Plot Twist In Paradise
by IAmHerEmma

 

 

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Chapter Three: Turquoise and Smug

 

The brochure was following me.

Not literally. I wasn't losing my mind. But in the four days since the lunch with Maribel, that glossy tri-fold piece of turquoise propaganda had somehow migrated across my apartment with the quiet determination of something that wanted to be looked at. Day one, I'd dropped it on the kitchen counter next to the mail and the La Croix graveyard, where it could be safely ignored. Day two, it was on the coffee table, which I attributed to having moved the mail. Day three, it was on my desk, leaning against the laptop like a passive-aggressive coworker who'd left a note instead of having a conversation. And now, day four, it was on my nightstand.

I had no memory of putting it there. None. I had not, at any point, consciously decided that the last thing I wanted to see before falling asleep was a stock photo of turquoise water and a tagline that sounded like it was written by a yoga instructor having a spiritual emergency. And yet there it was, propped up between my phone charger and a half-empty glass of water, looking at me with the serene confidence of something that knew it was winning.

I was not interested. I was a grown-ass adult with a career and a deadline and a perfectly functional apartment, and I did not need a tropical island to sort out my professional life. People who needed tropical islands to sort out their professional lives were people who put inspirational quotes on their bathroom mirrors, and I had too much self-respect for that. I had a water stain on my ceiling instead. Much more grounding.

Maribel had texted once, two days after the lunch. Just a link to the resort's Instagram page and a single word: Thinking? I'd replied with Working which was a lie so transparent that I was fairly sure she could see through it from across the city. She hadn't responded, which was worse than if she'd pushed. Maribel's silence was strategic. She knew that leaving me alone with the idea was more effective than arguing for it, because arguing gave me something to push against and silence gave me nothing to do but sit with it.

Four days of not writing. Four days of opening the laptop, staring at the cursor, typing something terrible, deleting it, and closing the laptop again. Four days of checking my sales dashboard and my Instagram and my email and finding nothing in any of them that made the blank page any less blank. It was starting to feel personal — like the empty document wasn't just empty but actively refusing to cooperate, sitting there with the quiet confident patience of a villain who knew the hero wasn't ready for the fight. The routine hadn't changed. The only thing that had changed was that now, every time I closed the laptop, the brochure was somewhere in my peripheral vision, being turquoise and smug.

I'd tried to distract myself. I'd reorganized my bookshelf — by color this time, because alphabetical had stopped feeling like enough and genre was a political decision I wasn't prepared to make. I'd deep-cleaned the bathroom, which was the kind of task I only undertook when avoiding something truly terrifying. I'd watched four episodes of Love Lagoon: Second Chances which was a reality dating show about exes being stranded on an island together, and yes, the irony of watching people trapped on an island while avoiding going to an island was not lost on me. I'd even called my mother, which was how I knew I was genuinely desperate — not because I didn't love my mother, but because calling her inevitably led to the question "how's the writing going?" and I'd used up all my good lies on Maribel.

The apartment was cleaner than it had been in months. My browser history was a graveyard of half-read articles about overcoming creative blocks, each one offering advice I'd already tried ("change your environment," "write badly on purpose," "try morning pages") and none of them acknowledging the fundamental problem, which was that my brain had apparently decided it was done producing words and had not consulted me about the decision. Whatever was sitting on the other side of that blank page — whatever invisible, stubborn thing had parked itself between me and a first sentence — it wasn't budging. And it had more patience than I did.

I was on the couch in sweatpants and an oversized hoodie — the outfit of someone who had officially given up on the day — when my phone buzzed.

Sasha's face filled the screen before I'd even finished accepting the video call. She was in her apartment, cross-legged on her bed, pulling apart a rotisserie chicken with her bare hands over a paper towel like some kind of beautiful, well-adjusted caveperson. Her curly hair was pulled back in the kind of loose knot that looked effortless and probably was, because Sasha was one of those people whose default state was somehow put-together even when they were eating a whole chicken in bed.

"You look terrible," said Sasha, by way of greeting.

"Thank you."

"I mean it. You look like you've been indoors for a week."

"Four days."

"Same thing. When was the last time you went outside?"

"I went to Sorrentino's on Tuesday."

