by Suzan Colon
“Kate,” Carson says, bringing me back to where I am, in his arms. “Kids say things. They don’t always mean them. I’m sure your father knew that.”
“I wish I knew that he did. We didn’t speak for a while after that, and then he died, very suddenly.” Tears fall silently down the sides of my face and into my pillow. “I should have taken it back. I should have told him I loved him.” But I couldn’t, because I never understood why he left us.
Carson sighs in the darkness. “I don’t know which is worse, saying the bad stuff or not saying it and just running away, like I did.” He turns my face to his. “We can’t change the past, but we don’t have to make the same mistakes. We can do things differently. Let’s make a pact,” Carson says. “We’ll always be honest with each other. Say exactly how we feel.”
I smile weakly at his attempt to make me feel better. “Okay.”
“Then it’s a deal.” He caresses my cheek, his eyes sweet and sparkling again. “Kate,” he whispers, “I’m in love with you.”
21.
“KATY,” MY SISTER demands, “what are you thinking?”
I’m not thinking. I’ve been eating mangoes and making love. Apparently for too long, judging by the message at the front desk that read only Call Bethany IMMEDIATELY, and from the parental sound of my little sister’s voice. Her angry words reach thousands of miles over the phone from her home in California all the way to the old phone booth in the front office of Emerald Cove, making me cringe. “You’ve been gone for two and a half weeks, Katy. Mom is asking me what’s going on with you because you won’t call her. Daniel even dared to call and ask me when you’re coming home. I gave him an earful before I hung up on him. Katy, are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” I say, though my more truthful answer is that I’m trying not to. Just like I’m trying not to see the ton of emails on the guest computer. I’ve been clicking through them as Bethy’s been talking to me, figuring that if I have to get hit with reality, I might as well lean into it. Not a good idea. There are automated notices of bills due and an alert with a big red exclamation point from the bank telling me that my balance is dangerously low. And Dina from Bon Voyage is very sweetly asking where my story is, which is editor-speak for I need it ASAP.
On the plus side, Now News says my blog about New Orleans is getting a lot of hits, and there’s proofreading temp work at another website. That would take care of next month’s bills, but it requires an in-person interview on Monday if I want the job. My mother and Bethy have sent a bunch of emails, and now I know those aren’t encouraging me to relax, have a great time, and not worry about coming home. There are also a few from Daniel that I don’t open, mostly out of some sense of guilt.
“Katy!”
“Yes, yes, I’m still here.”
“I know you’re still there. What I asked is what you’re still doing there.”
“Having a good time?” The time of my life, actually. I look out the window where rain is pelting the red hibiscus blossoms.
“Look, Katy, I’m glad you’re having a good time, but when do you plan on coming back?”
“Why? What’s the big deal if I stay here?”
I hear a sigh so impatient I’m prepared for Bethy to start the time-out countdown she does when my niece is being naughty. “Katy, I didn’t want to worry you, but Mom’s going extra-quiet. I think she’s having those weird chest pains again, and she doesn’t want to tell me.”
I feel a chill in my stomach. “What does her doctor say?”
“He says she’s fine, but it would be really great if you could check in on her. But you can’t if you’re there. I know you’re having fun, and you deserve it, but Katy, vacations have to end sometime. And how are you even affording this? Didn’t you tell me before you left that you were broke, with no paying work except for this assignment?”
“Yes, yes, I know. I just,” I sigh, knowing how my sister, as practical as my mother and usually as I am, will hear this. “I was just thinking of staying here for a while.”
Pause. “For how long?”
Damn it, where is that Kate person when I need her? “Uh, maybe indefinitely?”
“So,” my sister says slowly, “what exactly do you plan on doing there, indefinitely? I mean, to make a living.”
“Um, well, I could teach yoga.”
There is a heavy, disbelieving silence. “You could,” my sister says evenly, “if you were a yoga teacher. Katy, what is going on with you?”
“I’m in love.” The truth comes out, and I’m not trying to stop it. I think about the kind of person I was when I came here and who I am now. I learned how to surf and how to be impulsive, and I learned again how to be truthful. I hurt my father by being too honest, and I probably hurt Daniel by not being honest enough. But Carson has shown me the beauty in truth. He showed it to me last night when he told me he loved me. And I said it right back to him, and I meant it.
“You met someone,” Bethy states. I’m excited to tell her all about Carson when she goes on, “Someone you’ve known for two weeks, and now you’re in love. Never mind the fact that you were beyond crushed over Daniel not asking you to marry him. And you’re going to figure out some way to write from a surf and yoga camp in the middle of a jungle or pretend to be a yoga teacher, and you’re going to leave Mom alone in New York with no one to look after her, and I barely ever see you when you live in the same country, so now who knows? I’m sorry, Katy, but have you ever heard of a rebound romance?”
“Do you know what an incredible bitch you’re being right now, Bethany?”
I hear a gasp. In the background, Celia, my niece, starts to cry. “Bethy,” I say quickly, “Bethy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
My sister shushes Celia, making the same soothing noises she made at me just a few weeks ago when I was so devastated over losing Daniel.
