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“The hotel has all of that. Put it on my account.”
“I need my laptop—”
“Can you hang out here without it for one night? I’ll call you tomorrow. You need to go, the girls will be waiting.”
I leaned towards him for a kiss, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm and shook his head. “I’ll call you,” he said, reaching across me and flicking the door open. I’d been dismissed.
I plastered on a smile and walked swiftly to join my friends. They’d made an effort to show up for my crazy self-wedding even though it appeared Hunter would rather cut his vacation short than be part of it. And in doing that, I surmised that he and Matt had cooked up some work drama to give them an excuse to stay away.
That didn’t matter. This was my gig, and I was going through with it. A solo stand to celebrate myself and let the world—or Rex—know that I didn’t need a man at my side to validate my worth.
Casey, Dani and I lay face down on our respective massage beds in a peaceful, Scandinavian-inspired luxury spa. The scent of a pristine mountain range with a side-serve of pine and ozone permeated the air in the room. We were spoiled. I was lucky. This was the enviable life of a social media influencer yet it felt somewhat empty.
Knowledgeable hands rubbed fragrant oil into my skin, working into the hard knots, stretching out taut fibers. I imagined those hands were Hunter’s, that he was the one tending my body, smoothing tension and going harder, deeper when necessary. I thought of him placing kisses down the notches of my spine, the graze of his teeth over the curve of my ass. I wanted him in the room with me. A private room without the manufactured peace of the hushed spa.
A camera flash broke my fantasy. The hotel had hired a photographer to follow our day. It had been arranged months ago, when I was having a real wedding and the hotel was giving myself and my two bridesmaids the full spa treatment in exchange for me talking it up on my Instagram. They were possibly the only people to stick with me after I broke off my engagement, and I knew how much Casey and Dani had looked forward to this day. I also knew that they couldn’t afford this level of pampering, so I agreed to go ahead with the promotion, which meant the situation I found myself in wasn’t entirely private.
And I wanted to speak to my girls about private things like fear, and love, because I’d reached a point where I wasn’t certain I knew what love truly was. All I felt was that I’d gained something special with Hunter, something so much more intense than I’d ever felt before, and now it seemed as though it was slipping away.
We ate dinner in the suite, languid from the pleasure and pampering we’d received all day along with flutes of champagne that never emptied. I tried to be surreptitious about checking my phone, but those girls missed nothing.
“Whose call are you waiting for?” Casey asked.
I shrugged and tucked the phone behind a cushion, aiming for nonchalance and coming up with full-blown guilt.
“Hot-Hunter. That’s who she’s waiting for,” Dani said. “You can tell. She’s got that ‘why hasn’t my boyfriend called?’ look about her. Distracted, morose—”
“I’m not,” I cut in.
“Good, because you’re too awesome for that. Why don’t you have a practice recital of your goddess vows.”
Dani beamed a goddess-like smile at me and I wondered if my friends were beginning to see this as some kind of joke.
“I don’t have vows,” I said. “I’m supposed to have done all kinds of exercises and I haven’t completed them. Right now, I’m contemplating abandoning myself at the altar.”
Casey put her hand across her mouth, but I could tell by the way her shoulders shook that she was doing her best not to laugh out loud. Dani had her gaze fixed on a point where the wall met the ceiling, lips pressed together, the tightest focus I’d ever seen her achieve.
“Okay. From what I’ve read it should be something like this.” I stood and put my hand over my heart. “I promise to discover who I really am and live as that person, totally awake and aware, and whole within myself.”
Casey and Dani erupted, shrieking with laughter until they wept. It took about five seconds for me to join in. When we finally recovered, wiping our eyes and grabbing water, Casey came to me and took my hands.
“Pray tell us, sister, what have you discovered?”
“That Hunter’s such a sex bomb the idea of spending a night out of his arms is sucking the life from her soul,” Dani said.
She probably wasn’t far from the truth. I sank back onto the luxurious sofa and checked my phone before waving the blank screen at them. “See this? I’ve scared him away with all the sologamy talk.”
“Damn. So you’re definitely going through with it?” Dani asked.
“Yes, I am.”
Casey’s phone pinged. “Can you get a divorce if it doesn’t work out?” she asked without looking up.
“Can I get a little respect around here?” I countered.
“No,” Dani said. “But I guess if you stayed away from all forms of masturbation you could have your self-marriage annulled.”
I threw a cushion at her, missing by a mile, but catching Casey as she stood, phone in hand. “Gonna take this in my room,” she said, winking at Dani.
“What’s she up to?” I asked.
Dani shrugged. “Probably one of her secret boyfriends.”
“She doesn’t have secret boyfriends. If she so much as shares an elevator with a hot guy she’s texted full details to everyone in her contacts list by the time she reaches her floor.”
Dani simply widened her eyes and smiled at me. Some response. Since getting out of the shower that morning it seemed as though I was living in a board game where nothing would be revealed until I flipped the dice and managed to land my counter on the right square.
