by B Ivy Woods
“So Jules, were you trying to block out the entire sun with that hat of yours? I’m sure if we all stood in front of you, we would think it was a cloudy day.”
Rae shook her head at Liv as she laughed at her own joke.
“I’ll have you know that I burn easily, so I bought the biggest hat I could find. Don’t think you won’t burn, too, just because your skin tans better than mine.”
“True, but that’s why I bought a baseball cap and sunscreen. It will—”
Liv stopped midsentence once she reached their destination.
“So this is where the parties happen,” Liv said as she examined their location. Rae spun around in a circle as she tried to take in the scenery. To her left was a decent-size pool with a swim-up bar. It had pool chairs, umbrellas, and tables. She thought she spotted menus, which made her assume that there would be servers that would take their orders right at their seats versus having to go up to the bar. When Rae looked to the right, down a set of stairs was a beach with beach chairs and umbrellas right off the ocean.
“Where do we want to go first?” Eve asked.
“Anywhere that allows me to sit under an umbrella because I don’t want to fry.” Jules fanned herself and adjusted her big sun hat. Rae took that moment to place her sunglasses on her face.
“Why don’t we head to the beach, so we can lounge or play in the ocean if we want?” Eve gestured to the stairs.
“You’re the voice of reason. Let’s go.” Rae smirked at Liv’s retort before the girls walked toward the stairs.
The girls found four beach chairs near each other and claimed them by leaving the beach things they brought with them on the seats. Luckily, the four chairs had two umbrellas already set up, so they didn’t have to worry about dragging one down from another set of chairs.
“How about the two of us go get drinks, while you two get towels for the group?” Rae said as she grabbed her phone. She saw that she had a notification, but ignored it until they were all settled at the beach.
“Sounds good. How about me and Jules go get drinks, and you and Eve go get the towels?” Liv said as she stood up next to the chair she selected. The group agreed and decided that they all wanted different flavored margaritas before they headed off in their separate directions.
Rae and Eve walked silently along the beach on the way to get some towels. Rae checked her phone and noticed another text notification. She ignored it while Eve spoke.
“How’s everything going?” Eve asked as she broke the silence floating between them.
“I’m fine.” Rae paused before correcting her statement. “It sucks that my automatic response is to say I’m fine when I’m not. I’m trying to change that habit, but it seems to be a hard one to break. I’m doing better than I expected, but I still feel heartbroken, still have a million questions that I would like to ask.”
“No one is stopping you from asking those questions. And I believe that habit is something we all do, and it will take time to break.”
“I know, but I am supposed to be moving on and getting over all this.”
“Sometimes, to take a step forward, we need to take a step back. Examine what happened, so we don’t make the same mistakes again.”
“But I feel like I am making a mistake by thinking about this so much.” Rae sighed as she tried to rein in her emotions.
“That’s okay. The breakup is still fresh, and you’re allowed to think about it fifty million times. Plus, you overthink anyway, so this isn’t shocking.” Rae nudged Eve in the stomach with her elbow before shaking her head. “But seriously, I get it.”
“I’m just…confused. If Flint wanted to be with Cassandra, he could just be with her. I would let him go if it meant that he was happy even if it was with someone else.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be with Cassandra.”
Rae lifted her sunglasses and glanced over at Eve to see if she was serious.
“Do you know something that I don’t know?”
“Nope. I just find it very odd how serious you two were, then for him to turn around and act as though Cassandra posing up against him was like a stab to the back. I mean, he wanted your opinion on how you felt about him running for political office. To go from that to the whole Cassandra incident seems weird. But stranger things have happened.
“Having that in mind, do you think it’s possible that the camera snapped what it wanted you to see and that you should talk to Flint? This time when you aren’t as upset? It doesn’t mean that you need to forgive him or jump back into a relationship with him. The conversation might just be you need to seek more information to make an informed decision.”
By the time Rae and Eve reached the towels, Rae hadn’t said a word. Eve’s advice was helpful, and she was trying to process everything to figure out her steps forward. She grabbed two towels and handed two towels to Eve before they set back on their journey toward the beach chairs.
“You know I thought we would be together and make it work this time. We are older and wiser and know more about what we can do to make this relationship work. Or so I thought.”
“There is still time to heal the rift between you two if that’s what you want to do.”
“That’s the thing, I’m not sure what I want to do.” Rae paused, gently pulling on her braided ponytail that had made its way over her shoulder. She then threw it back over her shoulder, where it belonged. She was happy she chose that hairstyle because it kept all of her hair in one place and allowed her to adjust her hair with ease. By the end of the day, chances were that her hair would be a frizzy mess anyway, but for now, it looked good. “Actually, that’s a lie. I love him, but this is a lot. Do you think reaching out to him would provide the answers I’m looking for?” Rae asked that question softly as if it scared her to find out what Eve thought.
“It could. But it could also open up a can of worms I don’t think you want to touch right now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to talk to him. After all, you are adults. What’s the worst that could happen?”
