Once we’re back in the room, it feels about half as big as it did when we arrived, and I’m sure that is entirely due to the fact that clothing will be coming off soon as we get ready for bed. I am not ready.
Ethan tosses his wallet and key card onto the counter. I swear the sound of the items landing on the marble is like a cymbal crash.
“What?” he says in response to my dramatic startle.
“Nothing. Just.” I point to his stuff. “Jeez.”
He stares at me for a lingering beat before seeming to decide whatever I’m going on about isn’t worth it, and turns to toe his shoes off near the door. I walk across the room, and my feet on the carpet sound like boots crunching through knee-high grass. Is this a joke? Is every sound amplified in here?
What if I have to go to the bathroom? Do I turn on the shower to muffle the sounds? What if he farts in his sleep, and I can hear it?
What if I do?
Oh God.
It’s like a death march, following him down the short hallway to the bedroom. Once there, Ethan wordlessly moves to one dresser and I move to the other. It’s the quiet routine of a comfortable married couple, made super weird by the knowledge that we’re both ready to crawl out of our skins from the tension.
The massive bed looms like the Grim Reaper between us.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s only one shower,” he says.
“I did, yeah.”
While the second bathroom is simple, with a toilet and small sink, the master bathroom is palatial. The shower is as big as my kitchen back in Minneapolis, and the bathtub should come with a diving board.
I dig through my drawer, praying that, in the mad dash packing post-weddingpocalypse, I remembered pajamas. I really didn’t realize until now how much time I spend in nothing but my underwear at home.
“Do you usually do it at night?” he asks.
I spin around. “Uh, pardon?”
Ethan sighs the deep, weary sigh of a long-suffering ghoul. “Shower, Oscar.”
“Oh.” I press my pajamas to my chest. “Yes. I shower at night.”
“Would you like to go first?”
“Since I have the bedroom,” I say, “why don’t you go first?” Lest this sound too generous, I add, “Then you can get out of my space.”
“Such a caretaker, you.”
He steps around me to the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a solid click. Even with the bedroom’s balcony doors shut, I can hear the sound of the tide coming in, the waves crashing against the shore. But it’s not so loud that I don’t also hear the rustle of fabric as Ethan undresses and drops his clothes onto the bathroom floor, his footsteps as he walks barefoot across the tile, or the soft groan he makes when he moves under the warm spray of water.
Flustered, I jog immediately to the balcony door and step outside until he’s finished. Honestly, I’d only want to listen to that if he was drowning in there.
• • •
I’M SURE ETHAN WOULD LOVE to hear it was a long night for me and I barely slept, but my bed is fucking amazing. Sorry about the couch, dude.
In fact, I’m so rested and rejuvenated that I wake up convinced this running-into-people-from-our-real-life thing isn’t a catastrophe. It’s fine! We’re fine. Sophie and Billy don’t want to see us any more than we want to see them and are probably staying all the way on the other side of the resort anyway. And the Hamiltons are checking out today. We are in the clear.
As luck would have it, we run into the Hamiltons on our way to breakfast. Apparently the friendship was deeply solidified last night: they give us each a tight embrace . . . as well as their personal cell numbers.
“I was serious about that spouses club,” Molly tells Ethan conspiratorially. “We have fun, if you know what I mean.” She winks. “Give us a call when you’re home.”
They turn back to the reception desk, and we wave as we weave through the crowd toward the restaurant. Ethan leans down, muttering in a shaky voice, “I really don’t know what she means by fun.”
“Could be innocent, like a bunch of wives drinking merlot and complaining about their husbands,” I tell him. “Or it could be Fried Green Tomatoes complicated.”
“ ‘Fried Green Tomatoes complicated’?”
I nod somberly. “A group of women looking at their labia with hand mirrors.”
Ethan looks like he is literally fighting the urge to sprint down the curved driveway and into the ocean. “I think you’re enjoying this too much.”
“God, I am the worst, right? Enjoying Maui?”
We come to a stop in front of the hostess stand, give our room number, and follow the woman to a small booth toward the back, near the buffet.
I laugh. “A buffet, honey! Your fave.”
