by Amelia Wilde
The cab. Focus on getting to the cab.
The rental car is the original deceiver. When I climbed into its newly vacuumed interior at the tiny rental between Ruby Bay and Lakewood, it soothed me into thinking that this was going to be all right. I rode the high of that scent all the way through the dawn and into the city, where I dropped it off at the big-city twin rental place, which had a parking lot so cramped I worried the rented Hyundai Elantra wouldn’t squeeze into the spot. I climbed out of that little beauty and straight into the August swelter.
I’ve made one huge mistake already.
I make my way out to the cab stand by the curb, pulling my suitcase behind me. I brought only the necessities for this trip, with a plan to have the housekeeper box up everything else and ship it out. I’ve got clothes I can mix and match to get through the week at the office.
But all of those clothes are now wrinkled in the suitcase, and the cute outfit I put on this morning is instantly damp with sweat.
I force myself not to think of Ruby Bay. Ruby Bay isn’t going to help me overcome anything in my life. Ruby Bay, with its clean, pleasant water and its constant soothing sound in the background, was only ever a stopping point. It could never be a destination.
It was the destination for your uncle.
My brain is an asshole. It wasn’t really my uncle’s “destination,” only his summer home. This summer, he’s in France. That’s why his house was there.
It’s too early for it to be this hot. Eight a.m., and I swear I’m seeing a mirage of Ruby Bay across the street. I blink it away, along with a few errant tears.
A yellow cab ambles down the block. I wanted to go to Driver’s house last night and tell him…something. Anything. But that felt too much like giving up.
It takes the cab a full century to get to the cab stand and the driver hops out. I wave him off. My suitcase is small enough to fit in the back, and I haul it in behind me. My skirt twists underneath my ass as I sit down and pull the seatbelt across my lap, and I mourn the loss of my put-together appearance as I give the cabbie the address of the building where Windspire has its offices.
We hit traffic within five blocks. Eight in the morning, and this corner of Manhattan is surging with cars, honking and cutting each other off. It takes fifteen minutes to go half a block and the cab’s air conditioning stutters. “I’m sorry, miss.” The cabbie pounds at the dashboard with one fist. “It never does this.”
“It’s no problem.” It is a problem, because now I’m in the position of stripping off my short-sleeved blazer and sitting here while my pink shell goes from damp to dripping. At this rate, I’m not going to get there at all.
Some wild hope in my heart takes flight at the idea of never making it at all, but that bird is quickly swatted out of the sky. I am not here to get fired for being late on my first day.
I check the location on my phone. It’s four blocks away, and if I leave now…
The cab’s credit card machine is down, so I dig through my purse to find cash for the fare and climb out onto the sidewalk. At the first intersection I turn back. The cab is in the same spot. That’s a small victory, at least. Having to put the blazer back on is not.
One more block in the heat, and I’m wishing I’d stayed in the cab.
Combined with the humidity, the heat is making it hard to breathe. My hand slips on the handle of my suitcase.
And—no.
A thousand times no.
The nausea comes on like a slow-rolling wave.
I regret the iced tea I had this morning.
I regret the bagel.
I regret everything.
Head up. Chin up. I stand tall in my kitten heels and march forward. I’m two blocks from the office. Surely, the office will be cool, and I can take a minute in the bathroom to collect myself.
I make it ten steps, then fifteen…
And then I have to drop my suitcase and sprint for the next corner.
I’m not fast enough. I slap my own hand over my mouth hard enough to leave a mark as my stomach heaves and put on a final burst of speed. I collide with the garbage can at top speed, catching myself with my hands and leaning over for what is surely the finest moment in my life, bar none.
The problem I run into is that the garbage can smells so rank that every time I gasp in a breath, I get another lungful of it, and that makes me retch even more. I am in hell. I must be, because hell is wanting to stop puking but being unable to leave the only thing that lets you puke with the slightest amount of dignity.
Another century later, I’m only dry-heaving, and that means I can stand up and move away from the vile container. My suitcase is blessedly still in the middle of the sidewalk. I go back to retrieve it without looking to either side, but halfway there, it occurs to me that nobody cares.
This is New York City.
If I’d been in Ruby Bay, some kindly person would have rushed to my side. They might even have made me pancakes. But I’m not in Ruby Bay anymore, Toto.
I yank the suitcase to a roll behind me and march toward the Windspire offices on weak knees, counting down the numbers on the buildings. Closer and closer until…
The number on the building matches the address I have, and I take in a big breath. It’s a wide, graceful tower, and the logo for Windspire is right there on the door.
I wait for my heart to speed up, and for relief to set in, but all I feel is resignation.
I take a step closer to the doors and they whoosh open, letting out a blast of cold air, and I follow it inside. Being caressed by air conditioning shouldn’t make a person’s heart sink. It should make mine soar, after that cab ride and the puking and everything else.
Right—the puking. I dig into my purse and come up with a container of mints. The mints should make everything perfect.
A woman sits at a large, round desk with the Windspire logo on the front, and she smiles warmly as I step up to the desk. “Good morning. How can I help you?”
