Plot Twist In Paradise - Chapter 18 - Sleep Is Overrated and So Is Denial

Plot Twist In Paradise
by IAmHerEmma

 

 

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Chapter Eighteen: Sleep Is Overrated and So Is Denial

 

I woke up at 4:47am. I know this because the clock on the nightstand was glowing at me like an accusation, and my brain, for reasons it declined to explain, decided this was important.

I'd slept. Technically. An hour here, forty minutes there, each stretch ending with me surfacing into the dark bungalow, my mind still turning like the ceiling fan over my head, replaying the evening on a loop I couldn't shut off.

The kiss was right there, available for replay at any moment, and my brain had helpfully confirmed this several times across the night. But it was everything around the kiss that kept pulling me back — the walk back along the path, torches thinning out behind us, the bonfire music turning into something you felt more than heard. Renee's arm brushing mine and neither of us adjusting. The way the conversation had gone quiet without going awkward, which was a thing I didn't know we were capable of.

At some point, her hand had found mine. Or mine had found hers. The order of operations was unclear and I'd replayed it enough times that my memory had started editing for narrative effect, which was professionally useful and personally annoying. What I did know: it happened. Fingers lacing together, easy, like we'd done it before. The path was dark enough that it felt private even though it wasn't, and neither of us said anything about it, which made it feel more real than a conversation would have.

My bungalow came first, and we'd stopped at the door. There was a moment where the air shifted and I thought about the last time we'd stood in this exact spot, the goodnight that had felt like the start of something that never quite started. But this was different. There was nothing unresolved about the way she was looking at me. Nothing careful.

"Goodnight, Ade."

She'd said it simply. Smiling. Not the careful Renee smile — the real one, the one that showed up when she forgot to manage it.

"Goodnight."

And she'd kept walking. I'd listened to her footsteps on the path for a few seconds longer than I needed to, then gone inside, closed the door, leaned against it, and said "fuck" to my empty bungalow with a level of feeling that the word had probably never been asked to carry before.

I rolled over. Rolled back. Stared at the ceiling fan. Counted the rotations. Lost count. Started again. My body was done. Fully, completely done — hours of bonfire, a kiss on a beach, a walk home in the dark with Renee's hand in mine, and my brain doing the only useful thing it had managed all day, which was absolutely nothing.

And underneath the exhaustion, something else. A pull. Low and steady, nothing like the anxious static that preceded every failed attempt at the desk — this felt like a frequency I'd been trying to tune into for months and had finally landed on by accident. I recognized it because I'd felt it once before — the night I'd written the first chapter of My Husband, My Bride in one sitting and known, with the specific, irrational certainty that writers pretend doesn't exist, that it was good.

I sat up. Looked at the desk. The laptop was right where I'd left it before the bonfire, closed and dark and waiting.

I could sleep. I could lie here and count ceiling fan rotations and let whatever was pulling at me settle into something I could examine in the morning, at a reasonable hour, like a person who had their shit together.

I got out of bed, grabbed the laptop, and brought it back with me. Propped the pillows against the headboard, pulled the covers over my legs, opened the screen. The glow lit up the dark bungalow and I started typing without deciding what I was going to write, which is either the best or worst way to begin anything.

Nora came out first. Just like last time — already formed, already certain, arriving on the page like she'd been waiting in the wings for me to stop pretending I didn't know exactly who she was. I wrote her on a beach at night. I wrote the water dark and the sand still warm from the day. I wrote someone standing next to her — the one she'd been circling for chapters, who talked too fast and deflected too well and gripped her coffee cup like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

I wrote the kiss.

Nora hadn't planned it. That was the thing she kept coming back to, standing in the kitchen of her apartment three weeks later with a mug of tea going cold in her hand — she hadn't planned any of it. The beach had been a last resort, a nowhere to go when everywhere felt too loud, and Alison had followed her without asking if she should, which was either presumptuous or exactly right. She'd come straight from somewhere — still in the slim trousers and open-collared shirt she sometimes wore when she was being Alistair instead of Alison, the version of herself that stood differently and spoke half an octave lower and made Nora's brain do something inconvenient. They'd stood at the water's edge and talked about nothing that mattered and everything that did, and at some point the talking had stopped and the silence had been a dare that neither of them had the sense to walk away from.

When Alison kissed her, it tasted like salt air and the cheap wine they'd been drinking all evening, and Nora's hand had come up to her jaw on instinct — not gently, not carefully, just the way you reach for something you've been pretending you don't want. Alison made a sound against her mouth that Nora was going to hear in every quiet room for the rest of her life, and the ocean kept doing what it was doing, completely indifferent to the fact that Nora's entire understanding of her own week had just been revised.

