The Moment of Letting Go

by J. A. Redmerski

  I know there’s no arguing with her about any of this. We’ve had this discussion many times since I started drawing a good income. I just wish they were more open to my help than they are.

  I sigh again and run my free hand through the top of my hair.

  Another call beeps through.

  “Mom, I have to go. It’s the client.”

  “OK,” she says, already her cheery, smiling self again so quickly. “But call me when you get a chance and let me know how everything’s going. I just know you’re going to have a wonderful time.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you soon.”

  I rush through the day in a nerve-racking haze, barely stopping long enough to take a bathroom break.

  Working long after the sun is swallowed up by the Pacific, we finally call it quits minutes after eleven o’clock, and I take immediate advantage of it. Instead of hanging around long after everyone else has turned in for the night so I can triple-check everything, I call it a day and go straight up to my suite.

  I take a long hot shower, and I’m asleep moments after my head hits the pillow. Before I fall asleep, I find myself thinking about that guy in the red and black wetsuit. He was gorgeous from where I was standing—but I’m not here for that! Maybe Paige is rubbing off on me.

  I wipe the guy from my mind and eventually fall fast asleep. I dream about that dreaded wrench all event coordinators fear will be thrown into the gears and ruin everything. It’s always there, looming in the back of my mind.

  And then it happens.

  THREE

  Sienna

  After putting on my makeup, I glance at the clock beside the bed just to make sure that I’m not running late, and am relieved to see that it’s not even eight in the morning. I’m not expected downstairs for another thirty minutes. But when my cell phone starts vibrating in my hand and I see that it’s my boss, Cassandra, I get a panicked feeling in my gut.

  “Hello?”

  “Sienna,” Cassandra says into the phone with a frantic tenor in her voice, “what on earth is going on?”

  “I-I don’t know. What do you mean?”

  My heart is beating a hundred miles a minute all of a sudden.

  “Mrs. Dennings called me,” Cassandra says, “saying something about the caterer thinking he was supposed to be on Oahu a day later”—my palms are sweating—“and that the band received a cancellation notice? Sienna, I don’t know what this is all about, but you need to call me back as soon as you find out.”

  My head feels like it’s on fire. I can’t imagine how high my blood pressure is right about now, but it would undoubtedly alarm a doctor.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll call you right away. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. I’ll get it cleared up.”

  “You better. If I lose this client, you lose your commission … and maybe more than that.” The acid in her voice, although laced with regret for having to resort to threats, burns right through me.

  I hang up and step into my heeled sandals, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I swing open my room door and rush down the hallway to the elevator. When the doors open on the ground floor, I pick up the pace and practically glide toward the reception building.

  It’s a nightmare. And possibly the beginning of the end of my career. Veronica, the Evil Queen of Oahu, went behind my back and made phone calls to all the vendors even after I told her I had it under control, telling them God knows what. She must’ve done it later in the afternoon, after Paige made the calls for me, because everything was on schedule at that point.

  Mrs. Dennings chews me out for a good five minutes, embarrassing me in front of at least fifteen people. I could tell Mrs. Dennings that Veronica is the one who did all of this, but now isn’t the time to point fingers. What little time there is left, I know I have to use trying to fix what Veronica broke.

  Paige is nowhere to be found, having no idea what’s going on and still thinking she doesn’t have to be down here for another half hour. But I can’t even will myself to call her to help me because I know Paige, and she might make things worse by saying something to get us both fired. Paige’s fuse is much shorter than mine.

  “This is a disaster,” Mrs. Dennings tells me with an angry pinched mouth. Her arms come uncrossed and she gestures her hands out in front of her angrily. A muscle begins to twitch rapidly at one corner of her mouth. “I hired Harrington Planners because I thought they were the best. And I will not accept anything less than the best for my daughter. Did I make a mistake?” Her glare pierces me like a hot poker to the face.

  My mouth is incredibly dry. I can’t think straight, much less answer her straight. I need to buy some time, although I know that time is both expensive and elusive this close to the wedding tonight, and I’ve got to think of something quick.

  If I can’t buy time, I’ll have to manipulate it.

  “I’m on this right now,” I say, putting up a hand as a sign of assurance. “I don’t know how any of this happened”—a total lie—“but I’ll fix it.” I start to walk away, putting my phone to my ear as the caterer’s number begins to ring. “Ten minutes!” I call out to Mrs. Dennings as I get farther away. “Don’t worry about anything!”

  I’ve never lied so much in my life in such a short time.

  Four minutes on the phone with the caterer and after some begging and convincing and an offer to pay a convenience fee, they were able to rework their schedule to squeeze us in for today. I’m assuming Veronica told them the wrong day by accident when she called to verify—I don’t even want to know.

  One disaster down, one to go.

  Wiping beads of sweat from my forehead caused mostly by the stress and not the heat, I scan the contacts in my phone—ignoring the stream of text messages from Paige—for the number for the band when Paige walks up briskly.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Paige says, a scowl etched in her face.

  “What is it now?” I ask, exhausted, afraid of the answer.

