Plot Twist In Paradise
by IAmHerEmma

 

 

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Chapter Ten: Delete, Deflect, Repeat

 

The bed was trying to keep me.

I'm not being dramatic — that mattress had an agenda. Every time I shifted, thinking about sitting up, it reshaped itself around me like some kind of sentient cloud, finding the exact contour of my body and sinking me deeper into whatever horsehair-memory-foam-angel-feather situation the resort had invested in. The sheets were cool and impossibly soft. The pillows — plural, because this place apparently believed in excess — smelled faintly of coconut and something floral I couldn't name and didn't want to because naming it would mean I was awake.

I made it as far as rolling onto my side. That felt like an achievement.

The bungalow looked different in the morning. The sun was pressing through the wooden shutters in fat golden stripes, laying itself across the tile floor and up the foot of the bed, aggressively cheerful, the visual equivalent of a morning person telling you to smile. The ceiling fan turned in its slow, patient circle. Birds were making noise outside, the sort of effortless morning symphony that would've been lovely if I hadn't been lying there bargaining with myself like a hostage negotiator.

Get up.

No.

It's nine o'clock.

The pillow smells like coconut.

That's not a reason.

It's absolutely a reason.

The pillow was winning. The pillow was making an airtight case and I had no rebuttal. But somewhere between the coconut and the ceiling fan and the birds outside doing their whole performance, a thought arrived with the unwelcome clarity of a fire alarm: coffee. Coffee existed. Coffee was somewhere in this resort, probably hot and probably strong, and it was not going to walk itself to my bed. If I wanted it — and I wanted it the way people in deserts want water — I was going to have to get up and go find it like a functioning adult.

I threw the sheet off. That was step one. Step two was swinging my legs to the floor. Step three was sitting up, which my body interpreted as a personal attack. The tile was cool under my feet and the air from the fan moved over my skin and I sat there on the edge of the bed for a full minute, blinking at the room like someone who'd been woken from a coma and was still processing shapes.

Eventually I stood. Shuffled to the bathroom. The mirror was honest but not cruel — I'd slept well enough to look human, which was more than I could say for most mornings at home. The oversized t-shirt I'd slept in had done its job. I brushed my teeth with the kind of mechanical focus that suggested my brain hadn't fully come online yet.

Back in the room, I opened the closet and stared at the options with the decision-making capacity of someone who had been vertical for approximately four minutes. Shorts. A cotton top — something light and simple, the kind of outfit that said I'm on vacation but make it effortless. Makeup was the quick version — concealer, tinted lip balm, done in under three minutes. Not the full production, but enough to feel like myself. Hair up, because the humidity had made its position clear the moment I'd arrived yesterday, and I saw no reason to pretend I could win that fight.

I slipped on sandals, grabbed my phone, and headed out.

I stepped outside and the morning hit me — warm air, salt, the sound of the water somewhere close. The ocean was right there, doing what it had apparently been doing all night without supervision, and for a second I just stood on the porch and let it exist.

The path to the restaurant wound through the resort grounds, lined with the kind of lush greenery that offered plenty of places for a person to hide. I gave every hedge a once-over on the way, because I was not getting ambushed twice in twenty-four hours.

No Milo. Just birds, sunlight, and the distant sound of someone doing something athletic near the water.

I started walking.

The restaurant was open-air, which I was beginning to understand was just how everything worked here. A buffet line ran along the far wall — fruit, pastries, eggs in three different configurations, a waffle station that a man in chef whites was operating with solemn dedication.

Coffee first. Always coffee first. I grabbed the largest cup available and filled it without ceremony, then turned my attention to food. I was midway through adding a second piece of toast to my plate when a voice appeared behind me.

"You look like someone who only functions after caffeine."

I turned to find Cass, coffee in hand, linen shirt and shorts, looking like she'd walked out of a catalogue for people who were good at mornings. I was still catching up.

"That's not an observation, that's just a fact about most adults," I said.

"Most adults don't hold their coffee cup like it's the last one on earth."

I looked down at my hand. She had a point. I loosened my grip.

Cass nodded toward the far side of the seating area. "Talia already has a table. She's been up since sunrise."

"Voluntarily?"

"She set an alarm."

"On vacation."

"I married her." Cass took a sip of her coffee. "I'm aware of what I signed up for."

We walked to the table. Talia was already set up — plate loaded, fresh juice, sunglasses pushed up into her hair — and talking before we'd sat down.