I stopped typing. Read it back.

It was — yeah. It was good. It was specific in the way that made sentences stick, the details sharp enough to cut. It was also, unmistakably, the cove.

Something flickered at the edge of it — the salt air, the indifferent ocean, how close it all sat to a night I'd actually lived. But the writing was good, and good writing always comes from somewhere. That's what writers do. We take what moves us and we make something out of it. It's called inspiration.

I kept typing.

The pages were alive. The sentences were moving. The thing that had been locked inside me for months was pouring out, and I wasn't going to stop and ask why the lock had finally opened. Not now. Not with the words still coming.

I wrote Nora at work. A patient who couldn't straighten her arm past ninety degrees, who'd been told by three doctors that it was as good as it was going to get. Nora who didn't accept that, not with argument, but with patience — the boring, repetitive, undramatic kind of patience that nobody writes about because it doesn't make good copy. Two degrees of motion gained over six weeks. The patient crying in the parking lot afterward, not from pain but from the shock of being proven wrong about her own limits.

I wrote Alison watching Nora through the glass door of the clinic, seeing her kneel beside the treatment table with her hand on the patient's shoulder, saying something too quiet to hear. The way it made Alison feel — not jealous, not left out. Something else. Something that had no business being this complicated at nine in the morning while holding a latte she'd bought as an excuse to walk past the clinic on her way to absolutely nowhere.

The light changed. I looked up and the sky through the window had shifted from black to a deep, bruised blue that meant dawn was coming whether I was ready for it or not. I checked the clock. Ten past six. I'd been writing for over an hour.

I scrolled back to the beginning and read the whole thing through. Nora was good. Better than anything I'd written in months. The details were sharp, the scenes breathed, and the pages hadn't fought me for a single one of them.

I closed the laptop and got out of bed.

The shower was hot and I stood in it longer than I needed to, letting the water relax every part of me. By the time I got out, the sky was fully light — pale blue with the kind of early-morning clarity that would burn off into humidity by ten. I dried my hair, which was going to do whatever it wanted regardless, and took less time getting ready than I expected — makeup, earrings, a sundress I didn't have to think twice about.

The morning was already warm. Five days at this resort and I'd stopped noticing the landscaping, stopped reading the little signs along the path that pointed toward the spa and the activity pavilion and the beach access. I knew where I was going without checking, which wasn't something that usually happened to me this fast.

The table was full when I got there. Talia was mid-sentence about something, gesturing with a piece of toast. Cass had coffee and the particular expression she wore when Talia was being Talia.

Renee was sitting on the far side of the table, in a white tank top, hair still damp, cup of coffee halfway to her mouth. She looked up when I walked in and smiled — easy, unhurried, like she'd been waiting without minding the wait.

"Morning," Renee said.

"Morning," I managed, and was aware that the word came out slightly differently than it usually did. Talia noticed. She smiled into her coffee and let it go, which might have been a first.

"You're late," Talia said, pointing her toast at me like it was an accusation.

"I lost track of time."

"You lost track of time," Talia repeated, looking at Renee with the subtlety of a woman who had never once in her life been accused of subtlety. "Interesting."

"I was writing," I said, which was true and also the least interesting version of the truth available.

"She was writing," Cass echoed, to no one in particular, and picked up her coffee.

I went to the buffet, which had nothing to do with being hungry and everything to do with needing sixty seconds where nobody was watching my face. I came back with a full plate and the renewed composure I'd purchased by spending an unreasonable amount of time pretending to choose between croissants. I sat down next to Renee. Her knee was close enough to mine under the table that I could feel the warmth without actual contact, and I didn't move away, and she didn't move away, and we both pretended that we weren't both very aware of the distance between "almost touching" and "touching."

By the time I'd started eating, I'd gotten a better read on the table dynamics. Talia was already dialed up to her default setting. Cass was serene. Renee was present, easy, comfortable in a way that felt new and also exactly right.

And then there was Milo.

Milo was sitting very still, which was the first sign that something cataclysmic had happened. Milo did not sit still. Milo existed in a state of perpetual motion — hands, face, posture, all of it running at a frequency that made hummingbirds look lethargic. But right now he was sitting in his chair with both hands wrapped around his coffee cup, staring at a fixed point somewhere between the salt shaker and infinity, with an expression that I could only describe as post-religious.

"Okay," I said, looking at him over my coffee. "What happened to you?"

The table went quiet in a way that told me this question had been asked before, possibly multiple times, and that the answers had been insufficient.

"He won't give us details," Talia said, with the wounded tone of someone who had been personally denied.

