raised her hands to the sky. “I knew I could count on you to bring food.”
“That’s not all,” Alex said. He let one bag drop from his shoulder anddug through the other, pulling out three thermoses. “Coffee.” He passed one to me and one to Nina. “Yours is decaf, Jo. It’s for psychological comfort only.”
I took a sip and closed my eyes. “I’ll give you this, you make a good cup of coffee.”
Alex shook his head at me. “I’m a Michelin-starred chef who has cooked you literally dozens of meals, and you compliment me on my drip coffee?”
“What? I didn’t say your other food wasn’t good. I’ve just got priorities, and coffee is one of them.”
We hauled our bags through the limestone gate of Coral Castle, which was even weirder in person than it had seemed online. Other than a small tower in one corner, Coral Castle was an open-air courtyard filled with bizarre statues and furniture, all made from limestone. We set our things in an area called the Grotto of the Three Bears, where limestone chairs circled a rock that had been hollowed out in the center. Nina turned on a camping lantern, and the rest of us unfurled our sleeping bags.
Kitty ran a hand over one of the limestone chairs. “This place is freaky.”
Mia grinned at her sister. “I hear it’s haunted.”
“There’s no scientific evidence of the paranormal,” Kitty said, taking a step closer to me.
Nina pulled up a map of Coral Castle on her phone. “Ready to check out your castle, Josephine?” She led us around the courtyard, each limestone structure stranger than the last. They included a Florida-shaped table, a limestone barbecue, a bedroom with two beds and a bathtub, and something called the Polaris Telescope. Nina began a ghost story about Edward Leedskalnin, the guy who’d built this place, but I was almost certain the story was inspired by one of her bad Tinder dates. I tried to pay attention as we followed her around the courtyard, but I was worn out from the drive here, my conversation with Nina, and the thoughtsabout Alex I’d been ignoring for weeks. He and the girls followed Nina, fully immersed in her story, and I took the opportunity to slip away and walked back the way we’d come.
I walked past the Moon Fountain and the Sun Couch and stopped when I couldn’t see or hear the others, finding myself in the “bedroom” again. I stretched out on one of the beds and put my arms behind my head to stare up at the sky, but there was too much light pollution to see any stars. Without Nina, Alex, and the girls around, I was ready to face the task of untangling the knot of thoughts cluttering my head.
I asked myself the question I’d been avoiding: Did I have feelings for Alex? I knew the answer. I’d known it for a long time but kept pushing it away because it would only make things more complicated. Yes, I did have feelings for him. Feelings that were not of the “buddy” variety. I couldn’t deny it anymore, at least not to myself. What other explanation was there for the sparks that zipped through me whenever we touched? Or for how I couldn’t stop thinking about our kiss from that night at Mitch’s. I thought about our easy conversations each morning on the way to work and how he had the perfect playlist for any mood. I thought of the single-minded intensity of his work, and yet how he never took himself too seriously. I thought about how he made me laugh whenever he sang, how he made me laugh all the time. These were not feelings that could be explained away by pheromones.
Follow-up question: Did having feelings for Alex change anything? Just because I had feelings for him didn’t mean I was willing to do anything about them, because Nina was right, I was terrified. I didn’t want to be alone, but I also didn’t want to get hurt. And hurt was the only way this ended—the only way anything ever ended. I wasn’t convinced a little bit of happiness was worth the pain. I’d had moments of happiness with Shitty Peter, but being with him had been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Even if I did want to pursue these feelings for Alex, it took two to tango. And so far, Alex didn’t seem interested in dancing.
“There you are,” a voice said, startling me from my thoughts. I satup, spotting Alex with his hands in his pockets a few feet away. He looked unlike himself, with slumped shoulders and a serious demeanor. Did he know I’d been thinking about him? Was he a mind reader? He had catered a psychic event here, after all.
“Hi,” I said, trying to get a better look at him, but the shadow of Coral Castle’s walls fell over his face.
“You snuck off.” He sat on the other limestone bed and stretched out with his hands beneath his head. The bottom of his shirt lifted, exposing a sliver of his lean stomach. I drew my eyes up to his face and settled on my back again. There was hardly any space between us. If we reached out, our hands would touch.
“I’m getting some practice in.” I gave the limestone bed a pat.
“Sounds like a good idea,” he said, but his tone was devoid of his usual humor.
Had Nina said something about our conversation in the CVS? I didn’t think she’d betray me like that, but then again, she wasn’t acting like her normal self. And here was Alex about to let me down gently. That would be the end of carpooling, and singing, and our easy friendship, probably. I looked up at the sky, not wanting to see his face when he told me whatgreat friendswe were.It’s me, not you, I imagined him saying. Maybe it would even be good for me to hear. Then I could get over these feelings I’d dreamed up about him before they got too serious.