I get my heart broken all over again.
A little while later, Jules’ voice brought Rae out of her own thoughts. “Are you liking that book?”
She put the book she had been reading down at her side. She took her bookmark and put it between the pages before she closed the book.
“Yeah, it’s good. You get sucked in pretty easily, and it allows you to sit back and relax. It was a great purchase from one of the convenience stores at the airport.”
“Do you want to get into the water? Liv said earlier that it was great,” Jules asked as Rae took that opportunity to glimpse at Liv lying on her beach chair while Eve checked her email.
Rae smiled. “The playtime in the water and volleyball knocked the wind out of Liv’s sails.” Eve and Liv had been playing volleyball with some patrons of the resort and then went into the ocean to cool off. That turned into a lot of splashing of water, and now the result was Liv passed out on her beach chair and Eve scrolling through her phone. “I can go for a quick dip. Did you want to join?”
“No, I just got done reapplying my sunscreen.”
“Okay, well, you know where I’ll be.” Rae stood up and took off her bikini coverup. She then headed down the beach. The sand felt warm on the soles of her feet as she made her way toward the ocean. She glanced down the way and saw other people relaxing and playing in the soft pink sand, and the closer she got to the water, the more the salty sea smell took over her nostrils. Here she was, in paradise, yet all she could do was think about Flint. She thought about what he was doing right this very moment, or how much he would enjoy whatever activity she was doing. He was constantly on her brain, no matter how hard she tried to fight it.
She dunked her head in the water before rising to surface and trying to float on her back. She couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was ocean water that was flowing down her face. Rae took the time to lean back and enjoy the sun that was beaming down on her face. The sun’s rays help
ed her feel alive, which led to a smile forming on her face. She didn’t know how to feel or what she wanted to do, but at least for now, everything felt fine.
26
Rae wiped the drop of water that fell on her face. She was unfazed by it because the scene in front of her was mesmerizing. Here she was in the Crystal Caves in Bermuda. The walk down into the caves included over one hundred stairs, which made the journey feel even longer but helped build the anticipation of what they were about to see. The women enjoyed the stories their tour guide told, including jokes about the formations and what they resembled.
The formations were stunning but also maintained a ghostly quality to them. These formations weren’t just on the ceiling, but also under the water inside the cave. Rae took a few photos but mostly kept her phone tucked away because she was worried about dropping it into the water.
When the women left the caves, they headed back to the resort for an early dinner. They changed out of the clothes they wore to the caves and into nicer clothes for their meal.
“Should have tried this on before I packed it,” Rae told herself as she eyed the dark red maxi dress that was draped over her body. She dug into her suitcase and found some tan wedge shoes that she bought on a whim.
“Sometimes, buying things that you don’t need ends up coming in handy.” Rae put the shoes on and mentally gave them a thumbs-up. After her time at the beach yesterday, she had to wash her hair and rocked a wavier look. Then Rae headed into the bathroom to put on some makeup before returning to the living room. She was the first one ready to go, so she sat on the couch and played with her phone. She had been ignoring the text notification that she had received yesterday but figured that she couldn’t avoid it anymore.
Rae rolled her eyes at the message. This is now the third phone number she would have to block. She knew that she should take it more seriously, but the threats had been…empty besides the dead roses sent to her office. The messages always said something would happen if she didn’t stop dating Flint, but nothing ever did.
Rae played with the idea about who this person could be but tabled it when she heard one of her friends walking into the living room. She vowed to do more thinking and research when she got back from dinner.
Rae sat up in the middle of the night after she had been staring at the ceiling of her suite room for what seemed like forever. The group had gotten back from dinner hours ago, but Rae wanted to get some shut-eye before she did more research on who could be sending her these messages. Since she wasn’t getting any sleep soon, she needed something else to do. Rae put on a sweatshirt and headed into the living room.
She walked over to her fridge and got some ice cubes to pour into a glass. She then grabbed a bottle of water and poured half of it into the cup before walking over to the couch.
Something was bugging her about the whole picture of Cassandra and Flint floating around on social media thing. Although she had deleted her social media accounts a long time ago, she figured now would be a good time to fire them back up because she wanted to inspect the photo.
She found it and immediately felt a headache forming. She clicked on Flint’s name, since they tagged him in the photo, and skimmed his profile, but there wasn’t much to it. Or he had made a lot of his information private. She had forgotten that she had deleted him back when they broke up because the memory of their relationship was too much for her to handle. Rae went back to the photo and clicked on Cassandra’s profile. She found nothing obnoxious, but she noticed that her family seemed to follow some Pennsylvania sports teams pretty closely.
Something clicked.
“This can’t be what I think it is,” Rae muttered as she clicked over to Cassandra’s contact information. Nothing showed up, but Rae was not deterred. She took a chance and saw what Cassandra’s parents were up to because she knew at the very least something connected them to Gladys.
