Prologue
Whoever came up with the termthe great outdoorsmust never have had the pleasure of staying at a five-star hotel: where mai tais by the pool are only an order away and the spa gives all the refreshing rainforest vibes without anything venomous trying to kill you.
That’s about as outdoors as it gets for me.
Which is why I should have known better than to fall for Caden O’Connor.
I should’ve known by his polite, insincere laugh when I told him the legendary story of the one and only time my mom went camping as a kid: how she and her five siblings helped my grandparents set up the tent, how they gave it their all for two entire hours in the middle of nowhere—but then the bugs set in, and so did the humidity and the lack of electricity, and they collectively decided to go check in to the nearest hotel instead.
I should’ve known on our first date, when he took me for that picnic by the lake. He’d hardly noticed the ants and the mosquitos, didn’t seem to mind the sweat beading on his skin as the temperature climbed. I, on the other hand, hardly noticed anything else.
And I should’ve known by all the comments he made along the way—little things here and there about how long it took for me to get ready, how I couldn’t go anywhere without packing my entire house, how I should learn to “live a little” and “be more spontaneous.”
I brushed his comments off because ofcoursehaving a plan wasbetter than being spontaneous—being a generally risk-averse person who takes comfort in routine meant I wouldn’t just get to live alittle, but live a lot. I had no problem with his problems with me. Didn’t even truly define themasproblems.
Maybe if I hadn’t brushed them off, I wouldn’t have been so blindsided by the breakup.
It was going to be a pivotal night for us—I could justfeelit. I wore my brand-new dress from Kate Spade, a bubblegum-pink A-line with delicate white daisies embroidered on the collar, and my hair has never looked more like that of Catherine, Princess of Wales, than it did that evening.
Which all turned out to be a complete waste.
It was a pivotal night for us, all right, but not in the way I’d imagined. There was no proposal over chocolate soufflés, no sparkling diamondsorchampagne—just Caden and his whiskey sour and the way he casually mentioned he’d be leaving for a huge chunk of June due to a backpacking adventure in California that he’d signed up for on a whim.
One I was, apparently, not invited to.
“But what about Italy?” I asked. I had our entire itinerary planned out, hotels and a food tour and even a day on a private yacht. We’d been talking about it for months, though it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I was the only one to ever contribute to our shared Google spreadsheet.
“Italy’s not really my thing, Sadie, you know that.”
I did not, in fact, know that.
“And backpacking is?” I pressed. “What happened to going on adventurestogetherthis summer? You made these plans—even though we’d already been talking about Italy—and on top of that you didn’t eveninviteme?”
“Come on, babe,” he said, voice dripping with condescension. “You’d be miserable out there. You’ddie.”
I scoffed. “I would so not die.”
He was probably right about the misery, but I refused to acknowledge it because it was beside the point. The point was, he should have let me make the choice for myself—and he shouldn’t have planned the trip without me in the first place, especially since he knew I had my heart set on Italy.
“Sadie, come on,” he said, as if we were both in on the same joke. “Youknowbackpacking just isn’t your thing.”
“My…thing?”
He took a long sip of his whiskey sour. “Well, yeah. You like to be pampered, you like five-star hotels.”
Like the ones on our Italy spreadsheet, my thoughts filled in as he paused, probably thinking the same thing and choosing to ignore it.
“You could never sleep in a tent,” he went on. “You melt anytime the air conditioning takes too long to kick in. You can’t live without espresso. You’re too—”
“Toowhat?” I cut him off, leveling him with my best glare (which, in retrospect, likely had the ferocity and general vibe of a kitten threatening a dinosaur).
“Too extra for a trip like this. Too high-maintenance, you know?”
My only regret in that moment was that I had already drained my wine and there wasn’t even a drop left to toss in his face.
“You could have at least given me the chance totry,” I argued. “You could have at least asked.”
Sure, I’m particular about certain things, a creature of both comfort and routine. But I’m also a person who thrives on being underestimated: nothing motivates—or infuriates—me quite so much as someone saying they think I’m not capable.
