Page 23 of The Other Side of Paradise (Story of Paradise #2)
Stella
I was having fun. More than I’d expected on a beach trip slash potential hookup expedition where I got rejected. I was still holding the half-finished daiquiri when I dropped down on the towel next to Ryan’s, tapping my cup against hers.
“Cheers,” I said, settling in under the soft warmth of the setting sun.
“Cheers,” she echoed, sipping the remnants of her drink from among the ice cubes.
She looked like she was in a good mood… I guess that just about figured.
I’d caught her hanging out with Brooklyn earlier, up at the bar overlooking the beach, and she’d said how she and Brooklyn were ducking out for a bit for some last-minute work that had come up.
I didn’t know why Brooklyn was enabling that kind of thing, but I guess it was just like Ryan that the thing to pick up her spirits the most on a beach vacation was, like, ooh, surprise bonus work! I didn’t know how we were related.
But we were. And despite the obsession with work, I still liked her enough, I guess, to stick up for her, going with her on this trip when my whole family wanted to flay me alive for it. I didn’t regret a thing—felt nice being on the right side of things.
I guess I could see why she didn’t want me making a scene with the family with her around, like she’d told me off for earlier.
I’d kind of bristled at it because I would rather pull my teeth out than admit I was wrong, but now that I was here, it was pretty plain to see she’d really had enough of fighting for it and just wanted a peaceful minute on the beach.
And to work. But whatever. Nobody was perfect.
“Are you holding up okay?” I said, and she shrugged.
“I actually don’t think I was that happy with Shane, either.”
That was candid. Maybe she did know how to speak her mind. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Even without the cheating. We just… never really had much going for us.”
I sighed, staring out over the water, settling back against the towel, scrunching on the sand. “Dating is hard,” I said finally. “Men suck.”
She changed tack with a bright tone in her voice. “How was your and Allison’s mission? Find any cute… insurance policies in case Jacob doesn’t work out? Any cute girls for her?”
I snorted, elbowing her side. “If you hadn’t been gone for random work so long, you’d have seen,” I said. “Jacob was here. I got to say hello, chat a little bit. I would have introduced you.”
She laughed a little, eyes sparkling. “Ooh. You got to flirt with your hunky dreamboat man?” she said. “You didn’t want to run away with him?”
He didn’t want me, turned out. I was glad somebody here thought I was pretty, but it would be weird to thank Allison for that.
I wasn’t going on the pity parade with Ryan, though.
“I felt marginally bad ditching Allison in the water and running,” I said, and I whirled on her.
“Maybe I could have if you two had been back! What work were you even doing that you had to interrupt a beach trip for it?”
She spoke breezily, not looking at me. “I’d been waiting to hear back from a potential contributor to go ahead with something urgent, and it had finally come through. So? Did you and Jacob schedule a date or anything?”
Ugh, hitting hard. I scowled. “He didn’t ask, and I didn’t want to have to be the one to ask. Like, it feels weird being the one to ask, I’m a girl and he’s a guy.”
She gave me a look. “Okay, cool to know you and Grandma are on the same page.”
“Don’t say that,” I laughed. “You don’t think so? Like, you’d be comfortable asking a guy out?”
“I have before,” she said, shrugging like I was the weird one. “It had never even crossed my mind once that it could be weird.”
“Pfft.” First getting dragged by Allison and then by Ryan.
I just needed Brooklyn to complete the set.
She’d gone off swimming, though, down where Allison had come back from whatever she’d been doing in the car and had gone straight to the water without so much as a look my way.
Off to find her swimmer girlfriend, probably.
I pulled my mind back to Ryan. “Well, okay. Not all of us are as good feminists as you are. It just feels weird to me asking a guy! All my friends had their boyfriends ask them out, so it feels like I’m cheating the system or something if I ask first.”
“Didn’t realize you were looking for Jacob to be your boyfriend…”
“It’s the principle of the thing. Ugh, forget it.” I took a long sip of my drink, nearly finishing it off, and I put it down before I said, “Allison’s a little cagey.”
“Around girls, yeah, absolutely.”
Guess I really wasn’t the only one in the trenches trying to get Allison to talk to a girl. “But,” I said, smiling slyly at her. “We got her talking to someone.”
“Seriously?” She gave me an incredulous look. “And she didn’t put her foot in her mouth?”
I put my hands up. “I thought you and this girl were friends.”
“Ah, it’s fine. She’s mean to me. It’s all mutual. We love each other. Who was she talking to?”
