12. Stephanie
— ? —
Stephanie
Kevin’s whisper still hadn’t let go of me.
He’d caught me that afternoon on my way to the medical station, leaned in close, his mouth almost at my ear, and said it soft enough that no one else could hear.
I never stopped loving you, Steph. Not for a single day.
I’d walked off without a word and left him standing there in the grass, and hours later I still couldn’t shake the sound of it.
The sunset had turned the sky over the harbor into a watercolor of orange and pink, and I was three glasses of wine into actually enjoying myself.
The wedding-white tent Tris had rented for the weekend glowed against the dune grass, and for the first time in days I’d stopped tracking where Kevin was in a room.
I had my back to the water and Harry’s laugh in my ear and a plate of lemon-drenched fish, and I’d let my shoulders come down from around my ears.
That was the mistake. The second I relaxed, the weekend came to collect.
Tris appeared at my elbow with the color drained out of her face.
“Honey, your cabin is a watery mess!”
I set my drink down on the nearest table, wine sloshing over the rim onto the linen. “What?”
“Come with me. Quickly.”
I followed her across the complex, and my buzz evaporated with every step.
The stone path felt longer than it had this morning, each flagstone catching the last of the light.
Other guests turned to watch us hurry past, their conversations dying into curious whispers behind cupped hands.
I kept my eyes forward and told myself it was nothing, a spilled bucket, a leaky faucet, the kind of thing a couple of towels would fix.
When we rounded the corner to my cabin, I understood the whispers.
Water was streaming out from under the door in a steady sheet that had already darkened the path and pooled in the gaps between the stones.
Not the trickle I’d been picturing. It came out fast enough to lap at the toe of my sandal.
The blue shutters I’d thought were so charming this morning now framed a small-scale natural disaster.
“Oh my god.”
Tris pushed the door open and we both stepped back as more water rushed out over the threshold and soaked the hem of my dress.
Inside, the hardwood floors had disappeared under a flat gray shine.
My suitcase was floating. Actually floating, drifting in slow circles across what had been a bedroom this morning, a sad little vessel adrift on a foot of pipe water.
“A pipe burst,” Tris explained. “One of the staff noticed the flooding about twenty minutes ago. We’ve shut off the water but the damage is done.”
Lando appeared from inside the cabin, his pants rolled up to his knees, carrying my backpack in one hand and my toiletry bag in the other. Both were dripping. He waded toward us with the careful, high-kneed walk of a man trying not to fall on his face in front of company.
“Thank you!!” I grabbed them from him, not caring that water immediately soaked through the front of my dress. “Is everything ruined?”
“Most of your clothes are salvageable. We’ll have housekeeping run them through the laundry tonight.
” He looked apologetic, the same soft-eyed contrition Kevin got when he’d disappointed someone, and I hated that I recognized it.
“I’m sorry, Stephanie. These cabins are usually very well-maintained. ”
“It’s not your fault.” I peered past him at the devastation. My floating suitcase had bumped up against the bed frame and stalled there. The quilt I’d slept under last night hung half in the water, one corner still dry and pointless on the mattress. “Shit.”
“Men are coming to fix it in the morning,” Tris said, patting my arm with a wet hand. “But darling, you can’t stay here tonight.”
I looked at her. “Where am I staying?”
My mind went straight to Hugo. My brother would let me crash.
We’d shared worse, bunk beds and pull-out couches and one memorable air mattress that deflated by two a.m. I could take the floor.
It’d be fine, and more importantly, it’d be far away from the one person on this island I couldn’t afford to sleep near.
“Well,” Tris said slowly, drawing the word out the way she did when the answer was bad, “Hugo has a single-bed cabin. There’s really no room for two people.”
“I can sleep on the floor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You could stay at the kids’ cabin. It has a bunk bed, plenty of room.” She paused. Grimaced, the expression aging her ten years. “But you’ll have to share.”
A cold thread of foreboding crept up my spine. “With who?”
“Well, it was empty until yesterday. But then Kevin came in last minute and we put him there since all the other cabins were full.” She was talking faster now, words tumbling over each other the way they did when she was nervous.
“But don’t worry, we can ask Harry to move in with Kevin so you can stay at Harry’s cabin instead.