I WALK THROUGH the rain without putting up my umbrella, the droplets plopping into the two cups of coffee I bring back to the tent. When I get there, Carson is nearly dressed, wearing his board shorts and pulling on a rash guard. “Bad news, your gorgeousness,” he says. “I’ve got to go to work. Randy’s got a stomach bug or something, and Evan can’t handle the group alone.” He searches the floor for his flip-flops, rooting through the small duffel bag he brought here the day after he convinced me to stay. “I’d have to go back to work in a day or two anyway. Juan’s not going to give me any more paid vacation.” He smiles as he finds one rubber sandal. “We should probably think about moving you into the Rat Hole tomorrow. The rainy season’s coming, so you won’t want to be in this tent, and besides, it’ll get a little expensive. My lodging’s free, so you’ll just move in to my room. It’s not exactly luxe accommodations, but—ah, there it is,” he says from under the bed. He emerges triumphant, holding his other flip-flop, and then he sees me for the first time. “What? Kate, is something wrong?”
“I have to go back to work, too,” I say, my voice small.
“You can write your article today while I’m gone,” he answers, though his face still registers that something is up.
“Carson.” I put the coffee down on the tiny bureau next to the seashell he gave me. “I have to go home.”
“No you don’t,” he says, his voice full of denial.
In the distance, I hear Evan calling. Carson looks toward the sound, torn, and walks over to me. “Look, I have to go, but we’ll talk about this later, at dinner. No, wait,” he says, frowning, “I’ll have to eat with the group. You could join us.”
I shake my head. “I’ll just wait for you here.”
“Kate,” he says, and then Evan calls out to him again. “I meant what I said last night,” Carson tells me. He frames my face with his hands and kisses me once, hard and deeply, a kiss meant to last me the day after he runs out of the tent. Or to last me a lifetime after I go home.
ALL THE LONG day, Carson is off teaching a new group of people just like me how to surf. I know he’s giving them the lecture
about safety. I can imagine the women in the group swooning as his sea green eyes look into theirs. I know they’ll laugh at Evan’s drawings of waves looming over little stick figures as he teaches them how to read the surf. This afternoon, they’ll walk into the water for the first time, excited and anxious but secure, knowing that Carson is there, right by their sides. By the end of the day some of these people who are just like me will have fantasies of what it would be like to stay in this paradise. And then, a week or so later, they’ll go home.
Thinking about all of this keeps me from being able to write the story I was sent here to write. By the end of the day, when I see Carson with the new group gathering at the communal table for dinner, I have half a story written, and not a great half, either. I watch as Evan introduces someone to the group, a lithe, dark-haired beauty wearing a T-shirt with an Om symbol on the back. It’s an easy guess that this is Emerald Cove’s regular yoga teacher, back from the family issues that took her away. I wonder if her mother was having chest pains and needed her daughter to look in on her.
Carson excuses himself and comes over to my table where I sat after the rain began leaking through the roof of my tentalow. “You okay?” he asks, touching my cheek.
“I’m fine.” I gather up my notebook and laptop. “Really. I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll bring you dessert,” he says, looking at me with longing as I quickly leave.
TRUE TO HIS word, Carson arrives about an hour later bearing a plate with a thick slice of pineapple cake on it. He sets it down on top of the bureau, one of the few pieces of furniture that can fit in the tentalow, and looks at my packed bag. “So that’s it,” he says flatly. “No discussion. You’re just leaving.”
“Carson, please, sit down,” I say, my hand on the bed next to where I’ve been sitting on the edge with my stomach in sad knots. After a moment of looking stung and wary, he comes over and sits next to me. He lets me take his hands in mine, our fingers making soothing strokes over each other. “It’s not that I don’t want to be here,” I begin. “It’s certainly not that I don’t want to be with you. And I meant what I said last night, too.” And then I tell him about Bethy’s worries about our mother.
“Could you check on her, make sure she’s okay, and come back?” Carson asks. I can tell from the sound of his voice that he knows the answer.
“It’s not just that. I need work, Carson.”
“I know Juan could find you something here.”
“Well, I can’t teach yoga anymore,” I say with a half-laugh. “The regular teacher is back. The real yoga teacher. Carson, I never even wanted to be a yoga instructor or sell surf equipment and sun block or even live in Costa Rica. You wanted to stay here because you fell in love with this place. The only reason I wanted to stay was because—”
I stop when he looks up at me suddenly. I can’t say the rest of it, not with my bag packed, knowing I have to leave him. I can’t even look at him. Until he says, “Then I’ll go with you.”
“What?”
He stands up. “It’s simple. We want to be together, and you have to go back to New York. I’ll go with you. It’ll take me half an hour to pack,” he says. “Nah, that’s silly.” He waves a hand dismissively. “I can pack and be ready to go in ten minutes.”
“Carson, please, slow down.” I stand up and try to get his attention, though I can see he’s already mentally going through his things back at the Rat Hole. “You can’t just quit your job and take off.”
“Why not? I’ve done it before.”
“You did it when your father asked you to do something you didn’t ethically agree with. You can’t do it to people you like who are your friends.”
