Despite drinking next to nothing last night, I wake up with a pounding headache and a mood fit to kill the first person who dares irritate me today. Objectively, these side effects might be caused a little less from the booze and more from embarrassment and old heart wounds that haven't yet scarred suddenly resurfacing. Pulling a blanket above my head, I try not to hypothesise what he must think of me now. Granted, he knew me pretty well before so nothing should shock him now. But what did I just do? I saw my ex and instead of battling it out with frosty indifference towards him, I turned and ran the other way dodging chunks of Lucy's regurgitated pizza and beer as I went. Do I even remember what dignity is?

Perhaps the only perk of this increasingly horror-fuelled holiday, is the luxurious hotel room my mother has splurged for. Well-cleaned with high ceilings and windows to match allowing light to tumble through the cosy space, it's almost enough to make me forget the horrors to occur last night. Almost.

Sighing, I roll commando-style out from my warm cocoon of covers and head towards the bathroom to get ready. After a hot shower I apply a minimal amount of make-up and slip on a pair of denim shorts and dark, baggy T-shirt before heading towards the breakfast bar in the hotel's restaurant. The fluorescent numbers on my phone tell me the time is just past ten in the morning. No doubt, my family are still slowly munching through a wad of bacon whilst waiting for my late appearance.

As I approach the tantalising smell of hot food, the screeching of metal forks on porcelain smashes through my ears and straight into the pit of my brain like a tribe of tradesmen constructing a 40-storey skyscraper. Lifting an arm to block the noise as subtly as I can manage, I try my best to mask the throbbing blasts and shuffle towards the circular table I spot my family and outer friendship group crowded around.

"Have a good sleep?" Mum asks after I've ungracefully settled myself into one of the few remaining vacant seats.

I nod wearily. While my Mum believes she has adopted a 'chill' parenting style, I know her well enough to know she'd freak if I was to admit symptoms of a hangover and re-shattered heart over a boy I had severely downplayed our breakup to.

"How was the party?" My mother persists, leaning towards me like a teenager hungry for some juicy gossip. "Meet anyone interesting? I'm sensing Lucy had a good time."

My eyes flick over my black-haired hero who saved me last night. Her head flinches at every noise and her eyes, draped in dark rings, have obtained a chronic squint. It is not difficult to understand why dear old mother has come to that conclusion as it is not hard to figure Lucy is very much hung over from last night and perhaps still a little intoxicated too.

Looking back at Mum and her wide, eager brown eyes, I manage to crack a half-legitimate smile, "Yeah, it was alright. Not a whole lot happened. Mainly just stayed with Zoe and Lucy."

Mum smiles back, glad I've at least made an attempt to involve her in my wildly uninteresting life and gushes into a story of her own wild party life when she was my age. Boys, booze and bras I wouldn't even know how to put on, over the years Mum has informed me of far too much information regarding her adolescence. Needless to say, if mum was in my year at school, it is likely we would not have been close friends.

She continues to babble on about one eventful night - New Years, I think - but I'm hardly listening, something else has blazed distastefully across my peripherals. Or someone, should I say. Black thongs, black shorts and a green Hawaiian shirt drizzled over a plain white singlet that puts a perfect emphasis on his grassy eyes, I almost fall off my seat in shock. Seeing him at the party last night was bad luck but surely, surely, my luck is not so bad as staying in the same hotel as Zachary Evans.

"Hey, Kales, are you okay?" In an instant Teenager Mum has been replaced with Concerned Mum and her arm finds its way onto my shoulder.

I consider the possible ways this could play out in my head. I could remain acting casual and composed and continue eating my so far untouched slice of bacon sitting on my plate. Or, I explain to Mum in fragmented, choppy sentences how we have to go right now either back home or to a different holiday destination or even just to a different hotel. It doesn't matter which, just so long as I'm far, far away from him.

My mouth opens, my saliva goes dry and in one panicked breath I splutter out the regretful lie, "I'm fine."

Despite the uncertain look in her eyes, she seems to have bought my lie and finishes her story before asking my brother, Michael, to pass the orange juice. I keep my head directly over my cold tendrils of bacon and try my best to steady my racing heart. Has he seen me yet? Did he already know I was staying here somehow? When we first arrived at the hotel I was loudly complaining about the holiday, what if he was there? What if he heard me? What if -

"You in Kales?" My head whips up to come in direct eye contact with the entire circle of people, all of which are waiting for my answer to a question I never heard.

