by Jamie Pope
She shook her head. “Just that the wedding was off. I feel bad for Ava. I had to cancel a wedding a few months before I walked down the aisle. It must be terrible to call it off when your guests have already started to arrive. Something big must have happened.”
“Yes, she probably realized that he was the slimy, opportunistic scumbag that the rest of us already knew he was.”
“Whoa.” Hallie put her hands up in defense, but she gave him a little smile. “Tell me how you really feel about him.”
The kitchen door opened and his mother, Anita, breezed in. He hadn’t seen her in a few weeks, which was hard to do when they lived on an island so small.
“My baby is here!” She smiled brightly at him, but he couldn’t force his lips to curl in return.
“Hi, Mom.” He offered her a small, almost awkward wave. “How are you?”
She walked toward him, wearing a dress that looked more appropriate for a nightclub than a visit with her family. “I’m just great, sweetie. I’m on my way to meet my new friend. He’s taking me off-island for a little wining and dining.”
“That’s nice,” he said, not really meaning it. His mother was always with a “new friend,” as she called them. She had so many boyfriends by the time he turned fifteen that he had lost count. And each time she thought they would be the one. But it had been heartbreak after heartbreak, all because she never picked the right guy. It all had started with his father. A married man who never planned to leave his wife for his young mistress, even if that young mistress did get pregnant to force his hand.
She walked over, looking at him with a mix of love and dislike as she placed her hand on his cheek. They had always had such a complicated relationship. He looked so much like his father, and he knew that he reminded her of her biggest failed relationship, reminded her of all her mistakes, reminded her that she wasn’t quite good enough to make a millionaire leave his wife.
She was probably why he had never fallen in love. She had enough broken hearts for the both of them.
“How are you, Derek?” She kissed his cheek.
“I’m fine, Mom. I didn’t realize you were on the island.”
“I’ve been off and on,” she said vaguely.
“I haven’t seen you in a few weeks. I think we should have dinner and catch up.” Things were strained between them. They always had been, and Derek knew that it would just be easier to keep her at arm’s length, but he always made the effort even if it was continually rejected. She was his mother. He felt like she should be in his life.
His aunt Clara had come back into the kitchen, but his focus remained on his mother’s face as he waited for her answer. Her makeup was elaborate, not distasteful, crafted to make her look more youthful. Her hair was cut precisely in some sort of asymmetrical style that was popular with the teenagers in town. She looked more like his older sister than his mother, but that’s what happened when your mother was a teenager when she had you.
“Yeah, maybe next week,” she said noncommittally.
It was like déjà vu, little flashbacks to when he was a kid asking her to come to his band concerts or to see him perform on the debate team, or to one of his championship soccer games when he was in college. She had always made excuses, or promises that she couldn’t keep.
He nodded. Not surprised by her answer, not hurt by it, either, just curious as to what was going on in her head.
“I stopped by to see my mother. Where is she?”
“In the living room with Asa,” he answered.
“See you around, kid.” She winked at him and squeezed Hallie’s arm before she left again.
“My baby.” Aunt Clara practically pounced on him, wrapping him in a tight motherly hug. “I love you so much, Derek,” she whispered. “Just like you came from me.”
He closed his eyes and let himself be hugged. He knew his aunt loved him just like she loved her own child and probably twice as much as his own mother loved him. Maybe that thought should have comforted him, but it didn’t. It made him feel kind of hollow.
* * *
Ava lay in bed all day. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done that. Maybe she never had. She always had something to do, a task to accomplish, a job to complete, but now for the first time there was nothing ahead of her. She found that kind of terrifying.
Her stomach growled angrily at her that evening, forcing her out of bed and into the kitchen.
When she looked in the refrigerator she saw that there was nothing there but spinach and kale. Grilled chicken breasts and low-fat yogurt. It wasn’t the kind of thing a woman wanted to eat after a bad breakup. A pool full of hot fudge sundae with forty gallons of whipped cream was what she needed. Or something heavy and filling, something that would momentarily take away the empty sadness.
Her mother was not coming up from Costa Rica. Ava told her to stay home, that she needed a few days of alone time to think, to regroup. But she should have let her mother come. Her mother would have cooked for her. She would have made her world-famous double chocolate cake with the thick, creamy icing. And empanadas and a huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs like she used to do when she was a child. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had pasta or anything resembling a carb. She had eaten so many leafy greens that she was surprised she hadn’t grown branches.
Good food was another thing that Ava had given up for Max. It was even harder than giving up her great job and the high-paying promotion she was offered just before she quit. But she wanted to look beautiful for Max on their wedding day. She had given up pie on Thanksgiving and eggnog at Christmas and grilled beef in the summer and takeout every weekend. She had lost weight for him. Nearly starved herself to fit into a dress that she didn’t like.
From the kitchen she could still see it hanging on the rack. She hadn’t gotten the chance to fully look at it. Ingrid’s visit had stopped her in her tracks.
She didn’t think it was possible to hate a garment so much, but looking at it then just served as a reminder of all the things she had given up for a man who hadn’t respected her at all.
It had to go.
