Page 47 of The Summer You Were Mine

“That’s obvious,” she said. Her eyes were steel.

Ellie pulled her ponytail out, ran her fingers through her hair to gather up the stray wisps that had escaped in the breezy afternoon, and yanked it all back again.

She pressed her fingertips into the corners of her eyes to erase any chance of tears and looked back at the half-finished trellis.

She was setting the scene for the wedding of her grandmother and Cris’s grandfather.

It was something beautiful and unexpected.

But sometimes the unexpected thing was not beautiful.

Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes it kept dads at practice for hours longer than they had promised.

Sometimes it made people cheat with their clients.

Sometimes it ended thirty-year marriages.

Sometimes unexpected things ruined careers before you even knew your mic was on.

She’d been telling herself that she would be protected from the unexpected if she just did X, Y, and Z perfectly.

If she could hold everything together, spin all the plates, hide all the feelings, everything would be okay.

But it was a lie. It was another fraud—just like this mess with Cris.

There was no way of controlling the variables, only a need to keep trying to prove there was.

She placed the two silk roses she was holding back in the box in front of her and closed it, aware that Cris was still watching her. She wanted to run off the terrace and head straight to the airport, but she wasn’t a quitter—unlike some people.

“You’re staring at me,” she said, looking down at the box.

“I’m not trying to.”

“Well, you are.” She could feel his eyes on her, but now it was making her skin crawl.

She was back in the fishbowl again, sweating under the bright lights and humiliation, looking for an exit.

She was so, so tired of feeling that way and thought it was over.

She never would have believed that she could misjudge someone so badly and end up right where she started.

“Do you want me to go away? Is that what you want?” he asked.

“I have nothing else to say. I will deal with it.”

“Will you talk to me, please? You can’t shut me out now.”

“I can’t?” She whirled around to face him, aware that anyone could be watching them now. She kept her voice low. “And why is that? You think we owe each other something? I think it’s clear that you are mistaken.”

“I didn’t want this to happen.”

“But it did,” she said, choking back tears, hating that they wouldn’t stop.

“Don’t you worry, you’re off the hook now.

You conveyed your news.” She stood, pushing back the chair.

She found her sandals and slipped her feet in.

“And you can get as far away from the damage as you like. There’s nothing more to talk about. ”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammered. Cris reached out for her hand, but she could only stare at his hand, hanging in the air.

“Yes,” she said, picking up the box. “You are.” Ellie walked straight past the cabanas and dropped the box in the closet by Mario’s office where the wedding supplies were being held.

She kept walking, did a mental inventory of the contents of her pockets—house key, phone, lip balm—and decided that she could keep going all the way back to her house without difficulty.

It was likely that someone was going to be looking for her, but right now all she wanted to do was get inside somewhere cool and dark to stop the swirl of anger and sadness.

At least she knew she wasn’t missing anything crucial.

In the process of planning the wedding events, Graziella and Simone had decided that the night before the wedding would be a great time to rest and relax before the big day, and not an occasion to get one last party in.

Ellie had never been so grateful for octogenarian wisdom as she unlocked the apartment, shuffled into her bedroom, and curled into a ball under the covers.

The empty house was a quiet backdrop to the first all-out ugly cry she’d had in probably a decade while that montage of memories kept playing over and over in her head like a greatest-worst-hits album.

Although the scenes and characters changed, there was only one phrase that kept repeating in her head. Why does it hurt so bad?

Today was a confirmation of every instinct she’d had to not get involved with him.

The athlete. The emotionally underdeveloped.

The unpredictable. The untrustworthy. He was everything she had always tried to stay away from and all of her fears and insecurities in one place.

She couldn’t count on someone who would never be around, could never believe that guys like him weren’t looking for the next way to cover their own ass, and could never hope to be a partner to someone who was paid to be egocentric.

She had known all of this but let herself fall down the rabbit hole anyway.

And now all she had left was a snotty pile of tissues, a destroyed career, and herself to blame.

Ellie allowed one more silent tear to fall before wiping her nose, tucking into herself, and drifting off to sleep.