What Ayers realized while being smushed up in a booth next to Mick was that her feelings for him had changed.
She’d broken the engagement because she was smart—Mick would never stop cheating—but it hadn’t changed the fact that she loved him. Being pregnant with Baker’s baby hadn’t canceled out her feelings for Mick either. It was amazing the things that love could endure; nothing demonstrated this more than her ups and downs with Mick had. But at dinner with her parents, Ayers had been pleasantly surprised to find that she felt nothing for Mick other than a mixture of mild annoyance and nostalgic fondness. After Phil and Sunny headed back to Caneel, Mick walked Ayers to her truck and tried to kiss her. She ducked out of the way; she felt no attraction to him. Finally, she thought. The vine Mick had wrapped around her heart was withering. She had spent much of the previous six months hating Mick for what had happened with Brigid—but hate was not the opposite of love. Indifference was the opposite of love, and for the first time, Ayers felt like she could take Mick or leave him. Tonight, she would leave him.
“Good night,” she said.
Later, when Ayers was home in bed with Winnie snoring softly at her feet, she’d texted Baker. Survived dinner with Mick. Sorry about that; my parents wanted to see him.
There was no response, which was unusual. Ayers wondered if maybe she’d blown it. At noon the next day, Baker still hadn’t responded, and she nearly sent a second text asking if he wanted to grab lunch—but she decided this would be confusing. She was the one who had asked for space; he was giving it to her.
When their visit enters its second week, Phil and Sunny decide it’s time to introduce themselves to Irene Steele. Ayers tries to dissuade them; Irene is reserved. She may not appreciate being ambushed without warning. But Sunny waves Ayers’s concerns away like incense smoke. They see Baker and Floyd get back from school, and the instant Irene arrives home with Cash, they gather up Winnie, a bottle of champagne, and a charcuterie platter from Island Cork.
“Come over after you shower, Fred,” Sunny says, which bugs Ayers. She doesn’t want to shower and she doesn’t want to socialize.
She says, “I’m tired, Mama. I’m going to lie down for a little while.”
Sunny immediately changes her tune. Yes, Ayers should sleep, the first trimester is so taxing on the body. Sunny starts talking about being in western Australia on an ostrich farm that was owned by a woman who was also a potter, she made the most beautiful bowls…
“Mama, please,” Ayers says. She lies down on her bed and pulls the comforter over her head. The last thing she hears is Sunny saying to Phil, “Leave her be, honey.”
When Ayers awakens, it’s dark outside and her parents are back, laughing, whispering, bumping into things, shushing each other. Ayers checks her phone—ten thirty. They went across the street at five. “Mom?” she says. “Dad?”
They erupt in giggles. Ayers feels like she’s the parent right now. “Have you been across the street this whole time?”
“Oh, Freddy,” Sunny says. “It’s going to be so great!”
“What is?”
“Irene took a while to warm up,” Phil says. “But by the fourth bottle of wine…”
“Fourth?”
“Plus the champagne,” Sunny says. “So, technically, five.”
“Irene likes her chardonnay,” Phil says.
“What is going to be so great?” Ayers asks.
“Our family!” Sunny says. “The family we’re creating with the Steeles. And that Cash—what a cutie!”
“Your mother has a crush on him,” Phil says. “She made that much obvious.”
“He’s single,” Sunny says. “I’m surprised you didn’t end up with him, Freddy. He’s much more your type. Outdoorsy.”
“Cash and I are friends, Mom. We work together.” Ayers sits up in bed and pats the comforter. Winnie leaps up. “So you all had a great time and you drank the night away…”
“Baker made fish tacos,” Phil says. “That guy can really cook.”
“Floyd let me read to him before bed,” Sunny says. “I feel like a real grandma already.”
“We discussed our grandparent names,” Phil says. “Irene is Grammy, so Mom will be Mimi. I’m torn between Pop-Pop and Granddaddy.” He clears his throat. “It’s a big responsibility, being this child’s only grandfather.”
“We heard the whole story about Russ,” Sunny says. “Very interesting.”
“If by interesting, you mean ‘tragic,’ then yeah,” Ayers says.
“I think what’s interesting is the way Irene has come to terms with the situation. She blames Russ, but she also blames herself for taking Russ for granted, for not paying attention to the marriage, for all kinds of things.”