"That was four days ago. Have you left the apartment since?"

I considered lying. Sasha's face made it clear that she already knew the answer and was asking purely so I could hear myself say it out loud.

"I went to the bodega yesterday. I needed cream for my coffee."

"The bodega is downstairs."

"It's still outside. There was wind and everything."

Sasha pointed a greasy finger at me through the screen. "What's going on? And don't say 'nothing' because you texted me three separate times today and one of them was just a picture of your ceiling."

She was right. I had texted her a picture of my ceiling. In my defense, I'd been lying on the floor at the time because I'd read somewhere that changing your physical position could unlock creative thinking, and the only thing it had unlocked was a profound sense of my own ridiculousness and an angle on the light fixture I could have gone my whole life without seeing.

"Maribel wants me to go to a resort," I said.

Sasha's hand paused midway to the chicken. "A resort."

"An LGBTQ+ adults-only resort on a private island somewhere off the coast. It's called The Whispering Palms, which sounds like a spa that's also haunted, and the tagline is 'Your Most Authentic Self' which I'm fairly sure is a threat."

"Hold on." Sasha wiped her hands on the paper towel and held up a hand. "Adults only?"

"Yes."

"LGBTQ+?"

"Yes."

"On a private island?"

"Yes, Sasha. On a private island. In the ocean. Where islands typically are."

"That sounds amazing." Sasha was already grinning.

"It sounds like a place where people go to find themselves and come back with crystals and new dietary restrictions," I said.

"Those things aren't mutually exclusive," said Sasha, tearing off another piece of chicken. "Crystals are pretty and some dietary restrictions are legitimate."

"You're missing the point."

"You're burying the lead." Sasha leaned closer to the screen. "Why does Maribel want you to go to a resort?"

"Because I can't write, and she thinks if I go sit on a beach for a nine days I'll magically become inspired and produce a bestselling manuscript. She knows the manager. A guy named Emmett something. They went to Columbia together. She showed me a brochure with turquoise water and a stock photo of people laughing like they'd just been told the funniest joke in the history of human civilization."

"Back up." Sasha held up a hand. "How was the lunch?"

"The lunch was fine. The lunch was an ambush disguised as Italian food."

"What did she say?"

"She said the usual Maribel things. The window is closing. The momentum needs to be maintained. My emotional specificity has gone missing. She told me I'm avoiding vulnerability like someone's going to grade me on it, which is — okay, it was annoyingly accurate, but she didn't have to say it while I was eating rigatoni."

Sasha's eyebrows went up. "She said that?"

"She said it and then she sat there with her perfect posture and her sparkling water and waited for me to agree with her."

"Did you?"

"I ordered a second glass of wine. So, basically, yes."

Sasha snorted. "And then she pulled out the brochure?"

"And then she pulled out the brochure. Like a magician producing a rabbit, except the rabbit was a tropical island and the magic was making me feel like a dysfunctional hermit over lunch."

"I mean... are you a dysfunctional hermit?"

"That's not the point."

"That's entirely the point," said Sasha.

"Okay." Sasha pushed the chicken aside, which meant she was taking this seriously. Sasha only stopped eating for serious conversations and fire alarms. "And what do you think?"

"I think it's ridiculous. I think you don't fix writer's block by going on vacation. I think I'm not the kind of person who goes to a resort and does — what, group activities? Beach yoga? Trust falls with strangers? I don't do trust falls, Sasha. I have trust issues that preclude falling."

"You have trust issues that preclude a lot of things," said Sasha, like she was reading from a file she'd been keeping.

"That's not helpful."

"It's accurate. Keep going. What else?"

"What else is that it's probably expensive — it's a private island, those things aren't cheap — and it's impractical and I should be here working, not doing trust exercises on a beach and pretending that relaxation is a creative strategy," I said, aware that I was listing objections at a speed that suggested I'd been rehearsing them.

"Are you done?" Sasha asked.

"I might have a few more points."

"You've been thinking about this for four days," said Sasha.

"I have not been —"

"You texted me a ceiling photo, Ade. You're spiraling. You've been sitting in your apartment thinking about this resort you claim you don't want to go to, and the most interesting thing you could share with me was plaster."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. She had me.

