SOMEWHERE IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS, POST–CHOCOLATE soufflé and a second exploit, we made our way to the bed, but not before creeping out to the terrace to watch the stars as it turned further into tomorrow. I forced the flecks of worry out of my brain, wanting to savor the time with him. So long as the sun hadn’t yet risen on another day, I could keep the fantasy of us going.
I fell asleep with him curled around me, his weight and cool body like the crisp air of a fan. He found a way to touch me throughout the night—his arm draped across my hip, cheek pressed to the back of my head. If I unconsciously rolled away, he inevitably scooted closer to find me again. And there were the kisses. The way he pressed his lips to my hair or shoulder hazily—his actions so drenched in tender care I couldn’t help but give in.
As the early morning light creeps in, I open my eyes to find Charlie still beside me, sheet strung just below his belly button, his bare chest rising and falling in a delicate balance. I observe him unabashedly, as I had on the plane, taking in his perfection at this close proximity. His eyelashes curled upward in a perfect C shape. The divot of his cheek. The light hairs on his arms and belly glinting like gold. I have to look away, knowing I could grow to really want this—need it even—waking up to Charlie beside me.
Carefully climbing out of bed, so as not to disturb him, I rummage quietly around the room for my laptop. As I do, I bury The Burning Locke deep in my Mary Poppins bag. In the chair in the corner, I open my laptop, not yet wanting to leave his proximity.
I almost drop the laptop when I see the first email in my inbox is from Jack Palmer at Catapult Games.
Hello,
After careful consideration of our many candidates, I am pleased to inform you that you are one of two final contenders for the game designer position with Catapult. The team looks forward to reviewing your game to make our final decision. When your prototype is complete, follow the instructions below to submit.
Best,
Jack
I scroll down the email to the referenced instructions, stating that finalists should submit final game prototypes via email to Jack, Kenji, Ross, and Anita, along with their respective email addresses. They must have been reviewing my candidacy, along with the other candidates, over these last few days, secretly narrowing it down.
A glorious thrill shoots through me. I, Sloane Cooper, am a final candidate, one of two, for my dream job at Catapult Games. The job that will let me into the club of the gaming future I’ve always wanted but was afraid I might never get. It’s the validation I’ve secretly hoped for since I was a preteen, and in the grandest of fashions. From the Jack Palmer. I think of Jeffrey, the debt collector, whose additional seven calls I’ve ignored, and my anxiety dips. I feel closer than I ever have to a solution to all my problems. A real one. Just as I’m about to scream with pride, Charlie’s sleep be damned, my exhilaration is quickly smothered. In the To field of the email, my address and one other: nopainnozane@zanecullins.com.
Zane is the other finalist.
Really? Jack Palmer couldn’t be bothered to send two separate emails? Or BCC us, at a bare minimum? I wish he’d assigned this particular task to Anita. I think of Zane’s entitled face reading this same message and seeing my address as the other candidate, thinking he has it in the bag.
This opportunity can change everything. I recall my words from the interview. I would be fully dedicated to this job . . . have no personal life whatsoever. I look at Charlie, still sleeping peacefully in the bed inches away. I contemplate jumping back in with him, snuggling into his side, and letting the pressures of my real life float away, but the weight of Jack Palmer’s email holds me back.
I close my laptop and head for the terrace.
“Morning,” Charlie says, joining me outside about fifteen minutes later. There’s a heavy gray cast over the water, and the air holds the soil-like smell of impending rain. I lean against the rail, looking out at the view I’ve grown too accustomed to, glancing at him and offering a tight smile. Charlie’s dressed in board shorts and a sweatshirt, hood flipped up, which serves me a flash of disappointment that I can’t see what undoubtedly punny T-shirt he has on underneath. I instinctively pull the cord of my robe tighter, wishing we could have stayed knotted together in the suite’s bed.
“How’d you sleep?” he asks, a still-drowsy smile etched on his face as he draws closer. For a moment, I think he will keep moving forward until he is wrapped around me again, just as he was in bed. I take a step back and continue to stare at the water, unable to make eye contact. At this, he halts.