“I’m Holiday Taylor. It’s my first day.” Why am I choked up about this? Why? “I’m supposed to meet Wendy Limkins.”
“I’ll let her know you’re here. You can take a seat, if you’d like.”
All of this was a mistake. The suitcase, the outfit—all of it. I want to be at Ruby Bay. Not even that—I want to be with Driver. I don’t sit down, because my skirt needs time to air out. Instead, I consider going right back out the doors. I trace a path from where I’m standing to the sidewalk, taking in all the elegant tile in the middle…
This isn’t worth it. It’s a realization as cold as the air conditioning. I’m here because I wanted to prove that I could make it in Manhattan, but nothing in this office is going to give me what I really want.
“Holiday?” I turn around to face a woman in a pink skirt suit, her dark hair coiled at the back of her head. “I’m Wendy Limkins. Welcome to Windspire. We can head straight up to your new office, and you can get started.”
I shake her hand. “Sounds great.”
“How was your trip in? I know it was short notice, but we’re so glad to—”
“Actually, no.”
“Excuse me?” Her smile is as warm as the receptionists, only it’s full of confusion.
“I can’t. Get started today, that is. I won’t be moving to Manhattan.” The weight pressing into my chest falls away, and once it does, I can feel how heavy it was. “I’d love to work as an editor for Windspire, Ms. Limkins. I really would. But the internet exists, and book files are digital, and there’s no reason why—” I stop. All of this is beside the point. “I need to be with the father of my baby,” I announce. “I’m not moving to Manhattan. Please give me a call if you’re willing to take me on as a freelancer, and thank you so much for the opportunity.”
The receptionist stares at me, mouth open, eyes wide.
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” I tell Wendy Limkins firmly, and then I wheel my suitcase toward the door. “I’m really sorry,” I call over my shoulder. “But I have
to go.”
A hand on my elbow stops me. Ms. Limkins has followed me to the door. “Are you sure, Holiday? Are you feeling all right?”
“I just puked my guts out in a garbage can two blocks from here, and I sweat through my clothes. I feel like hell. But the heart wants what it wants.”
She nods, looking somehow like she understands, and lets me go.
19
Driver
“This is over the top. Even for you, Drive.”
Beau leans against the doorframe at the front door of my house, watching me pack for Washington. Packing like this is the bane of my existence, and I’ve gone through six different configurations of my carryon so far. This is why I prefer to drive. I can pack however I want, and nobody at the TSA is going to screw with my stuff.
“It wasn’t my idea to get on a plane.”
“If we don’t leave soon, you’ll miss your flight.”
“Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?”
“For me, probably. Roman’s expecting me to get you there.”
I shoot Beau a look. “Then you shouldn’t have told him you were going to give me a ride.”
He shrugs. “It came up in conversation.”
“Again, not my idea to have a conversation with Roman.”
I take the last shirts I packed back out of the suitcase and toss them onto the couch.
“I’m cutting you off in ten minutes,” says Beau. “I’m going to have a sit.”
“You do that.”
There’s a creek as he sits in one of the wicker chairs on my front porch. I don’t know where the wicker chairs came from, and I don’t care. I honestly don’t care about anything, except the drumbeat of Holiday’s name. It’s stuck in my head, and it’s been repeating all night. I haven’t slept.
This is a mistake on a cosmic level.
Miracle girl, I said to her the first night we met. She seemed like a miracle then, all warm skin and hot kisses, and they burned themselves into my mind. Deeper. Into my soul. It’s the kind of thing I’d laugh at one of my brothers for saying, but I’d keep thinking about it long after they said it. I always wondered how Roman forgave Jenny for the infamous social media slipup, but now I know.
And it’s too late.
Holiday’s gone.
If you think I didn’t walk to her house this morning at the asscrack of dawn to make one last attempt at…I don’t know, a compromise? A conversation? Anything? You’re out of your mind. Of course I did. I sprinted down the sand in the half-light of dawn and found an empty house waiting for me.
Thinking of her is not helping me pack this carryon with the right clothes to get me through the next two weeks. It’s not the amount that matters so much as the combination. I never have to worry about this. I drive. I drive, and that means I don’t have to play these torturous mind games while my heart stabs me with every beat.
“Is he ready yet?” Charlie’s voice on the deck is the last thing I need to hear.
“Can you two find anything else to do?” I shout at them.
“If I don’t stay, you won’t go to the airport,” Beau shouts back. “And then you’ll get fired.”
“I don’t think it would be that bad to get fired at this point.”
“How can you be a Bliss brother and not work at the resort?” Charlie asks. He sounds out of breath, like he’s been running. The man has been running too much lately, if you ask me. The financial stuff must be a bigger deal than I thought, or else he’s disproportionately stressed out about it. Either one could be true.
“Ask Asher,” I fire back. “Does he even work here?”
No answer. Typical.
“Five minutes,” Beau calls. If you can’t see him, he sounds exactly like Charlie. This makes sense, because they’re identical twins. It’s weird that they don’t switch identities more often.