Rae found that Gladys and Marie Hopkins seemed to run in the same social circle as she expected, but there was nothing that popped out about her as she combed over her social media footprint. Although Cassandra had a younger brother, Rae skipped him and went directly to Cassandra’s father, Calvin Hopkins.
And the next few she things she found were what made her world standstill.
The more she dug, the more information she found that connected him to the person sending her those weird text messages several years ago and potentially sending them again as recently as the past few months. This man was in love with Philadelphia due in part because it was his hometown, but she could tell his passion for the City of Brotherly Love ran deep. There were at least twenty photos of the Hopkins’ and the Wests’ going on vacation together without the kids.
When she finally reached his contact information, her heart skipped a beat. The cell phone number that Calvin had listed in his profile area code was 215, which meant that at least at one point, he had a cell phone number with the same area code as the one that was texting Rae the vaguely threatening messages. She jumped up and grabbed a pen and paper and copied the number down from Calvin’s profile, and then found the number that had sent her text messages from several years ago and the ones that started sending her messages recently.
Rae gasped and had to catch her phone because she almost dropped it. “You have got to be kidding me.”
The numbers were almost the same; just the last digit was different.
What was she supposed to do with this information? She felt she could go to Jules, but didn’t want to wake her in the middle of the night with circumstantial evidence. She could go to Flint, but that would also open up a whole can of worms regarding their relationship that she didn’t want to deal with, even though she knew she had to at some point. She gathered the pen, paper, her phone, and a glass of water and tried to sleep on it even though she knew it would be almost impossible to do.
The next morning, she woke with a start. Based on the amount of sun shining into her room, Rae knew she had slept in.
She hopped out of bed and made her way into the living room, but no one was there. She turned around and hightailed it back toward the bedrooms and noticed that everyone’s bedroom doors were open. Her friends had left their suite, and she didn’t know where they went. Thinking they might have sent her a text message, she grabbed her phone and scanned her messages. She found one from Eve telling her that since she was sleeping, they grabbed breakfast, but they would bring her back some food and coffee.
Rae checked her other messages too and noticed that another day had gone by without Flint sending her anything. Although she understood if he had given up trying to talk to her, the thought of it still stung. She needed to figure out what she wanted to do with her love life and fast.
Looking around her room to find something to do, she figured the best course of action was to get ready in case the girls wanted to go shopping and exploring after she ate whatever they brought back.
As she was finishing putting on a light blue sundress, she heard voices outside of her door in the living room. She finished getting ready and headed out to meet her friends.
All the women greeted her with big smiles, and Eve handed over the breakfast they grabbed for her. She scarfed down the food, not realizing how hungry she was, checked herself in the mirror once more, and asked, “So what’s the plan for today?”
Liv answered, “We figured we’d take the bus to Hamilton and go shopping for souvenirs and see the sights down there if you didn’t mind.”
Rae nodded as she took the sunglasses she had placed on top of her head down and shielded her eyes with them. “I love that idea. I wanted to grab some jewelry for my mom anyway.” And with that, off they went to explore more of Bermuda.
When they got back to the suite, the girls were exhausted.
“Do you mind if I take a nap before dinner?” Rae asked the room. She saw that the girls looked at one another before Jules responded, “That sounds like a great idea. I might do the same.”
Rae raised an eyebrow at her.
“Wow, you must be tired because I don’t think you have ever mentioned taking naps in the time that I’ve known you.”
“Guess we’re rubbing off on her,” Liv piped in as she placed the things she bought on the kitchen island. “How about you both nap and we’ll wake you up before dinner?”
Rae and Jules both nodded and headed to their respective rooms. Rae set her souvenirs on top of her suitcase before sitting on her bed. She didn’t even feel her head hit the pillow before she passed out.
Rae slowly came to when she heard a knock on her door. She yawned as she stretched her arms above her head. The person on the other side of the door knocked again.
“I’m up. I’ll be out in a few.” Glancing out of the window, she noticed that the sun was setting, so she must have been sleeping for a few hours.
When she forced her body to get out of bed, she stretched all of her limbs. She left her room and immediately went into the bathroom to check the damage to her face and hair after that nap that turned into a mini sleep session. After thinking she looked presentable, she headed out of the bathroom before she realized something.
“Did I miss dinner? There’s no way that it isn’t after 5:00 p.m. now.”
Feeling somewhat panicked, Rae opened the bathroom door and noticed, once again, that her friends’ bedroom doors were all open too. Unless they were in the living room area, no one else was in the suite.
Shaking that thought from her mind, Rae grabbed her purse and left her bedroom. Thinking everyone might be in the living room waiting on her, she said, “Hey, ladies, I’m sorry about —” But the words died on her lips.
Her friends weren’t in the living room. But someone else was.
She could see the outline of a man standing near the sliding glass doors leading out to their balcony. The man’s attention was focused on the sun setting across the ocean from their balcony.