"Morning!" Talia said, with the kind of energy I hoped to achieve by noon. "Did you sleep okay? That mattress is insane, right? I told Cass we need to find out the brand. We need that mattress."

"We don't need it."

"We absolutely need it."

"You slept well, then," I said, sitting down.

"Like the dead. Cass barely moved all night. I checked."

Cass set down her coffee. "She checked."

"I like to make sure you're breathing."

"She watches me sleep."

"Lovingly."

I was halfway through my toast and starting to feel like a person again when there was a commotion. Or, more accurately, when a fully formed human man materialised next to our table as if he'd been teleported there by an uncaring god.

"Good morning, beautiful people!"

All three of us flinched. Talia's juice sloshed. Cass grabbed the edge of the table. I dropped my fork.

Milo stood there grinning, wearing a shirt that appeared to be covered in parrots mid-argument, looking like he'd been awake for hours and had spent every one of them storing up enthusiasm for this exact moment.

I smacked his arm. Not gently.

"You have got to stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Appearing. Out of nowhere. Like a goddamn haunted house attraction."

"I walked up. Normally. Like a normal person."

"Nobody who is normal just arrives at a table without making any sound," Talia said, pressing a hand to her collarbone. "My heart is in my throat."

"You all need to pay more attention to your surroundings," Milo said, dropping into the empty chair. "I was right there."

"Where? In which dimension?"

He waved this off and reached for a piece of fruit from Talia's plate. She didn't stop him.

"So," he said, chewing, "none of you went to yoga this morning."

It wasn't a question.

"Lyle was out there at six-thirty. Mat laid out, little Bluetooth speaker playing the kind of music they use in spas to stop people from committing crimes. I went for a walk and saw him setting up. He had the whole beach sectioned off." He shook his head. "I walked past again about forty minutes later and it was just Lyle and two women who looked like they'd been doing yoga since before it was invented. That was it. The man looked personally betrayed."

"To be fair," Cass said, "six-thirty is an act of aggression."

"We should try at least one thing on that schedule," Talia said. "I didn't come here to just lie around."

"I did," Cass said.

Milo looked at me. "Where's Renee?"

The question landed with the gentleness of a brick through a window.

"How would I know where Renee is?"

"You were the last one seen with her." He let that sit for half a second, eyes twinkling with the delight of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. "Cass saw you two at the railing last night."

I looked at Cass. Cass looked back at me with the serene expression of someone who absolutely had seen us at the railing and had drawn every available conclusion.

"We were standing," I said. "Near a railing. At a mixer. Where people stand. Near things."

Nobody said anything. Talia was smiling. Cass was smiling. Milo was definitely smiling. The collective weight of three people smiling at me while I held a piece of toast was more than I was willing to deal with before my second coffee.

"We talked for about thirty seconds and then she left. That's the whole story. That's all the data. There is nothing to process here."

"We didn't say there was," Cass said.

"Your face said there was."

"My face is just my face," Cass said.

The thing was — and I was absolutely not going to say this out loud, because the table was already treating me like a research subject — Renee had been different at that railing. No sharpness, no dry comments designed to make me feel like I'd wandered into an argument I hadn't prepared for. She'd said I was good in the game. No qualifier. And then the skinny-dipping comment, and that's a shame, and she'd just walked away like she'd mentioned the weather.

I took a bite of toast and did the thing I was getting very good at doing: I pushed it out of my head.

Renee hadn't appeared for breakfast. I noticed this. Then I stopped noticing it.

"So," Talia said, leaning forward. "Pool this afternoon?"

"I was actually going to try to get some writing done this morning," I said.

The table looked at me the way you'd look at someone who'd just announced they were going to spend a beach vacation reorganising their sock drawer.

"Work," Milo repeated.

"Yes. Writing. The thing I do."

"On the first full day."

"Inspiration doesn't take vacation days, Milo."

"Ade." He put his hand flat on the table. "You are on an island. There is a pool. There is a beach. There is a very attractive bartender who I have dibs on but who you are welcome to admire from a respectful distance. And you want to sit in your bungalow and stare at a laptop."

"That's a reductive description of my creative process."

"Your creative process sounds depressing."

"Good luck," Talia said, raising her juice glass. "We'll be at the pool when you give up."

"If," I said.

"When," the three of them said, not quite in unison but close enough.