"Sorry?" I ask, blushing . . . what if Zach is witnessing this now? My blush deepens at the thought.

Patrick, Lucy's Dad who had asked the original question, chuckles, completely oblivious to my rising distress, "We were talking about going fishing this morning. Maybe even fry up our catch for lunch. Want to come?"

"Uh," I go to reply with a polite 'no' but pause just in time. I should do whatever I want to do - after all, it is my holiday. However, and I hate myself for factoring him into my decision, but the only thing I wish to do is get away from Zach, and because I know from experience that he suffers from severe sea sickness, a fishing trip would almost guarantee a morning free of his presence that is practically haunting me. "Sure, I'll come."

"That's the spirit!" Patrick leans across the table to whack me on the back in what I presume is meant to be a friendly, joking manner.

Smiling awkwardly, I'm about to slip back into my frenzied whirlpool of thoughts when Mum shoves an empty jug under my nose, "Kales, can you be my favourite person and get us a refill of orange juice?"

Being the good daughter I am, I push back the chair and take the glass jug, "I'm already your favourite person, Mum." My smile only widens when I hear no denial to my words.

It turns out the breakfast bar is a hub of hurried people sprinting from one table to the next. Waitresses, customers, people I'm not sure which category they fall into, swerve and dodge around me like commuters racing home from work on a Friday night. Mildly alarmed by the sheer mass of people, I stand dazed to the side and wait for a break in traffic before making my way to the bar.

Patiently standing to the side, my eyes, as if by their own accord, wander over to the smaller, rectangular table Zachary had been last sighted sitting at with his parents and older brother. I look for his green shirt and dark chocolate hair. My eyes, annoyingly hungry for him, are greeted with the backs of his three family members and an empty seat. Blood pulses through me a beat higher than it was before. Where is he?

"Hey." Another sixteen beats are skipped leaving me physically able to feel my heart's racing anxiety.

I have heard there is a total of twenty-six muscles in the human neck. I have also heard that once a memory has been attributed to a muscle, that memory may plague the physical body indefinitely. And as I turn my body now, those twenty-six muscles in my neck remember exactly which angle to crank my head upwards until I'm staring into a reef of oceanic green, and I'm reminded of just how many times my neck has been in this exact angle.

"Hi," I croak out a startled greeting.

I wait for him to say something else but for a long outstretched moment that could have been an eternity, no words are shared between us. The hazel in his eyes swim in lethargic loops around his pupils. Without him realising it, he's hypnotising me under an unearthly spell I had once wanted to never escape from. This time, its different. I break the spell choosing to instead look at a blob of orange pulp sliding down the inside of the glass jug I'm still holding.

"What are the chances, right?" He says eventually, bringing my eyes back up to his.

"What?"

"That we're here. Same choice of holiday. Even the same hotel. Kind of funny, right?" A row of white teeth make an appearance in a smile too large for the situation.

I don't respond. I don't even smile out of politeness. It's not funny. It's a nightmare which I would pay a fair amount of cash to end it all right now. The moment stretches out until it borders on the edge of another infinity. He stands with an awkward smile, that same foreign yet undeniably intense look burning into my own defensive eyes, with an empty glass jug being cuddled between us.

Eventually a thin smile ghosts across my lips, "Yeah . . . I have to get some juice." Without allowing Zach to say anything else or allow my over-thinking brain to cry out at the high cringe level of my parting words, I join the highway of people and allow myself to be swept away from him and to the girl standing behind the bar.

As I make my way back to the table I feel the same burning gaze drill holes straight through the back of my head and scraping the edge of my already bruised heart. Maybe he wants me to look back at him? Why? I don't know. I don't look back. I don't look anywhere besides my still untouched plate of food and my battered Vans for the remainder of the meal up until I'm squished into the back of Patrick's dirt-splattered forward drive.

I watch the blur of lush palm trees and overpriced houses fly past the window with a detached mind. I shouldn't be acting like this, I know that. I'm sharing my hotel with my ex whilst on an already unwanted holiday. Really, it's not that bad. Zoe's got so many ex lovers out there, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if she had been in a very similar situation to my own recent predicament. And who knows? With a bit of luck and a fair amount of skilful planning, I might just be able to avoid him for the remaining weeks I'll be stuck here for. And if I do come into a forced confrontation with him, what's the worst that could happen, really?

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A/N:

I've never been in a similar situation to Kaylee but it sounds bad. I'm hoping none of you have either? Also, I just finished doing my whole book plan and I'm thinking about 20-25 chapters all up for Misplaced. 

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