"I gave you details," Milo said, still staring at the salt shaker. "I gave you the relevant details."

"You said 'it happened' and then you sat there like that for ten minutes."

"Those are the relevant details. It happened. That's the detail."

I looked at Renee. She was watching Milo with a particular expression that said she already had a working theory and was waiting to see how long it took everyone else to catch up.

"What happened?" I asked, already regretting it based on the look on his face.

Milo finally looked at me. His eyes were glassy and he clearly had no language for whatever had happened to him. He set his coffee down with great care, like a diplomat about to make a statement to the press.

"After the bonfire," Milo began, in a tone of measured calm that he had clearly been rehearsing. "After everyone left. Nico and I stayed. We talked for a while. And then — and I want to be clear that this was a mutual, organic, adult decision—"

"Oh my God," Talia said, grabbing Cass's arm like she needed physical support.

"—we went back to my bungalow. And we — we spent time together."

"Spent time together," Cass repeated, setting her coffee down like she was going to need both hands free for this.

"Quality time."

"He slept with Nico," I said, cutting through the euphemisms with a knife that was long overdue.

"Ade!"

"What? You were going to circle this for another twenty minutes. I'm saving us all time."

Milo's composure collapsed like a building that had been condemned and was only waiting for someone to sneeze near the foundation. His face went red, which he clearly wanted to be from outrage but was obviously something else entirely, and the grin he'd been fighting broke through despite his best efforts to look scandalized.

"Ade, I am trying to be dignified about this—"

"Dignified?" Talia looked at Cass. "Was this before or after he sat down and forgot how to blink?"

"Before," Cass said. "He blinked once. I noted it."

"I am blinking a normal amount—"

"You were buffering," Renee said. "Like a video on bad Wi-Fi."

"I was not buffering—"

"You were absolutely buffering," Talia said, and the fact that the whole table was piling on at once seemed to short-circuit whatever rehearsed dignity Milo had left.

"Okay. Okay. Fine. We had sex. There. Are you happy? Nico and I had sex!"

"No," Talia said.

"Absolutely not," I agreed, pulling my plate closer like I was settling in for a show.

"Not a chance," Cass added, making the jury unanimous.

Milo looked around the table, searching for a single ally. Renee smiled at him — warm, unhelpful, thoroughly entertained. He rolled his eyes.

"So... how was it?" I asked, grinning at him over my coffee.

Milo took a breath, and whatever restraint he'd been clinging to went with it. "After the bonfire wound down, we stayed. Just sitting there, the fire going out. And he wasn't doing the Nico thing, you know? The quiet, behind-the-bar thing. He was just talking. He told me about his family back home, about why he came to the island."

He paused, looking down at his coffee cup like the next part required a running start.

"And then he walked me back to my bungalow, and at my door he stopped and looked at me and said, 'Tonight was good.' That's it. Three words. The man gave me three words and I almost passed out."

Talia made a sound that was not entirely human.

"And I said — God, this is embarrassing — I said, 'Just good?' Like I was fishing for a compliment. At my own door. At midnight. Like an absolute disaster of a person. And then... he just... kissed me."

The table collectively held its breath for a beat.

"And then what?" Talia asked.

"And then..." Milo paused. He was trying, genuinely trying, to maintain some boundary between what was his and what was the table's. It lasted about four seconds. "He's — okay. You know how he is behind the bar? That thing where every movement is exactly where it needs to be, nothing wasted, nothing rushed?"

"Please don't finish that sentence," Cass said, closing her eyes like she could physically block it from arriving.

"It's the same," Milo said, finishing that sentence. "It's exactly the same. The man is — he has a focus, is what I'm saying. A specificity of attention. An intentionality—"

"He's using SAT words to describe sex," Renee said to me, barely above a murmur.

Milo trailed off. The SAT words ran out, and what was left on his face wasn't funny anymore.

"He stayed," Milo said, quieter now. "I woke up this morning and he was still there. He didn't have to — his shift starts early, he could have left. But he was just... there. Next to me. Awake. Like leaving wasn't something he'd considered."

The table went quiet for a second. Because underneath all the comedy and the SAT words, that was real. Milo had spent days watching a man who spoke in two-word sentences and almost-smiles, reading every micro-expression like it was scripture, and they'd ended up in the same bed and Nico had stayed. That was the thing. Everything else was furniture.

Talia reached over and squeezed his hand. She didn't say anything. Didn't need to.

"So what happens now?" Cass asked, practical as always.

"What do you mean, what happens now?"

"You're still leaving. He lives here. What happens now?"

The word leaving landed on the table like a stone dropped into a still pond. I felt Renee's knee shift a millimeter closer to mine, or maybe I imagined it.

