Page 24

MARLOW

I feel sick.

There are so many conflicting feelings bouncing around inside of me, my insides feel bruised and sore.

Then there’s the part of me that is actually sore. The part that can’t ignore how good it felt to be with Ryan last night, even if every single other part of me is screaming that I need to move on now.

When we dozed off after all that mind-blowing, toe-curling sex, I didn’t have the energy to worry about if he would stay or not.

When I woke up this morning next to him, I thought maybe it meant something.

Maybe it wasn’t just a one-night thing. I didn’t want to be overly optimistic, but it felt like more than that.

Then he dropped the bomb over breakfast that staying the night with his one-night stands is a regular thing for him.

It was a glaring reminder from him that this isn’t any different.

It was stupid for me to think that I was special.

And, after all of that, he has the fucking nerve to introduce me as his girlfriend to some family friends or whatever and I’m just supposed to play along.

I’m done playing.

I’m done pretending.

Project Forget Ryan starts now. I gave into my feelings for him, pretended that maybe we could be a thing, and now I’m paying the price.

I need to squash my feelings and re-write this ending before things get even worse.

Otherwise, I’ll give into him over and over again until I have nothing left to give.

_____

On Monday morning, my stomach is in knots over seeing Ryan at work. Despite hyping myself up yesterday, there’s no way I’m going to move on quickly or easily after having sex with him.

In retrospect, I think I knew what it was all building up to.

I knew we would hook up eventually if we kept hanging out together.

I wanted us to hook up. Ever since the idea entered my brain the night of the wedding, I’ve never found the will to let it go.

I knew sex with Ryan would be amazing – and believe me, it exceeded expectations – but it was sex on his terms. And now I’m left to deal with the consequences.

It’s a quiet morning at the ranger station. Emmett is the first to greet me, as usual. A couple of the interns are milling about towards the back of the lobby. I run into Hunter in the hallway, who gives me a quick nod as the smell of freshly brewed coffee lures us both into the break room.

And there he is.

Ryan.

My stomach tilts so hard that I wonder if the floor just moved. It’s a serious setback to Project Forget Ryan.

He’s standing there, casually perched against the counter sipping his coffee. Is he somehow better looking today?

Ryan greets Hunter with the typical man-mumbles. When he looks over at me, his smile morphs into one that explicitly says, ‘I have seen you naked.’ It’s beyond his normal trademark smirk. I want to smack it off his face.

Or kiss it off his face.

One way or another, I need to do something. I’ve just been hovering near the door for a solid thirty seconds now.

Chin up.

Walk forward.

This man does not affect you.

You will not let him rule your emotions.

“Coffee?” Ryan asks, holding up the carafe as I approach.

“No,” I retort in what has to be the most aggressive-sounding syllable ever spoken. I then proceed to grab the carafe out of his hand and confusingly pour myself a cup of coffee.

Sensing trouble, Hunter practically sprints out of the room.

Ryan laughs off the awkward moment and watches as I stir some sugar into my cup of coffee.

“How was your weekend, Marlow?” Ryan asks in a quiet, playful tone.

“It was fine.”

“Fine?” he laughs. “You really know how to boost a guy’s ego.”

“Well, if your ego gets any higher, it will probably orbit off into space. Besides, we shouldn’t be talking about this at work. It’s unprofessional.”

When I look over at him, Ryan seems genuinely confused, maybe even a little hurt. I’m letting my emotions get out of hand and bring out the worst in me. My goal was to be even-keel and nonreactive. Instead, I’m acting like a lunatic.

I need to remove myself from the situation. It’s too fresh. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe then I’ll be able to walk normally and answer simple questions about coffee.

As I turn to walk away, I hear Ryan say my name, but I don’t stop.

Around noon, a call comes into the station about a group of nudists setting up camp right off a heavily traveled section of trail.

It’s a little-known fact that it’s perfectly legal to be naked in a national forest, as long as it’s not a developed recreation site.

Unfortunately, this information has fallen into the wrong hands time and time again.

Most often, it’s a group of older men meeting up for sex while their wives think they are at work.

They even have a special area of the forest where they like to go, which we call the Dark Forest and avoid completely unless there’s absolutely no getting around it.

