Authors: Suzan Colón
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 try 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.
I try to picture Carson and me as this couple, him sighing about returning to the same ol’-same ol’ at his job, and I know I did the right thing in telling him to stay at Emerald Cove. His whole life is an exciting fantasy, an endless vacation. I want a quotidian reality, thousands of ordinary moments made special by sharing them with someone who sees the same joy in them that I do. I want forever.
In a way, I still get to have that with Carson. He’s changed me. He taught me how to be brave, the importance of trying new things, how to speak my truth, and even how to love. By being the person he called Kate, I can keep Carson with me, always.
MY CELL PHONE, sitting on my desk where I left it, is hot from being overcharged and bursting with messages from Bethy, Mom, and Daniel. I listen to a few from Daniel, all insisting we have to talk, before I start to delete them. Then I call my mother, who sounds happy that I’m home, though she doesn’t say so. And I don’t tell her how relieved I am to hear her sounding strong, because she hates people fretting over her. She assures me that she’s fine and busy with her boyfriend Vic besides, so we set up a date to get together at the end of the week.
Before we get off the phone, I say, “Mom, I want you to know something.” I take a deep breath as though I were about to go under a wave. “I love you.”
“I know that, Katy.”
“I don’t say it enough,” I tell her. “I just want to say it and for you to know that when I say it, I mean it.”
There’s a pause. “Do you know that I love you, Katy?”
Smiling while talking to my mother feels really good. “I do, Mom.”
The first thing I unpack is the photo of me walking confidently toward the surf with Carson by my side. I put this reminder of what’s possible on my desk where I can see it. Then I find my mermaid cell phone and place it next to my bed.
As soon as I look up, I see all the framed photos on the wall above my bed of my family in its various forms. From the distant past, Mom and Dad lean with big smiles over little me and tiny baby Bethy. Then there’s sullen pre-teen me, with Bethy grinning as she clings to our father on the rocky California coastline. In another, Bethy wears makeup for the first time, and my mother is in the background, focused on her work, her face set and serious. And then, in the past but like a hope for the future, there are so many photos of Daniel and me. We’re always smiling, looking like we’re in the kind of love that will last forever.
I take one of the photos of us off the wall to look at it more closely. “I’m sorry,” I tell Daniel’s frozen, beaming image. “I’ll always love you. But I have to let you go, too.” I know this isn’t enough. I have to tell him. He’s still holding on to this image of us, but it’s not true anymore.
One by one, I take the photos of our past and my hoped-for future off my wall.
MY EYES SNAP open from bright sunlight. It illuminates the clock next to my bed, and I bolt upright and blink wildly at the late hour, groaning loudly. I’d meant to get up early, but I’ve been out of the habit of setting my alarm, and there are no howler monkeys here to wake me up at sunrise. Pigeons and the odd squirrel just don’t have the same oomph, and my first travel feature is due in less than twenty-four hours. Crap.
Ten minutes later, after a speed shower and the first cup of coffee downed like a shot, I sit at my desk with a second cup of wake-me-up-now and a bowl of granola. I quickly scan my emails. Among them is one from the website that needed a proofreader, the temp job I was going to interview for tomorrow. They just found someone. Great. My please-hire-me dress can relax in the closet.
Just as I’m about to get down to work, my phone rings. I stare at the caller ID, weighing whether I should answer. Well, I’ll have to sometime, and I know in this case what I resist persists. “Katy,” Daniel says in an exhalation, “are you finally home?”
“Yes, I’m home, and I’m on a hellacious deadline.”
“Katy, please,” he begs, and the tone of his voice stops me from cutting him off. “I’ve been waiting almost three weeks to see you. I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Daniel, I really don’t think we have much to say to each other.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do,” he insists. “I’m coming over.”
“No, no, you can’t! Whether or not you have something to say is beside the point right now. This travel article is due first thing tomorrow morning. I’ve barely written anything, and what I have isn’t good.”
“I’ll bet it’s better than you think,” he says with the certainty of someone who’s heard my fretful deadline song before. “You always worry a lot, right before you pull a well-written rabbit out of a hat.”
He makes me smile in spite of myself. Daniel was always my best cheerleader, and he’s being that for me now, even when I’m pushing him away. “Thanks for the good speech, but really, I’ve got to get on this,” I tell him. “I’ll be working on it all day and all night. I can’t talk now.”
“Okay. I understand,” he concedes. “But after you hand it in tomorrow morning, will you call me and let me know when I can see you? It’s really important.” I hear him take a deep breath. “Please, Katy.”
A thought drifts to me, like a warm ocean breeze, of telling Carson why I’d always been afraid of being honest. I know now that I wasn’t being truthful with my father as much as I wanted to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt Daniel that way, but I have to tell him I’ve moved on and that we’re over. I owe him that. “I’ll definitely call you tomorrow.”
“Promise,” he says.
“I promise.”
BY MIDNIGHT, when I read through my finished article again, the best description of how I feel came from Daniel. I’m looking at a well-written rabbit that I just proudly pulled from a hat. I hold the printed pages of my first travel story out, ta-daaa, and take a little bow, just for myself.