She walked over to it. Unlike the last time she attempted to view it, she yanked the zipper down and pulled the dress from the bag all in one motion. It was heavy, pounds and pounds of fabric and crystals and a train that would rival a princess’s. Lavish, over the top, unapologetically bold. It was everything Max was, and she felt her blood start to boil. For years she had ignored the little things about him that annoyed her. She had defended him when others called him callous. She had done everything to morph herself into a wife he could be proud of, and more than she was mad at Max, she was mad at herself for being so damn stupid.
She marched out her front door and tossed the monstrous piece of fabric into the yard. It needed to be out of the house, out of her sight. Unable to taunt her, remind her of all her wasted years. But even now that it lay in the sandy dirt, she didn’t feel her anger ease. So much effort had gone into that dress; so much effort had gone into building herself into a perfect woman for a man who didn’t deserve her. It wasn’t enough to have the dress out of the house. She stepped off the porch and kicked the dress, letting out a scream of pure frustration as she did.
It felt good to kick the dress. It felt good to let out some of the pent-up emotion she kept bottled up inside.
Don’t raise your voice.
Don’t be too opinionated.
Don’t ruffle feathers.
Be pleasant.
Be passive.
She kicked the dress again. She stomped on it, like she was stomping all the years of reprogramming she had done to herself. She took pleasure in seeing the pristine white fabric getting stained a greenish brown from the grass and dirt.
But it wasn’t enough.
She reached down and pulled on the bodice of
the dress, feeling more satisfaction as she heard the popping of threads, but still that wasn’t enough for her. The damn thing needed to be completely destroyed, all of its bad energy gone for good. She spotted a metal garbage can on the side of the house and a lonely bottle of lighter fluid meant for a charcoal grill. An idea took shape in her head.
She wondered how long it would take to barbeque a wedding dress.
* * *
Derek watched Ava from his window, completely in awe. He had gotten home from a planning meeting just a few minutes ago and was preparing to head into his workshop when he heard a strangled scream. He rushed to his window to see Ava jumping up and down on a massive pile of white fabric. He stood transfixed, unable to move, even though he knew it was wrong to watch such an intensely private moment. The Ava Bradley he had known, the incredibly put-together, icily beautiful woman, had disappeared. He was left looking at a woman so full of raw hurt and anger that even he felt the depths of it in his bones.
She was destroying her wedding dress. Her hands pulled furiously at the fabric, ripping it to shreds, little angry grunts escaping with every hard tug.
She must have had so much riding on this marriage. An entire life.
A memory of his mother flashed in his head.
Derek had been a kid, not even ten years old yet. He’d been crouched on the floor in his bedroom, staring through a crack in his door as his father told his mother that he never wanted to see her again.
You need to get it through your head. I’m never leaving her for you.
His father had a wife. His mother was his mistress. And that was one of the million times Derek wished he could have been born to normal parents.
But of course that wish was just too much to ask for. He watched rage take over his beautiful mother.
I planned my life around you. I’ve done everything to be with you.
And she had. Derek’s father was the most important person in her world. Way more than Derek could ever hope to be.
She had hurled a vase at his father’s head as he had turned to leave, letting out a guttural, primal scream as she did. Derek would never forget that sound. He would never forget how his father looked when he felt the glass shards bounce off the wall and hit his back.
You got pregnant, forced a child on me like it was going to magically make us a family. Your plan failed. I’ll take care of him, but don’t ever think that he’s going to turn out to be anything like my other children with you for a mother.
His mother destroyed the house that day. Throwing lamps and chairs, ripping up photographs, stomping on keepsakes.
Derek had called his uncle Hal because he was scared and didn’t know what to do, and he heard his aunt Clara’s voice in the background, ordering Hal to go get him and his belongings. That was the first time he’d lived with his aunt and uncle for an extended amount of time. Over the years he had stayed with them more times than he could count.
His mind snapped back to the present when he saw Ava, dressed in a flimsy nightgown, drag the metal garbage can from the side of the house to the front yard. She hauled the dress off the ground and dumped it into the garbage can before walking away. For a moment Derek thought that that might be it, but she came back with a can of lighter fluid and a box of matches. He watched motionlessly as she squirted the entire bottle into the can.
Something inside of Derek screamed at him to move.
He sprinted from his house and made it to Ava just as she lit a match. He caught her hand, blew it out and took the box away from her.
“Are you insane?” he shouted.
She looked up at him with shocked, angry eyes, and even though she looked crazy as hell, he still found her insanely attractive. “Are you trying to burn down the whole damn neighborhood?”
“Mind your business, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Yes, it does! Anyone who attempts to burn down my island becomes my concern.”
“Get over yourself. I’m just lighting the dress on fire. It’s in a metal garbage can. It’s not like I sprayed lighter fluid on your house.”
“But it’s windy, and you put enough fluid on there to have thirty-five cookouts. My house is full of wood and varnish and every other kind of flammable thing. There was a terrible fire on the island a few years ago that destroyed many homes. Just because you’re pissed that your scumbag fiancé turned out to be an even bigger scumbag than you thought, doesn’t mean you can put my house or anyone else’s in jeopardy.”