I laughed. “This really pretty blonde girl was out here swimming with her friends, except that she got left behind a little bit when they went to go surfing and she didn’t seem keen on joining.
I pushed Allison to go swim with her a little bit, and they got really into talking before the girl’s friends came around and picked her back up.
Seemed like they were getting on really well. ”
I hated that I was a little annoyed at the thought.
Jealous, I guess. Allison was off picking people up just like that after talking a big game all oh, I could never talk to a girl, and I was getting ignored left and right.
But whatever. Ryan looked skeptical. “Are we sure the girl is, you know… into women?”
“I don’t know. She seemed into it. What was I supposed to do, walk up to her and ask if she was gay?”
“No, probably something… subtler. So,” she said, relaxing, “Allison denied that there was any connection, said the girl was absolutely not interested…”
“It’s like you read her mind,” I laughed. “You know, I’m glad we did this. I feel like we never get, you know, girl time.”
She gestured out towards where Brooklyn and Allison were splashing in the water together, and she said, “Well, plenty of girls now.”
“Yeah, that’s just it,” I said. “You’re always around guys, you know? Like some kind of pick-me. With Oscar and Shane and then all your work friends are men…”
She arched her eyebrows before she looked out to the water. “I’m being charged with not being a girl’s girl, then.”
“Sometimes I feel like the only daughter,” I said, and she snorted.
“This is because I’m called Ryan, isn’t it?”
“I’m just saying, it was a choice that Mom decided to just keep the names she had when she thought you two were both going to be boys.”
“So, what?” she laughed. “You’re glad Shane and I are over so now we can have girl time?”
I nudged her. “We could really have girl time if you were willing to just play along a little bit with the boys.”
She gave me a dry smile. “Oh, now who’s defining femininity by proximity to men?”
“Shut up,” I laughed. “I’m just saying, I feel like you got burned so badly you’re not going to date for a while once we’re all back home…”
She grimaced, just a little, her gaze drifting back out to the water. After a second, she spoke quietly, saying, “Yeah, probably.”
“So? You see my point, right?”
She shrugged, not answering. I leaned in closer.
“ So? ”
She spoke absently, quietly. “You’re not normally this insistent. What’s up?”
“Huh?” I frowned. She kept the light tone.
“It’s not lost on me that you’re normally a million miles from me and now you’re having drinks on the beach with me talking about boys. So, what’s up?”
Well, if we were putting it all on the table, I guess that was what I’d always wanted. “It’s that you’ve always been too good for me,” I said. “And you always had Shane around.”
“Did you not like him?” she said, and I shrugged.
“Not really. He’s full of himself and annoying.”
“You—” She looked at me like I was out of my mind. “You were telling me to marry him. That it was a bummer he wasn’t going to propose to me here.”
“I mean, that’s what you do, right?” I put my hands up. “Try to get married and live a good life.”
“With someone full of himself and annoying?”
“Isn’t everyone a little annoying?” I said, starting to feel a little defensive now. She rounded on me.
“Okay, Stella, be honest with me. Have you actually dated anybody you like?”
“C’mon,” I said. “You can like people and still find them annoying sometimes. Don’t come for me, I have, like, a tenth the issues my friends do.”
“So you haven’t dated anybody you don’t find annoying.”
“Am I getting a lecture now?” I said incredulously. “From the one who just dumped a cheating boyfriend?”
“Uh, yeah. Consider me now an expert in telling off an annoying partner you don’t really like. What’s the point in…” She trailed off, searching for something she never found. I settled for that.
“The point ,” I said, “is that being lonely sucks. I don’t want to be single forever and just end up collecting weird things alone in my house until I’m like an episode of Hoarders , dying alone and getting eaten by my cats.”
She was quiet for a second, her eyes on the ocean, before finally, she laughed. I scowled.
“What?”
“You and me both,” she said, her voice a little softer now, more vulnerable. “Gotta watch out, though, or you just end up dating a Shane, and I’d rather at least feed a cat than that.”
Huh. Maybe she wasn’t all bad. “Okay, true,” I said, raising my drink to hers. “Here’s to that.”
She smiled at me, a different smile than usual—small, soft, a little vulnerable again. “You sure you don’t mind flipping off the entire family just to come listen to me complain about my ex-boyfriend and listen to Allison complain about talking to girls?”
“Nah. I feel like I’m getting to know you,” I said. “We should do some more of this. Where are you staying tonight?”