Exhausted, I go to set my alarm so I can wake up early tomorrow morning and send the article in, and then I think of something. I do a web search on my phone and download a sound byte of the calls of howler monkeys, and I set that as my alarm. Now I’ll definitely wake up and remember wonderful things.
THE NEXT MORNING, my hands are shaking, and not because I’ve had too much coffee. Nervous glee vibrates through me as I press
send.
My story about Emerald Cove, my first adventure, whooshes out into the ether, and I can only hope that my editor Dina thinks it’s as good as I do.
I jump when the phone rings almost immediately after that, but it’s not Dina at
Bon Voyage
or any other number I recognize. Maybe it’s that website saying they still need a proofreader. “Hello?”
“Kate the Great,” says a rich, sexy voice. “It’s been too long, your gorgeousness.”
“Carson!” Right where I stand, I do an excited touchdown dance. “Oh my God, how are you?” I melt as I try to imagine him, maybe reclining on his bed, maybe dressed in nothing but his board shorts, his tanned abs rippling as he leans back. Damn it, why didn’t he Skype me so I could see? Or would that be the worst form of torture, seeing without being able to touch?
“Are you home?” Carson asks. “I have a delivery coming to you, but you have to be there to accept it.”
“Is it organic chocolate from the gift shop?” I guess. “Whatever it is, I’m home. I’ll wait for it.” Ooh, anything from him, anything he touched, I want it. I want it, I want it now.
“Good. Listen, your gorgeousness, I have to run. We’ll talk later, okay?”
I want to plead for a few more minutes, but I know it’s right after breakfast at Emerald Cove, and a group of would-be surfers is assembling on the beach, waiting for him. “Okay,” I say, trying to keep from sounding pouty, “call me when you’re free.” He says goodbye too quickly.
I stare at my phone in wonder. I really thought goodbye meant goodbye forever. But, just as I’d thought the day Carson took me to Heaven Beach, maybe
forever
meant
for now
. The impossibility of us being together made everything feel like a dream that reality could never measure up to, but, as it seems is usual, Carson has other plans. I dreamily wander off to the shower, wondering what gift he’s sending me.
An hour later, dressed in my blue flowy yoga pants and grey long-sleeved shirt, my freshly shampooed hair hangs in fruit-scented tendrils in front of me as I try to balance on my hands with my knees on my elbows. The crow is a tough pose, and I’ve never had the guts to try it before, but now I’m rather pleased with myself because I’m almost in perfect form. Just as I get to a steady point, my front door buzzer rings. I squeak in surprise as I fall backward, fortunately on the most padded part of me.
I open the door, expecting to see my usual brown-uniformed delivery guy. Instead, all I see is pink. A tall oblong of girly, bubblegum pink with black racing stripes and a star at the top. My surfboard! “Wow,” I say, nonplussed that Carson shipped my surfboard to me. “Um, I guess you can bring it right
. . .
”
My voice fades away as a pair of ocean green eyes peeks out from behind the board and then crinkles in amusement.
“Carson!” He laughs at my shocked excitement, putting the board to the side of the door as I leap into his waiting arms. He swings me around, hugging me tight, and when he sets me down he peppers me with kisses. “Carson, how—what are you doing here?” I ask, nearly breathless.
“Special delivery,” he says, beaming at me. He strokes my hair away from my face. “Damn, woman, you smell delicious.” His kiss is deep, almost urgent, and it makes me lightheaded as he crushes me to him. I feel myself being lifted and carried, and then I’m pinned to my bed by the weight of his hard, beautiful body, his hands pulling impatiently at my clothes, eager for our skin to be reunited.
“AND YOU TASTE delicious,” Carson says, his already decadent voice even more luscious after he’s passionately spent.
“So do you.” I snuggle against him, once again sexed senseless. Though not completely. I lift my head, grinning at him, and ask, “Carson, what are you doing here?”
“Well, on Saturday,” he says, “I had this really bad dinner at Emerald Cove. Just awful.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Yeah
. . .
”
“And then breakfast the next day? The worst. The coffee was like mud.” He rolls his eyes in exaggerated disgust. “I didn’t even bother with lunch. And the waves were flat, really boring. And you know all those beautiful flowers around the veranda? Withered, brown,
pfffft
.” The hint of a smile begins tugging at the corners of his lips. “And all this happened right after you left.”
“Is that a fact?” I say.
“What was I supposed to do,” he asks innocently, “spend the rest of my life drinking bad coffee and surfing flat waves?”
I smile with him for a moment, but then I touch his face and say, “Carson, we both know you love it there.”
His eyes gaze deeply into mine as his fingers brush my lips. “Turns out I love you more.”
We lean toward each other for a kiss when he suddenly says, “Wait, is that the time? We have to go.” He flings back the covers and gets out of bed, stunning me for a second with the jaw-unhinging hotness of his naked body, before I manage to ask, “Go? Where?”
“We have a lunch date,” he says, pulling his briefs up his rock-hard thighs. “Come on!” He laughs as he takes my hands and drags me out of bed. “Let’s go!”
