She didn’t come down for breakfast.
At that point, I knew she must have misunderstood what happened in the garden but why did it matter?
When I woke up, I had expected she would join me for breakfast as usual but she didn’t.
At eight, when the coffee sat untouched across from mine, I confirmed she wasn’t going to.
I thought she didn’t care?
By nine I heard her moving in her room but not toward the door.
That was when I confirmed that it was intentional and I understood that last night’s walk through the garden had not been a coincidence.
She’d seen me with Mara.
Mara Chen, the resort’s events manager, who had approached me during the beach gathering to confirm arrangements for Thursday’s dinner and pulled me aside to go through the guest list and the seating chart to double check and confirm everything.
This would have been ordinary and very unremarkable except that Sloane had walked past at exactly that time and seen what she’d decided to see.
I knew her well enough by now to know she wouldn’t ask.
Sloane Reed didn’t ask about things that she had never openly admitted mattered to her.
She would just assume and close up, withdraw back into her protective cocoon and wait for the feeling to pass while pretending there was no feeling at all.
I found it far more frustrating than I should have.
She appeared at half past eleven looking like nothing was wrong, “Zane.” she said and casually nodded at me.
Which meant something was wrong.
She was dressed, composed, her phone already in hand, moving through the kitchen deciding this morning was going to be purely functional.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Morning.” She poured coffee without looking at me.
“The woman last night was the resort’s events manager.
She was confirming the Thursday dinner arrangements.” I decided to clear the air before letting a misunderstanding brew.
Sloane added her typical one cube of sugar and stirred it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” she said nonchalantly.
I scoffed.
“Of course you don’t.” She looked up.
“It was just a six minute formal conversation, ” I said.
“I counted.” “You don’t have to explain, but you can keep counting.” Her response was yet again passive before she picked up her coffee and walked to the terrace.
I stood in the kitchen knowing with complete certainty that she had heard every word I said and intended to do absolutely nothing about it.
Fine.
I gave her the morning.
I sat across the pool and worked while I was doing that, I was trying to manufacture a reason to talk to her, and she sat at the outdoor table under the umbrella with her laptop, which I returned last night – a deal I’d kept- and we existed in the same space like two buildings on opposite sides of a street.
The first day she’d been closed off because she decided it was professional.
What she was doing now was deliberate.
Every time I moved toward her there was some small mechanical adjustment.
She would either turn her chair, answer a call or decide that in that moment she needed to find something in her bag and it required her complete attention.
The space she was creating was taking up more of the room we were in and I could feel it.
I had never missed arguing with anyone but experiencing Sloane’s deliberate quiet made me understand something: every argument we’d had since she walked into my life had required her to look directly at me.
To put that brain of hers fully into whatever we were fighting about and give me her complete, ungovernable attention.
When she was arguing, she was present.
This silence was her absence which I was finding out was worse than anything she’d ever said while furious.
It was torturous.
I cornered her in the afternoon on her way from the sitting room to her bedroom and I stepped into the hallway at the right moment.
“Tell me what you think you saw,” I said.
“I didn’t see anything.” She muttered, trying to go around me.
I stood in the way, blocking her path.
“You’ve been decorating the villa with silence all day, Sloane.” I didn’t even know when the metaphor slipped.
But there was something about beautiful places and bringing out the creative part of people.
“I’m working.
You told me to relax and I relaxed and now I’m working.
That was the agreement,” “We had a day and since then you’ve been…” I trailed off.
“I’ve been fine,” she said sharply.
“I’m fine.
Not everything is about you.” She walked past me, into her room and closed the door.
Placing my hands on my hips, I let out a sigh of exhaustion.
She could be so stubborn and unreasonable, I knew exactly what to do.
The formal dinner was this evening.
White tables were set along the resort’s upper terrace with candles that the evening wind couldn’t touch because someone had placed them inside glass.
There were a hundred guests in their best clothes dressed like they knew photographs were being taken.
I watched Sloane come down the stairs to the lobby.
She was wearing something deep red.
It was different, understated and devastating at once.
Her hair was up and her neck bare.
She made herself into someone you looked at and thought: she belongs here.
It worked on everyone.
Including me.
Scratch that.
Especially me.
We moved through the dinner together with the ease of practice because six weeks of shared space had done what it was designed to do.
Bring us close together.
Now, we knew each other’s rhythms.
The photographer moved around us and I was certain that whatever was produced tonight would be the best content we’d made.
We looked real.
Because something about this had become real, whether she was willing to look at it or not.
Between the main course and dessert, I held out my hand.
“Dance with me.” “There’s no dance floor.” “The terrace is open.” I looked past her to where three couples had drifted to the edge.
“We need the content.” I whispered.
She looked at my hand.
Then she stared at the couples.
It took a minute but she took it.
I brought her to the terrace edge where the city spread below and the music from inside reached us faintly, something slow.
I put my hand at her waist and she put hers on my shoulder.
The photographer circled us twice.
I ignored him.
I was watching her.
She was looking past my shoulder, that small crease between her brows that appeared when she was working on a problem she hadn’t solved yet.
“Stop thinking,” I said.
“I’m not, ” “You are.
You have been all day long.” I held her gaze.
“Whatever you built in your head, it’s wrong.
It was six minutes with a resort manager.
That’s all.” She was quiet.
“I know,” she said so quietly I almost missed it under the music.
I stopped.
” It’s just, I don’t know, I really don’t know, I am just confused.” She added.
She was still moving with the momentum of the dance, then she stopped too.
We were standing on the edge of the terrace, the city below us, music behind us while she was looking at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before.
She moved her hand from my shoulder.
Placed it flat against my chest.
Over my heart.
She didn’t look away.
I could feel her waiting, feeling for what was under her palm.
My heart was beating the way it always did when she was this close.
Her eyes changed.
She felt it and didn’t move her hand.