"The brochure is on my nightstand," I said quietly.

Sasha's eyebrows went up. Not a lot — just enough to communicate that this was, in her professional opinion as my best friend, extremely telling.

"I didn't put it there on purpose."

"Ade."

"It migrated."

"Brochures don't migrate," said Sasha, with the patient calm of someone talking a stranger off a ledge.

"This one does. I think Maribel gave me a haunted brochure."

Sasha was smiling now — the specific smile she reserved for moments when I was being ridiculous and she loved me for it but was also going to say something I didn't want to hear.

"You want to go," said Sasha.

"I absolutely do not."

"You want to go and you're mad about it," said Sasha, like she was announcing the weather.

"I'm not mad. I'm resistant."

"Ade, you put a brochure on your nightstand. That's not resistance. That's foreplay."

I pulled a throw pillow into my lap and squeezed it, because my hands needed something to do that wasn't picking up the brochure and reading it for the fifth time in four days.

"Even if I wanted to go — and I'm not saying I do — what would be the point? I go sit on a beach for a days. I come back with a sunburn and some photos for Instagram and I'm still the same person who can't write. The location doesn't change what's happening in my head."

Sasha tilted her head. "Maybe the location isn't supposed to change what's in your head. Maybe it's supposed to put something new there."

"That's very philosophical. Did you get that from a podcast?"

"I got it from four days of texts that were either complaints about your toaster or photos of your ceiling. Ade, when was the last time you talked to someone who wasn't me or Maribel?"

I started to answer and then stopped, because the answer was embarrassing enough in my own head and saying it out loud was going to make it real.

"Exactly," said Sasha. "You've been living in a bubble. You, your laptop, your apartment, and the same two people who've been in your life for years. That's not a life, that's a holding pattern. And I love you, but you can't keep pulling from the same well and expecting it to fill back up on its own."

"I'm not pulling from a well. I'm not pulling from anything. That's the problem."

"Right. Because you've been alone. And I don't mean alone like single — I mean alone like isolated. When was the last time you had a conversation with someone who didn't already know you? Someone who didn't know about the book or the block or the apartment or any of it?"

"I talk to people."

"The barista at the coffee shop doesn't count."

"We have a rapport."

"She knows your order. That's not a rapport, that's a transaction." Sasha shifted on the bed, tucking her legs underneath her and leaning forward in a way that meant the chicken portion of the evening was over and the truth portion was beginning. "You used to be the person who could walk into a room full of strangers and walk out with three stories and someone's phone number. Remember that? Remember when you actually let people in instead of sitting in your apartment judging brochures?"

That one landed. I didn't have a joke ready for it, which was how I knew it was true.

"I don't judge brochures," I said weakly.

"You called the tagline a threat."

"It is a threat. 'Your Most Authentic Self' is corporate for 'we're going to make you do something uncomfortable and charge you for it.'"

Sasha leaned back against her headboard, arms crossed, letting the silence do the work she'd already started.

"Go meet people," Sasha said finally. "Not for the book. Not because Maribel told you to. Just — go be around humans you haven't met before. Have a conversation that surprises you. Let someone say something you didn't expect. That's all. Just let some new air into whatever room you've locked yourself in."

"And that's going to fix my writer's block?"

"I don't know. Maybe not." Sasha shrugged. "But it might remind you that you're actually interesting when you're not hiding in your apartment being miserable about it."

"I'm not miserable. I'm... creatively constipated."

"That's the worst thing you've ever said."

"I stand by it."

"Please don't." Sasha laughed — the real one, not the polite one she used when she was being diplomatic. "Look. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know how to fix your writing. That's not my department. But I do know you. And the version of you that hasn't left her apartment in four days is not the version of you that wrote that book. That version of you was out in the world, talking to people, collecting experiences, being brave enough to feel things and then put them on a page. You can't do the last part if you've stopped doing all the parts that come before it."

"When did you get this wise?" I asked, mostly to stop her before she made me feel anything else.

"I've always been this wise. You just don't usually sit still long enough to hear it."

"Fine. I'm a little miserable."

"And," said Sasha, leaning forward with the grin that meant she was about to say something I was going to hate, "if you happen to meet someone out there who makes you stop thinking about word counts for five minutes... that wouldn't exactly hurt either."

