Seriously? She’s concerned that he has a girlfriend, not that she had a boyfriend?
“I can’t believe you right now. Who are you?” I run my fingers through my hair.
She rises to her feet and grasps my wrist. “I’m so sorry, Cammy.”
The girl before me is desperate, and it’s pathetic.
“Don’t fucking touch me right now.” I yank so she’s forced to release me, then I take a step back. Not that it puts much space between us in this tiny cabin.
I’m sure our next-door neighbors are getting quite the earful, but that’s the least of my concerns.
“Why?” I plead, though I’m not sure I even want to know the answer.
She looks pained. Good. “I don’t know.” She ducks her chin and rubs the side of her arm. “I had too much to drink and my judgment was skewed, but that’s not an excuse,” she admits. “If I’m being totally honest, I think I just didn’t feel like being the good girl for once.”
My anger dissipates just a fraction with that confession. “What do you mean?”
“I’m so tired of feeling suffocated by my parents’ expectations, and I’m sick of always doing exactly what they tell me to do. Aren’t you?” She licks her lips and searches my face. “I mean, they freaking arranged our marriage without even considering how we might feel about it. That’s crazy, right? I feel crazy right now.”
Though I’d rather not touch her, I grasp her arm gently and guide her to the bed.
Sitting beside me on the mattress, she keeps her head bowed, not making eye contact. “What I did was shitty. I really am sorry. I feel so lost right now. Like I don’t know what I want from life. Before you, I’d only dated one guy, and that didn’t end well. I don’t know. I just want the freedom to figure it out on my own without my parents breathing down my neck.”
“I get that. I just wish you wouldn’t have gone behind my back.”
She turns to me, tears still streaming down her face. “I know.”
My jaw loosens a bit. I’m tired. I don’t want to fight over this when we’ve already decided not to be together. “Let’s just get through the rest of the trip.”
Though keeping things civil with Hayden feels like the right thing to do, I’d rather not look at her. The only face I want to see is Joey’s, and with any luck, I’ll bump into her on the ship today.
The pool deck is crowded with Brits who are all about an hour away from third-degree sunburns. I’ve set myself up on the lounge by the pool, praying my odds of catching her walking by this high-traffic area are decent. With a whiskey on rocks in my hand, I hold tight to the image of the prettiest brown eyes in my head.
Man, I really screwed things up. Why did I have to open my mouth and tell her I regretted our night together? It’s the farthest thing from the truth. If the last twenty-four hours has taught me anything, it’s that life doesn’t always need to be planned to be beautiful. I may have just met the girl of my dreams, but I’ve royally fucked it up, and now I’ll never see her again.
12
Josefine
ONE YEAR LATER
“Why wouldI ever go back there, Mills?”
“Because,” she says, “your dad wanted you to have the time of your life in Greece and that fuckboy”—she throws her hands in the air—“ruined it. You have to go back and replace the bad memories with good ones.”
My cousin is right. Tyler irrevocably ruined what I had anticipated to be the trip of a lifetime. Though I guess he guaranteed that I’d never forget it.
Before we even landed at LAX, I was coordinating with friends to move my stuff out of his apartment. Not only did I want to get the hell away from him, but from Los Angeles too. I needed a total rebirth—Josefine’s Version, if you will—and zero distractions if I was ever going to get my life together and make it as a published author.
Lucky for me, my cousin Millie swooped in and saved the day. As soon as I called to tell her whatfuckboydid, she bought a pull-out sofa from IKEA and a one-way ticket to Manhattan forme. When I made my way past baggage claim at JFK, she was waiting with a bottle of Macallan and a sign that readWelcome back from prison, Joey!
Our apartment in Washington Heights may be the size of a Barbie Dreamhouse, but we make it work. The light gray sectional that doubles as my bed is surprisingly comfortable, and the drum-shaped gold and walnut coffee table is an adorable place to store my bedding. Two large windows on one wall let in the most exquisite morning light, and most of my personal shit fits inside the television credenza on the opposite wall.
“There’s no way we can book a last-minute trip to Greece,” I say.
“That’s what you think!” Millie jumps up from the black velvet captain’s chair in the corner of her bedroom. Her obnoxious, faux-fur blanket falls to the ground in front of a gaudy, full-length mirror.
“What are you saying?” I squint at my cousin.
