Free A Star is Born by Robbie Michaels

side. Since the hotel where I was staying was a big-name, glitzy, glamorous hotel, the beach was easily accessible.
    I walked straight to the ocean, slipped off my shoes, and waded into the water until it was up to my knees. Why did it always seem that the Pacific Ocean was involved in every relationship difficulty I seemed to have? First, the Pacific had separated me from Bill when he was filming his movie in Australia. And now, this time, he was in Hawaii getting it on hot and heavy with Derrick while I was stuck back in California. Maybe the secret to a successful relationship was to never let an ocean come between you and your loved one. I don’t know. I really wished I did know, but I didn’t have a clue.
    Since I didn’t have a clue, I stood with the warm water of the ocean lapping up around my knees with a whole fresh new batch of tears welling up in my eyes. My world was such a mess. I had so much going for me, and at the same time it was all a twisted mess. I don’t know why it seemed that every time I had things worked out, ironed out, and everything seemed to be going reasonably well, something like this had to happen.
    The first time when I thought Bill had cheated on me, I had learned of his “indiscretion” from a series of newspaper stories and photos. It turned out those had been faked, and what I thought he had done actually hadn’t happened. This time, however, there was no mistaking what had happened. I had sat right there and watched it happen. There was no mistaking what I had witnessed, right down to the toes curling and the primal scream when orgasm hit. This time it was crystal clear—and unfortunately burned into my mind forever.
    I have no idea how long I stood in the ocean contemplating my life, but the next time I focused, the sun was fully up and the day felt much warmer than I remembered. Since the skin on my feet was withering up, I decided that it was time to dry off my feet and figure out what I wanted to do with myself for the next few days. A big part of me wanted to just get the hell off this island and go home. Another part of me was cosmically weary and wanted to rest and be responsible to nobody for anything ever again. In the end I decided to go for something between those two extremes and stay where I was until I was scheduled to fly home.
    As a compromise, I went to the pool and settled in under an umbrella and tried very hard to forget everything. For the next couple of days I somehow managed to relax.
    On the third day of my poolside existence, I was lying in my usual chaise lounge with my eyes closed. I was about to rouse myself enough to ask my waiter to bring me another pineapple juice when I felt someone block my sunlight. Assuming it was my waiter—I had been tipping him very well, so he damned well better take good care of me—I said, “Play it again, Sam.” (My waiter was named Sam, so the first couple of dozen times I had thought that sounded cute so I simply stuck with it. If he didn’t like it, well, I didn’t care—I was tipping him very well to not care.)
    When I didn’t hear a response, I opened my eyes and looked up, but what I saw wasn’t Sam, my waiter—no, it was Bill, my ex-boyfriend, and he looked like crap. Good. It seemed only fitting that he should feel as miserable as I had been feeling for the last few days.
    I didn’t have anything in particular I wanted to say to Bill at the moment, so I simply closed my eyes and lay back down, hoping that he would go away.
    He was edgy, apparently. When I didn’t pay him any attention, he said, “Is that it? You’re not going to say anything to me?”
    Without opening my eyes, I simply said, “You look like crap.”
    “Matches how I feel, then. We need to talk.”
    “Why?” I asked. “It all looked pretty crystal clear from my vantage point.”
    “How long were you there?” he asked quietly.
    “It felt like forever, but was probably only five minutes, maybe ten.”
    “And you didn’t say