When I stop giggling from him lifting me over his shoulder and carrying me the short distance to my closet, I ask, “Okay, what’s the dress code for this lunch date?”
He shrugs. “Up to you,” he says. “Whatever makes you comfortable.”
I sigh and roll my eyes. Men are never good at sharing important information. I have to take a cue from what Carson’s wearing.
As he gets dressed, I see him more clearly than when he came in, surprised me, and started making love to me immediately. It’s like I’m seeing him for the first time, but this isn’t my shaggy-haired surf god who wore sun-faded T-shirts, board shorts, and flip-flops. This is Carson, New York style. His hair is trimmed and neat, and he’s dressed in a French blue button-front shirt and a pair of grey pinstriped trousers. And those sure ain’t flip-flops on his feet. If my fashion magazine training serves me, those patent leather loafers are Prada. Now that I think of it, he even smells different, still like him but with a dash of citrusy cologne. I look at the bespoke suit jacket tossed carelessly over the chair by my desk. It must be worth two months of my rent. Carson looks like a male model or a prince, a prince who models for kicks when he’s not playing polo.
“This might take a minute,” I say, feeling sartorially intimidated.
“No rush,” Carson says, grinning mischievously, “but hurry.”
He makes my head spin
, I think as I quickly search through my closet for something, anything that will make me look like I belong with him and that I’m not some polo-playing model prince groupie.
Ten minutes later, I climb into a pair of brown suede boots that go nicely with my caramel-colored cashmere sweater dress. I feel so guilty wearing this with Carson; Daniel gave it to me, but it’s the best dress I have. “Will this do for whatever we’re doing?”
“You’re so perfect I want to unwrap you all over again,” Carson says, his hands moving hungrily over the cashmere. “But we’re going to be late.”
“Late for what?” Carson just winks at me and smiles. I make a frustrated sound as I throw on my red pea coat and grab my phone, keys, and purse. “Your surprises are going to kill me,” I mutter as we leave.
A silver Porsche stands out like a princess in a pig sty on my homely little street, and when Carson clicks a key fob toward it, the car winks its headlights and practically purrs at him. I stare at it and then at him. “Not exactly the Rat Hole community Beetle, is it?” I ask.
He opens the passenger side door for me. “It was a gift from my sister,” he answers, downplaying its flashy fabulousness. I slide into a black leather seat soft and smooth as a pair of fine gloves. I couldn’t even afford gloves as good as what this car seat is made of, and in Carson’s family, this is a gift that only rates a passing mention. It probably wasn’t even for a special occasion.
Carson does look more at home in the driver’s seat of this luxury machine than he did in the dented, sand-filled car he shared in Costa Rica. “Any hints about where we’re going?” I ask.
He shakes his head, clearly enjoying my frustration.
I’m too excited about being with him to do my usual automotive narcolepsy routine, and I have to find out more about Carson’s sudden visit. He assures me that he didn’t quit his job at Emerald Cove, but took what he calls a leave of absence. He tells me that the timing for a family visit was perfect because his father is in Europe on business. He makes it all sound so simple, even logical, and yet I still can’t believe I’m with him again, listening to Filter’s “Take a Picture” on his car stereo, his fingers stroking mine as we drive along the highway. My surf god showed up unexpectedly after turning into a Porsche-driving prince, ravaged me, and very sweetly kidnapped me, destination unknown. This sure isn’t my typical Monday morning.
After a while on the highway, I see signs pointing us toward Long Island, where Carson came from. As we drive further out, the homes go from modest aluminum-sided two family deals to houses that cost a small fortune to larger houses that cost larger fortunes. Then come the mansions, all of them seeming to be in a grandeur contest. We turn down a seemingly innocuous path that brings us to a high, imposing security gate nestled on either side by a wall of thick hedges. Carson reaches out to punch a code into a monitor, which signals the gates to slide open. “Must be a bitch just to get a pizza,” I joke, though I hear the nervousness in my voice. Carson doesn’t seem to notice as he laughs.
We go about a mile down a meticulously tended driveway before we come to a stop in front of a mansion. No, that’s not quite the word.
Palace
is a more accurate description. The sprawling, three-story house is pearl grey with four white columns framing the doorway. I can see part of a huge infinity pool in what could jokingly be called the backyard, if yards were fields of emerald lawn that led to a wide stretch of beach. Oh, and just for fun, there’s a gazebo that could fit a small orchestra on the lawn. Actually, when we’re talking this much land with no other house in sight, I think as Carson opens the passenger side door for me, the proper term is
grounds
.
“Ah, there you are!”
I’ve barely had time to take in the opulence of the Wakefield estate before hearing the musical sound of a woman’s voice and seeing someone who could only be Carson’s mother. She’s beautiful. Blonde, youthful looking but not plastic, with a tennis player’s slim build. Standing next to her is a teenager, as tall as a model and just as attractive. She has Carson’s milk chocolate colored hair and his lively smile. She bounds over to him and gives him a huge hug. “Where you been, big brother?” she says, ruffling his hair as he laughs.