by Meg Maguire
She stared out the huge window across the city. What would Dan be doing, right now? Probably sleeping in, after his bachelor party. Not that Dan was much for getting wasted and crazy. He was a pretty low-key guy. Or he used to be a pretty low-key guy. Who he was wasn’t so clear anymore.
She missed his passion. Their hectic, high-profile engagement had done a number on their sex life, and Leigh suspected he was readjusting how he saw her, no longer his girlfriend, but his soon-to-be wife.
When the fitter got to her knees to fuss with the hem, Leigh leaned close to her mother’s ear to whisper, “I don’t think Dan and I have had sex in nearly a month.”
“You’re very busy people.”
“No one’s that busy. We’re not even newlyweds yet. That can’t be normal, can it?”
“You and Dan aren’t normal people. And Dan is very ambitious. You’re lucky to have such a driven man, Leigh, really. Not like your father—”
“Ma.”
“A lot of girls in your position have husbands who don’t expect to do a thing after they get a nice tight grip on those celebrity coattails. Dan’s not one of them. You’re very, very lucky.”
Leigh knew she ought to feel lucky. The man she was marrying was her best friend. Or had been. She prayed they’d get some of that back, being away from everyone for two weeks. No, they would get it back. She needed to think positive. Still, a bit of reassurance wouldn’t hurt.
When the fitter excused herself to make a call, Leigh thought she ought to do the same. She padded back down the hall to her own room, shut the door and stood before the windows, holding down a button on her phone to speed-dial Dan.
He answered just as she was about to hang up, and his voice alone reminded her to breathe. “Hey, you. What’s up?”
“Hey. I, um... Oh God, I don’t know.” She laughed, already calming.
His tone was warm, but tight as well. “Everything okay? You sound kinda spastic, spazzy.”
She smiled at his teasing. “I guess I’ve got jitters, but I wanted to hear your voice, before I saw you. You know, at the altar.”
“You’re sweet. I’ve got jitters, too. Goes with the territory, right? Especially with the audience we’ve got watching. You’ll be fine.”
Leigh waited a beat for something more—an “I love you,” perhaps. It didn’t arrive, but Dan was stressed, same as her. And like her, he didn’t really know what he was doing. No script, just two young people nervous before their vows. Normal. The thing Leigh ached most to be. She glanced at her ring, its diamond blinking in the morning sunlight.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks. I just needed to talk.”
“Just breathe, and I’ll see you before you know it. I better go. I’ve got my brother on the other line.”
“Tell him hi. See you soon.”
“Bye.”
Leigh nearly hung up, but after a pause Dan added, “Babe?” He hadn’t called her that in months, and the name flooded her with relief.
She held back an impulsive plea—that they run off and elope, skip all the staged drama. “Yeah?”
“Sorry about that. It was her.”
Leigh’s brow furrowed. “Her?”
Dan laughed. “It was Leigh. She’s got bridal nerves.”
She went dead numb, head enveloped by an echoing, unnatural calm as she realized he thought he was talking to someone else.
“Babe?”
This time the pet name hit her like a slap. “Yeah?” her mouth replied, disconnected from her brain.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
“No,” Leigh murmured.
“I know right where you’ll be today. Every chance I get, I’ll try to catch your eye. I mean, this might be us in a few years. We have to be patient. If it’s supposed to happen, it’ll happen. You never know.”
The numbness faded, and in its place Leigh felt hot in her dress, constricted, felt tears boiling up to sting her sinuses. Her heart pounded in her ears, loud as a gong. “You never know,” she whispered.
“Don’t cry. I know the timing’s awful, but it’s not like we planned this. It’s worth it, we both agreed. You and me, we’ll have our time. Last night wasn’t goodbye, I told you.”
Leigh didn’t reply.
“Okay? Allie?”
She sucked in a breath. Allie. Allie. Her mind was too blank to supply a face, a remembered mention...not that it would help. “Okay,” she breathed.