Once we’re seated, Ethan—running on slightly less sleep than I am—glares at the menu, clearly working to burn a hole in it. I wander over to the buffet and fill my plate with giant hunks of tropical fruit and all manner of grilled meats. When I return, Ethan has apparently ordered à la carte and is cradling a large cup of black coffee in his enormous hands. He doesn’t even acknowledge my return.
“Hi.”
He grunts.
“All that food up there, and you ordered something off the menu?”
Sighing, he says, “I don’t like buffets, Olive, Jesus Christ. After what we witnessed two days ago, I’d think you’d agree with me.”
I take a bite of pineapple and am pleased to see him cringe when I speak with my mouth full: “I just like hassling you.”
“I can tell.”
God, he is such a grouch in the morning. “Seriously, though, you think I’m enjoying this vacation too much? Do you even hear yourself?”
He puts the mug down carefully, like it’s taking every ounce of control he has to not use it for violent means. “We did well last night,” he says calmly, “but things just got a whole lot more complicated. My ex-girlfriend—with whom I share a number of mutual friends—thinks we are married. The wife of your new boss wants to have labia-hand-mirror time with me.”
“That was just one possibility,” I remind him. “Could be that Molly’s version of fun is a Tupperware party.”
“You don’t think this is complicated?”
I shrug at him, turning the blame back where it’s deserved. “To be honest, you were the one who had to go and be ridiculously charming last night.”
He picks his mug back up and blows across the surface. “Because you asked me to be.”
“I wanted you to be sociopath charming,” I say. “Too charming, so that afterwards people look back and think, ‘You know, I didn’t get it at the time, but he was always too perfect.’ That sort of charming. Not, like, self-deprecating and cute.”
Half of Ethan’s mouth turns up, and I know what’s coming before it launches: “You think I’m cute.”
“In a gross way.”
This makes him smile wider. “Cute in a gross way. Okay.”
The waiter brings his food, and when I look up, I see that Ethan’s smile has fallen and he’s staring over my shoulder, his face ashen. With a frown, he blinks down to his plate.
“Just remembered that bacon at restaurants is ten thousand times more likely to carry salmonella?” I ask. “Or did you find a hair on your plate and think you’re going to come down with lupus?”
“Once more for the people in the back: Being careful about food safety isn’t the same as being a hypochondriac or an idiot.”
I give him a Sure thing, Captain salute, but then it hits me. He’s freaking out about something other than his breakfast. I glance around, and my pulse rockets: Sophie and Billy have been seated directly behind me. Ethan has an unobstructed view of his ex and her new fiancé.
For as frequently as I want to open-hand smack Ethan, I can also appreciate how much it would suck to continually run into your ex when they’re celebrating their engagement and you’re only pretending to be married. I remember running into my ex-boyfriend Arthur the night I defended my dissertation. We were out to celebrate me, and my accomplishment, and there he was, the boy who dumped me because he “couldn’t be distracted by a relationship.” He had his new girlfriend on one arm and the medical journal he’d just been published in in the other hand. My celebratory mood evaporated, and I left my own party about an hour later to go home and binge an entire season of Buffy.
A tiny bloom of sympathy unfurls in my chest. “Ethan—”
“Could you try chewing with your mouth closed?” he says, and the bloom is annihilated by a nuclear blast.
“For the record, it’s very humid here, and I am congested.” I lean in, hissing, “To think I was starting to feel sorry for you.”
“For being cute in a gross way?” he asks, prodding at his plate, glancing over my shoulder again and then quickly zeroing in on my face.
“For the fact that your ex is at the resort with us and sitting right behind me.”
“Is she?” He looks up and does a terrible job of being surprised to see her there. “Huh.”
I smirk at him, even though he studiously avoids my gaze. With the tiny hint of vulnerability just at the edges of his expression, the bloom of sympathy returns. “What’s your favorite breakfast food?”
He pauses with a bite of bacon halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“Come on. Breakfast food. What do you like?”
“Bagels.” He takes the bite, chews and swallows, and I realize that’s all I’m going to get.
“Bagels? For real? Of all the choices in the world, you’re telling me your favorite breakfast food is a bagel? You live in the Twin Cities. Can we even get a good bagel there?”
He apparently thinks my question is rhetorical, because he turns back to his meal, completely happy to blink those lashes at me and remain nonverbal. I realize why I hate him—he food- and fat-shamed me, and has always been a monosyllabic prick—but what is his deal with me?