“Well, Juan only had Evan and Randy before I got here anyway, but you’re right,” he agrees. I have a second of relief that he’s thinking sanely again when he adds, “I’ll give two weeks notice.”
“But, Carson, what would you do in New York?”
The question seems to throw him, and he shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ll work that out when I get there.”
I take a deep breath and press my fingers into my temples. I should be thrilled that this incredible creature wants to attach himself to me and follow me home, but my mother’s cautious training has kicked in, this time for Carson’s own good. “Think this through, Carson. As far as I know, you’re qualified to do two things: be a corporate number cruncher and teach surfing. You can’t be caged in an office, and it’s October, fall going into winter in New York. There’s not much surfing going on there at this time of year.”
He bites his lips and frowns. “You’re being really negative.”
“No, I’m being really practical. Something you don’t seem to be very good at,” I say lovingly, putting my arms around him. “Something I’ve been for most of my life, to a fault. Until I met you. Carson, I’ve always been such a practical, cautious over-thinker I can’t even imagine what I’ve missed out on. And there are some things I can imagine that I regret now, like trips I never took, or,” I sigh, “things I never said. You’re the total opposite, and the way you leap without looking has brought you to this amazing place. A place and a life that you love.”
I touch his chin to steer his face back to me, and I can see I’m starting to get through to him. “Carson, I love you. If I could think of a way for us to be together, I’d do it in half a heartbeat. But I have to go home, if not for my career, then definitely for my mom. And I can’t ask you to give up a life that makes you so happy. We can’t say we love each other and then do something that hurts the other person.” I trail off as tears begin to fall.
He doesn’t say anything. Not even with his eyes, which close slowly as he bows his head toward mine. His arms move around me, and we hold each other for a long time that I know to call for now.
Carson lifts my chin up, and he leans down and kisses the trails of tears from my face. And, just as with our first kiss, I know I’ll never forget the touch of his mouth to mine so filled with promises we can’t keep.
22.
THE NEXT MORNING, I wake up to the electronic beeping of the alarm in my laptop. I didn’t want to risk the howler monkeys going on strike for some reason and me missing my plane. The tides are already turning, I think as I roll over, hoping to spoon with Carson for just a few more minutes.
But he’s not there.
I sit up, gathering the sheet around my naked body, and look around, though there’s nowhere a six-foot-two surf god could hide in this tent. Carson is gone, as is his duffel bag and any evidence that he was ever here, other than the trace of kisses on almost every inch of my skin.
Then I see it on the bureau. A piece of paper tucked inside the seashell Carson gave me. Written in his neat print are only a few words:
There is something I’m afraid of after all.
A STORMY WIND gusts against me as I run toward the cove. I have to see him. I have an idea of how painful it will be to say goodbye, but I have to see him one last time, even though I know he wants to remember the way we were last night, when we were the closest we could be, gazing into each other’s eyes and saying I love you.
Panting, I reach the small dune at the top of the cove. When I look into the water, I only see Evan and Randy, two small figures bobbing in the grey waves. I have to yell “Carson!” into the wind a few times before they can hear me, or maybe they’re just guessing that I’m looking for him. Randy puts his hands up in a gesture that says they don’t know where he is. I want to say goodbye to them, too, but they’re in the water, and I only have a few minutes before my taxi will be here to take me to the airport. To take me away.
I run from the cove to the main beach, the sand slowing me down as though I’m in a bad dream. No one is there. At the Rat Hole, I knock furiously until a sleepy Anya answers the door. “Carson,” I gasp, “Is he here?”
She leans her tousled head against the doorframe. “No.” As I frantically try to think of where I haven’t looked yet, Anya asks, “Are you staying? Going to t
ry to get a job here or something?”
“No,” I tell her, “I’m going home.” Anya frowns slightly, as though she’s surprised, a wider range of emotions than she’s ever shown to me. “What?” I ask.
She seems to weigh whether or not she should speak, and then does. “He never had it this bad for me.” Before I can ask her anything else, she shuts down again, slipping into the shabby instructors’ bungalow and closing the door.
I’m ready to run and check the veranda, even the laundry room, when I suddenly realize where Carson has gone. When I do, I stop running. I walk slowly back to my tent, get my bag, and wait by the entrance to Emerald Cove for my cab. I’ll miss my plane if I ask the driver to make the two-hour trip to a beach called Heaven.
FROM PRACTICALLY the second I fasten my seat belt on the plane, I feel my sensible old self returning. As soon as I can, I turn on my laptop and methodically work on the story that’s due to Bon Voyage the day after tomorrow. When lunch comes, I eat the healthy parts, leaving the cake untouched. I get out my notebook, swiftly flicking past the pages where I wrote about Kate and Carson and Daniel, and I start a bullet-pointed list of things I have to do when I get home. All of this helps me not to think.
I can’t help but hear the couple in the aisle across from me. They talk about missing their kids and how the grandparents probably spoiled them so much they didn’t miss their parents one bit. They talk about how they have to shop for food, do laundry. My eyes close, as though that would tune out their beautiful talk of all the little daily things that make up a life together.