"I don't know," Milo said. "I don't — I haven't figured that part out. I was going to figure it out after I finished processing the part where I woke up and he was still there. He didn't have to stay. He had a shift. He stayed anyway, which means—"

"It means he pays attention," Renee said. Simply. Like a fact.

"He pays attention," Milo echoed, quieter, like he was hearing it properly for the first time.

I looked at Renee. She was already looking at me. And for half a second, neither of us looked away — not in a dramatic, loaded way, just in the way of two people who were both sitting at a table hearing someone talk about what happens when a person pays attention to you, and who both knew, without discussing it, that they were sitting in the same conversation from the other side.

Talia, because she was Talia, chose this moment to speak.

"So," she said, turning to me and Renee with the expression of a woman who had been exercising truly heroic restraint and whose heroism was now at an end. "How was the walk last night?"

"Nice," I said.

"Nice," Renee confirmed.

"Nice," Talia repeated, flat as a pancake. She looked at Cass. "Nice."

"I heard them."

"They went for a walk on a moonlit beach and the adjective they've come back with is nice."

"It was a nice walk," I said. "We walked. On the beach. It was nice. What do you want, a weather report?"

Talia opened her mouth, and Cass put a hand on her arm without even looking, the practiced reflex of a woman who had been intercepting Talia's worst impulses for eight years.

"Leave them alone," Cass said.

"I'm just—"

"You're just leaving them alone."

Talia sat back in her chair with an expression of tremendous, theatrical suffering. But she left it alone. For now. The "for now" was doing about forty pounds of lifting in her silence, and everyone at the table could hear it.

Breakfast continued. Or it would have, if Lyle hadn't appeared.

He materialized at the edge of the table the way he always did — like he'd been standing nearby for several minutes waiting for a gap in the conversation that he'd finally decided wasn't coming.

"Good morning, everyone. I hope the evening's festivities were enjoyable and that everyone is feeling rested and hydrated." He was holding a clipboard. Lyle always had a clipboard. "I wanted to share some of today's scheduled programming, in case any guests at the table might be interested in participating in one or more of the available activities."

"Hit us," Talia said.

"So the first option is a pottery workshop, which will be held in the arts pavilion — that's the covered structure adjacent to the garden path, for anyone who hasn't yet had the opportunity to locate it. The workshop runs from ten to twelve and all materials are provided, so there's no need for participants to bring anything other than themselves and a willingness to engage with clay in a hands-on capacity."

"A willingness to engage with clay in a hands-on capacity," Cass repeated.

"There's also guided kayaking along the western coastline, departing from the main beach at eleven, for any guests who might enjoy exploring some of the smaller coves around the island from the water."

"And finally, there's a group aqua aerobics session at nine-thirty in the main pool. It's instructor-led, set to music, and suitable for all fitness levels."

"No," Cass said.

"It's very popular with—"

"No."

Lyle blinked, recalibrated, and smiled. "Of course. If anyone changes their mind, the sign-up sheet is at the front desk. Have a wonderful day." He moved on to the next table with the steady determination of a man who had never once been discouraged by a flat rejection.

"We should do the kayaking," Milo announced, apparently fully recovered from his emotional disclosure. "But skip the guided part and go further — there's supposed to be a waterfall on the other side of the island you can swim under."

"Yes," Talia said immediately.

"I'll be at the pool," Cass said, as if this had been decided long before the conversation started.

"Cass, there's a waterfall."

"And there's a pool."

"I want to swim," Renee said.

I poured another cup of coffee and my phone buzzed in the pocket of my dress.

Then buzzed again.

Then four more times in quick succession, which meant either there was an earthquake somewhere or Sasha had woken up.

I pulled the phone out under the table and tilted the screen toward me.

Sasha: You alive?

Sasha: Hello

Sasha: If you're dead I'm going to be really annoyed because I have news about my landlord's new girlfriend and it's UNHINGED

Sasha: You're ignoring me which means you're either asleep or something interesting is happening

Sasha: It's interesting isn't it

Sasha: ADRIANNA MOORE

Sasha: I KNOW YOU'RE AWAKE

I bit the inside of my cheek. Seven messages. The escalation pattern was textbook Sasha — casual concern, mild irritation, gossip bribe, accurate read, capitalized threat. She'd gone from "you alive?" to full caps, which was actually restrained for her.

I started typing.

Me: I'm alive. Sorry. Bonfire ran late.

Three dots appeared instantly. She'd been waiting.

Sasha: The bonfire ran late

Sasha: The bonfire

Sasha: Ran late

Me: Yes. There was a bonfire. It ran late. That is a complete and accurate summary of the evening.

