CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 20
Does “We Have to Talk” Always Mean “We’re Breaking Up”?
“We have to talk,” Oliver says after we get back to our villa. We stopped by the Beach Club to get some lunch first, but it was a somber affair. Everyone was whispering and talking in small groups. It felt like high school when something big happened on the weekend, and it was filtering through the ecosystem on a Monday morning.
A man is dead. There have been threats and mishaps. It feels like Italy all over again, and not in a good way.
Is it worse or better that I’m just an observer this time, and not the target?
I’m not sure.
If I were the target, I might have some clue as to the motivations and secrets that drove someone to this desperate act.
But despite what I told Connor yesterday, I don’t know the players here. I could tell you who wanted to kill Emma in high school, but not now. Fred was a poster on Emma’s wall. The others I met on set, but that was an environment where I was more preoccupied with vacillating between being blown over that my book was coming to life and being horrified with how it was changing.
All this to say, I’m not the author here. I’m not plotting all this out in advance and watching it unfold.
I’m the reader, trying to see around corners and parse out what the characters are saying. Whether their words mean more than one thing. Whether there are gaps to fill in. What’s a clue and what isn’t.
I know what it’s like to be in the middle of a plot.
I don’t like it.
Especially not at my best friend’s wedding. 66
Harper doesn’t come back with us to the room, instead going off with Shawna to help plan the remaining details of the wedding in case it’s still happening. I watch them go with a bit of dread because I know what’s coming once Oliver and I get back to the villa.
“We don’t have to talk, though,” I say to Oliver, trying to keep my tone light. “We can not talk.”
His eyes cloud with confusion and maybe also hurt. “Eleanor.”
“Oliver.” I sigh. “Our names rhyme.”
“I...what?”
“Nothing, it’s stupid.” I step to him and take his hands, twining my fingers through his. “Don’t break up with me. Please.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then why did you say that? ‘We have to talk.’ That’s what it means.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “So, what do you say if you just have to talk?”
“I don’t know.”
He holds our arms out to the side, then brings them back together. “Two authors, at a loss for words.”
“How many authors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
“How many?”
“Three. One to blame their agent, one to blame their publisher, and one to blame writer’s block.”
“Who screws in the lightbulb, then?”
“It doesn’t get screwed in. Not unless there’s a deadline.”
“What are we even talking about?”
“I’m distracting you.”
He lets my hands drop. “That won’t work forever.”
“For today, though?”
“Is that wise?”
“I don’t want to be wise. I want to be with you. Wait. That’s not what I meant. It is wise to be with you. Very wise.”
I have become a blathering idiot.
Do you think Oliver will notice?
Maybe that’s why he’s breaking up with me. Because I’m a moron .
“Are you sure about that?” he asks, and I worry for a moment I was speaking the last part out loud instead of in my head, which is a thing that happens sometimes.
But no, not this time.
“I’m sure being with you is what I want,” I say.
“Then why have you been flirting with Connor?”
Excellent question.
How come, Eleanor?
Don’t we hate Connor?
“I haven’t.”
“Eleanor.”
“Okay, I get it. We banter. It’s a thing we do. It’s an extension of the pattern we’ve developed on tour. You know how it is. Getting asked the same questions by a million people—it’s a defense mechanism. It doesn’t mean anything more than that. And it certainly doesn’t mean I want to be with him because I don’t. I swear to you. It’s the last thing on my mind.”
“It hurts to see you like that with him.”
“And you have trouble trusting me.”
He nods slowly. “And I have trouble trusting you.”
“I know I haven’t given you any reason to. Not historically. But everything that happened with him was when I was scared. I’m not scared now. I know what I want and it’s you.”
I reach up on my toes and kiss him for all I’ve got. Not with passion but with ferocity, holding the side of his face, willing my lips to convince him of what my words can’t.
I pull back and stare into his eyes.
Which is difficult for me. I’m working on my emotional intimacy issues.
But you try it. Try really looking someone in the eyes for more than a moment.
It’s hard .
“You’re very seductive when you want to be,” Oliver says, staring right back because he doesn’t have intimacy issues.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
He smiles. “That’s a good thing.”
“But?”
“But I don’t know if I can watch you with him. It hurts too much.”
