"Hey, why so glum?" Grace asked. She'd found Reid slumped against the front door to the dance studio with his head in his hands. His normal dance gear was switched out for the most mundane looking jeans and white t-shirt. It still made her heart pitter patter wildly in her chest.

He held up a piece of paper to her without a word. Neat black type covered the page. At the bottom was a signature and an address for one of the top schools in the area. He'd been applying to places all over but this was the one his heart was set on. It didn't take a genius to notice the wording of the first sentence and to know anything that started with the word regret was not going to be a happy ending.

"Oh, Reid," Grace started. Words failed her in that moment and she offered him a hand instead. Once he was back on his feet she nodded and pocketed the keys to her shop. "Alright, we're going out. I can't have you moping around in front of my store and having people say I upset the great Reid Bennet."

A size ten shoe was wedged between the door and its frame. The tennis shoes looked nothing like the sleek black shoes he'd had on earlier. Grace had gotten a good look at them earlier while she'd been bent over staring down at them. The canvas of the tennis shoes looked softer, more malleable.

She could definitely crush those in the door if she pushed hard enough.

"Grace, you're going to break my foot if you keep that up," Reid sighed. Both of his hands were still held up at slightly awkward angles to keep the drinks safe from her rough handling of the door.

"Oh no, the great Reid Bennet out of commission for a broken foot. How will the world recover?" she snapped. After another failed attempt to kick his foot out, Grace jerked the door open enough to step into the hall. Her brown hair was wild from the vicious door slamming. It wasn't wild enough to hide her red rimmed eyes.

The green smoothie was held out to her again, more insistently this time. "What did that guy say to make you cry?"

The silence that grew between them was enough to make Grace feel as if she'd gone deaf. He had to be joking. When she'd known him, Reid had been a pretty funny guy. Not a day had gone by that he wasn't reading her a stupid joke from a popsicle stick and poking her until she laughed. So he had to be joking now while he stood in front of her hotel room.

"You can't have been crying over me, not after you walked out on me like you did," Reid said. He took a slow sip of his drink and wiggled hers at her. "Wanna talk about it?"

Grace gently took the drink from his hand and held her hand up. "Can you wait just a minute? I want to throw on some pants, you sort of lost short shorts viewing privileges," she joked. After getting confirmation from Reid that he would wait, she slipped back into the room and left the door half closed.

"I never expected to see you in a place like this," he said from the door. "Come into some huge inheritance or something?"

"Or something," Grace called back. She returned to the door with a towel draped over her arm. "Don't move please." It wasn't like he had time to move as she shoved him back and threw the towel down in front of him. One firm tug and he'd stepped onto the towel. "Nice to see you still follow instructions when told to."

The lid to the green smoothie popped off with a flick of her thumb and Grace had it turned upside down over his head in half a second. Pineapple and banana scents washed over her from the growing puddle of green spreading across the white bath towel. Pineapple had always been her favorite. The carnivorous fruit always made her feel that even if people cut her up and took pieces of her for their own purposes she'd still take her own chunk out of them.

"The audacity you must have to walk over here and think we could just talk like old friends absolutely blows me away," she hissed. The empty cup dropped from her hand to splash the last few drops across his shoes. "You don't talk to me, don't look at me, don't even breathe my air."

"How am I meant to not breathe your-"

Grace cut him off by flinging the lid at his face like a miniature frisbee. "Go breathe somewhere else and stop contaminating my air," she snapped. "Knock on my door again and I'll show you what those talented feet taste like." The door slammed, echoing through her room. Her legs slowly gave way and Grace sank to the floor in a silently sobbing puddle.

Reid's retreating footsteps were just audible from the other side of the door. Once another door had slammed down the hall, she reached out and tugged the towel, mess and all, back inside the room. Hopefully it hadn't had time to absorb into the hotel carpeting. One more deadpan stare from the custodian would probably kill her at this point.

What the hell was he thinking? She may have been young and stupid when they met but that was forever ago. If anyone should have expected her to grow up fast it should have been the man who showed her the world was just waiting to tear her down.

"Asshole," she muttered. The empty room absorbed her insult better than the towel absorbed the smoothie. The pineapple smell was starting to overwhelm her. If it hadn't been for the empty stomach she might have started feeling nauseous right then.

Grace carefully folded the towel and dropped it into the shower to rinse off the offending green sludge. It swirled down the drain like a cyclone. At least that mess could go away with a little water, aside from the green stain. Reid, the tornado that had rearranged her life twice, was back for another round. A little water wasn't going to get rid of him in any legal way.

Damn the world for non refundable deposits. Her bags were still packed except for the clothes she'd changed into after her bath but this wasn't some luxury she could afford to blow off. Years of hard work and sacrifice weighed on her shoulders at even the thought of running home.

"It's not like we're in the same room. I can avoid him for a week," she told herself. There were business locations to look at, massages to have, maybe even a scandalous romance to have. Anything was preferable to hiding in her room like a coward.

Grace shut off the shower and left the towel up to dry. The staff would come gather it in the morning and add the damage charge to her bill no doubt. Speaking of staff, the bag of cookies Alan had brought were still waiting for her on the chair by the door. He might have been a scummy idiot but the cookies hadn't done anything. She dragged the entire thing onto the bed and hid under the blankets like it was a fort.

That was her go to comfort zone for bad days. It reminded her of camping in Joshua Tree with her parents. Just the three of them roasting sausages in the early morning and naming stars at night. She'd never learned the proper names until an astronomy class in college. The made up names were still better in her opinion.

Unwelcome memories of Reid came along with those of camping and stars. He'd insisted on a road trip just before they started dating. Fresh tears started as she remembered how he'd surprised her with a telescope. It was just some cheap kid's toy but it worked well enough to see the constellations. He really had infected every part of her life. All these years working to block him out and now it was like he'd never left.

Smoothies.

Stars.

Camping.

All these years working to block him out and now it was like he'd never left. Except he had. Worst yet, he'd left without her.

Now he was going to leave his mark on Hawaii too. Her hands hovered over her phone, already thinking up all of the things she could text to everyone she knew. They all vanished as soon as she had the phone open. Everyone must be tired of hearing about Reid by now. She would be. There was no point in subjecting everyone to it all over again.

Inside her isolated makeshift fort, Grace lined up the boxes of cookies and tore through the plastic packages one by one. She turned the television to the first non romance movie that came on and settled in for a long night of regret. After a night of cookies, she was sure she'd regret the morning too.