I finished my coffee, stacked my plate, and left them to it. I hadn't made it far from the restaurant when I saw her.

Renee was coming from the direction of the bungalows, heading toward the restaurant. Hair down, white t-shirt, cotton shorts, looking more awake than anyone had a right to.

We spotted each other at roughly the same time. There was a moment where the path was wide enough to just nod and keep walking, and narrow enough that we didn't.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning." She slowed. "Breakfast?"

"Just finished. Coffee's good."

"That's all I need to hear."

We stood there for a second. The morning was already warm, and the air between us had its own temperature. I was aware of last night. The railing, the quiet, the two words she'd said before walking away. And I was aware that she probably wasn't thinking about any of it, which made the fact that I was thinking about it significantly worse.

"I'm heading back to try to write," I said, because I needed to say something that had nothing to do with railings or skinny-dipping.

Renee nodded. "Good luck with that."

I couldn't tell if it was genuine. With Renee, that was always the question.

"Thanks."

She headed toward the restaurant. I headed toward my bungalow.

The bungalow was quiet when I got back. I kicked off my sandals and dropped my phone on the bed. The desk was right there — laptop closed, chair pulled out slightly from where I'd left it. I stood there for a second, looking at it the way you look at something you know is about to disappoint you.

I sat down at the desk and opened the laptop. The screen woke up.

There it was. The cursor.

I thought about the water outside the window. I thought about the light. I thought about the fact that I was sitting at a desk in paradise with nothing between me and the page except every creative fear I'd ever had, which seemed manageable if you didn't look at it directly.

I started typing.

The heat was the first thing. It met her at the door like a wall, thick and wet, and by the time she'd crossed the tarmac her dress was already clinging to her back. The city she'd left was grey and sharp-cornered and running on caffeine and deadlines, and the island operated on a different clock entirely. Slower. Warmer. The kind of warm that got into your skin and stayed there.

I read it back. It was fine. That was the problem — it was fine. It was a paragraph that existed and had sentences in it and none of those sentences were wrong, exactly, but none of them were doing anything either. It sounded like a woman describing a holiday to someone who hadn't asked.

I kept going anyway.

She didn't know anyone here. That was the point — or that was what she'd told herself when she'd booked it, standing in her kitchen at midnight with a glass of wine and the kind of recklessness that only shows up when you've run out of better ideas. Nobody here knew her name or her history or the mess she'd been making of things lately. She could be anyone. She could be the version of herself she kept meaning to become.

I stopped. Read both paragraphs together.

It was worse than bad. Bad would have meant something was happening on the page, even if it was happening wrong. This was just there. Sitting on the screen like a postcard nobody had asked for. Every sentence competent. Every sentence dead on arrival.

I selected everything and held the delete key, watching the words vanish letter by letter — slower and more painful than highlighting and hitting backspace, but it felt appropriately dramatic for the occasion.

I stared at the empty page for another few minutes, then closed the laptop, picked it up, and carried it to the beach. A change of scenery. Maybe that was all I needed — different air, different view, the sound of the water doing something useful for once.

I found an empty lounger on the beach, sat down, and opened the laptop. The cursor was still there. Still blinking.

I watched the water instead.

The ocean was doing what oceans do — rolling in, pulling back, being relentlessly beautiful in a way that felt like showing off. The colour shifted where the reef sat below the surface, turquoise bleeding into a deeper blue that looked like it went down forever. A couple walked along the waterline holding hands, their footprints dissolving behind them. A woman a few loungers down was laughing at something her partner had said, easy and unselfconscious, and I hated her a little for it.

I wrote nothing.

I shifted positions twice. I watched two different couples walk the same stretch of waterline. I checked my phone, put it down, checked it again. The cursor blinked. I closed the laptop and opened it again as if that would change something. It didn't.

By the time I checked my phone for the third time, an hour had passed and the document was still empty.

"There you are!"

Lyle Peterson appeared from behind the tree line, clipboard in hand, looking like a man on a mission.

"Great spot, right?" He gestured at the ocean as if he'd personally installed it. "The morning light on this stretch is really something. We had a guest last year who painted watercolours right here — same angle, everything."

"That's lovely."

"So — just wanted to flag a few things on today's schedule." He consulted the clipboard with the reverence it apparently deserved. "We've got a snorkelling excursion leaving at eleven — the reef on the east side has visibility like twenty metres, it's unreal. At two there's a beach volleyball tournament, teams of four, very chill. And at four we've got a mixology class at the bar with Nico — that one's really popular. You make three cocktails and you keep all of them."