“Good. You?”
“Fine.” He flips down his hood and runs his hand through his hair. “Look, Sloane, last night was . . .”
I turn to face him. “A stupid, silly, drunken mistake.”
His face goes stiff, all remnants of sleep cleared. “We weren’t drinking.”
He’s right. These were sober, full mental capacity decisions we cannot dismiss away.
The email from Jack Palmer burns in my brain. “Look, we can forget it happened, okay?” I chuckle awkwardly. “Nothing has changed. We’ll continue to post pictures, make Brooke jealous, and I’ll keep working on my game. Then we can get home and back to our lives.”
His face hardens and it makes my insides liquefy. I want to curl up in his lap like a cat. I want to tell him last night meant a lot to me. More than I expected. But I can’t. There’s too much to lose. Even if I do give in to my desires for the rest of this week, there’s still the nagging thought that Charlie isn’t fully over his ex. Even if he thinks he is, it could just be the distractions of paradise blinding him.
“Sloane, I’m sorry,” he says. The words pinch my skin like a clamp. He’s sorry. He regrets last night. It made him realize how much he misses Brooke, and now he’s afraid he’s led me on.
“I’m sorry too,” I say, because I don’t want to give him all the power over last night and now, the aftermath.
“For what?” he asks. He takes a half step closer. His wrist flicks forward, and for a moment I believe he will take my hand in his.
“For letting this place cloud my judgment last night . . .”
His face drops before I can continue. As soon as I’ve said the words, I know they were too cold. And untrue.
He clears his throat. “Right, well, I’m gonna head down to the beach.”
“Charlie,” I say. He stops and looks at me with a pleading stare, his eyes practically begging me not to do this. Nothing comes. I’m afraid, I realize. Fearful of letting someone in again. I can come up with all the excuses in the world about Catapult and Brooke and this not being real life, but if I strip all of that away, immobilizing fear is all I’m left with.
I watch in silence as he grabs a towel from the basket by the entrance and lets the door clang behind him. Perhaps I’ve been too harsh. Perhaps it was just the right amount. Either way, I know last night cannot bleed into today.
I grab my tote and head to the lobby to borrow one of the resort bikes. More than half of our trip is over and I have yet to leave the resort. With the help of Andres’s directions, I take the considerable ride along the island’s main road to Da Conch Shack, a tucked-away restaurant with bench tables set in the sand under the shade of widespread palms, just a few feet from the water. The building is white with the same bright blue shutters as the resort and cotton candy pink accents across the buildings and signs. It’s still a bit before eleven, and the place is virtually empty, except for a small group drinking bottles of Turk’s Head while playing Ringing the Bull on a center post.
A perfect spot to spend the day.
I choose the two-top closest to the water and set up my laptop, removing my sandals and digging my feet into the powdery-light sand. It’s pretty magical working on something I love in a place like this, I tell myself, attempting to ignore my nagging unease.
Once I decided on Arsonist Betty as the game concept, things have come together pretty quickly on my design. I can’t help but feel thankful for Charlie. Without him, without the fire alarm, without this trip, I wonder if any of it would have materialized the way it has.
Charlie.
Only a few hours have passed since our tryst—or trysts, two, technically—and I can’t think about him without hearing his voice, soft in my ear as he lay atop me. Feeling his lips all over me. The pressure of his hips against mine, pressing fully into me . . .
Stop.
Focus.
This is precisely why something with Charlie was not supposed to happen. I won’t lose this opportunity with Catapult because I let a guy get in the way of my dreams. Even if he is as handsome and supportive and kissable as Charlie. I’ll never forgive myself if I do.
Four hours later, with a small break for an equally savory plate of jerk chicken as from the resort, I’ve made decent progress on the game, particularly the world-building. I’ve constructed a once-vibrant but now-ashen cityscape, defiled by the elderly arsonist on her reign of terror. I’ve added many devices to her pyro tool kit: matches, gas can, an array of lighters, and, for the very end, when it seems she’s run out of materials and might be done for, a piece of flint she can use to fuel her reign of terror indefinitely.