My heart squeezes. A physical pain that might take me to the ER if we weren’t trapped on this island, and I hadn’t been here before. “We just have to get through today and tomorrow and then that’s it.”
“It’s not it, though. He’s in your life. He’s always going to be.”
“You knew that when we got back together in Italy.”
“You said you were ending the series.”
I had said that. When I was desperate to get him back and it was the only way I saw forward.
Not that I hadn’t plotted Connor’s death. Many times.
But it was only a fantasy, me taking him out of the picture. It wasn’t going to happen in real life.
“I can still kill him off,” I say anyway, because I feel desperate again, and maybe repeating myself will work like it did last time.
“You tried that, remember?”
I’d plotted out a whole book where he died. But that wasn’t what I ended up writing.
In the book I turned in after Italy, Connor lives. 67
“I know, I just...I’ll do whatever it takes. I haven’t been writing anyway, so that will be easy.”
“Don’t use writer’s block against me.”
“I’m not.”
He leans his head against my forehead. “Eleanor, you love writing those books. And I’m not going to take them away from you.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
I breathe in his scent—a mix of soap and the light spice of his aftershave. “What about therapy? That might help.”
“I thought you hated therapy.”
“I only went once. I didn’t give it a real chance. Plus, I love you more than I hate therapy.”
He tips his head back and laughs, but it’s not the usual sound I love. “That’s a lot.”
“It is a lot. It’s everything. You’re everything.” I look away from him to the window. There are clouds on the horizon now, not just metaphorical ones. “You chose to get back with me. Please don’t break my heart.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re doing it, though.”
“I’m sorry.”
My mind cycles and I face him again. “Can we try something?”
“What’s that?”
“Can we pretend everything is normal for the rest of the weekend?”
“Despite the murderer on the loose?”
“The murderer fled the coop.”
“Did he?”
“I think so. It stands to reason that it’s Tyler. Who else would want to kill Emma or Fred or disrupt their wedding?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sometimes the simple solutions are correct.”
“Almost never, though.”
“That’s in books, not in real life.” I bring his hands to my waist. “I know it’s hard to see us together. I get it. But I don’t feel like that about him anymore. I haven’t in a long time. And I never felt with him what I feel with you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“ Yes. I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t love him. I did. But he was never accessible to me in the way you are. He was always playing a part, and I was just part of his scam. And I think I felt that deep down the whole time I was with him. But with you, it’s different. I can give my whole heart to you. I don’t have to worry. I know you’re there for me no matter what. And I don’t want to lose that. I can’t.”
“What if it’s too hard?”
“You sound like me.”
“Ha.”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy. I think it’s supposed to be work. Good work. And we’re still learning how to be back together. It’s only been three months. Maybe we both thought things would go right back to how they were. That would’ve been too easy. Let’s give ourselves a break.”
Oliver’s eyebrows raise to his hairline. “ You want to go on a break?”
“I don’t mean that. I just meant, let’s stop expecting too much from each other. From us. All that talk of marriage and proposing yesterday. Let’s take that off the table for now. We don’t have to decide anything until we’re ready.”
“Isn’t it what you want?”
“Of course it is. But only when we’re both ready.”
He pulls me closer to him. “No clock ticking?”
“I have no idea if there is or isn’t. I don’t even know if I want kids. I mean, can two writers have kids and not fuck them up totally? Plus, who gets to write in that scenario?”
“I’m not sure I’m even going to be a writer anymore.”
“You will.”
He steps away and I shiver like it’s cold.
“Are you a writer if you don’t have a book deal?”
“Of course you are, Oli. And you’ll get a deal. If not with our current publisher, then with someone else.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Is that what this is about?”
The corner of his mouth turns up. “It’s hard when everything in your life is up in the air.”
“I know.”
“You don’t. It’s all come so easily for you. Write a book by accident, it blows up. Get this long-running series. Try to quit, and that’s a new bestseller.”
“Almost get killed...”
“Okay, there’s that.”
I take his hands again. I need to be connected to him. “The book business isn’t a meritocracy.”
“I know.”
“And you can’t want me not to succeed so we can be together.”
“I know that, too.”
“So, can we work this out? Can we try?”
“I want to.”