"I appreciate it, Lyle. I'm actually trying to—"

"The mixology class fills up fast. Nico's been running it for about a year now and the drinks are genuinely amazing."

"I'll think about it."

"The snorkelling is also—"

"I'll think about all of it, Lyle. Thank you."

He nodded, smiled, and retreated toward the tree line with the brisk energy of a man who had at least six more guests to find before lunch.

I looked down at the laptop. The cursor looked back.

"Shit," I said, to nobody and to the ocean and to whatever part of my brain was supposed to be producing a novel.

I closed the laptop and stood up, brushing sand off my shorts. An hour on the beach. Nothing. The change of scenery had changed nothing — different view, same empty page.

I walked back toward the bungalow, which meant cutting through the pool area. Cass was on one of the sun loungers with a book propped open against her knees.

"That was fast," she said, without looking up from the book.

"What was?"

"Your morning of productive writing."

I dropped into the lounger next to hers. "I don't want to talk about it."

Cass turned a page. "That good?"

Talia appeared a few minutes later in a two-piece, towel over one arm, bag over the other, looking like a woman who had packed for the pool the way other people packed for international travel. She claimed the lounger on Cass's other side and started arranging her things with a focus that bordered on architectural.

"Ade! I thought you were working."

"I was. Wrote two paragraphs. Deleted both. Moved to the beach. Wrote nothing. That page is my nemesis."

"I thought Renee was your nemesis," Cass said. Still not looking up from her book. "When did it become a Word document?"

I stared at her.

Talia went first — a laugh she tried and failed to smother behind her hand — and it set Cass off too, the two of them doing that thing couples do where they feed off each other's amusement while the subject of the joke sits there contemplating whether assault charges are worth it on vacation.

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny," Cass said.

"It is funny," Talia said, nodding.

"You know what might actually help?" Cass set the book down and pushed her sunglasses up. "Stop trying. I mean it. You've been here one day. Your brain is still running on city speed. Give it a break. Sit by the pool, drink something cold, let your mind go wherever it wants for a few hours. You can't muscle your way into it."

"She's right," Talia said. "You can't force creativity. It's like when we're trying to pick a restaurant — the more we deliberate, the worse it gets. Our best meals are always the ones we stumble into."

"That's a terrible analogy," Cass said.

"It's a perfect analogy."

"It's about dinner."

"It's about surrendering to the process."

"It's about restaurants, Talia."

I watched them. This was going to go on for a while. There was something genuinely comforting about it — the well-worn grooves of two people who'd been having the same argument for eight years and would probably be having it for another forty.

"What about activities?" Talia said. "We could do the snorkelling."

Cass exhaled through her nose.

"Beach volleyball?"

Cass closed her eyes.

"Or we could—"

"Stop suggesting athletic things," Cass said. "It's our anniversary trip. I didn't come here to spike a volleyball."

"Talia, every time you suggest something, she groans," I said.

"I don't groan," Cass said. "I evaluate audibly."

"What about the mixology class?" Talia said. "Four o'clock at the bar."

That landed differently. Cass opened one eye. I raised an eyebrow.

"Milo will lose his entire mind," I said.

"Oh, absolutely," Talia said, grinning. "Which is reason enough."

I didn't say anything for a second. Milo in a cocktail class run by Nico. An hour of watching that man try to act casual around the bartender he'd barely managed to string a sentence together for at the mixer. That was worth showing up for.

"I can see you about to say you'll think about it," Talia said. "Don't."

"She's doing the face," Cass said.

"Come on, Ade. It'll be fun. All of us, drinks — just come."

There was no arguing with it. Talia said things and then they became facts. It was either a gift or a weaponised personality trait, depending on which side of it you were standing on.

"Fine. But only because watching Milo make a complete fool of himself in front of Nico sounds like the best entertainment this island has to offer."

I spent the next hour by the pool doing nothing productive and feeling only moderately guilty about it. Cass read. Talia applied sunscreen with the methodical precision of someone following a dermatological protocol. I lay on the lounger and let the sun do whatever it wanted to my skin and tried very hard not to think about the two paragraphs I'd written and killed.

Eventually I swung my legs off the lounger and reached for my sandals.

"Heading back?" Talia asked.

"I need a shower before this class I've apparently committed to."

"Four o'clock," Talia said. "Don't be late."

