Page 26 of The Four Engagement Rings of Sybil Rain

“S O LET ME SEE IF I ’VE GOT THIS STRAIGHT— ”

Seb is sprawled across my hotel bed, his golden-blond head propped up on one hand, blue eyes dancing with amusement.

“You’re getting way too much enjoyment out of this,” I tell him, pacing my room.

“—your ex-fiancé, the guy you left at the altar a year ago, randomly pops up at the same resort where you are covering a once-in-a-lifetime eclipse, and now you need me to pretend to be your fake boyfriend so you can save face in front of Jamie and his hot new girlfriend? Do I have that right?” Seb says, pushing himself into a sitting position, his back against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankle.

After our run-in with Jamie and Genevieve in the lobby, where I introduced Seb as my previously absent, Very Important Marine Biologist Who Used to Be a Photographer boyfriend, I dragged him into the elevator and up to my room to fill him in on the whole ridiculous story.

A move I am regretting more with each passing minute.

I’ve explained it all to him three times already. I am not humiliating myself for a fourth. I stop pacing and come to sit beside him on the bed. For a moment, we just sit like that in silence, both of us staring at the black TV screen on the wall opposite the bed.

“Go ahead,” I finally say. “Let’s hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“That I’m a chaos bunny who creates her own disasters for reasons that surpass human, machine, or extraterrestrial understanding.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You wouldn’t?” I turn to look at him, but Seb is still looking at the blank TV.

“No. Never thought you were a chaos bunny. Just a free spirit.”

I snort and roll my eyes. “Same thing. Anyway, thank you for playing along in the lobby.”

“No problem. It was kind of fun. I think I missed my calling as an actor.”

“Well, you have always loved the spotlight,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Oh yes, and I know how much you loathe to be the center of attention.” Seb nudges my shoulder with his own.

“‘I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me,’” I quote, lifting my hands in a helpless gesture.

“Shakespeare?”

“Taylor Swift.”

“Same difference.”

My lips curve into a genuine smile. This part was always easy with Seb. The back and forth, the banter. When things got real—that was the hard part. But I know I have to be real with him now.

“So… as grateful as I am that you played along with my stupid lie, I have to ask…”

“Yes?”

“Why are you really here?”

“I told you, had to check out these beaches.”

“Seb.”

“I’m serious!” Seb twists his torso to look me in the eye.

“Look, I was about to start making my way back to the States after the shoot, and I remembered you messaging me that you were going to be here, and I don’t know…

” He shrugs. “It just seemed like it’d be something fun to do, and it’s pretty cheap to island hop once you’re over here.

So I caught the next flight to Maui.” He says it so casually.

Like he really just decided to come here on a whim, the way a person might decide last minute to take in a movie or a visitor to New York might hop the subway out to Coney Island.

“But don’t you have…” I grasp around for the right words. “I don’t know, plants that need to be watered? A cat that needs to be fed? A girlfriend that needs to be…” I trail off, realizing I kind of backed myself into a corner with that one.

“Oh please, finish that sentence.” Seb’s face is curled into a lascivious grin.

I swat at him. “But seriously.”

“Seriously,” he repeats. “No plants, no cat, no girlfriend—except a fake one, apparently.” I swat him again, but this time, he grabs my hand, pressing a kiss to it before placing it back in my lap.

It feels much the same as when his lips were against mine earlier today—soft, familiar, but devoid of the electricity that used to crackle between us.

Back then, a kiss from Sebastian could set my whole body on fire.

Now, it was just a pleasant warmth, a comfortable ember instead of a raging inferno.

“Honestly, Sybil,” he continues, “I don’t even really have an apartment right now.

My place in Tokyo is on a long-term sublet, so I was planning to crash on my buddy’s couch back in New York for a bit.

But this”—he slides down the headboard, nestling into one of the fluffy down pillows—“this is much comfier.”

I give his shoulder a hard shove. “Oh no. Don’t even think about it.”

He closes his eyes, a dreamy smile on his face. “Shh… it’s sleepy time.”

“It’s barely eight a.m.”

“Fine, fine.” He pulls himself up and off the bed. “Guess I should go back down to the lobby and get myself a room of my own.”

“You didn’t even book a room?” I’m all for winging it, but even I draw the line at arriving at a destination without booking accommodations first.

Seb waves a dismissive hand, apparently completely unbothered that he hasn’t secured a place to sleep tonight. “I’m sure they’ll have something. If not, I’ll figure it out.”