“That’s something.”
He pulls me into his arms and holds me close. I can’t tell if this feels like a beginning or a goodbye, and sadness wells up in my chest as tears spring to my eyes.
“Hey,” Oliver says, tipping his head back and looking down at me. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“I love you.”
“You do?”
“Very, very much.” He dips his head down, and we kiss, a slow build that starts soft and then turns into hunger, our mouths open, our tongues intertwined, our bodies pressed close. And right when I’m about to pull him into the bedroom, to seal us together instead of pulling us apart, there’s a loud knock at the villa door.
“Do we need to get that?” Oliver asks, slightly out of breath.
“I was thinking we could ignore it.”
He kisses me once more, then lets me go and walks to the door. When he opens it, Officer Anderson is standing there.
“Can I come in?” she asks.
“Yes, of course.”
Oliver steps back and she enters. She looks even younger, up close, with a lot of responsibility resting on her shoulders, her two red braids falling over them.
“How can we help you?” Oliver says.
“I have some questions about the events of today.”
“Let’s sit over here,” I say, pointing to the dated, tile-covered table near the window. “And you can ask us anything you like.”
We sit at the table, and she takes out a notebook like the one Inspector Tucci was using and clicks a pen after turning up a fresh page. She takes down our details—names, addresses, occupations—and then goes through our timing over the course of the weekend. The party on Thursday, when we got on the boat, what we did since then, mapping out the last two days.
We’re thorough in our explanations, both good at remembering the details of plots.
“And then you contaminated a crime scene,” Officer Anderson says with a cluck of the tongue.
“Right. Sorry about that.”
“I would’ve thought you’d know better, being crime writers and all.”
“Yes, well, we weren’t thinking, clearly, but no harm, no foul, right?”
“We’ll see about that.”
“What does that mean?”
She puts her pen down. “Just seems convenient. All these people on this island who have a motive to harm Mr. Winter and Ms. Wood.”
“All these people? Who besides Tyler?”
“Mr. Smith, for one.”
“Connor?” I glance at Oliver. “Why would he want to harm them?”
“He’s a hired gun, he told me that himself.”
“He doesn’t own a gun that I’m aware of. Was José shot?”
“No, his neck was broken. And Mr. Smith told me the same thing,” Officer Anderson says. “However, I’m not sure he was telling the truth.”
“He does tend to lie,” Oliver says.
I shoot him a look.
Even though he’s right.
Fuck. Maybe I do have unresolved feelings for Connor?
No. No. Absolutely not.
“That’s true,” I say. “He can be less than truthful...But he’s not a murderer.”
“He killed someone in your book Drowned in Porto , didn’t he?”
“Oh, you read that?”
“I’ve read all your books.”
“You have?”
She taps herself on the chest. “Big detective fiction reader.”
“You didn’t give any indication when we met earlier.”
“You have to keep it close to the vest, don’t you, while you’re getting the lay of the land?”
“I guess that makes sense. Anyway, that was fiction.”
“Who else is a suspect?” Oliver asks, his mouth in a frown. I don’t think he’s about to ask if she’s read his books, but it’s possible.
Oliver has an ego, too, even if his is better hidden than mine.
“That Mr. Liu is an interesting fellow, don’t you find?”
“David the screenwriter? How so?”
“Seems like he might be behind those notes being left for Ms. Wood.”
“I thought Tyler left those?”
“Cutting out of the pages of a script? That screams scriptwriter to me.”
“How did you know it was from a script?”
“It’s that Final Draft font, isn’t it?”
“You know Final Draft?”
“Doesn’t everyone in LA?”
“I...”
She gives me a broad smile. “I write screenplays in my spare time.”
Of course she does.
Because only in LA would a cop also be a screenwriter.
Heck, a few more years in the force and she’ll probably be able to get a series green-lit with the reductive former-cop-turns-to-writing-about-cops pitch line alone.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Hollywood is full of imagination.
They take “write what you know” literally.
“So it stands to reason that it could be Mr. Liu who’d do that.”
“But why?” I ask.
“I’ve heard that Mr. Liu believes that Ms. Wood had him fired off an earlier movie?”
“But that was years ago.”
“And there was also an issue with rewrites in this film, too, wasn’t there?”