"She means don't flake," Cass said, turning a page.

"I won't flake."

"That's exactly what someone who's about to flake would say."

I left them to it.

The path to the bungalows was becoming familiar now — I knew where the hibiscus thickened, where the gravel gave way to packed sand, where the palm canopy opened up enough to let the sun hit the ground in gold patches. I was about halfway there when I heard footsteps matching mine and turned.

Renee. Walking the same direction at approximately the same pace, as if the universe had decided to synchronise our schedules without checking with either of us first.

She caught up without visibly speeding up — a skill I was beginning to associate specifically with her — and we fell into step together without discussing it.

"Pool?" she asked.

"For a bit. You?"

"Just a walk. Getting to know the grounds."

"And?"

"It's a nice island."

We walked. Neither of us rushed to fill the quiet.

"Plans for the rest of the day?" I asked.

"Quiet. A book. Nothing that involves a schedule or a whistle."

"Lyle found me on the beach this morning."

"My condolences."

I laughed. It came out before I could catch it.

"He mentioned there's a mixology class at four," I said, and I said it the way you'd mention something you'd just remembered and not the way you'd invite someone to something, which is definitely what I was doing, and which I realised I was doing roughly half a second after I'd started. "At the bar. Talia, Cass, and I are going. Milo will likely be there too. Should be fun watching him try to make a cocktail without staring at Nico the entire time."

Renee considered this for a pace or two. "I think I'll pass."

"Yeah. Sure. It's probably just—" I let the sentence die on its own. "Yeah."

I reached my bungalow and stopped. Renee kept walking.

"You're further down?" I asked.

"Twelve."

"Okay. Well. Enjoy your... quiet."

"Thanks."

I went inside, closed the door, and stood there for a second wondering why I couldn't end a conversation with this woman without sounding like I was buffering.

The bungalow was cool and dim, the ceiling fan doing its slow rotation, the bed still unmade because housekeeping apparently came in the afternoon and I was living like someone who deserved nice things regardless of whether she'd earned them today. My phone was on the nightstand where I'd left it. One notification.

Maribel.

I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the thread.

Maribel: Alive?

Ade: Alive. The bungalow is ridiculous. Met Emmett — he says hi.

Maribel: He would. That man greets people for a living. How are you feeling?

Ade: Like a person on vacation who doesn't know how to be on vacation.

Maribel: That's exactly what I expected you to say. Rest. Don't force anything.

Ade: You sent me here to write and now you're telling me not to force it.

Maribel: I sent you there to be a person. The writing will follow.

I put the phone down beside me and stared at the ceiling fan for a while. The blades went around. The writing will follow. She said it like it was a fact, like gravity or weather — something that just happened if you let it. Maribel had a way of making everything sound inevitable, even the things that felt impossible from where I was sitting.

I picked the phone back up. Maribel was good for the truth, but right now I needed someone who would let me complain without turning it into a life lesson.

Ade: Update from paradise: the island is still beautiful, the bed is still trying to absorb me into its structure, and I spent the morning attempting to write and producing absolutely nothing usable.

I dropped the phone on the bed beside me and kicked off my sandals. Looked at the ceiling fan again. The phone buzzed.

Sasha: Shocking. A woman who spent three months staring at a wall in her apartment can't magically write on a beach. Who could have predicted this.

Ade: Your support means the world.

Sasha: I support you by telling you the truth. The truth is you need to chill. You've been there one day.

Ade: Everyone keeps saying that.

Sasha: Everyone is correct. What else is going on? Give me gossip. I need to live through you because my life is boring and I ate cereal standing over the sink for dinner.

Ade: Milo is in love with the bartender. He's known the man about twelve hours and has interpreted every word out of his mouth as a coded love letter.

Sasha: I respect that level of commitment. What about Curbside Karen? She still being awful?

Ade: She's not awful. She went to the beach by herself today. We ran into each other on the path this morning. And then again just now, actually. Renee's in bungalow 12.

I sent it without thinking. Three seconds later, the realisation hit me like a truck with bad brakes.

Sasha: Wait.

Sasha: RENEE???

Sasha: Her name is RENEE now??

Ade: That's her name. That's always been her name. I've known her name since the airport.

Sasha: Ade. I have been calling this woman Curbside Karen since you first told me about her. She was "that woman." She was "the one from the plane." And now she's Renee. With a first name. And you know her bungalow number.

