Chapter 22
“How was your date last night with Dom?” Juju drapes Pru over her shoulder, heading toward the lounge chairs out back like we’re already best friends. She pats the empty seat next to her, wanting me to sit down.
Are we really doing this right now? Me having coffee on my back deck with Rex’s new girlfriend?
She hits the seat next to her again harder, maintaining her grin.
I guess that’s a yes .
“Uh, it was good.” I sit down slowly. I’m a terrible liar, so I add, “I’m honestly not sure if it was a real date.”
The coffee she gave me is delicious. Way better than mine has been since I started learning how to make it, but I’m not surprised. I’m sure most things about her are perfect.
The balmy morning breeze sweeps past us while I squint out at the water. I didn’t think to grab my sunglasses, but the heat from the sun feels really nice on my face without them. A bird chirps in the trees nearby, sounding nothing like the nasty red-eyed pigeons back home. A half-dozen surfers are bobbing on the water, and I raise a hand to shield my eyes, wondering if one of them is Rex.
“It sure looked like a date to me!” she says, breaking my focus. “That red romper you were wearing is hot as hell. A solid upgrade from that bucket hat situation you had on earlier.”
I’m about to be offended, but when I look at her face, I can’t help but laugh. She’s not wrong. She pushes my leg playfully after successfully breaking the ice, and leans back in her chair, looking more relaxed. Dammit. She’s so likable.
“This view can’t be beat, right?” She sighs happily and takes a sip of her own coffee, pulling a stray hair back from her face, hugging Pru a little tighter.
“Is that Rex out there?” I ask as one of the surfers gets face-plowed into the water. They hit the surface so hard, it makes me cringe.
I hope it’s him.
“Sure is,” she says, shaking her head. “That man can do a lot of things right, but surfing is not one of them.” She pauses to watch him get smacked with another wave from behind and giggles before continuing. “Sometimes I think he might actually drown out there, so I try to keep an eye on him. Believe it or not, he seems to be improving by the day. You should have seen him when he first arrived.”
Rex pops out of the whitecap and then quickly gets hit by another wave coming in from behind. He jumps up out of the water a third time, like a resilient little cockroach.
Life is weird. The last time I was oceanside, Rex and I were waking up to a similar view in the same bed together. We spent a week last summer in the Maldives. Rex’s idea. It was a surprise gift to me. All I had to do was pack a bag.
I eye Juju suspiciously, wondering why she hasn’t recognized me from the viral clip of our failed proposal yet.
“So, are you here on an extended vacation or something?” she asks.
“Sort of,” I say slowly. “I’m finishing up a movie script.”
“You’re an actress?” She perks up and turns her whole body toward me, studying my face. “I knew there was something familiar about you! What else have you been in?”
“I’m a writer,” I clarify quickly. “I’m writing a script. Definitely not acting in it.” I feel myself turn pink.
“Oh wow, you’re here to write.” She looks genuinely impressed.
“That and I wanted to get away from New York for a while. My boss offered me a sabbatical of sorts. I figured I may as well choose a beautiful place to write from, plus the setting of the film is here.” I don’t feel like adding that I couldn’t go outside in New York without someone telling me they felt sorry for me. “It’s always been my dream. I figured, since I had the time, it was probably now or never.”
“What else have you written?”
“A few theater scripts, and a short film. This would be my first full feature-length film script. What about you? Are you here on vacation with Rex?”
“No, I grew up here.” She smiles. “Well, I guess if you count moving here when I was twelve. Hence the Aussie accent I haven’t been able to shake.”
“You grew up here? And Australia?”
She nods, glowing. She sets her mug down and Pru flips over in her arms like a baby.
No wonder she seems so comfortable in her own skin, both in and out of the water. She was probably born in a bathing suit. Her face doesn’t have a drop of makeup from what I can tell, and she’s still absolutely glowing.
“I can’t imagine this being my life every day.” I wave my hands around the scenery surrounding us. Green, rugged mountains line the bay, rising up toward the blue sky behind us. “What do you do here?”
She smiles. “I own a coffee shop.”
“That explains the delicious coffee,” I mumble, taking another sip.
“Actually people come to my shop more for the smoothies and acai bowls than the coffee.” She curls her long legs up beneath her. “Also, it’s more like a little shack on the side of the road, so not like the coffee shops you’d have back home in New York. I guess I should start saying I’m a smoothie shack owner.” She laughs, and I let myself join her. “But I guess coffee shop sounds quite a bit more posh to me than roadside smoothie shack surrounded by stray cats and chickens . I grow the fruit on my land, then have my employees blend up whatever is the most fresh that day.”
I imagine her roaming down a row of banana trees, barefoot and tan, with her hair pulled up in some colorful scarf, accentuating those precision-cut cheekbones as she turns to offer a fresh-picked mango to Rex with a grin. Sun cascading down her slender arms as she reaches up to kiss him, tasting of tropical fruit and sunbeams. No wonder he fell in love with her.
“Sounds like the perfect life,” I say wistfully. “I was just telling my best friend back home that I can’t believe people live like this here. It makes my life back in New York look—” I want to say chaotic and soul-crushingly cold “—complicated. And gray. I love it there, but it’s not the same brand of magic as this island.” I wave my arms up toward the sky, which looks like a mirror image of the ocean beneath it, dotted in foamy white clouds.
She rubs Pru’s belly before kissing her upturned nose.
“That’s what I hear from Rex. He says he never wants to go back.” She smiles at me, and I swallow my shock. I thought Rex loved New York.
The whole world wants to be us, Olivia , he’d say. We’re at the center of the universe here.
“Anyway, I’m blabbing on while you’re here to do something important.” She stands up. “I should let you get back to writing.”
She looks back out at the water, her crystal blue eyes searching the surf, until she spots Rex falling off his board again.
We both laugh, and she rolls her eyes at me.
“If Rex survives this morning, we’ll be back out here at five o’clock doing our happy hour thing again. Join us if you need a break from writing! And bring that hunk of a man with you, if he’s free too.” She gives me a mischievous grin, raising her brows.
I give her a half-grin, shielding my eyes from the sun, while I watch Rex take another faceful of saltwater.
If he wasn’t the man renting the townhome on the other side of my wall, this whole crazy notion of me running away to Hawaii on sabbatical to finish my script would have been working out perfectly.