Page 3 of What I Like About You

Chapter Two

By the timeZara and Antwan made it out of their hotel suite, the sun was starting to set. If it had been up to Zara it wouldn’t have taken them nearly as long, but Antwan insisted on going live online to show off their digs for the week.

“Y’all should see this place!” he said, looking his phone dead-on as he held it out in front of him and twirled about the suite.

She should have known it would take him forever to get everything staged perfectly, then however long he felt like yammering on to the black hole of online viewers—but she also knew that the traffic it would generate to their profiles and the blog was worth the delay. So she simply stayed out of his way and let him work his magic.

They made their way over to the pool, only after stopping at The Casbah to grab mai tais to sip on while they explored. Zara wasn’t a big drinker, but she figured that while on vacation, she might as well indulge a little. Especially if the booze was free.

The pool was still buzzing with people, even though it was well into the dinner hour. The thought did occur to Zara that the dinner hour might have a different definition based on island time. Having spent the first portion of her life as a bit of a wallflower, people-watching had always been something that she had found interesting, and the current makeup of the pool did not disappoint. There was everyone from college-aged co-eds to some who were more than old enough to be her grandparents. While some of the older folks were certainly in interesting attire, Zara’s focus stayed mainly on the younger set.

It was as if every girl there had walked off the set of a movie, their hair and makeup done perfectly, with their perfectly toned bodies barely covered by their perfectly tiny bikinis. For a moment, Zara couldn’t help but feel like she was back in high school, and all those girls were the in crowd. Cool, popular, and life of the party were never things she had ever been accused of being. In high school, she was more often the butt of a joke than actually in on one. Not that she knew anything about these women, other than how incredibly good-looking they were, but it still didn’t stop her from feeling inferior all over again.

Stop, she told herself. You are not that girl anymore. You are a confident, successful woman on the verge of something amazing. You are beautiful, even if you aren’t the size of a stick of gum!

“I think every man I see is hotter than the last,” Antwan said, knocking her out of her thoughts. “I call dibs on all of them!”

“You can have them,” Zara laughed.

“Girl, did you switch teams and not tell me?”

“No, I just…” she trailed off. She just what? Wasn’t interested? No, that wasn’t true. She was more than interested in men. It’d been a long time since she’d been with anyone in that way, and her body had long since registered its protest. Yet somehow, she just wasn’t feeling it. And not just because she was feeling self-conscious. She was tired of all the crap. She wanted something real. Not a holiday hookup, or some set-up by her parents where she had to force a smile and pretend to be interested when she was really bored to tears. She wanted to find the person with whom her soul was at ease, or whatever that Bible verse was that got quoted at weddings. Other than Antwan, there had only ever been one guy who she could totally be herself with.

Or so she had thought. Turns out she’d been wrong about him too.

“We’re here for work, not for you to pick out your next ex-boyfriend.” She shot him a look that was half scolding, half playful.

“A, who said anything about making him a boyfriend,” Antwan shot back. “B, our readers totally want to know about the ‘scenery’ down here, and C, I think that getting laid would do you some good. Relax you a bit.”

“We have spa treatments for that.”

“Even the best spa treatment isn’t a replacement for some good D,” he pointed out.

Antwan had a point. Even if he was a bit crude in his execution. But that was part of why she loved him so much, because he was always straight to the point. The two of them had met in freshman seminar when Antwan had walked up to her, looked her up and down, and without hesitation asked, “Do you not have people who like you? Because no one should have let you out of the house looking like that.” She had known the combination of a black-and-blue houndstooth skirt paired with a black-and-white checkered top was a bit of a bold choice, but she hadn’t thought it looked that bad. Although the hot pink Converse shoes might have been too much.

Zara had told herself college would be a new start and that she would no longer be the shy, chubby girl always standing just outside the circle. She had thought she could ease into her new, more outgoing self with the outfit, but had apparently failed miserably. It was all she could do to shake her head no, to let the heavy-set kid in front of her know that she didn’t have any friends. Her roommate, Tina, hadn’t been much help. Tina was really just more of the same from high school. Actually, that wasn’t entirely fair. Tina wasn’t nearly as mean as the in crowd in high school. However, she also had zero interest in befriending someone who wasn’t a pre-established party girl like herself. So while she wasn’t taunting Zara like those from her past, she certainly wasn’t giving her the time of day either.

“Well, first thing after this class, we’re fixing this. Because I just can’t let it continue,” he had said.

“Who are you?” she’d asked, confused as to why a stranger would just invite himself into her life like this.

“Albert. Scratch that, call me Antwan,” he had answered. “The moment I stepped foot on this campus I swore I would never be ‘Fat Albert’ again.”

True to his word, he’d managed to lose seventy-five pounds that year, where Zara had simply been happy to not gain the dreaded freshman fifteen. But even with his newfound “hot bod,” he’d stuck by her, helping her find her confidence, bringing her out of her shell, and never letting her mix patterns again.

“I think I’ll stick with spa treatments on this trip,” she laughed.

“Suit yourself.”

Zara started to turn to head back in the direction of the beach when Antwan grabbed her arm and pulled her back to his side.

“Sweet. Baby. Jesus,” Antwan whispered, a dramatic pause in between each word. He tightened his grip on her forearm as his eyes grew wide with excitement.

“What?”

“Over there.” He pointed past the swim-up bar, in the direction of the Purple Rain. “Do you know who that is? That is Cullen Cruz!”

“The soccer player?” Zara asked. It was hard to tell if the guy walking toward them really was the famous athlete, since he had a baseball cap pulled down low on his head and was talking to some other tall, fair-haired guy.