I give friendly one last try: “Why don’t we do something fun today?”
Ethan looks at me like I’ve just suggested we go on a murder spree. “Together?”
“Yes, together! All of our free activities are for two people,” I say, wagging a finger back and forth between us, “and as you just pointed out, we’re supposed to be acting married.”
Ethan has retreated into his neck, shoulders hunched. “Could you maybe not yell that across the restaurant?”
I take a deep breath, counting to five so that I don’t reach across the table and poke him in the eye. Leaning in, I say, “Look. We’re deep in this lying game together now, so why not make the most of it? That’s all I’m trying to do: enjoy what I can.”
He stares at me for several quiet beats. “That’s awfully upbeat of you.”
Pushing back from the table, I stand. “I’m going to go see what we can sign up for tod—”
“She’s watching,” he cuts in tightly, quickly glancing past me. “Shit.”
“What?”
“Sophie. She keeps looking over here.” In a panic, his eyes meet mine. “Do something.”
“Like what?” I ask tightly, starting to panic, too.
“Before you go. I don’t know. We’re in love, right? Just—” He stands abruptly and reaches for my shoulders, jerking me across the table and planting his mouth stiffly on mine. Our eyes remain open and horrified. My breath is trapped in my chest, and I count out three eternal beats before we burst apart.
He fixes a convincingly loving smile on his face, speaking through his teeth. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
“I’m going to go gargle bleach now,” I tell him.
No doubt it was the worst version of an Ethan Thomas kiss, and it was still . . . not terrible. His mouth was warm, lips smooth and firm. Even when we were staring at each other in horror, he still looked nice that close up. Maybe even nicer than he does from a distance. His eyes are so insanely blue, his lashes are long to the point of absurdity. And he’s warm. So war—
My brain is short-circuiting. Shut up, Olive.
Oh my God. Pretending we’re married means we might have to do that again.
“Great.” He stares at me, eyes wide. “Great. See you back in the room in a few.”
• • •
THE IDEA OF BUILDING A house from the ground up has always terrified me, because I know I’m not a person who cares about details such as doorknobs and drawer pulls and stone pavers. It would be too many choices that I simply don’t care about at all.
Looking at the list of activities feels a little like this. We have the option of parasailing, zip-lining, four-wheeling, snorkeling, taking hula kahiko lessons, enjoying a couple’s massage, and much, much more. Honestly, I’d be fine with any of them. But Trent, the overeager activities planner, stares at me expectantly, ready to ink “my” name into the schedule wherever I desire.
The issue at hand is really which activity would make Ethan scowl the least?
“A good place to start,” Trent says gently, “might be a boat ride? Our boat goes out to the Molokini Crater. It’s very calm out there. You’ll get lunch and drinks. You could snorkel, or try Snuba—an easy mix of snorkeling and scuba diving—or you could even just stay on the boat if you don’t want to get in the water.”
An option to sit down and shut up instead of join the fun? Definitely a bonus in the holster when I have Ethan in tow. “Let’s do that.”
With gusto, Trent enters Ethan and Ami Thomas onto the boat manifest and tells me to be back downstairs at ten.
Upstairs, Ethan is already in his board shorts but hasn’t yet put on a shirt. A strange, violent reaction worms through me when he turns and I see that he has actual muscles on his muscles. A dark smattering of hair over his broad chest causes my hand to curl into a fist. “How dare you.”
I know I’ve said it out loud when Ethan glances at me with a smirk and then tugs his shirt over his head. Immediately, with the abs out of my sight, the fire of hate in my lower belly is extinguished.
“What’s the plan?” he asks.
I give myself three silent seconds to linger on the memory of his naked torso before answering, “We’re taking a boat to Molokini. Snorkeling, drinks, et cetera.”
I expect him to roll his eyes or complain, but he surprises me. “Really? Cool.”
Warily, I leave this deceptively upbeat version of Satan in the living room to go get my suit on and pack a bag. When I emerge, Ethan valiantly refrains from making a crack about my suit barely containing my boobs or my cover-up being frumpy, and we make our way down to the lobby and follow directions out to a twelve-seater van waiting at the curb.
With one foot propped to climb in, Ethan pulls up short so quickly that I collide with his back. Again.