"Oh, absolutely not," I said. "We're not doing that. This is not a romantic comedy. I'm not going to a tropical island and falling in love with some mysterious stranger by the pool."

"I didn't say love," said Sasha, with the kind of grin that absolutely meant love.

"I can see your face, Sasha. I know what that grin means."

"I'm saying go have a conversation with an interesting person. Maybe someone buys you a drink. Maybe you buy someone a drink. Maybe you just sit at a bar and someone says something that makes you laugh and for five minutes you're not Adrianna Moore, blocked writer, you're just a woman having a drink and talking to another human being."

"That sounds suspiciously like the setup to a romance novel," I said.

"Everything sounds like the setup to a romance novel to you because you write romance novels."

"I write erotica, not romance."

"Ade, your characters fall in love. They just also happen to have orgasms while they do it."

I opened my mouth to argue this point and then closed it, because she was right and I knew she was right and arguing would just prove her point faster.

"But fine," Sasha continued. "Go for the sunsets and the self-discovery. Ignore any attractive humans you encounter. Very healthy plan."

"Thank you. I think so too."

We looked at each other through the screen. Sasha was smiling. I was trying not to.

"I haven't even looked at the website," I said, as if this was evidence of something.

"Look at the website."

"I don't want to."

"Look at the website. I'll wait."

"This feels like a trap."

"It's a website, Ade. It's not going to reach through the screen and drag you onto a plane."

I stared at her. She stared back, unbothered, unblinking, radiating the calm patience of someone who had already won this argument and was just waiting for me to catch up.

"Fine," I said, and opened my laptop.

The Whispering Palms had a website that looked exactly the way you'd expect it to look. The homepage featured an aerial shot of the island that made it look roughly the size of a postage stamp in a very large ocean.

"It's a small island," I said. "And you have to take a boat to get there. I already told Maribel I don't do boats."

Sasha squinted at me through the screen. "Since when do you not do boats?"

"Since I found out this place requires one."

I scrolled past the bungalows before they could do any more damage to my resistance.

"There's a philosophical argument to be made that any location you can only leave by boat is functionally a prison with better towels."

"There is not a philosophical argument to be made about that. Show me the rooms."

I clicked on the accommodations page. The bungalows were, objectively, beautiful. White walls, wooden shutters, beds that looked like clouds had been pressured into rectangular shapes. Each one had its own porch — a real porch, with chairs and a little table and a view of either the ocean or the gardens. The kind of porch where you'd sit with a coffee in the morning and feel like a person in a movie about finding yourself.

"Those are nice," said Sasha, leaning closer to her screen. "Those are really nice, Ade."

"They're fine."

"They're gorgeous and you know it."

"They're rooms. They have beds and walls. All rooms have beds and walls."

"Most rooms don't have a view of the ocean and a ceiling fan that costs more than my rent," said Sasha.

I scrolled past the bungalows before they could do any more damage to my resistance.

The beachfront bar had its own page, which felt excessive for a bar but was admittedly well-photographed. Warm wood, open sides, barstools facing the water. The kind of place where you'd order something you couldn't pronounce and pretend you'd been drinking it your whole life.

There was a list of activities: guided nature walks, beach yoga, kayaking, snorkeling, game nights, karaoke, bonfires, cooking classes, and open mic nights.

"Open mic nights," I said aloud.

"Don't."

"An open mic night, Sasha. On a private island. Where you can't leave. So you're just trapped there while someone reads their poetry about the ocean, and you have to clap, and you can't even pretend you need to be somewhere else because you're on an island and there is nowhere else."

"You're spiraling about a hypothetical open mic," said Sasha, clearly delighted by it.

"I'm a writer who can't write. An open mic night is not a fun activity for me. That's a public execution."

"You don't have to do the open mic."

"I know I don't have to do the open mic. I'm not going."

"You're still scrolling."

She was right. I was still scrolling. And the worse thing — the thing I wasn't going to say out loud — was that with every page I scrolled past, the resistance was getting thinner. Not disappearing. Just wearing down, like a sweater you'd washed too many times. The shape was still there but you could see through it if the light hit right.