“Wow, you guys really got into it,” Ayers says. “Did you talk about me?”
“When we first got there, we told them you were tired,” Sunny says. “And we talked about the baby.”
“But other than that, your name didn’t come up,” Phil says.
Ayers is both relieved and bothered by this. Her parents and the Steeles are out forging a new family together but somehow the most important person—the person carrying the baby that will unite them—doesn’t matter.
Her parents gather their things to return to their room at Caneel—in two short days they’re off on their Caribbean adventure, thank goodness—and as soon as the front door closes, Ayers sends Baker a text. Thank you for entertaining my parents; I’m sure they overstayed their welcome. Baker doesn’t respond. Well, maybe he’s asleep. But when Ayers gets up to check, she sees a light on in what she knows is Baker’s bedroom.
She has a strong impulse to tiptoe over and knock on his window. Maybe even encourage him to come over. Maybe even…
She climbs back into bed. Space, she thinks.
Two nights later, Ayers is working at La Tapa. Her parents left that morning on the ten o’clock ferry; they’ll be gone for six to eight weeks. Ayers is relieved; happy, even. They’ll be back, but she doesn’t have to deal with them right now.
Tilda approaches Ayers at the back service station. “I assume you’ve heard?”
God alone knows what Tilda is going to drop on her. Heard you left Cash for some wealthy guy who doesn’t eat? Yes, Ayers has heard about that, in gory detail, from Cash. Ayers won’t lie—it has colored her opinion of Tilda. Tilda is entitled to see whomever she pleases but going away with a rich boy and leaving Cash in the dust seems crueler than your average breakup.
“Heard what?” Ayers asks.
“Mick quit the Beach Bar,” Tilda says. “He’s leaving island.”
“That must be a mistake,” Ayers says. “He told me at dinner last week that he signed a one-year lease at his new place, Pure Joy.”
“He’s trying to find someone to take over his lease.”
“Really,” Ayers says. “Where’s he going?”
“You should probably ask him that,” Tilda says.
Tilda is back to being very annoying, even more annoying than when she had a crush on Skip.
On her way home, Ayers calls Mick. “Word on the street is that you quit the Beach Bar? You’re leaving island?”
“Yes,” Mick says. “And yes.”
“Wow,” Ayers says, though she still doesn’t believe him. He’s been at the Beach Bar a Caribbean eternity—eleven years.
“I can’t live on this island and not be with you,” he says.
Ayers knew it. This is all a ploy to get her back. He planned this with Tilda; they’re in cahoots! “Well, I’m never coming back to you. I’m not in love with you anymore. So I guess you’d better go.”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Any chance you want to take over the lease on Pure Joy?”
“Damn straight I do,” she says. He may be bluffing but she’s dead serious. Pure Joy is a one-bedroom with incredible views across Great Cruz Bay over to St. Thomas, views that are best enjoyed sitting at the cute bar counter on the front porch. Ayers is sure her parents will help
her with the rent.
“I thought you might move in with Banker and his kid. Play house, happy family, and all that.”
“No plans to,” Ayers says. “I definitely want your place.”
“Cool,” Mick says. “I want to leave as soon as I can. I’ve been offered a position as food and beverage director at Tucker’s Point in Bermuda.”
Ayers hoots. “Will you wear knee socks?”
“I think I might have to,” Mick says. “The resort is five-star, so the job has more responsibility. The only downside is the shorts-and-knee-socks look. My legs are so stubby.”
“So you’re doing this?”
“Yes,” he says.
Things move fast, so fast! The next day, Ayers meets Mick at the real estate office to sign paperwork for the lease. Mick is leaving this weekend; Ayers can move in as soon as he’s out.
“What are you doing with your place?” Mick asks.
“Cash is taking it,” Ayers says. This whole thing is almost too easy; Cash can move off his brother’s couch right into Ayers’s studio apartment across the street. He and Winnie will be reunited. Ayers isn’t sure how Baker feels about her leaving Fish Bay, but it’s not like she’s leaving for St. Thomas or even Coral Bay. She’ll be on Great Cruz Bay Road, halfway between the Happy Hibiscus and the Westin time-share office. And it’s only for a year.
