Plot Twist In Paradise
by IAmHerEmma

 

 

---

 

Chapter Six: Telenovela on Wheels

 

The heat was the first thing.

The doors opened and it hit me — the actual, physical assault of a climate that had been waiting for me on the other side of the glass. Thick, wet, immediate — the kind of heat that didn't introduce itself so much as move in and start rearranging the furniture. My sunglasses fogged. My carefully maintained hairstyle, which had survived a four-hour flight and a baggage carousel standoff with its dignity mostly intact, immediately began negotiations with the humidity. I could feel my hair making decisions I hadn't approved.

Jason walked ahead with the easy stride of someone for whom this heat was just another day. He was carrying a clipboard and talking about shuttle timing and marina logistics, and I was absorbing approximately fifteen percent of it because the other eighty-five percent of my brain was occupied with the fact that my skin had decided to become a water feature.

I could hear her behind me. Her bags, the footsteps, the particular silence of a woman who had just found out she'd spent four hours being condescending to the actual author of the book in her lap. It was, without exaggeration, the best walk of my life.

"Adrianna."

I kept walking. My own luggage rolled smoothly behind me across the pavement. The sun was doing something aggressive to the top of my head.

"Adrianna Moore."

That was the full name. She was using my full name like a teacher about to assign detention. I allowed myself a small, private smile behind my sunglasses.

"That's me," I said, without turning around.

"You actually wrote that book."

"You're a writer?"

"What gave it away?" I said, still walking.

"You wrote My Husband, My Bride?"

There it was. The you. She wasn't questioning the book. She was questioning me — whether someone like me, who she'd been stuck next to all day, could have possibly written something worth reading.

I stopped walking. The block flickered somewhere at the back of my mind — weeks of blank screens and false starts, the words I'd written and deleted and written and deleted — and for one brief, awful second, she'd landed a hit she didn't even know she'd thrown.

But only for a second.

I turned around.

"I'm sorry, is there an audition process I missed? Should I have brought references? A writing sample, maybe a dramatic reading right here in the parking lot? Because I'd really love to know what exactly about me says 'couldn't possibly write a book.'"

She opened her mouth and nothing came out. I watched it happen — the false start, the slight press of her lips, the recalibration behind her eyes — and I enjoyed every second of it. Renee Miller, who had spent the entire flight with an answer for everything, was standing in a parking lot in the blazing heat with absolutely nothing to say.

"That's what I thought," I said, and turned to follow Jason.

I didn't rush it. I took my time. I let my luggage roll behind me at a leisurely, unhurried pace, because when you finally win one against a woman who has been out-talking you all day, you don't sprint away from it. You stroll.

Behind me, after a long and deeply gratifying pause, her bags clicked into motion.

Jason led us across the pickup area toward a white minivan with the Whispering Palms logo printed on the side. A minivan. For a resort that charged what this one charged, they really were committed to keeping expectations flexible.

I could feel Renee falling into step beside me as we got closer — not next to me, exactly, but no longer trailing four steps behind either. She'd closed the gap without closing it all the way, which felt like the most Renee Miller thing I'd learned about her so far. Even her walking had conditions.

Jason reached the van first and pulled the sliding door. It stuck halfway. He gave it a second tug — the kind that suggested this was a daily negotiation between him and this vehicle — and it slid open to reveal a man already seated inside, who looked at the two of us like Christmas had arrived early and brought backup.

He was stepping out before Jason could finish his gesture.

"Hi. Hello. Welcome. I'm Milo." He said it like one word — hihellowelcomeimmilo — already extending a hand toward me while the other one gripped the door frame for balance. He was medium build, late twenties maybe, with a smile that took up most of his face and a shirt that looked like a tropical greenhouse had exploded during a sunset. He shook my hand with both of his. "I love that dress. The belt detail? Incredible. You understood the assignment and then some."

I hadn't been complimented with that much conviction since Sasha told me my eyebrows could end marriages. I laughed before I could stop myself.

"Adrianna," I said.

"Adrianna. Beautiful name. Beautiful dress. We're already winning." He let go of my hand and turned to Renee, who had stopped a step behind me with the expression of someone watching a weather event approach. "And you — I'm sorry, are you a model? Because you have a face that makes me want to apologize for mine."

Renee looked at him the way she might look at a stain that had appeared on her shirt in public — not angry, just deeply inconvenienced by its existence.