“Are you having another—?”
Ethan shuts me up with a hand shooting back, gripping my hip. And then I hear it: the high-pitched nails-on-a-chalkboard voice of Sophie.
“Ethan! You and Olive are coming snorkeling?”
“We sure are! What a wild coincidence!” He turns around and murders me with eyeball daggers, before smiling as he faces forward again. “Should we just hop in the back there?”
“Sure, I think those seats are the only open ones.” Billy’s voice sounds pretty giddy, and when Ethan ducks to climb in, I see why.
There are eight people seated in the van already, and only the very back row is empty. Ethan is so tall he has to practically army crawl to get through the gauntlet of bags and hats and seat belts crisscrossing the path. With slightly more ease, I settle in beside him and glance over. Surprisingly, the fact that he looks absolutely miserable doesn’t fill me with abject joy as expected. I feel . . . guilty. I clearly chose poorly.
But this is Olive and Ethan we’re talking about; defensiveness is the first reaction out of the gate. This feels like Cheap Airplane Ticket Fiasco, version 2.0. “You could have picked the activity, you know.”
He doesn’t answer. For someone who was so convincingly newlywed last night to cover for my lie, he sure is surly when we have to do it to cover for his. He must really hate to be indebted to me.
“We can do something else,” I tell him. “There’s still time to leave.”
Again, he says nothing, but then deflates a little beside me when the driver closes the double van doors and gives us all a thumbs-up through the window, indicating we’re ready to head out.
Gently, I elbow Ethan. He clearly doesn’t get that it’s meant as a Hang in there, tiger! because he elbows me back. Jerk. I elbow him again, harder now, and he starts to shift to return it again but I evade it, turning to dig my knuckles into his ribs. I did not expect to find Ethan’s hysterical tickle spot, and he lets out a deafening, high-pitched shriek that I swear makes me momentarily deaf. It is so startling that the entire van turns to figure out what the hell we’re doing in the back seat.
“Sorry,” I say to them, and then quieter to him, “That’s a sound I haven’t heard a man make before.”
“Can you not speak to me, please?”
I lean in. “I didn’t know she was coming.”
Ethan slides his gaze to me, clearly unconvinced. “I’m not going to kiss you again, just in case that’s what you were thinking this would lead to.”
Whowhatnow? The jackass. Gaping at him, I whisper-hiss, “I would honestly rather lick the bottom of my shoe than have your mouth on mine again.”
He turns back, looking out the window. The van pulls away from the curb, the driver cues up the mellow island music, and I am ready for a twenty-minute nap when, in front of us, a teenager pulls a bottle of sunscreen out and begins liberally spraying it down one arm and then the other. Ethan and I are immediately lost in a cloud of oily fumes with no window or door.
He and I exchange a look of deep suffering. “Please don’t spray that in the van,” Ethan says, with a gentle authority that does something weird and wavy to my breathing.
The teen turns, gives us a flat “Oops, sorry,” and then tucks the bottle back in her backpack. Beside her, her father is absorbed in a Popular Science magazine, completely oblivious.
The fog of sunscreen slowly clears and, aside from the view of Sophie and Billy making out two rows ahead of us, we are able to see out the windows, to the view of the snaking shoreline to our left, the brilliant green mountains to our right. A pulse of fondness fills me.
“Maui is so pretty.”
I feel Ethan turn to look down at me, but don’t meet his eyes, in case he’s confused that my words were delivered without insult to him. His frown could ruin this flash of happiness I’m feeling.
“It is.” I don’t know why I always expect an argument from him, but it continually surprises me when I get agreement instead. And his voice is so deep; it almost feels like a seduction. Our eyes meet, and then dart apart, but unfortunately our attention lands directly ahead of us, between the heads of the sunscreen teen and her father, where Sophie and Billy are schmoopy-murmuring to each other with their faces only millimeters apart.
“When did you two break up?” I ask quietly.
He looks like he’s not going to answer, but then exhales. “About six months ago.”
“And she’s already engaged?” I let out a soft whistle. “Yeesh.”
“I mean, as far as she knows I’m married, so I can’t be too hurt about it.”
“You can be as hurt as you want, but you don’t have to seem hurt,” I say, and when he doesn’t answer, I realize I’ve hit the nail on the head. He’s struggling to pretend to be unaffected.