“I’ll miss you while I’m away. You know that.”
No words came.
“I love you.”
That did it. Those words Leigh needed so badly, offered to comfort some mystery woman. Some Allie. Her hand shook as she pushed the end button.
She stared at herself in the mirror that ran behind the marble bar, at this stranger with her face, draped in a beautiful dress. Thoughts flashed and jabbed, but the numbness reduced them to abstract concepts. There was an Allie, who’d stolen Leigh’s pet name. Who’d kept Dan from taking Leigh’s call for four rings, on their wedding day.
The shock lifted, and behind the numbness was pure pain, so sharp it seemed her heart must be coming apart, cell by cell. Strange white sequins danced before her eyes and she leaned against the bar, feeling heavy and awkward, as though suspended on strings. The dress was shrinking, an invisible corset binding her too tight to take a full breath. The room blurred, and for a moment she knew it was just a dream. She’d jerk awake and everything would be as it should be, spinning walls and strangling dress all vestiges of a nightmare.
The room did come back into focus. The dress relented enough for her to catch her breath, and the spots abandoned her vision. She pushed up from the bar to find the bride in the mirror peppered with red blotches, eyes wild. Leigh saw only a stranger staring back, a scared woman of twenty-seven as ignorant as she’d been at seventeen, playing dress-up in yet another glittering identity.
She clutched the phone and raised her hand, drew it back...but no. Her posture crumpled. Now wasn’t the time to start smashing up hotel rooms like some out-of-control celebutante. Actually, perhaps this was the perfect time for that, but Leigh wasn’t that girl, no matter what the tabloids yearned to report.
She pressed a palm over her thumping heart, scared by the sheer pain of feeling this angry, this hurt. The rage was like an animal trying to claw its way out of her chest, but she held it down, as she always did. She forced her mind to practical matters. Decisions that needed making.
She should confront Dan.
No, she couldn’t.
She had to call it off. But then the press would hound her mercilessly and the whole world would find out about this.
What was the alternative? Go through with the wedding and deal with the fallout later? Her heart twisted anew, her hands trembling as she thought of faking her way through the ceremony, her jaw clenching and lips quivering as she imagined uttering her vows, hearing Dan recite his and knowing he’d already violated them. More likely, she’d run off en route to the altar in front of two videographers and an audience of hundreds, as public as humiliation got.
She rubbed at her chest, begging her heartbeat to slow. The satin seemed to mock her fingers, cool and smooth against her heated skin.
Leigh couldn’t remember the last decision she’d made for herself, but all at once, and for the first time in ages, she knew what she had to do.
She had to run.
Now.
She didn’t have the first clue what she wanted from her life, but she damn well knew it wasn’t all this—a three-ring sham of a wedding to a man who didn’t love her, a career of other people’s making, a city where she couldn’t enjoy a moment’s anonymity.
Her suitcase waited by the door, packed with two weeks’ worth of clothes and toiletries, passport and ticket in her purse, re
ady to go. The trip she’d so been looking forward to, the one she’d hoped would reconnect her and Dan...the mere notion was a hand around her throat. The tabloids had been salivating for Leigh’s fall from grace forever, and if she was doomed to reward their persistence, she’d give them a doozy—a gen-u-ine wedding day no-show.
She switched off her phone and slipped it into her bag, with no intention of turning it back on anytime soon.
As she wheeled her case down the hall, all was quiet, the elevator empty, the lobby peaceful. No small mercy, the press not having discovered she was staying here. She hiked her dress up to her shins and marched barefoot past Reception, through the door the stony-faced porter held, and into the cool spring air. She knew which long black Town Car was hers by the driver leaning on the hood, flipping through Variety.
“Hector.”
His brows rose and he stood, taking in her getup. “Good morning, Leigh. You’re early. Very early.” His familiar deep voice with its musical Haitian accent calmed her. “And you forgot your shoes. And your mother. Change of plans?”