  Paige stops and motions her hands up and down in front of her, indicating her clothes.

  “Does this look ‘suitable’ to you?” She makes quotation marks with her fingers. “These shoes cost more than Mrs. Dennings’s facelift,” she snaps. “Yet it’s still not good enough for her. I think she just has it out for me.”

  I put up my hand to stop her, not looking her in the eyes, but at the ground instead.

  She hushes in an instant.

  “I can’t deal with this right now,” I say, throwing my hands in the air, surprising not only her, but myself. “Paige,” I say more calmly, “just stay as far away from Mrs. Dennings, Veronica, and the wedding as you can, OK?”

  Paige blinks, stunned.

  “Please,” I say before she has a chance to start with the questions—in addition to everything else that’s gone wrong, I feel like the worst best friend in the world. “Just go to your suite, or hang out with the bartender—whatever you want to do. I don’t care right now. All right?”

  Baffled by my reaction, she stands there with deepening creases around her blue eyes.

  “But what about—”

  I turn my back to her and walk away, leaving her standing in her statuesque form, and with the rest of her words on her tongue.

  Where I’m going, I have no idea, but I know it’s not to do any of the things I should be doing. I have to get away. I need to clear my head. Or jump into the ocean and let a wave sweep me out into oblivion, never to be found again. I should be tougher than this! Working in this kind of hectic environment and feeding off the stress instead of letting it feed on me, I’m usually good at. Maybe two years of running my butt off nonstop and trying to prevent disasters has finally caught up with me.

  I drift farther away from the building, my feet going smoothly over concrete until the concrete becomes sand and it’s harder to trek through in my favorite blue-mint heeled sandals. Shoes I never would’ve worn to do a setup, but felt obligated because of Mrs. Dennings’s excessive expectations of o
thers.

  Steady footing becomes wobbly and uneven as my heels sink into the sand step after step. But I keep on walking, letting the sounds of voices and vehicles and other manmade things fade into the background, replaced by the crashing of the waves against the shore. The light wind brushing through the trees and the nearby bushes are becoming more numerous the farther I drift. The birds. The sand crunching beneath my shoes. I want to shut myself off from the world just long enough to breathe, but the voices and images swirling tumultuously inside my head are too loud and only drown out the peaceful things that nature has to offer.

  As unexpected as having the wind knocked out of me, my fuse finally burns to the end and I fall against the sand on my bottom and bury my face in my hands, sweat and all. My eyes begin to burn as I smear mascara into them, but I don’t care. I don’t care if I look like a raccoon when I go back into that building—sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air.

  “Are you all right?” I hear a voice say.

  Raising my eyes from the confines of my hands, I look up to see a tall, gorgeous guy in red swim trunks standing over me—the same guy who was looking at me across the beach in the red and black wetsuit yesterday. The same guy whose brief glance made my stomach flutter.

  FOUR

  Sienna

  Although I only saw him from afar, he has the kind of face that would be hard to forget: defined cheekbones brushed by a five-o’clock shadow. Deep hazel eyes that seem to contain everything between devotion and mischief, framed by tousled golden-brown hair, short in the back but a little longer on top. It looks like he woke up this morning, shuffled his hand through it a few times, and, voilà, perfection.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say with no distinguishable emotion, wiping underneath my eyes with the edges of my thumbs.

  I quickly pull the ends of my skirt farther down near my ankles to make sure I’m not on display.

  “I see,” he says, crossing his arms loosely over his plain white T-shirt. “You must not be from around here then.”

  I look up at his tall, tanned form looming over me and brace for the same tourist treatment that Veronica received.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” My nose wrinkles around the edges.

  The guy smiles, close-lipped, and though it’s charming enough that it borderlines infectious, I’m not sure what to make of it.

  “Well, people from Hawaii,” he says matter-of-factly, “when they cry like that, it usually means something’s wrong.” He shrugs.

  I blink confusedly and just stare up at him for a moment.

  I’m not crying.

  “Is that so?” I say out loud, my voice faintly laced with sarcasm. “I’m curious to know where you think I could be from then, based on that observation.” I’m usually not this impolite, but he caught me at a really bad time.

  His lips turn up faintly, matching the charming look in his eyes.

  “I dunno,” he says. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  I look away and down at my phone crushed in one hand. A stream of unread text messages from Paige await me. Sighing heavily, I drop the phone on the sand beside my shoes, not wanting to think about any of that right now.

  The silence grows between us.

  I wonder why he’s even still standing there.

  Finally I stand up and dust sand off the back of my long flowered silk skirt, and then my hands. My heels sink deeply into the sand again, causing me to lose my balance. I catch myself before I fall, but it doesn’t stop him from collapsing his hand around my elbow, just in case. My stomach flip-flops a little when he touches me, but I quickly brush that aside.

  “Well, I’ll leave you alone then,” he says suddenly and takes a step back. “Whatever it is, just let it go. You’ll feel better a lot sooner.” He smiles. His strange advice seems sincere and not at all arrogant or all-knowing—this alone makes me infinitely curious to know more about him.