Apparently, the group that’s out there today is just your garden-variety nudist colony camping out.

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with that, but most parents don’t love it when their kids are randomly exposed to a group of naked people while they’re out on a nice, little family hike.

So, we have to get the nudists out of there on some other technicality.

When I overhear Ryan grumbling to Hunter about how this will probably take up the rest of his day, part of me is tempted to join the conversation.

Who doesn’t love talking about rogue nudists in a forest?

But a bigger part of me is just happy that I won’t have to worry about running into Ryan for the rest of the day.

When he passes by my office door, he glances my way but doesn’t stop or smile. In fact, he looks miserable.

The rest of the day ticks by slowly. My thoughts keep veering off toward Ryan and I’m admittedly not too quick to course correct.

The interns also keep popping into my office looking for their next task.

The only one who seems to understand the idea of seeing something that needs to be done and just doing it is Beth.

And the thing that she’s decided needs to be done?

Boring tourists to death with information packets that she’s printed off the internet about some sort of turtle that is specific to this region.

I’m still not convinced that these interns are real humans. I’m waiting for the hidden cameras to pop out any minute now. How did my life become one big, strange joke?

Long after everyone else has gone home, I’m tucked away in my office trying to finish my work. It’s nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, but at least it’s some sort of distraction from my thoughts about Ryan. If I go home, I’ll just wallow in my own sadness.

I’m reading over a contract for one of Abby’s vendors for the hundredth time when I hear footsteps in the hallway. When I look up, Ryan appears in the doorway.

“What are you doing here so late?” I ask.

“I saw your car outside when I came back to grab by personal truck after the whole nudist debacle. I was hoping we could talk.”

He’s already closing the door behind him before I can begin to think of a reason why now is not a good time.

“What’s going on, Marlow?” he says as he sinks into the chair across from me.

“Nothing.”

Ryan lets out an exasperated sigh. “Seriously? Are you going to make me drag it out of you? Everything was great between us Saturday night – way better than ‘fine’ – but then it was like a switch flipped in you on Sunday morning. I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out what I did wrong, but I’m coming up short.

You’ve got to help me out here. Obviously, something went wrong. ”

I glare at him for a minute, knowing that if I start talking, I’m likely to start crying. And I really don’t want to cry at work, even if it’s late and everyone else has gone home.

With a slow, steady breath, I finally manage to say, “It’s exactly what I warned you would happen: I’m not any good at separating sex from emotions, and now I just need some time to – how did you put it? – recalibrate my feelings. It’s not easy for me, Ryan.”

“Wait…why?” he asks, sitting forward and knitting his eyebrows.

“Why isn’t it easy for me? I warned you about this already…”

“No, why are you trying to separate the two?”

I stare at him, flabbergasted. Is he seriously asking me to explain his own stupid dating rules to him?

“Because of your rules. Because you only do one-night stands. And now that we’ve had our one night together, I need to find a way to move on.”

“That’s not what this is,” he says quickly.

“Okay, then what is it? Do you still want to be friends, hiking buddies, what? Because I’m not really sure where to go from here.”

“I want us to be together.”

His words turn me inside out. My bruised insides feel like they’re all exposed. Even though the words are echoing in my ears, I can’t seem to find a way to make them all fit together.

“Together?” I repeat, like an alien who is hearing the English language for the first time. Brilliant, Marlow .

If Ryan is frustrated by my constant misjudging of the situation, he doesn’t show it. He just quietly nods as he watches me from across the desk.

Do I want to be with Ryan? I do…right? That’s what made the idea of going back to being friends – or enemies – so unbearable. All the ooey-gooey feelings that I’ve developed for him. Even so, I’ve never considered the possibility of actually dating Ryan because I never knew it was a possibility.

“O-okay,” I finally manage to eke out.

Ryan laughs at this as he stands up and walks around the desk.

He grabs my hand and gently pulls me out of my chair so that I am standing right up against him.

He brushes a few strands of hair out of my face and cups my jaw in his hands.

When he looks at me, heat coils through my body and pools at my core.

Memories of his lips and hands all over me and him moving inside of me flicker through my mind.