A honeymoon invite.

Alexa looked glumly, to begin with. “We had a bit of a blazing row.”

Astryd reached out to lay her palm on her friend’s hand. “Yeah, we heard.” Word had spread amongst the wedding guests the next day of Alexa and Daniels screaming match in the hotel corridors. “What are you going to do?”

“We’re still together. We haven’t split up or anything but I told him I didn’t want him going on the honeymoon with me.”

“That could be for the best,” Astryd comforted her friend. Maybe Alexa taking the trip by herself would give her a chance to sort through her feeling for Vinny.

“I also told him I was taking my very good friend Astryd instead,” Alexa added.

Astryd was shocked. She’d known Alexa and Daniel had planned to spend their honeymoon in the Bahamas. It was only a short trip over from her own island of Barbados. There had even been some talk of catching up some time while they were on holiday. It had been on a previous trip of Alexa’s to the Caribbean that they had met and become friends.

“I don’t know what to say,” Astryd replied honestly.

“Oh, please say you will come with me,” Alexa pleaded. “I don’t want to be alone at the place I’m meant to be on my honeymoon at.

“Alright, alright. Of course, I will come with you. When do you leave? I can change my ticket and come with you instead of back to Barbados,” Astryd said. It wouldn’t be all that much trouble.

Alexa next spoke delicately. “There’s another thing.”

Astryd did respond but stared looking at her friend evenly.

“Maybe you would want to invite your new boyfriend to come with you?”

That dirty little sneak Alexa, Astryd goggled! Had she set this whole thing up just so she could abscond off on holidays with Vinny? If so it was low and Astryd’s reckoning of Alexa dropped a little lower. She’d always know about the affair with Vinny but this was taking it too far.

“Alexa, I…” Astryd didn’t feel comfortable about this.

“I swear to you I never planned this. Any of this. I just got swept up with everything. I was getting married and I didn’t want to give up Vinny. After the fight with Daniel this morning I just wanted to get away with my closest friend, the only one that knows everything about me. But then I’d heard about you two pretending to be an item after saving my ass this morning and I got thinking. Maybe I could go away with two people I love.”

Alexa frozen. Astryd caught it and froze too. Had Vinny? Astryd’s mind whirled that Alexa had just let slip that she was in love with Vincent in front of him and she didn’t know if he’d been aware of it.

He cleared his throat and coughed. “Does anyone even want to ask if I can come?”

Alexa did just that. “Well, can you?”

“I’m meant to be cornering a young fighter I’ve been training the following weekend,” Vinny told her.

“Is there any possible way you can get out of it? Please, Vinny. Don’t you want to come and lay by the beach with two beautiful women?” Alexa pleaded.

After just hearing what Alexa had said about loving Vinny before, Astryd found that she really did want him to be there for her friend.

Vinny shrugged nonchalantly. “I can move some things around.”

Alexa clapped and yipped, jumping up in her seat before suddenly remembering that she was supposed to be all sad about her fight with Daniel and sat back down. They would have to organise a plane ticket for Vinny to get there. He’d need his passport and extra clothes, not that a lot was needed on a honeymoon resort. Alexa started to run through in her mind what they would have to do.

Vinny seemed to be thinking it too. “I’ve got to head back to Brooklyn tonight but I can get a flight out of JFK the next day and meet you both down there.”

It was happening. It was really happening Alexa thought, her excitement rapidly rising.

After lunch, Alexa had to let Vinny and Astryd move off together to keep up pretences of those two as a new item. She did manage to visit Vinny in Astryd’s room for a long and lingering series of kisses goodbye. The presence of her friend modestly turning her back to give the two of them privacy perhaps the only thing preventing their goodbye from becoming too steamy.

Down at the hotel reception, Vinny handed his room key in and paid the small mini-bar charge before handing a ticket to the hotel’s valet to go and fetch his car. He was standing next to his small travel bag when a voice spoke rang out from behind him.

“Heading back to New York? Mind if I grab a ride?