Sasha: Babe you have never in your life stayed late at a group event voluntarily. you once left a birthday party during the cake because you said "the social contract has been fulfilled"

That was true and I didn't appreciate being reminded.

Me: It was a nice bonfire. Good music. Rum punch. Fire. You know. Bonfire things.

Sasha: You just used "nice" to describe something which means you're actively concealing information

Sasha: Was renee there

I looked up from the phone. Renee was talking to Cass about something — a restaurant, maybe, or a place to swim. Her profile was catching the morning light and her hair was still damp from whatever she'd done before breakfast, and she was gesturing with her coffee cup in a way that was so characteristically unhurried and precise that I had to look back down at my phone before my face did something that the table would notice.

Me: Yes.

Sasha: AND?

Me: And what? She was at the bonfire. Other people were also at the bonfire. It was a group event.

Sasha: I need you to understand that I can tell you're lying through a screen from thousands of miles away

Sasha: What happened with renee

Me: Nothing happened. We hung out. With the group. At the bonfire. Which I already told you about.

Sasha: Ade

Sasha: You went from "she's different than I thought" to radio silence

Sasha: Something happened

I glanced up. Talia and Milo were in a debate about whether pottery counted as a legitimate vacation activity or was "something people do when they've given up." Cass was refereeing. Renee was watching the argument with visible amusement and hadn't looked at my phone.

Me: We maybe went for a walk.

Sasha: A WALK

Me: After the bonfire. Just the two of us. On the beach.

The three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

Sasha: Adrianna Moore went for a moonlit beach walk with Renee Miller

Sasha: Willingly

Sasha: Just the two of you

Sasha: I am losing my mind right now

Me: It was just a walk.

Sasha: It was not just a walk

Sasha: You don't take walks. you don't even like walking. you took a cab to the grocery store that one time and it was three blocks away

Me: That was raining.

Sasha: IT WAS DRIZZLING

Sasha: Did you kiss her

I stared at the screen. The cursor blinked in the text field, empty and waiting. I could lie. I could deflect. I could type "lol no" and change the subject to Sasha's landlord's girlfriend and spend the rest of breakfast talking about someone else's drama.

"Everything okay?"

Renee's voice, next to me. Quiet enough that it was just for me.

I looked up. She'd noticed. Of course she'd noticed — she noticed everything, that was the whole problem and the whole point. Her eyes moved to the phone in my hand and back to my face, and there was no accusation in the look, just a question.

"Yeah," I said. "Sasha's being Sasha."

Renee smiled — amused by something she'd decided not to comment on. She turned back to the table and left me to it.

I looked back at the phone.

Me: Yeah.

Sasha: YEAH?

Sasha: YEAH AS IN YES?

Sasha: YOU KISSED HER???

Me: She kissed me. Technically. I mean I also kissed her. It was mutual. There was kissing. On a beach.

Sasha: I'M GOING TO PASS OUT

Sasha: ADRIANNA

Sasha: MY GIRL

Sasha: ON A BEACH?????

Me: On a beach.

Sasha: I need details. I need every single detail. I need lighting conditions and who leaned in first and what her mouth tasted like

Me: I'm at breakfast. She's sitting right next to me.

There was a long pause. Longer than any pause Sasha had ever taken in the history of our friendship.

Sasha: She's right there

Me: Right here.

Sasha: And you're texting me about it while she's RIGHT THERE

Sasha: You absolute disaster of a human being

Sasha: I love you so much

Me: I know.

Sasha: So what now?

And there it was. The question I'd been stepping around all morning — through the writing, through the shower, through the walk to breakfast, through the ease of sitting next to Renee and feeling her knee almost-touching mine and pretending that proximity was the same as having an answer.

Sasha: You leave Saturday right

Me: Yeah.

Sasha: And then what

I looked up from the phone. Renee was laughing at something Milo had said — really laughing, the kind that changed her whole face, that she didn't try to catch or control. Milo was glowing from making her laugh, which was making Talia glow from watching Milo glow, which was making Cass look faintly alarmed by the amount of glowing happening at her breakfast table.

Sasha: Ade?

Me: I don't know.

Sasha: Do you like her?

I watched Renee. The laugh was settling into a smile that hadn't fully gone away, the kind that sticks around because the person wearing it has forgotten they're wearing it. She turned her head slightly — not toward me, just shifting — and the morning light caught her profile and I felt something so simple and so clear that it made every SAT word Milo had used and every complicated thought I'd had at 4am and every page of Nora I'd written feel like the long way around to an answer that had been sitting right there, in the chair next to mine, for days.

Me: Yeah. I like her.