“Change of plans” usually meant Leigh was being harangued by a reporter and needed to end an evening earlier than expected.
“Change of plans,” she agreed, and climbed inside when Hector opened the door. He shut it in his firm, reassuring way and she heard a thump as he stowed her suitcase.
Once behind the wheel, he lowered the glass. He aimed the car toward the exit. “Has your mother got her own ride sorted out?”
“Don’t worry about my mother. If she calls you, tell her I asked to go home, to the apartment. I need some time to think about things.”
“Ah. She being a mother-of-the-bride-zilla?” Hector teased. “You need me to drive you around before we go to the estate? Dramatic entrance?” He squinted at her in the rearview mirror, possibly noticing she had no makeup on, no jewelry, that her hair was still a damp tangle and her face flushed and mottled.
“We’re not going to the estate,” she said, feeling strangely serene. “We’re going to the airport.”
“Oh?”
She nodded, steeled in her decision. “I’m going on my honeymoon. Alone.”
2
WHEN THEY ARRIVED at LAX, Hector brought Leigh her suitcase and she wrestled herself out of her gown and into jeans and a T in the backseat, protected by the tinted windows. She dug her slip-ons from her luggage and glanced at her dress. It looked like the shed skin of some beautiful, mythical creature. She left it in the car.
To camouflage her identity and the tears she could feel brewing, she found and donned her big aviator shades and Giants cap. She swallowed all the rage and sadness and confusion rising in her chest, and forced a smile.
“Thanks, Hector.”
“It’s no trouble. Just my job.”
“My mom’s going to tear you a new one.”
He grinned. “I know.”
“Would you do one more thing for me?”
He nodded, and Leigh slid off her engagement ring and handed it to him. In place of the sadness she’d anticipated, she felt her back straightening, as though fifty pounds of pure dread had fallen from her shoulders.
“Give that to my mom or dad or to Dan, whoever you see first. And the dress. But try to avoid all of them for at least a few hours. Until I’m on a plane.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
She took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’ll be okay. I just need some time away. Thank goodness I’m already booked someplace where nobody’ll recognize me.”
He nodded and slipped her solitaire into his breast pocket. On impulse, Leigh did something she never had before—she hugged her driver. He offered a quick squeeze in return, as warm as professionalism allowed.
“You take care of yourself. I’ll dodge your mother as long as I can.”
She yanked up the suitcase’s retractable handle. “Wish me luck that there’s an earlier flight with room for me on it.”
He held up two sets of crossed fingers. “Enjoy your getaway.”
With a wave, Leigh said goodbye to the last familiar face she’d see for two weeks. She said goodbye to L.A., to the girl she no longer recognized as herself, and strode through the airport’s sliding doors and into the unknown.
* * *
THE FLIGHT SHE CAUGHT to New York was insanely overpriced, yet well worth it to feel L.A. dropping away behind her. If any of Leigh’s first-class neighbors recognized her, they were kind enough not to let on. It was the calmest six hours she’d passed in weeks, nothing but blue sky and white clouds, totally unlike the storm swirling in her head.
She’d failed to change her second flight, a smaller carrier that had no planes leaving before the one she’d already booked, the following morning. The idea of being alone in another hotel room with only her thoughts for company scared her, so she napped fitfully through the night in the airport.
She arrived in Bridgetown at lunchtime, though, sadly, her luggage did not. No clothes, no cell charger, no toiletries. Abandoned by her own belongings.
With a mighty sigh, she headed for the airport’s exit. As the doors slid open, the warm, scented air of the island enveloped her, the sun caressing her travel-weary body. By the cab stand, a group of three smiling men played steel drums. Just an extra touch to realize tourists’ stereotypical expectations, but it worked. Leigh’s panic faded with the song’s cheerful notes.
She’d be okay. There were plenty of clothes to be purchased here in Barbados, and her sleeping cell phone had enough juice to make a handful of calls.