I stopped scrolling. The cursor hovered over a photo of two women walking along the beach at golden hour, laughing, barefoot, the water catching light around their ankles. It looked warm. It looked easy. It looked like the kind of moment that happened to people who weren't paralyzed by their own expectations.

"What if I go and nothing changes?" I said. The joke was gone from my voice and I didn't bother putting it back.

Sasha's expression changed. The teasing dropped away and what was left was just my best friend, looking at me like she could hear everything I wasn't saying.

"Then you come home with a tan and some good meals and nine or ten days away from that apartment. That's not nothing."

"And if I still can't write?"

"Then you still can't write, and we figure it out. But at least you'll have tried something different instead of staring at the same walls hoping they start talking back."

"What if it's just over a week of me sitting on a different surface being blocked? Instead of my desk chair it's a beach chair. Same problem, better weather."

"Maybe. Or maybe your brain needs something it can't get from your apartment. Different air, different people, different everything. You've been running on the same fumes for weeks, Ade. At some point the tank is empty and you need to go somewhere and fill it back up."

I didn't say anything for a moment. The apartment was quiet around me — the hum of the fridge, the faint sound of traffic from the street below.

"You're going to make me cry and I just did my skin care routine," I said.

"Then cry pretty. You know how."

She was right. She was annoyingly, undeniably right.

"I hate you," I said.

"You love me. Book the trip."

"I'll think about it."

Sasha didn't blink. "You've been thinking about it for four days. Book the trip."

"Goodnight, Sasha."

"Book the trip, Ade."

"Goodnight."

"I swear to god if you don't —"

"Goodnight!"

I ended the call. The apartment felt quieter than before.

I went through the motions of ending the day. Brushed my teeth. Washed my face. Changed into the oversized t-shirt I slept in — the one with a hole in the collar that I refused to throw away because it had reached the stage of softness that only came from years of wear, and finding a replacement would require emotional energy I didn't have. Got into bed. Turned off the light.

I thought about Sasha's words. Your brain needs something it can't get from your apartment.

I thought about Maribel tapping her temple. Stranger things have happened to worse writers.

I thought about the cursor blinking on an empty page, patient and unhurried, taking no responsibility for anything.

I turned the light back on.

I opened the laptop. Clicked on the booking page before I could talk myself out of it.

The page loaded in three seconds. Dates, room selection, payment. A private bungalow for nine days, starting next Friday. The calendar showed availability in green — plenty of open dates, as if the universe had cleared its schedule specifically to accommodate my breakdown.

I selected the dates. A bungalow with an ocean view, because if I was going to run away from my problems, I wasn't going to stare at a garden while I did it. The total appeared at the bottom of the screen and it was enough to make me wince — not enough to use as an excuse, the royalties from My Husband, My Bride had made sure of that, but enough to feel like a significant financial commitment to a decision I wasn't sure I was making.

I filled in my name. My email. My phone number. Each field felt like another step across a bridge I wasn't sure I wanted to be on.

My finger hovered over the confirmation button. My brain offered one last round of objections: this was impulsive, this was avoidance, this was spending money to run away from a problem that would be waiting for me when I got back. This was a woman in an oversized t-shirt with a hole in the collar sitting in bed at nearly midnight about to book a tropical vacation because her best friend told her to and she couldn't think of a good enough reason not to.

That was either the saddest thing I'd ever done or the bravest. I couldn't tell which, and I was too tired to figure it out.

I clicked it.

Booking confirmed. We can't wait to welcome you to The Whispering Palms at Coral Key.

Underneath, in smaller text: A confirmation email has been sent to the address provided. Please review our packing guide and pre-arrival checklist at your convenience.

A packing guide. There was a packing guide. I'd just committed to a vacation that came with homework.

I stared at the confirmation screen for a long time. Then I picked up my phone, screenshotted the email, and texted it to Sasha.

It was 11:47 PM.

Her reply came in under thirty seconds.

Sasha: Tell the island I said you're welcome

Me: I hate you

Sasha: You love me. Goodnight, Coral Key girl.

I put the phone down, turned off the light for the second time that night, and lay there in the dark — relieved, annoyed, and absolutely certain I'd just made either the best or the worst decision of my life.