“The last thing I need is a lecture from you. Isn’t there a dolphin you could be rescuing or a citizen you could be lecturing about their civic duty?”
“I don’t lecture people. I’m just trying to stop you from being a pyromaniac lunatic!”
“All you do is lecture. It must be exhausting needing to be right every single moment of your life. Tell me, do you get nosebleeds from sticking your nose so high up in the air?”
He had never heard her speak like this; in fact, he rarely heard her speak at all, and when she did, it was in a quiet measured way. She always seemed to ooze class and elegance, and frankly she seemed like a snob to him. But today she was full of fire.
Literally and figuratively.
“Why did you choose to rent a house next to mine? There have to be dozens of rentals on this island.”
“Well, excuse me, Mr. Mayor. I don’t care enough to keep tabs on which house is yours, but if I had known that I would be living next door to such an insufferable jackass, I wouldn’t have rented here. In fact, I would have rented a house on the other side of the island.”
“Why don’t you do us all a favor and go back to where you came from? This way, I won’t have to worry about anything going up in flames.”
“You want me to move?” Her eyes went wide as she pointed to herself. “Well, that’s too damn bad, because I’m going to stay all spring and summer and possibly into fall. I’m going to throw raging keggers and hold a wet T-shirt contest and have a parade of unsavory, big-resort-building ruffians stomping through my house at all hours of the night just to piss you off. And there isn’t a thing you can do about it.”
“I could call the police and make a noise complaint.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “You would do that, wouldn’t you? I bet you were that kid in school who ratted out all the other kids. I can see the headline on the local paper now. ‘Annoyed Mayor Calls Cops on Heartbroken Bride.’ I’m sure your citizens will love you for it, too. Once they find out that you’re living next door to the ex-fiancée of the man who tried to ruin their island, I’m sure they’ll be over here with flaming pitchforks.” He saw more hurt flash in her eyes. It was clearer and sharper than the anger that was radiating from her body, and it made his own anger diminish. He wasn’t sure what happened between her and Vermeulen, but he knew it must have ended terribly. He almost felt bad for her.
“I wouldn’t call the cops. I like to handle disputes myself.”
“There won’t be any more disputes—just give me back the matches. Let me have this. I need to do this.”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t let you risk your safety or any of the homes on this island.”
“Then go to hell.”
She stomped away from him then and he was left feeling...he couldn’t describe it, but he knew he had never had an interaction with a woman like that before. And as he watched Ava’s retreating form, he was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be the last time they would be shouting at each other.
Chapter 4
Ava looked at the box of chocolate-covered mint cookies in her shopping bag and realized that she hadn’t bought a single ounce of organic, fresh, never-processed or frozen food. She had double-chocolate doughnuts and three kinds of chips.
She even had an entire block of cheese among her purchases because she
couldn’t make proper nachos without cheese. It was the first time since Maxime had proposed to her that she didn’t care about watching what she ate or how many calories were in a serving size. She didn’t care about getting enough protein or eating kale or how she was going to look in her wedding dress and on the arm of her handsome, rich husband. She was going to have wine tonight. Cheap seven-dollar-a-bottle wine that she really liked but had to pretend to not like to impress her ex and his snobby friends.
She was going to drink alcohol and eat ice cream with chocolate syrup and gummy worms and gnaw on a block of cheese, and she was going to enjoy every damn moment of it. As she grabbed the second junk-filled bag out of the trunk she noticed her neighbor’s classic pickup truck pull into his driveway.
Ava didn’t know why she hadn’t known that Derek Patrick owned the house next to hers. It was odd that out of all the rentals on the island she picked the one next to his. If she had known the young mayor had lived there, she wouldn’t have taken it. Things had gotten rather nasty between him and Maxime during the height of the resort debate. Max would have had a fit if he’d known she was living next door to a man he considered an enemy. But she was glad she hadn’t known, because she had fallen in love with the little candy-colored cottage. The road it was on was sparsely populated and away from the busier downtown. The scenery surrounding the home was lush, with wild flowers, tall green grasses and fruit trees. She was walking distance to a small beach that was only used by the residents on this road. She could go there whenever she wanted. It was paradise. But she hadn’t been to the beach the entire time she had been on the island. She hadn’t taken the time to enjoy herself at all. That was going to change. She wasn’t sure when she decided that she was going to stay for a long while. But it was probably around the time when Derek told her that she should move off the island.
She would stay just to spite him. Besides, she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She tried not to glance at him as he stepped out of his truck. She wasn’t so sure what it was about him that rubbed her the wrong way. It wasn’t the thing with Max. Any mayor going so hard to protect his island was admirable, but Derek Patrick was always just a little too good. The townspeople were full of stories about him. About how he housed a family when their home was flooded during a storm, about how he drove dialysis patients to their appointments when the community shuttle broke down. He even babysat for a single mother when her sitter canceled so that she could get to an interview. No one was that good. It just seemed unnatural. Everyone had a dark side, a bit of selfishness that ran through them from time to time, but not Derek Patrick. He was the island’s golden boy, and for some reason that annoyed Ava. And it irritated her even more that he was so good-looking on top of it.