It will be a big, scary year, but Ayers isn’t going to let that stop her. She loved the cottage when Mick showed it to her. Now it’s hers!
On Saturday when Mick is scheduled to leave, Ayers drives down to the car barge to say goodbye. She can’t quite figure out why she wants to do this. She supposes that part of it is to witness the milestone—the moment her boyfriend of nine years moves on. Part of it is to make sure he actually goes. And part of it is to kiss Gordon one last time.
The car barge is, as always, a whirl of activity with a snaking line of cars and Jeeps and pickups and huge Mack trucks waiting to board and a notoriously unflappable West Indian woman named Sheila overseeing who goes where. More than once, Ayers has witnessed Sheila letting her friends and sweethearts jump the line, which isn’t fair—but nobody ever questions Sheila.
Sheila is a cousin of Rosie’s on her father’s side and because of this, Sheila likes Ayers. “You getting on, doll?” she asks.
“Saying goodbye to someone,” Ayers says.
“And good riddance?” Sheila asks.
“Kind of, yeah,” Ayers says and Sheila chuckles.
Ayers almost doesn’t recognize Mick’s blue Jeep because it has the top on. Has she ever seen his Jeep with the top on? She doesn’t think so. She and Mick got caught in rain showers in that thing probably a hundred times. The seats held a damp smell and Mick eventually pulled up the rugs so that water emptied through the holes in the floorboards. Ayers parks her truck over by Sheila’s guardhouse. As she strides toward Mick’s Jeep, she hears Gordon barking. Automatically, she tears up. She promised herself she wouldn’t become emotional, but that dog was like her first child and she’s going to miss him.
They’re loading the boat; she has to hurry. She runs up behind the Jeep and goes to the driver’s side, where Gordon is hanging his head out the window.
“Who’s a good boy?” she says.
“Hey!” Mick says. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to say goodbye to my pup—” Ayers is at the window, her hands cradling Gordon’s bucket head, when she realizes there’s someone in the passenger seat of the Jeep.
It’s Brigid.
“Hey, Ayers,” Brigid says. “Thanks for seeing us off. Good luck with your baby.” She says the word like it’s something imaginary and she holds up two fingers in a peace sign.
Ayers is…she’s…she looks at Mick. “Brigid’s going with you to Bermuda?”
He nods. “Yeah.”
Ayers kisses Gordon between the eyes, then leans in past Mick. “Goodbye, Brigid,” she says. She returns the peace sign—ironically, but Brigid will never know this.
Sheila whistles, windmilling her arm; it’s time for Mick to go.
Ayers watches the blue Jeep drive up the ramp of the barge.
“And good riddance,” Ayers says.
The very next day, Ayers wakes up feeling like a new woman. She got a long luxurious night’s sleep, and for the first time in weeks, she feels hungry. She makes not only buttered rye toast but also cheesy scrambled eggs. She takes her prenatal vitamin, drinks a glass of juice, eats a banana.
She figures she needs two days to pack her things and one day to move them. Then she’ll be back in action.
She calls Whitney at the Treasure Island office. “I can work again, starting on Wednesday,” she says.
It’s as though Ayers has crossed an invisible boundary. Her body was her enemy, but now it’s a friend. She has energy; she has vitality. The tiny life inside her might as well be a supercharged battery. Ayers moves into Pure Joy. While Ayers’s studio was funky and bohemian but gloomy, with a view only of the Happy Hibiscus, Pure Joy is bright and airy, filled with sunlight. She has actual rooms—a living/dining/kitchen area, a brand-new bath with gleaming white subway tile, a bedroom with a king-size bed, and a bona fide walk-in closet. The cottage has a gas grill and an enclosed outdoor shower and Ayers will spend every spare minute on one of the stools at the bar counter gazing at the dreamscape across her new front yard—the striated blue and green shades of the Caribbean.
Ayers sets her mugs and plates and wineglasses on the fresh white shelves in the kitchen; she puts new sheets on the bed; she hangs her photographs; she sets her houseplants in the sun. During her last check of her old studio, she discovers the hidden pack of cigarettes on top of the refrigerator and throws them away.