Ade: She told me. It came up. We were walking the same direction.

Sasha: WALKING TOGETHER

Ade: Walking the same direction. Those are different things.

Sasha: They are not different things. They are the same thing with extra words around it. You are walking. Together. To your adjacent bungalows. Where you live. Two doors apart.

Ade: This is a normal thing that happens at resorts where people are staying in the same area.

Sasha: Mhmm.

Ade: Don't start.

Sasha: MHMM.

Ade: I am begging you.

Sasha: You texted me because you wanted to say her name. You wanted to use it and see how it felt and now you have and you can't take it back. RENEE. The woman has been promoted from nickname to government name. This is the biggest development since you called her "not trouble."

Ade: I should never have texted you.

Sasha: You should always text me. Tell me more about Renee.

Ade: There's nothing to tell. She's quiet. She keeps to herself. She said she didn't want to come to the mixology class later.

Shit.

Sasha: You invited her to a mixology class???

Ade: Not invited. Mentioned. In passing. Offhandedly. While walking.

Sasha: TOGETHER.

Ade: I need to take a nap.

Sasha: You need to take a long hard look at yourself is what you need to take.

Ade: Goodbye, Sasha.

Sasha: Say hi to RENEE for me. Your neighbour. Who you INVITED to a COCKTAIL CLASS.

I dropped the phone on the pillow next to me and stared at the ceiling fan. The blades went around. The afternoon light had softened into something warm and slow. The bed was doing its thing again — pulling me down, rearranging itself around me like it had been waiting for me to come back.

I closed my eyes. Just for a minute.

When I opened them, the light in the room had changed. The sun had shifted, the shadows stretched longer across the floor, and I had the specific kind of disorientation that comes from falling asleep in the middle of the day and waking up in a different version of it. I grabbed my phone. Three-fifteen.

I'd slept through lunch.

The mixology class started at four.

I got up, stripped, and got in the shower. The water pressure was absurd — the kind of pressure that felt like the resort believed even basic hygiene should be an experience — and I stood under it longer than I needed to, letting the day rinse off. I washed my hair, considered my life choices, and decided that a day of failed writing, poolside lounging, and napping was still technically a day of creative recovery if you didn't examine it too closely.

I dried off and went to the closet. A skirt — mid-length, lightweight, the kind of thing you could sit on a barstool in without thinking about it — and a spaghetti strap top, simple and fitted, nothing that was trying too hard. Sandals. Makeup was the evening version of the morning routine — concealer, a little bronzer, tinted lip balm, just enough to look like myself without looking like I'd tried. I checked the mirror, adjusted a strap, and called it done.

The walk to the bar took five minutes, and I could hear the group before I saw them.

The beachfront bar had been rearranged — a long stretch of counter space cleared and set up with bottles, shakers, cutting boards, and fresh fruit in neat rows, looking like a cooking show that served alcohol. And behind all of it, moving between stations with the quiet efficiency of a man who'd been born back there, was Nico.

Milo was already there.

Of course Milo was already there. He was standing at the near end of the counter, positioned as close to Nico as it was possible to be while still maintaining the fiction that he was there for the cocktails. His body language was broadcasting "casual interest" with all the subtlety of a neon sign.

Talia and Cass had claimed stools a few seats down. They were watching with the expressions of people who'd bought front-row tickets to something they fully intended to enjoy.

"He's been here since three-thirty," Talia informed me as I sat down.

"The class starts at four."

"He wanted a good spot," Cass said. "The bar is twelve feet long. Every spot is a good spot."

I looked at Milo. Milo was looking at Nico. Nico was slicing limes with the focus of a man performing surgery.

"Has he talked to him?"

"He ordered a water," Talia said.

"A water."

"He walked up there with a plan and what came out of his mouth was can I have some water, please." Cass paused. "Nico gave him water. Milo came back and told us he thought that went well."

"Did it?"

"He ordered water at a bar, Ade."

I glanced around the bar as more guests filtered in — a couple I recognised from the mixer, two women in matching sun hats who seemed to already know everyone. The class was filling up.

And Renee — as she'd said — was not there.

She'd told me she wasn't coming. She hadn't come. That was a person keeping their word. Completely consistent, completely expected, and absolutely nothing worth registering.

I registered it anyway.

Nico tapped the flat of his knife against the cutting board and the chatter softened. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.