Speaking of calls. She dug the device from her purse and turned it on with held breath. Alerts for voice and text messages multiplied as the phone roused. Though tempted to view Dan’s and find out if he’d caught on, she ignored them all, tapping out a text for her mom. I’m safe. Won’t be in touch for a while. Don’t worry, and please don’t follow. Sorry for the stress. See you in a couple of weeks. Leigh. As soon as the message was sent, she switched off her phone for good.
Leigh had a few hours before her final flight, and she spent it wandering the shopping district, buying a knock-off designer suitcase to fill with new clothes, then ate a lunch of fried plantains from a street vendor. It was easy to stay distracted here, amid all the colors and smells and sounds. And how lovely it felt, being any old visitor to these cheerful strangers.
At two-thirty a taxi dropped her off outside the city, at an airport on the coast—a tiny terminal with a large antenna, no runway. The roadside billboard proclaimed it Bajan Fantasy Airlines. A long dock led out into the glittering water, where a seaplane—a Cessna on water skis—bobbed lazily in the waves. As far as she knew, this was the only way to get to Harrier Key. She’d picked the resort island for its seclusion, booking one of only four private villas.
She walked through the terminal’s open door and into what reminded her of a bus depot. A dark-skinned woman in a salmon-pink dress stood behind a long counter, and a single passenger lounged in the waiting area, reading a newspaper. Leigh gathered her printed ticket and ID.
The woman greeted her with the gigantic Barbadian smile Leigh had gotten very used to while shopping. “Miss Bailey?”
Anonymity gone, Leigh fell back to earth with a thump. “Yes. That’s me.”
“I knew it! You know how I knew that?” the woman asked brightly, tapping on a keyboard.
“Not the tabloids, I hope.”
She gave her a funny look. “Tabloids? Dear me, no. I know ’cause you the only woman flyin’ with us this afternoon.”
“Oh. Right.”
More tapping. “And you’re all checked in. How about Mr. Cosenza?”
She flinched. “He won’t be coming.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yes, change of plans.”
“I’m afraid the tickets are non-refundable.”
“That’s fine. Sorry if it’s any extra trouble for you.”
“Not at all. You got twenty minutes before you take off. Help yourself to coffee or tea.” She nodded to a counter with carafes and a jumble of mismatched cups.
“Thanks.”
Leigh filled a rainbow mug and took a seat across from the other passenger. He wore jeans, and a linen shirt with the top few buttons ignored, his tan and the state of his overgrown brown hair telling her his vacation had been going on for some time. He seemed like a man with no place to go, in no rush to get there.
He caught her staring. His eyes were as blue as the water beyond the windows, and Leigh didn’t look away quickly enough to appear polite, so she smiled instead and gave a tiny wave. He smiled in response, then turned back to his paper. Leigh tried to keep her gaze on the ocean, though she stole a glance at her fellow traveler every few seconds.
Something about his ease attracted her. Leigh had been surrounded by L.A. people for so long—a species whose males preened as diligently as its females—that this man’s lack of styling struck her as refreshingly exotic. He was also nothing like Dan, which didn’t hurt. Taller, she suspected, generally bigger, more fair, with those bluest of blue eyes.
For the first time in what felt like forever, Leigh let herself imagine how it might feel to kiss a man who wasn’t Dan. What would he taste like? What would his skin smell like? How would his stubble feel, after she’d spent two years with a studious shaver? The fact that she could wonder such things had her breathing easier. She was hurt, not ruined.
The stranger folded his paper and called to the woman behind the desk. “Just the one, Jackie?”
“Just the one.”
“Right.” He turned to Leigh. “You ready to go?”
She blinked. “Go, like, take off?”
“Unless you feel like swimming.”
“No, I’m ready.” She drained her cup and rose to place it on the coffee counter. She looked to the man as she picked up her suitcase. “You do this a lot? Do you work on one of the islands?”
