Chapter 1 #2
“One more,” he wheezes.
“I went to school to be a court reporter. I mean that’s cool, right? But here’s the thing, I really wanted to be the courtroom illustrator. You know how they show on the news the drawings of the tough prosecutor and the stoic jurors? Oh, or the sobbing widow?”
He nods.
“The court reporting didn’t work because I would forget to type, I’d get so involved in the testimonies.
And well, the drawing, that didn’t pan out because I have zero artistic talent.
” I lean a little closer to him across the middle seat.
He smells really good. It is not helpful.
“Besides, everyone knows the sobbing widow murdered her husband for his life insurance. Not to mention her new boy toy.”
“Sounds like you’ve been watching too much Dateline,” he says.
“Ohh, I love Dateline. Keith Morrison is the man.”
“Sounds like you live an adventurous life.”
“I suppose.” I look down at my hands for a moment, then back up at him.
“My sister is the real adventurer though. She’s getting married this weekend.
It’s why I’m flying to the island.” I smile thinking about Juniper, about the way she’d sounded on the phone when she told me about Leo, like something in her had finally clicked into place.
“They had a whirlwind romance. Super fast. But I guess when you know, you know.”
He grunts. “This particular island is as well known for quick weddings as Vegas is. They’re just less kitschy.”
“Are you going for a wedding too?”
“I am.” Something shifts slightly in his expression. Not closed exactly, but complicated. “My son’s. Though I’m hoping I can talk some sense into him. I have no doubt this girl he’s found is only after his money.”
“Oh no, that’s terrible.”
He lifts one shoulder. “He’s technically an adult, so there might not be anything I can do.”
“I get it. You’ve got to protect the ones you love.
” I think about Juniper again, about how certain I am of her and Leo, and feel a small pulse of something like gratitude on her behalf.
“My sister’s romance was fast, but it’s real.
They’re amazing together. I’ve never seen her so happy, and man would I love to find a man who looks at me the way he looks at her. ”
Heath is quiet for a moment. He’s looking at me in a way that is hard to describe. Like he’s reading something and taking his time with it. “So you don’t have a boyfriend waiting at home for you?”
I snort. “Hardly.”
The middle seat passenger returns with a coffee and a bag of pretzels and the temporary geography of our conversation rearranges itself. Heath and I exchange a brief glance over the man’s oblivious head, the particular look of two people who have been interrupted mid-something and both know it.
I put my headphones in. Still not connected to anything.
For the next two hours, I am extremely aware of the man two seats to my left.
I am aware when he shifts position. When he orders a drink.
When he laughs quietly at something on his phone and the sound of it ghosts through the ambient noise of the cabin and lands somewhere in my chest. Once, when I fall into the shallow half-sleep of the deeply exhausted traveler, I surface briefly to find that my head has drooped toward the window and Heath is looking at me with an expression I don’t have enough context to read.
I close my eyes again.
When we land I am slow and groggy and I drop my headphones twice getting them back into their case. The middle seat passenger has already gone. Heath is standing in the aisle, my carry-on in his hand.
“You didn’t have to—” I start.
“I know,” he says. He hands it to me easily, no ceremony, and then steps into the aisle ahead of me to clear the path, which given his size is a meaningful contribution.
I follow him off the plane into the thick warm air of the island evening and think that this is the end of it.
A nice conversation with a handsome stranger.
A thing that happened on a plane. I will tell Juniper about it and she will want every detail.
I will give her said details, and we will both agree that he was the most attractive man I’ve ever spoken to.
And that will be that. Because while my sister is the type to have a grand romance that leads to her happy ending, I am far more likely to end up with poison ivy on my rear end.
I think about the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, and realize I’ll be thinking about him likely for the rest of my trip.
“Next.”
I’m jolted out of my reverie by the front desk clerk’s voice and the realization that I have been standing in a hotel lobby at one-thirty in the morning replaying a conversation with a man I met on a plane.
“Baby girl, are you awake or sleeping on your feet?” Heath’s voice comes from behind me, low and warm, and just the sound of it does the same thing it did on the plane, that inconvenient internal rearranging.
