“You’re being a control freak, but sure, let’s call it practical.” I drop my tote bag in the middle of the bed, which feels like an act of war given the territorial negotiation happening. I watch as he opens a dresser drawer then begins transferring some of his neatly folded clothes from his suitcase. “You’re really giving me the whole closet? That’s... unexpectedly generous.”
“I don’t need much space.”
I study him for a second, this man who folds already-folded shirts and offers up prime closet real estate like it’s no big deal. He’s a tyrant, apparently, but a polite tyrant. The kind whodivides the kingdom equally and then acts like generosity had nothing to do with it.
“What about the bed line?” I ask, dragging my big suitcase toward the closet. “Are you planning to use painter’s tape, or just a chalk outline? Because I should warn you, I’m a sprawler. I once kicked Lisa off a queen-sized bed in a Motel 6.”
He pauses mid-fold, and for a moment I think he’s going to say something cutting. Instead, he crosses to the bed and leans down to place his hand on the mattress, palm flat, indicating an invisible border down the center.
“This is the line,” he says. “Your side. My side.”
His hand is maybe eight inches from where my tote bag sits. Close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off him when he shifts his weight, can see the tendons flex along the back of his wrist. He looks up at me and the proximity catches me off guard, his green eyes sharp and uncomfortably direct from this angle. This close, I can see a faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, can count the gold flecks in his irises that I first noticed on the plane when he grabbed my wrist during turbulence.
My skin feels too warm. We’re negotiating sleeping arrangements and my body is responding like this is a completely different kind of negotiation, which is mortifying and also not something I can seem to stop.
Then he straightens and steps back, tucking his hands into his pockets like he’s confiscating them from himself. “Clear enough?”
“Crystal,” I manage.
I don’t move for a second. My eyes land on the spot where his hand just rested, the duvet still pressed flat from his palm, and I have to take a deliberate breath before I trust myself to turn around and walk like a normal person.
I head for the bathroom, testing the lock. It works, thank God. At least I’ll have one room in this suite where I can have a private meltdown.
“I have some rules of my own too,” I call over my shoulder.
“Such as?”
“No bringing random hookups back here.”
There’s a beat of silence from the bedroom, long enough that I step out of the bathroom. Alec is standing beside the dresser, a stack of perfectly squared socks in his hand, looking at me with an expression that hovers between amusement and disbelief.
“I’m not here to get laid,” he says flatly. “Are you?”
He raises an eyebrow, and the question is dry enough to function as a fire hazard.
Except something in the way he asks it makes me pause. His voice has gone quieter, and his gaze doesn’t slide away the way it usually does after he’s delivered one of his clipped little volleys. It stays. On me. And there’s a flicker of something behind the question that feels less like banter and more like he actually wants to know the answer. Which is ridiculous. Which also sends a warm curl of awareness through my stomach that I deeply resent, because we are standing in a honeymoon suite discussing sex, however indirectly, and that context is suddenly very loud in the room.
“I didn’t come here looking for romance, Alec. This is my first vacation in years. My first time leaving the country. It was supposed to be me and my best friend, not me and some guy who thinks fun is a communicable disease.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to, fueled by a flare of genuine frustration. This trip was supposed to be freedom. Fresh air and ocean water and the first real break I’ve had since I started waitressing at eighteen. “Forgive me if this wasn’t on my vision board.”
I half expect something from him. A softening. Even the smallest acknowledgment that this situation is hard for both of us. He just looks at me for a moment, his expression unreadable, then nods once.
“Noted.”
The word lands like a receipt. Transaction closed, no further comment. I’m standing here telling him something real, something that cost me a sliver of pride to say out loud, and he just filed it away like a memo he’ll never read. I’m annoyed at myself for expecting anything different. He’s a stranger. I don’t need his sympathy. But there’s a kind of loneliness in offering a piece of yourself and watching someone pocket it without looking.
I walk over to my suitcase before my face can do anything stupid. “Men.”
The unpacking that follows is an exercise in coexistence that perfectly illustrates why he and I are fundamentally incompatible as human beings.
I toss my sundresses onto hangers in cheerful, wrinkled clusters. Sandals get dumped to the closet floor. My beach cover-ups go over the back of a chair because who has time for folding when there’s a whole ocean waiting?
Meanwhile, across the suite, Alec is organizing his drawers like he’s prepping for a military inspection. Socks squared into tight rolls. Shirts folded with creases so sharp they could open envelopes. Even his running shoes are placed sole-to-sole with the laces tucked inside, as if messy laces would be the thing that finally broke him. Every time he bends to place something in a drawer, I catch the shift of muscle through his shirt, the controlled economy of a body that moves like it’s been trained to waste nothing. I look away. Look back. Look away again. It’s becoming a pattern I’d rather not examine.
I’m shoving a tangle of bikini tops onto the closet shelf when he glances over at my situation. His expression lands somewhere between fascinated and horrified, the way you’d look at a car accident.
“Is that your system?” he asks.
“Why, do I need a system? Are you going to check my work?”