It’s my favorite part: just when you think Arsonist Betty is down and out, she pulls out the flint to prove she’s an underestimated, formidable opponent. It’s certainly not commercial quality, far from it. It’s more of the outline of a game than a game itself, but I’m quite proud of what I’ve produced so far.
Confident about my game design, I pack up and ride back to the resort, my anxiety building as I get closer to seeing Charlie again. Instead of heading to the suite, I detour down to the beach. Perhaps a little more time will help push last night further back into my memory. So far, no such luck. I’m still thinking about his hands gripping the sides of my hips . . .
Before I can round the corner of the building to the sand, my phone rings. I fish it out of my bag and practically squeal in delight when I see it’s a FaceTime from Tess.
“How’s my baby?” I ask her.
“I’m great, baby,” Tess says when the screen connects.
“Where’s Finn?”
“Well, hello to you too. He’s right here.” She leans down from her seat at her kitchen table, and Finn is positioned in his usual spot, pressed up against her leg.
I rub at the pang of longing in my chest. “Finn! How’s my boy? I miss you so much!”
Finn rises to a stand, wags the back half of his body, smiles into the screen with a floppy tongue.
Tess’s face fills the screen again before I’m ready. “How are things going with J.D.?” she asks.
Now I regret answering. My face always gives me away to my best friend since middle school.
“You slept with him!” she yells, right on cue. A couple passing by on the path give me a curious look, the woman nodding in approval. I nod back, appreciating this stranger’s sex positivity.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I didn’t.”
“Don’t try to deny it. I can practically smell the sex on you through the phone. Did it, like, just happen? Tell me everything!”
Finn whine-barks in the background.
“It’s okay, Finny. Mama got laid,” Tess says to him, scratching his head. “Tell me everything.”
I sigh. “It was . . . mind-blowing, intense, doubly orgasmic.”
Tess shrieks.
“But it was a mistake. I can’t let Charlie derail my opportunity at Catapult.”
“Why did you promise a life of spinsterhood to a room full of dudes who can’t keep their dicks in their pants?”
Tess, as crass as ever. Not wrong, but crass nonetheless. I can’t deal with her telling me this situation with Charlie is okay when it is very much not okay. As I’m about to make another attempt at explaining why this job has to work out, I spy something in the corner of the frame.
“Tess, what’s that behind you?” I ask, and point to my screen as if it gives her any sort of reference.
Tess turns to see the pair of men’s loafers lined up next to her couch. I glance at the time on my phone. Three p.m. It’s three hours earlier in Los Angeles, which means the owner of those shoes is in her apartment at noon on a Wednesday. Or, was comfortable enough leaving a pair of shoes at her place mid-week. Perhaps there’s a non-romantic explanation, but my mind won’t acknowledge any of those possibilities. Either way, this is not one-night-stand behavior, certainly not by Tess’s rules. Tess—who has not had a serious boyfriend since high school—prides herself on sleepovers she ensures end before the sun comes up.
Tess positions her body to fill the screen so the shoes disappear.
“Tess Carly Hubbard, is there a man in your apartment? One who wears loafers?”
“Oh my, I think the connection is cutting ou—” she says before fake-freezing her face and ending the call. I stare at the blank screen. I think how I pulled a similar move yesterday with my mom and feel a twinge of guilt.
Tess has (or recently had) a man in her apartment—in her life—who she’s hiding from me! All the more reason to make it through the rest of this trip and get back home as soon as possible.
When I finally round the corner of the building to the beach, there’s a crowd of people gathered at the water’s edge, some pointing, all facing the same specific plot of sea. I make my way down to the group, unable to identify what has drawn the crowd.
“What’s going on?” I ask a woman in the back. She turns to face me and I’m comforted to see Mrs. Mustache, though embarrassed I still don’t know her real name.
“There’s a girl who’s drowning!” she tells me. “Your boyfriend ran in to help her.”
“He’s not my boyfr—” I start reflexively, before understanding settles in. “Wait. Charlie?” I push my way to the front of the crowd, a lead weight in my stomach, needing him to be okay.