How to Honeymoon Alone

I raise my small bottle of rum. “To surviving half of our honeymoons.”

His eyebrows draw together, but he raises his own bottle. “To our first week,” he says.

We make it through two full mini-bottles each, sitting beneath the sky, with our feet dangling in his private pool. “I don’t understand your ex,” I say. “If I was her, I would have fought tooth and nail for this vacation.”

“Mh-mmm. But you’re not her,” he says. “And a vacation like this isn’t a big thing to her.”

I frown. “Not a big thing?”

“No, she’s…” he shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. We wouldn’t have gone on a vacation together after the way things went down.”

“How did they go down?” I ask. “I mean, if you want to talk about it. It can be therapeutic.”

Phillip runs a hand along his jaw. He’s quiet for a long moment, and I wonder if I’ve overstepped. If he’s going to tell me off.

But then, he looks over at me. “We changed our minds last moment.”

“Oh,” I breathe. “That’s… intense.”

He chuckles, but the sound isn’t humorless. “Yeah.”

Silence falls between us again, and I’m burning with questions. I want to know more. It’s hard to picture him in a relationship. Him with someone… else.

I clear my throat. “I didn’t see it coming, with my relationship. Did you?”

His eyes feel unusually heavy on mine. “I should’ve,” he finally says. “We lived very different lives.”

“Was it enough for you?”

He turns the bottle over in his hands, and it looks tiny in comparison. “I thought so at the time. We weren’t a couple for as long as you and your dipshit.”

I stare at him for a second before chuckling. “Dipshit?”

“He’ll never be anything else,” Phillip says. There’s a curve to his lips, but his voice is serious.

“It does make you rethink things. Like, you see the relationship differently. In the beginning, I only thought of things I missed… but now, the list of things I’m glad to be rid of is so much longer,” I say.

He puts a hand on his knee, supporting himself. “All right. One shot per good riddance you can think of.”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

“You have to do it, too,” I say. “Okay?”

“All right. But you’re starting.”

I push my hair back over my shoulder. “Well, used gym socks everywhere. I don’t miss that even a little bit.”

“Cheers to that,” he says, and I take a shot of the rum. It burns going down. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much rum before-or probably ever will again-in one week.

“Your turn,” I say, grimacing. “Ugh, that’s strong.”

His eyes find the horizon again and the softly swelling waves. The sea is barely visible in the darkness, illuminated only by the moon and stars.

“I can’t believe… okay. Well, I won’t miss the constant texting to let someone know where I am, all the time.”

That makes me chuckle. “You guys had that kind of relationship, did you?”

He runs a hand over his face. “If I was working late and forgot… well. I’m not going to miss that.”

“That sounds stressful.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs like he wants to get rid of the memory. “Come on, what’s your next one?”

“Well, he hated quiet nights in. Like, something always had to happen. A big movie night, dinner with friends, or going for a run.” In the last couple of years, our differences had become stark. I’d want to spend the evening on the couch with a book, and he’d call me boring or lame.

Phillip frowns. “What? That’s the best.”

“Going for a run?”

“No, having quiet nights in.”

“Right?” I smile, shrugging, too. “Anyway, what’s your next good riddance?”

He holds the small rum bottle up to his lips. “Dating someone who is constantly checking their social media,” he says and drains the bottle. “Good fucking riddance to that.”

I laugh. “That would drive me nuts.”

“Trust me,” he says, his eyebrows lifting high, “me, too.”

A comfortable silence descends. My fingers play with the tiny label on my rum bottle, carefully peeling it away. I feel warm, inside and out.

“So,” Phillip says. “Tell me your next good riddance. What did the dipshit do that you won’t miss?”

I tear the label clean off. “I won’t miss-um. Wait,” I say, shaking my head. A blush is creeping up my cheeks. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Oh,” he says, voice amused. “I get it.”

“You get what?”

“What you were going to say.” He raises an eyebrow, and there, on his cheek, his barely-there dimple winks at me. “So Caleb wasn’t the best in that department, was he?”

I can’t look at him. “Wow. That’s not what I was going to say.”

“No? Okay, then.” He takes another sip from his bottle, and it’s clear in the silence that he doesn’t believe me.

“I mean… yeah, I’m not going to miss the five-minute sessions.”