Most people would have backpedalled. Milo didn't even blink. "Okay, noted, we're not doing compliments yet. That's fine. I come on strong. My therapist says it's because I externalize affection to avoid sitting with my own vulnerability, but I think it's because I have great taste and no filter." He shrugged. "We can revisit the model thing later when you trust me."

Something happened to Renee's mouth. It wasn't a smile. But something in the architecture of her expression shifted about two millimetres in a direction that was not entirely hostile.

Milo saw it. His whole face lit up like he'd found buried treasure.

"Did you see that?" He looked at me. "I almost got a smile. I'm counting it."

Jason gestured toward the van. "If you're all ready, we can get the bags loaded and head to the marina."

Renee turned to follow him without a word. Milo watched her go with his mouth slightly open.

"Excuse me — I called you a model, almost got murdered for it, and we haven't even done introductions?"

Renee stopped. She looked back over her shoulder. "Renee," she said, and kept walking.

Milo turned to me. "She's fun. I can tell."

Jason helped us with the bags while a driver I hadn't noticed before loaded everything into the back. Renee and I ended up on the same row, close enough that I was aware of the space between us, and Milo took the row in front of us, already twisting around in his seat so he could face us both. Jason climbed into the passenger seat, the driver started the engine, and we pulled out of the pickup area.

"So," Milo said, settling into his seat like he was hosting a talk show. "How was everyone's flight?"

"Fine," I said.

"Uneventful," Renee said.

Milo looked between us. "You two fly in together?"

"No," I said.

"Same flight," Renee said, at the same time.

I looked at her. She looked at me.

"We were on the same flight," I said. "We didn't fly together."

"I didn't say we did."

"You kind of implied it."

"I stated a fact. We were on the same flight. That's all I said."

"It's not—" I stopped myself. I was not going to do this. Not here. Not in a minivan. Not in front of a man in a floral shirt I'd known for two minutes.

Milo watched the whole thing without blinking. His eyes moved from me to Renee and back again, slow and delighted, and he pressed his lips together like he'd just been handed a gift he was choosing to unwrap later.

"Okay," he said, nodding slowly. "Okay."

He let it sit just long enough to be polite. Then, deciding to be generous, he moved on.

"So I'm Milo. I said that already but I feel like the first one didn't count because we were standing in a parking lot and nobody was comfortable yet. I'm a nurse. Been doing it six years, love it, wouldn't trade it, but it does mean I spend most of my life around people who are either in pain or heavily medicated, so when I get a vacation I become—" he gestured at himself, "—this. Amplified. Sorry in advance."

"You don't seem sorry," Renee said.

"Oh I'm not, honey. That was performative." He pointed at her with genuine approval. "See, you're paying attention. I appreciate that."

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. Milo seemed like the kind of person who walked into a room and rearranged everyone's plans for the evening without asking, and somehow you thanked him for it afterward.

"I've been single for two years," he continued, unprompted. "Which at this point feels like a personal attack from the universe. The first year, fine, I was healing. But this last year? I've just been cute and available and absolutely wasted on nobody, which is frankly a crime. So I'm here because the universe owes me a man, and if it doesn't deliver, I'm filing a formal complaint."

I didn't know if he was always like this or if this was just his vacation setting. Either way, there was something about a man demanding the universe owe him a boyfriend that was hard not to like.

"What about you?" He looked at me. "What do you do?"

"I'm a writer," I said, and the word came out easier than it had any right to, given that I hadn't written anything worth keeping in weeks.

"A writer!" Milo said it like I'd told him I was an astronaut. "What do you write? What's the book? Tell me everything."

"I've written a few novels," I said. "Five, actually. The first four did okay — nothing crazy. But the last one kind of took off."

"Took off how?" Milo said. "Like, your-mom-bought-copies took off, or like, actual took off?"

"Bestseller lists for four months took off."

"Shut up." He slapped the back of his seat. "What's it called?"

"My Husband, My Bride."

"What's it about?"

"It's erotica," I said, and it came out easier than I expected. "It's about a marriage where both people are discovering things about themselves — desires, kinks, parts of their identity they never had language for. And instead of blowing up the marriage, they figure it out together. Messily. Honestly. With a lot of sex."

