How to Honeymoon Alone

Maybe, but it’s messing with my head. I’m meeting him again now. We’re going on a hike.

OMG. Just the two of you?

Yes.

Okay, so he likes you.

I look down at her text for a long few seconds. I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t even know if I want him to.All text © NôvelD(r)a'ma.Org.

That’s a lie. I do. But I don’t know if I’m ready for the things that come with that or for going on an actual date, or seeing if he wants to do more than kissing… Or going home and facing the cold weather and my familiar life and not have any more nights with him in paradise. The whole thing is overwhelming.

Maybe. Or maybe he was just being nice.

Eden.

Men do not kiss women to “be nice.” It’s literally never happened. Not once.

I chuckle. Maybe not.

“Eden?”

My phone slips out of my hands and falls to the hard stone floor of the lobby. It lands with a decisive sound, and my heart drops.

“Shit, sorry.” Phillip bends in front of me to pick it up. His hair is dark and thick, and damp again as if he’s just had a shower. He grabs my phone and flips it over. “Unbroken.”

“Thank you,” I say and take it from his outstretched hand. The screen’s mercifully gone dark; Becky’s last text is hidden from view.

He straightens. “Ready?”

“Yep. Let’s go.”

We leave the hotel lobby and walk toward the waiting car. Phillip and I booked it last night, after dinner and after the discussion of what other secrets were hidden in my annotated guidebook. I mentioned hiking, and he’d agreed to it immediately.

So here we are.

Phillip opens the car door for me and I get in. Somehow, this feels even stranger than after our previous kiss. I don’t know what to say or what to think, and the easygoing rapport between us feels strained.

The driver puts the car in drive and we head away from the resort. Phillip apologizes for being distracted as he answers emails on his phone. I send a glance his way and he smiles in return. It’s the crooked one that warms his entire face. “I promise, I won’t touch my phone on the hike,” he says.

“I’m going to hold you to that promise.”

“I know you will,” he says. “And I don’t want to be put in a time-out.”

We drive past fields of sugarcane, small villages and bright yellow Moringa flowers, and through groves of palm trees and dense tropical foliage. The road turns from straight to crooked, with sharp twists that have my hand permanently glued to the seat in front of me for support.

Phillip puts his phone down with a loud sigh.

“Work?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says. “But it was just a few emails. I’ve told everyone that I’m unavailable for the rest of the day.”

I look at him for a long few moments, and he rolls his eyes. “I am capable of that, you know?”

“I am now,” I say, and he shakes his head. But he looks amused.

The car turns onto a gravel road, and around us, the view changes. We pull to a stop at the trailhead. Mountains rise from the green-covered landscape on either side of us, thick forest spilling down toward the deep-blue sea. White froth dots the ocean, forced to the surface by waves far stronger on the island’s east coast than back at the resort.

“This is incredible!” I dig out my phone and grab a few pictures of the sight.

“And we haven’t even started our hike yet,” Phillip says and slings a backpack onto his shoulders. He’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt, the laces on his sneakers tied with double knots. Phillip’s shoes look infinitely more sensible than my sandals. He stretches, hands high above his head, and his shirt rides up. I catch a sliver of the tanned, taut stomach and the happy trail that disappears into his shorts.

I look away.

I’ve seen him in swim trunks several times already, but something about this moment felt intimate.

Because you’ve kissed him now, my mind whispers. And you want to do it again.

By the trailhead is a thick wooden sign that indicates the starting point and a map. Below, someone has drawn a smiling sun and scribbled the words “Have a good hike!”

We start up the dusty gravel path that winds its way along the mountain. Soon enough we need to duck beneath low-hanging tree branches, and Phillip gets a smile on his face.

“My dad used to do this with me when I was young,” he says.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Not in Barbados, though.”

“Hiking, fishing… you were an outdoorsy kid.”

“At times,” he says.

The trail turns too narrow to walk side by side, and he steps ahead of me, doing most of the work to hold back the branches or shrubs that hang in our way.

I watch his broad shoulders and narrow waist, and the muscles shifting beneath his T-shirt and backpack. He’s so stupidly attractive. Far more than he has any right to be.

Tearing my eyes away, I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. “What did you want to be then? Growing up?” I ask.

He looks over his shoulder, his eyes amused. “You don’t think I grew up dreaming of being a corporate lawyer?”

“Something tells me no.”

He chuckles and keeps walking, trudging up the hill on legs that are longer and probably stronger than mine. I’m glad he can’t see me panting.

“An astronaut,” he says.

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah. My mom made the ceiling in my room into a planetarium.” Then, he shrugs and looks back at me again. “What about you?”