  He starts to walk away, his white T-shirt clinging to him in the breeze, his bare feet moving easily over the top of the sand as if he’s had time to master it, but then something urgent grows inside me and my mouth suddenly has a mind of its own.

  “I’m just under a lot of stress,” I call out, finally giving him an answer, and stopping him in his tracks.

  He turns to face me.

  Nervously I glance down at my toes and the blue-mint beads running along the bottom strap of my sandals, buried partially by the sand.

  He walks toward me again, but I don’t look at him. It feels awkward to look. I don’t want to risk giving him the wrong idea.

  “That must be some serious stress,” he says, stepping back up. “To reduce you to tears.”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I point at him playfully. “I wasn’t crying though.”

  “Yeah, yeah—well, you do realize where you are, right?” he asks.

  I look around briefly without moving my head, not exactly sure what he’s getting at, but I think it’s mostly because he’s caught me so off guard.

  His smile softens around his eyes.

  “Hawaii,” he says as if making a very serious point. “People come here on vacation to destress, not to create more of it.”

  I kind of feel bad for dragging my issues over here from the mainland, like I’ve brought the plague with me.

  Finally I look at him with a steadier gaze. “I know,” I say with regret, “but I’m not here on vacation.”

  “Well, that’s your first mistake.” He points his index finger upward.

  “An unavoidable mistake,” I say. “It’s my job.”

  “Ah.” His head tilts back slightly, his lips parting. It’s as if he just realized something. “Well, that explains it, then,” he says with what seems like relief.

  “Explains what?”

  “Why you were hanging around that crazy chick yesterday.”

  I remember him seeing Veronica talking to me on the beach right after she stormed away from him. But I take immediate offense to his choice of words.

  “Well, that’s a little rude, don’t you think?” I cross my arms, letting my fingers drape over my biceps. “Not to mention whatever it was you said to her yesterday.”

  He laughs lightly and then looks at me with raised eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything in his defense. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I don’t like the arrogant vibes he’s putting off, and that’s a shame because I was beginning to like his company.

  Then something dawns on me.

  “It, uh … well, whatever you said to her, she probably asked for it, right?” I wince a little, feeling like an idiot.

  He shrugs his shoulders, his muscled arms hanging freely down at his sides, the white T-shirt stark against his bronzed skin.

  A breeze blows by, pushing the fabric of my loose, flowing skirt embarrassingly between my legs.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, ignoring my skirt altogether. “I should’ve known.”

  I stumble again—stupid shoes.

  “I barely know her,” I go on, pointing at him briefly, “but what little I do know doesn’t help her case any.”

  He chuckles and then crouches down in front of me.

  Surprised by the sudden movement, for a second I can’t move anything but my eyes, which follow him. His fingers lightly touch my foot as he unzips the tiny zipper at the back of my sandal, collapsing the other hand around my ankle and then easing my foot out. There’s that fluttering in my stomach again; my skin breaks out in chills—I hope he doesn’t notice. Baffled by this otherwise intimate gesture, I still can’t do much but stare down at the top of his golden-brown head, my lips parted and my eyebrows scrunching up in my forehead. When I don’t protest, he takes off the other shoe, and before long I’m standing on the sand in my bare feet. He pushes himself back into a stand two inches taller than me and places my sandals into my hand, hanging them on my fingers by the thin straps.

  I stare at him in bewilderment, swallowing nervously.

  “Umm, so what e
xactly did happen yesterday?” I ask, feeling the need to change the subject—not because I was offended by what he did … No, I certainly wasn’t offended.

  It was something else.

  “Luke Everett,” he says, holding out a hand to me.

  I glance down at his hand and back up at his gorgeous sculpted face and deep hazel eyes, undecided what’s confusing me more: the way he’s smiling at me or the way he keeps avoiding my questions.

  “My name is Luke,” he repeats, urging me to shake his hand the charming smile never faltering. “We should get that much out of the way, I think.”

  Reluctantly I place my hand into his, and in an instant I feel a sense of security.

  “Sienna Murphy.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sienna,” he says while still holding my hand.

  Finally he lets go.

  “To answer your question,” he says, “she came over to talk to me, and when she asked me to show her how to surf, I told her—as I would any other customer—that I was already booked for the day and that she’d have to set up an appointment.” He laughs lightly, shaking his head. “She didn’t like that much.”

  I make a face just thinking about it.

  “I saw you talking to her yesterday,” he goes on. “That worried me a little. Thankfully you’re nothing like her—that would’ve been a disappointment.”

  Luke sits down on the sand, drawing his knees up and resting his forearms atop them.

  “You teach surfing?” I ask.

  He nods. “Yeah. I’m not a pro, but I know my way around the waves enough to offer lessons.” He points in the direction of the hotel. “I work part-time for the surf school.”

  I smile on the inside, assuming that the girls in his group yesterday were likely just customers. I drop my sandals and sit down next to him, crossing my legs underneath my skirt.

  “Then I guess you’re not just some stuck-up surfer with territory issues?”

  He laughs.