Or maybe they do, and I can’t tell the difference.
This is not what I need to be thinking about in this moment. I put one of the shirts back in the carryon. It goes with all the pants, and if I need to, I can buy t-shirts when I’m on the ground in Washington and mail them back to myself. I guess. Or I could just keep them there and start a whole new life under a false identity, which seems like less of a hassle than getting on the plane in the first place.
“Driver,” shouts Beau.
“Shut the hell up,” I call over my shoulder. “I’m almost done.”
“No—”
“Beau, if you can’t stop talking for five seconds, I’m never going to get—”
“He’s right, Drive,” says Charlie. “You should come out here.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rise like a supernatural energy has passed through my living room, which it has not. It must be something in the tenor of their voices.
“If I come out there and you guys are screwing around, it will be the last thing you ever—”
The cry is so faint I think it’s a figment of my imagination.
“Drive, come out.” I don’t know which twin says it, but this time I drop the shirts onto the open carryon and go out the front door. Both Beau and Charlie are looking in the same direction, their heads at an uncannily similar angle.
“What is—oh.”
Holiday is running up the gentle slope to our houses, her purse in one hand and a pair of high heels in the other. She looks so different that my first instinct is to blink, hard, to get my eyes to work. She’s dressed in a gray skirt and blazer, looking every bit the accountant, and her hair flies back over her shoulders.
“Looks like she belongs with you, Charles,” says Beau, and Charlie slaps him on the arm.
“Driver,” she yells.
She’s crying.
I move toward her without another thought, taking the stairs two at a time and sprinting down the narrow walk to the pavement. Holiday lifts her head and sees me and a sob tears from her throat. I can’t get to her fast enough, and once I do, I can’t see enough.
“Are you all right?” I check her head for wounds. She’s crying so hard that she must be hurt. There’s no blood on her head, so I scan down over her shoulders to her wrists. “Hey. Talk to me. Are you all right?”
“I fucked up,” she screeches, her voice echoing off all the other houses on our street. “I made a mistake, Driver. It was a mistake to go to New York and be without you for even a second.”
“It’s all right.” I kneel down and check her legs. Her feet are dirty. “Did you step on something?”
“God, no, I didn’t step on anything.” She grabs a fistful of my t-shirt and pulls me up to standing. “I got to the city and it was terrible. I threw up in a garbage bin, and I couldn’t get away from it. And I realized—” She hiccups, the tears running down her face. “I’m in love with you, okay?” Her voice rises, almost to a scream. “I love you. And it’s stupid because we don’t know each other that well. I mean, we’ve had sex an absurd amount of times, but I don’t know where you went to high school.”
“I went to high school in Ruby Bay.”
“Ruby Bay! Fine!” She throws her hands up. “I want to know you. I want to spend every day knowing you. And I want our baby to know you. And I don’t care what I have to give up. I’ll give up a hundred jobs.”
I smooth her hair away from her face. “You gave up your job?”
“Why would I keep a publishing job if it meant being away from you?” She wipes furiously at her eyes, but more tears come. “You scare the shit out of me, Driver. I would always be outside my comfort zone with you. But I don’t care, because no comfort zone is worth being away from you. Do you get it? I love you. I love you.”
I laugh because I’m so happy, and because this is so insane, and because this incident is sure to go down in Bliss Resort history. “I love you too, and I don’t know why. You like to stay inside way too much, and you don’t seem to get that being inside a car is still…being inside. We can stay inside all the damn time if you want, as long as we can take some trips.”
“Oh, hell, n
o.” She brandishes a finger at me. “You’re not giving up your travel. I’m the one who got to make the grand sacrifice, and you will not take it away from me. Do you hear me?”
“Everybody hears you. You’re shouting so loud.”
“It’s because I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I can’t hear you,” she shouts.
“I love you, too.”
And with my idiot brothers cheering from my front porch and adding to the spectacle, I pick her up in my arms and kiss her like she’s a miracle returned to me.
That’s exactly what she is.
20
Holiday
Two weeks later
“Some stranger’s house at the Bliss Resort has never looked so good,” I tell Driver as he steers the car toward his house in the club.
He snorts. “Some stranger’s house. That’s your house now. You’d better get used to it.”
“We’ll see. I might want to keep traveling.”
Driver keeps a straight face for longer than I thought he could, then bursts out laughing. He reaches for my hand and gives it a squeeze. “I don’t see that happening. But as a housewarming surprise…”
My heart leaps. “You didn’t get a different house, did you? I agreed to come live with you under the condition that it’s this house.”
“I didn’t get a different house. I did have a chat with Roman the other night while you were at the gym.”
“Oh, yeah?” Exercising, in a shocking turn of events, felt good. I didn’t have a single episode of morning sickness the whole time we were in Washington. Though it could have been the constant proximity to Driver—hard to say. “About what?”
“About rearranging my work schedule.”
“Driver Bliss. You did not.”
Driver laughs, his face warmed by the evening sun. “I didn’t ask him for another job. I’m still going to be traveling, but we’ve…condensed the schedule.”
I wait.