Those four words are classic Seb. Classic me, too—especially back when we were together. Seb and I were always “figuring it out.” Half the time, things worked out as perfectly as if we had planned them. The other half? Well, we came away with a great story to tell our friends.

Seb begins to walk toward the hotel room door, and I follow alongside to see him out.

“How long are you staying for?” I ask when we reach the threshold.

“I guess it depends.” He pauses, leaning his back against the frame of the open door.

“Depends on what?”

“On how long my services are needed.”

“Services?”

“As your fake boyfriend,” Seb clarifies. His alley-cat grin is back.

“Oh.” I laugh, looking away. “You don’t have to—”

“Come on, let me have my fun. How long is what’s-his-name going to be here?”

I roll my eyes. “I know you know his name. Jamie said he’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Great. I’ll stay until then too.”

“Are you sure?”

“Two days at one of Hawaii’s top resorts, servicing a beautiful woman? Sounds like paradise.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “There will be no servicing of any kind.”

“Are you sure? Don’t you want to make things convincing for Jimmy?”

“Jamie. And no. I mean, yes, I do. If you don’t mind pretending—”

“I don’t.”

“—but just, like, holding hands and stuff. If we happen to run into them—”

“Sure.”

“—which we probably won’t, since it’s a big resort—”

“Naturally.”

“—although, I did run into them, like, an obscenely large number of times over the past forty-six hours, so—”

“Sybil?”

“Hmm?” I stop rambling and look up, suddenly realizing how close we are.

Seb is now leaning forward on the doorframe, one hand gripping the molding along the top of the door, the other holding the strap of the duffel slung across his shoulder.

Seb is not an especially tall man—he’s probably only got a few inches on me—but there’s something about the way he’s standing now that makes him seem large.

Masculine. I can smell his cologne, the same spicy one he used to wear.

Memories of a hundred moments just like this cloud my mind. Moments where we said we wouldn’t but did anyway. Moments where we acted without thinking. Moments that, in the end, were only ever moments.

“I would be honored to play your fake-platonic-hand-holding boyfriend for the next two days,” Seb says, drawing my attention back to the present.

“Thank you.”

“Do you want to meet up later for brunch?”

Despite having already had a pancake breakfast with Jamie, I know I’ll probably be hungry again later. Jamie used to call me a hobbit, given my affection for “second breakfast.” “That’d be great,” I tell Seb. “Meet in the lobby around ten?”

Seb nods, then pushes off the door.

“And you let me know if you change your mind about the servicing. We did always used to say, ‘if you’re single and I’m single, then—’”

“ Goodbye , Sebastian.”

He gives me a wink and heads down the hall to the elevator. But halfway there, he stops. Turns around.

“Forget something?” I call to him.

He walks halfway back down the hallway so we can speak at a normal volume and not risk waking anyone else on this floor. “Just—explain it to me one more time.”

I let out a long groan and lean my head back against the wall. “Yes, okay—I panicked and made up a bald-faced lie about dating a fish scientist, are you happy?”

He smiles, but for once, it doesn’t quite seem to reach his eyes. “Not that. What I can’t understand is… why?” His voice is low now. I have to strain to hear him.

“Why what?”

“I mean, you left him at the altar, right?” Seb asks. “Shouldn’t he be the one trying to save face around you ? What are you trying to prove, Sybil?”

S EB’S WORDS HAUNT ME while I try to bang out a few work emails. After about forty minutes, I push away from my laptop and head into the bathroom to shower.

While I wait for the water to heat up, I survey my reflection in the driftwood-framed mirror.

A messy pale blond topknot. I look chaotic, but nowhere near as bad as I looked running down the aisle last year.

And I know exactly how awful I looked that day, thanks to some preteen cousin of Jamie’s who had the audacity to film the whole thing and post it online.

Emma tried to shield me, blocking terms like #runawaybride from my feed, but of course, the algorithm came for me anyway.

That summer after the failed wedding, I used to lie in bed and watch the clip over and over, stuck in a self-pity doom spiral.

I wonder if Seb saw the video too. If that’s why he believes I’m the one who left Jamie—even though that’s not exactly what happened—I can see why Seb would think that.

The video doesn’t capture the heartbreaking words exchanged in harsh whispers under the flower arch.

Just the moment where I took off down the aisle.

Classic Sybil, doing a runner. Just like I’d broken my engagement to Seb two years prior.