Her first night in the new place, she gets barbecue from Candi’s—ribs and chicken and pasta salad and coleslaw and plantains—and she sits at the bar counter on her front porch to watch the sun sink into the Caribbean. Hashtag sunset, she thinks. Mick is gone, she’s pregnant, and she has a new place to live—it all feels like a fresh start. She picks up her phone and nearly sends a text to Baker saying, Want to see my new place? But it’s only her first night. There’s plenty of time.
A leave of absence from Treasure Island was exactly what she needed because she comes back rejuvenated. Virgin Gorda Baths, snorkeling at the Indians, White Bay on Jost Van Dyke, where Leon, the bartender at the Soggy Dollar, makes her a virgin painkiller.
“Congratulations, love,” Leon says. “When will I meet this child’s daddy?”
“Soon?” Ayers says. She wonders if she should invite Baker and Floyd out on the boat so they can experience the BVIs and see her in action. Yes, they would like it. When they get back to Cruz Bay, Ayers checks the schedule and sees there are plenty of spots on Saturday’s charter. She texts Baker. BVI trip Saturday, you and Floyd, my treat?
The response comes: Nice offer, thank you. Floyd doesn’t have a passport.
Ah, bummer, Ayers thinks. He’s only four, but yeah, he still needs a passport. How about just you, then? Leave Floyd with your mom?
I shouldn’t, he says. Weekends are my time with Floyd. Sorry about that.
He’s a good dad, she thinks. He’s a really good dad.
A few nights later, Ayers leaves La Tapa after service and she’s so tired that she drives to Fish Bay without thinking. It’s only when she pulls into her former driveway and sees Cash’s new-used truck that she realizes she’s on autopilot.
Ugh! She might need Tilda to close from now on so she can get out of the restaurant earlier. Tilda won’t like this. She has been the one slipping out early, rushing her tables, neglecting to offer dessert, coffee, or aperitifs, snapping at Skip for change—all because her new beau, Dunk, likes to linger across the street outside the Tap and Still, vaping and waiting for Tilda to emerge. Ayers has studied him. He’s always in jeans and a T-shirt and a baseball cap and Sambas, looking more like a guy with an online-poker habit than a multimillionaire with an estate out in the Eas
t End, but Ayers supposes that’s part of the appeal. Dunk looks shady, which Tilda has mistaken for mysterious; she finds his fasting intriguing rather than ridiculous. She’s young. She’ll learn.
As Ayers is backing out of her former driveway she sees, in her rearview mirror, two people coming out of the Happy Hibiscus. It’s Baker and…a woman. Tall, blond.
Wait a minute. Ayers pulls back into her former driveway, turns off her lights, cuts her engine. She squints into the mirror. Do they see her? No. Baker and the woman are standing by an ivory Land Cruiser that Ayers recognizes as belonging to Swan Seeley.
Baker is walking Swan Seeley out to her car at ten thirty at night. Are they seeing each other? Is this why he hasn’t responded to her texts?
No, Ayers thinks. No! She can’t let this happen. And yet this is all her fault. She told Baker she needed space; she told Baker she wanted to be friends. Friends! After he moved his entire life down here, after he handled the news of the pregnancy like a hero. Has he complained? No. Has he been even a little bit of a jerk like literally any other guy in America would have been? No. He stopped by with a smoothie and chips. She had seen him another time, with Floyd in tow, bearing coffee and a bakery bag, and she’d burrowed into her bed, not even answering the door. She’d skipped the impromptu visit by her parents. She had been so certain that Baker would be there when she was ready that she had never considered another woman might step in, a woman such as Swan Seeley, a Gifft Hill mother who is going through a divorce and who told Ayers the afternoon that Mick proposed that she thought Baker was hot. And now here they are, Baker and Swan, standing by the driver’s side of Swan’s car, about to have a moment.
They’re talking, but not touching. Swan tosses her hair, leans her head back, raises her face to his. She lays her palm on Baker’s strong chest, and Ayers feels a pang of longing. The first time she saw Baker was at Chester’s Getaway, when he crashed Rosie’s funeral reception. He had seemed such a stunning, fresh presence in that sea of all-too-familiar faces, some of which were also all too unpleasant (Mick had had the gall to bring Brigid).
Troubles in Paradise Page 21