It’ll only take a little while, you can wait in the main house. ”
Somewhere at the very back of my mind, a small suspicious voice noted that Tris Coleman had never in her life been nervous about a plumbing repair, and that a pipe bursting in my cabin, on the one weekend her son and I were both trapped on the same small island, was a remarkable piece of luck for a woman who’d spent months making sure I’d come.
I told the voice to hush. I had enough problems.
I looked at the flooded cabin. At Tris’s worried face, at the crease between her brows that had been there ever since I’d arrived and pretended everything was normal. At Lando, still holding my dripping belongings, patient as furniture.
This was her weekend. She’d been planning this birthday for months, the tent, the caterers, the ferry schedules she’d called me twice about, making sure I’d actually come.
She’d cried a little on the phone the second time, said it wouldn’t feel right without me there, and I’d understood she meant it.
Tris had kept me even after the divorce carved everyone else into sides.
She’d sent birthday cards to my new apartment and never once asked why I’d left her son.
The last thing she needed now was to reshuffle her whole guest list because that same ex-wife couldn’t handle one night in the same room as him.
I could picture Harry hauling her suitcase across the complex at midnight, and Kevin’s face when he realized why, and the whole family quietly rearranging a birthday around my inability to be an adult for eight hours of sleep.
“It’s okay,” I heard myself say, from somewhere outside my own body. “It’s a bunk bed. I can share with Kevin.”
Tris blinked. “Are you sure? I really don’t mind waiting for Harry.”
“It’s no problem, Tris. Really.” I forced a smile so wide it hurt my cheeks. “What’s one night in a bunk bed with my ex-husband? I’ll just ignore him. It’ll be fine.”
The words sounded convincing. My voice didn’t shake. I almost believed them myself.
Tris still looked uncertain, searching my face for the crack she was sure was there, but I held the smile and she finally nodded. “If you’re sure. Let me have your clothes sent to the laundry, and I’ll make sure housekeeping brings fresh towels to Kevin’s cabin.”
“Thank you.”
Twenty minutes later, I was standing outside Kevin’s cabin with a borrowed backpack that held my toiletry bag and exactly one change of clothes the flood had spared, plus a growing certainty that I’d made a terrible mistake.
The evening had gone blue and cool. Somewhere behind me the party carried on without me, laughter and the clink of glasses drifting up the path.
One night. I could survive one night. I’d survived worse than one night.
I knocked. No answer.
I knocked again. Still nothing but the sound of my own knuckles.
Maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe he was up at the main house or out walking the beach or doing whatever Kevin did with his evenings now that they weren’t mine to know. I could slip in, claim a bunk, and be a lump under the covers by the time he got back. He’d never even have to look at me.
I opened the door.
Kevin was standing in the middle of the room. Completely naked. Fresh out of the shower, water still tracking down his chest, a towel in his hand instead of anywhere useful.
“OH MY FUCKING GOD.”
I slammed my eyes shut so hard I saw stars burst behind the lids.
“SHIT,” Kevin grunted.
Then a thump, and a crash right on top of it, and a string of profanity creative enough that I’d have been impressed under any other circumstances.
I peeked through my fingers.
He was flat on his ass on the floorboards, having tripped over his own feet in the scramble to cover himself. The towel had landed strategically, but only just. His face had gone a red I could see from across the room.
I shut my eyes again. I couldn’t stop the snort of laughter that escaped.
“Did you just fall on your ass?”
“What are you doing here?” His voice came out strangled.
“Your mother sent me. My cabin is a swimming mess. Pipe burst.” I kept my hand clamped over my eyes, which did nothing, because the image was already seared onto the inside of my skull.
Broad shoulders and a chest I hadn’t earned the right to look at anymore.
Ink I hadn’t gotten a proper glimpse of.
And between his legs, before I’d shut my eyes, No. Stop. Don’t think about that.
“Oh,” Kevin said. “That was quick.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He cleared his throat. “Let me get changed. Be right back.”
I heard him scramble up off the floor, heard the frantic rustle of fabric, heard a door click shut. Only then did I let my lungs work.
And laugh. Really laugh, into my own palm, shoulders shaking.
It was funny. Objectively, it was the funniest thing that had happened all weekend. Kevin Coleman, a man so composed he could suture a wound while someone screamed in the next room, had just face-planted naked in front of his ex-wife and taken a lamp down with him.