"Afternoon." He set the knife down. "We're making three drinks today. I'll show you each one, then you make your own. First up is a classic daiquiri — the real version, not the frozen one. Rum, lime, simple syrup. Balance matters more than anything else."

That was more consecutive words than I'd heard from Nico in total. He spoke the way he moved behind the bar — precisely, nothing extra, every word doing exactly one job. Then he started building the drink, and the bar went quiet.

His hands moved between bottles and tools with the kind of muscle memory that came from doing this thousands of times. The rum poured without a jigger, the lime squeezed and strained in one motion, the shaker handled with a flip that looked effortless and absolutely was not. Forty seconds, maybe. He poured it into a coupe glass, set it on the counter, and stepped back.

"Your turn."

Everyone shuffled into position at the individual stations set up along the bar. Milo drifted toward the end closest to Nico with the gravitational pull of a man who could not help himself.

"Quick question," Milo said, holding the rum bottle at an angle that suggested he had no idea how to pour it. "How much exactly?"

Nico looked at him. "Two ounces."

"Two generous ounces or two precise ounces?" Milo asked, tilting the bottle slightly as if that would help clarify things.

"Two ounces," Nico said, his expression unchanged.

"Right. And when you said balance — between the lime and the syrup, is there like a ratio, or—"

"Make the drink, Milo."

Talia made a noise that she tried to disguise as a cough. Cass studied the ceiling. I focused very intently on my own lime.

We made the daiquiris. Mine was decent — a little heavy on the syrup but drinkable. Cass's was precise, because Cass looked like someone who was precise about everything. Talia's was sweet enough to qualify as dessert, which she blamed on the jigger being "designed for people with steadier hands." Milo's was apparently fine, but he carried it to Nico's station for evaluation with the energy of a student submitting his thesis.

Nico tasted it. Paused. "Good."

Milo floated back to us.

"He said good."

"He did," Cass confirmed.

"That's — I mean, he's probably not saying that to everyone."

"He's said it to four other people since you walked back," I said.

Milo's face didn't fall. Not even a flicker. "But the way he said it to me was different."

The second drink was a mojito — Nico muddled the mint with a quiet intensity that made it look personal — and the third was a mai tai that involved four ingredients and a layering technique that none of us fully mastered but all of us enjoyed getting wrong.

Throughout the class, Milo found reasons. Reasons to ask about muddling pressure. Reasons to need clarification on layering angles. Reasons to carry his glass back for what he called "quality control" and what the rest of us called "another excuse to stand near Nico." Each trip was executed with manufactured casualness and returned from with the kind of forensic debrief usually reserved for post-game analysis.

"He asked if I'd done this before," Milo reported after his fourth visit.

"What did you say?" Talia asked.

"I said does making drinks alone in my apartment at midnight count and he did a thing with his mouth."

"A thing."

"The left side moved. Upward. Briefly."

"One millimetre of mouth movement," I said. "Basically a proposal."

"Mock all you want. I know what I saw."

The class wound down as the sun began dropping toward the water, turning everything gold and amber. We sat at the bar with our drinks lined up — the daiquiri, the mojito, the mai tai — and the easy noise of an afternoon that had been better than I'd planned for.

"Should we find somewhere to hang out for a bit?" Talia said. "It's too nice to go back to the bungalows."

Nobody argued. We took our drinks and went.

We ended up hanging out until the light started to fade, the conversation easy and aimless in a way that didn't need directing. At some point someone mentioned dinner. We got up and started heading toward the restaurant, cutting through the bar area. The open section that faced the beach caught the last of the light, and I glanced out toward the water.

There was a figure at the edge of it. Standing alone, facing the ocean, arms at her sides. Not rigid — just still, like she'd been there long enough to become part of the landscape.

Renee.

The group was ahead of me, already moving toward the restaurant, laughing at something Milo had said.

And Renee was standing at the water's edge, alone, watching the sun go down by herself.

I looked at her for a moment — the outline of her against the fading light, the distance between where I was and where she was.

"Ade." Talia's voice, somewhere ahead. "You coming?"

I watched Renee for one more second. She didn't move. The water came in, pulled back, and she just stood there, like she had nowhere else to be and no one waiting for her to be there.

"Yeah," I said. "Coming."

I caught up with the group. Milo was already debating what to order. Talia was telling him he couldn't have three appetizers again. Cass was walking beside them, quiet and content.

I didn't look back at the beach. But I thought about it all the way to the restaurant.