"Oh, this is the best thing I've heard all month." Milo looked like he'd been personally blessed. "How spicy are we talking?"

I laughed. "Pretty spicy."

"I'm buying it the second I get Wi-Fi."

"Although, funny enough, certain people don't even believe I wrote it. Like I'd just walk around claiming someone else's book for fun. As if that's a thing people do."

I didn't look at Renee. I didn't need to. I could practically feel the eye roll from the seat next to me, radiating off her like heat from a stove.

"People are the worst," Milo said sympathetically.

"They really are," I said, still looking at Milo, still smiling, still not looking at the woman beside me who had gone so quiet you could hear the air conditioning.

Milo let the silence sit for about three seconds, which I was starting to suspect was his absolute limit. Then he turned to Renee.

"Okay, I've been rude. I know your name, I know you're not a model — even though you are — but what do you do?"

"I'm a physical therapist," Renee said.

"Oh, so we have a writer and a healer. This van is full of talent." He looked between us. "And me. I bring the personality."

A physical therapist — so she spent her days telling people what was wrong with them and how to fix it. Figures.

"So have either of you been to this place before?"

"First time," I said.

"Same," Renee said.

"What are you most looking forward to?"

"Quiet," I said. "And maybe some time to work."

"Work?" Milo looked at me. "You're bringing work to a tropical island? Honey, that's depressing."

"I'm a writer. It follows me."

"That's even more depressing. You need to learn how to turn off." He swung his attention to the other end of the row. "And you? What's your big island plan?"

"Peace," Renee said, and offered nothing else.

"Peace. Fun. Relaxation. Sun." Milo counted them off on his fingers. "That's four things that are not work. Take notes," he said to me.

"We'll see," I said.

"That's a yes. That is absolutely a yes disguised as being chill." Milo pointed at me. "You're going to be on a beach with a laptop. I can already tell."

"I have a deadline. The next book isn't going to write itself."

"From what I saw, neither are you," Renee said, still looking straight ahead.

"That's called a process."

"That's called a blank page."

"Oh, so now you're an expert on writing?"

"I know what a finished page looks like. That wasn't one."

Milo's head was swivelling between us like he was courtside at a tennis match. He hadn't said a word in about thirty seconds, which I was learning might be a personal record for him.

"Okay," he said, holding up both hands. "I have a question and I need both of you to not get mad at me."

"That's never a good start," Renee said.

"What is happening between you two?"

"Nothing," I said, too fast.

"Nothing," Renee said. Half a second behind me.

"See, that." Milo pointed at both of us. "You just said the same word at the same time and neither of you looked at each other. I've been watching you two since the parking lot and the tension is giving full-on telenovela. What is going on with you two?"

"We sat next to each other on the flight," I said, as if that explained everything.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"Really? That's it?" Milo asked.

"I have been through an ordeal today," I said.

"That is wildly dramatic," Renee said.

We looked at each other. She had the audacity to look annoyed — she was annoyed, as if I was the one who'd been impossible all day. I gave her my best "are you serious right now" face, she gave me one right back, and then we both turned toward our respective windows like two people who had absolutely nothing left to say to each other.

Milo clapped his hands together once. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun."

The minivan couldn't get to the marina fast enough. I needed air, space, and approximately two hundred feet between me and the self-appointed skeptic sitting next to me.

We slowed, and through the glass I could see the marina opening up ahead of us — the dock stretching out over the water, the late afternoon light doing something golden across the surface, and a catamaran with the Whispering Palms logo on its hull tied up alongside it. It was mid-sized, white, with an enclosed cabin and an open deck at the back where a row of seats faced the water. We were here.

Renee was on the door side, which meant my escape involved waiting while she gathered her things at a pace I can only describe as deliberate. By the time my feet finally hit the pavement, I had a whole speech prepared.

Then the salt air hit me, and the speech went somewhere I didn't bother following. Cleaner than the airport, warmer, the breeze coming off the water — I stood there for a second and let it settle. The warmth on my skin, the breeze coming off the water, the way everything here seemed to move a little slower than I did. For the first time all day, I wasn't annoyed or anxious or composing a sarcastic internal monologue. I was just standing somewhere beautiful, breathing.

Maybe Maribel and Sasha were right to push me into this. I wasn't going to tell them that. But standing here, salt air in my lungs and the water ahead of me — yeah. Everything was going to be okay.