“For what it’s worth,” I whisper, “Billy looks like a tool. He’s the understudy version of Reedus, without any of the scary-sexy charm. This version just looks oily.”
Ethan grins down at me before seeming to remember that we don’t like each other’s faces. His smile straightens. “They’re just up there making out. There are, like, eight other people in this van. I can see their tongues. It’s . . . gross.”
“I bet Ethan Thomas has never been inappropriate like that.”
“I mean,” he says, frowning, “I like to think I can be affectionate, but some things are infinitely better when they happen behind closed doors.”
Heat engulfs whatever words remain in my head, and I nod in agreement. The idea of Ethan doing unknown, hot things behind closed doors makes everything inside my body turn to goo.
I clear my throat, relieved when I look away, take a deep breath, and the goo dissolves away. Dear Olive Torres: This is Ethan. He is not swoony.
Ethan leans in a little, catching my eye. “You think you can bring it today?”
“ ‘Bring it’?”
“The fake-wife game.”
“What’s in it for me?” I ask.
“Hm.” Ethan taps his chin. “How about I don’t tell your boss you’re a liar?”
“Okay. Fair.” Brainstorming what I can do to help him win the nebulous Best New Partner war I suspect we’re fighting with Sophie and Billy, I lean in, meeting him halfway. “I don’t want to get your hopes up or anything, but I look really great in this bikini. There’s no revenge like being with someone new who has a great rack.”
His lip curls. “What an empowering, feminist statement.”
“I can appreciate my body in a bikini and still want to set fire to the patriarchy.” I look down at my chest. “Who knew what a little meat on my bones would do?”
“Is that what you meant at check-in? About losing your job and baking?”
“Yeah. I’m a stress-baker.” I pause. “And eater. I mean, obviously you know that.”
He stares at me for a couple of loaded seconds before he says, “You’ve got a job now. Your baking days can be behind you, if you want.” When I look up, he glances quickly away from my boobs. If I didn’t definitively know better, I might think he was hoping I’d keep up the baking just a little while longer.
“Yes, I have a job, assuming I can keep it.”
“We got through last night, didn’t we?” he says. “You’ll keep the job.”
“And maybe the rack, too.”
He reddens a little, and the sign of his discomfort gives me life. But then his eyes do another tiny dip over the front of my cover-up, almost like he can’t help himself.
“You had no problem looking in the Skittle dress.”
“To be fair, it was a bit like you were wearing a fluorescent light bulb. It drew the eyes.”
“After all this, I’m going to have something made for you out of that dress,” I promise him. “A tie, maybe. Some sexy briefs.”
He chokes a little, shaking his head. After a few beats of silence, he confides, “I had actually just been remembering that Sophie almost got implants when we were together. She always wanted bigger . . .” He mimes cupping boobs.
“You can say it,” I tell him.
“Say what?”
“Breasts. Boobs. Jugs. Knockers.”
Ethan wipes a hand down his face. “Jesus, Oliver.”
I stare at him, daring him to look at me. Finally, he does, and he looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin.
“So she wanted implants,” I prompt.
He nods. “I bet she regrets not getting them back when she was enjoying my paychecks.”
“Well, there you go. Your fake new wife has great boobs. Be proud.”
Hesitating, he says, “But it has to be more than that.”
“What do you mean, ‘more than that’? I’m not going to wear a thong.”
“No, just—” He runs an exasperated hand through his hair. “It’s not only about me being with someone hot now.”
Wait, what? Hot?
He rolls on like he hasn’t said anything completely shocking. “You have to pretend to like me, too.”
A curl falls over his eye just after he’s said this, turning the moment into a Hollywood shot that completely mocks me. A small set of fireworks—only a sparkler, I swear—goes off beneath my breastbone, because he is so goddamn pretty. And seeing him vulnerable, even for a second, is so disorienting it makes me imagine a time when I can look at his face and not hate it.
“I can pretend to like you.” I pause, adding out of the self-preservation instinct, “Probably.”
Something softens in his demeanor. His hand moves closer, curling around mine, warm and encompassing. My reflex is to jerk away, but he holds me steady, gently, and says, “Good. Because we’re going to have to be a lot more convincing on that boat.”