“Surely you don’t try to murder someone because of changes in a script,” Oliver says.
I bite my tongue. I was feeling murderous about that very thing.
Not that I did anything about it.
I swear.
“I agree with Oliver. That’s not enough of a motive,” I say. “It happens all the time in the business. David’s a professional. He knows how to roll with the punches.”
“There’s a sequel, though, I understand. And some doubt about who’ll get to write it?”
“But if Emma and/or Fred is killed, wouldn’t that end hopes of a sequel?”
“Hmmm. You might be right there.”
“Anyone else?” Oliver presses. He always has liked summing up a list of suspects. When we used to watch crime shows together, we always tried to guess who it was before the third act. We kept score and everything.
Do I need to tell you Oliver had a winning record?
No, right?
“We have to examine the possibility that it’s Mr. Winter and/or Ms. Wood themselves.”
“What? Why?”
“To get out of his money troubles. To get out of the wedding. To drum up some publicity for the movie. Take your pick.”
“I don’t think they’d do that. Certainly not Emma.”
“But Mr. Winter?”
“No, no, I...”
She squints at me like she needs glasses. “You’re keeping something from me.”
I’m impressed she can tell.
Then again, maybe she learned everything she knows from my books?
I am full of myself, aren’t I?
“Only that he had a second phone. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it. I meant to turn it over to you.” I rise and go to get it from my backpack.
But it’s not in there.
“I thought it was in here...”
“Where did you see it last?” Oliver asks.
“I took it out to get the number to call José.”
I replay the events at the murder scene in my mind. And yes, I had it then. That’s how I found José. But what did I do with it then? I could’ve sworn I put it back in my bag, but I have no memory of doing so.
Shit.
“What was on the phone?” Officer Anderson asks.
“There are texts on there between him and someone else...It looks like he might’ve been having an affair.”
“Ah. Now there’s a motive.”
“But there’s any number of possible explanations for all of it.”
“Such as?”
“The texts aren’t romantic, just a series of meeting times. Maybe it had to do with his money thing. Or it’s some friend he’s helping out. Or his trainer. Or his dealer.”
“He has a dealer?”
“Not that I know of. I’m just saying there’s lots of possibilities.”
“We shall see. The last time you saw it was at the crime scene?”
“Yes.” I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. Sometimes I have to learn to shut the hell up.
Not today, apparently.
I don’t have to tell her that I took photos of the texts, though.
But I should, right?
Only, one thing I know is that secrets never stay buried. If I give the texts to Officer Anderson, they’ll get released, even if they were innocent, and I don’t want to do that to Emma.
“Can you do me a favor?” I say.
“What’s that?”
“Please don’t ask about this in front of Emma. She’s been through enough.”
“I will follow proper police procedure.” She cocks her head to the side. “Haven’t you found that there are certain instances where it’s good to apply pressure?”
“How so?” Oliver asks.
“People under stress say things they wouldn’t under normal circumstances. They disclose secrets.”
“You think if you ask Fred about the texts in front of Emma, she’ll help you solve the case?”
She blinks at me.
“That doesn’t...I know we always write about gathering all of the suspects and getting them together to get a confession, but I have no idea if that works in real life. It’s just a tool that we use in books and movies for dramatic effect.” 68
“We shall see.”
“Please don’t.”
She looks ready to say something when her phone bleats with a text alert. She reads it, looks disappointed, then smooths out her features.
“We’ve located Mr. Houston.”
“That was fast,” Oliver says.
“Does this mean we can have the wedding?”
“If Ms. Wood wishes to, I don’t see the harm.”
“Why wouldn’t she want to?”
Officer Anderson gives a small shrug of her shoulders. “We can be trapped in things sometimes, can’t we? And if a solution presents itself, then we’re happy to get out of it.”
“Emma loves Fred.”
“You’d know better than me.”
“I do, yes.”
Oliver walks her to the door. “Out of curiosity, where did they find Mr. Houston?”
“Oh, he was right here, the whole time. On the island.”
66 Which is a great movie, by the way.
67 Why didn’t I end the series as I had planned? Well, like Taylor Swift confesses to in “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” I took the money. Don’t judge. You would, too.
68 I definitely do this in my books.