Right. We’re not on the plane anymore. We’re here. At the resort. At one-thirty in the morning after the travel day that time forgot.
I roll my shoulders back and drag my carry-on forward and focus on the front desk, which is all gleaming wood and tropical flowers.
The guy who was ahead of me in line is wrapping up whatever transaction he was conducting, and I watch him slide something across the shiny countertop with the practiced ease of someone who does this regularly.
The pretty brunette behind the desk, her name tag reads Candy, pockets whatever it was with a smile that doesn’t budge a millimeter.
She turns that smile to me. It is a very professional smile. The smile of someone who has been trained to deploy it regardless of the hour or the circumstances.
“Next,” she says again.
I think I fight off the urge to roll my eyes, but honestly, I can’t be sure. Overly tired Clover is not always super friendly Clover. Overly tired Clover has, on occasion, said things that well-rested Clover has to spend considerable energy apologizing for later. I am doing my best.
“Hi!” I say, with way more enthusiasm than I feel, which is to say approximately zero enthusiasm dressed up in a party outfit. “Checking in.”
“Name?”
“Clover Hill.”
She stares at me. Blinks once. Then again. It’s the name. It’s always the name. My parents were people of deep conviction and a complicated relationship with conventional choices and I have been introducing myself to this particular reaction my entire life.
“Yep,” I say. “Silly name. My parents were either very whimsical or slightly cruel, the jury’s still out. But can you—” I motion to the monitor in front of her.
She turns to it and taps on the keys. Her brow furrows in the way of someone who has found something they would rather not have found. She taps a few more keys. The furrow deepens.
I watch this process and brace myself for whatever fresh hell Candy is about to dump on me.
“Ms. Hill.” She says it carefully. The way people say things carefully when what they’re about to say next is going to be a problem. “You are not scheduled to arrive until tomorrow.” A brief pause. “We do not have a room for you at the moment.”
For a second, the words just sit there in the air between us, in the tasteful ambient lighting, in the lobby that smells of tropical flowers and money, and I simply look at her.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “What did you say?”
She opens her mouth.
I shake my head slowly, because I heard her, I just need a moment to fully absorb the information before she says it again and it becomes more real than I am currently prepared for it to be.
I look at my watch. One twenty-six in the morning.
I have been traveling for nineteen hours.
I have had one airport coffee, one bag of pretzels, and approximately four crackers from a snack box that I paid nine dollars for and ate over the Atlantic Ocean in a state of mild despair.
“It is now nearly two in the morning,” I say. I keep my voice very measured. I am being very measured. “It is the next day, is it not? By most reasonable definitions of the phrase the next day?”
“Technically,” Candy says, with the careful diplomacy of someone navigating a minefield in heels, “check-in time isn’t until three in the afternoon.”
There it is.
There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the final and most perfect coda to this entire magnificent disaster of a day.
Late planes. Missed connections. Temporarily lost baggage.
Hair that has achieved a level of humidity-induced volume that can only be described as architectural.
And now this. Now I am standing at a hotel desk at nearly two in the morning being informed that while yes, technically, it is the next day, it is not next day enough.
The laughter comes first. It always does with me, the hysteria arriving ahead of the tears like an advance scout.
It bubbles up my throat without permission.
It’s that kind of deranged laughter that has nothing to do with anything being funny and everything to do with being a human person with a finite amount of coping resources who has reached the end of the road.
Ah, shit. Here it comes.
The giggles start, helpless and slightly unhinged, and right behind them, because my body is nothing if not committed to the full theatrical experience, come the tears. Two of them sliding down my cheeks while I’m still laughing, which I am aware is a deeply alarming visual.
“Are you serious right now?” I ask, and my voice only wobbles a little, which I think shows real character.
“Because I have to tell you, and I mean this with the greatest respect, this has been—” I gesture vaguely at the general concept of the day.
“This has been a day. This has been the kind of day that should come with a warning label and a complimentary glass of something strong, and I have been on four different planes and in three different airports and my hair—” I pause to gesture at my hair, which speaks for itself.
“My hair is doing something that I think might be visible from space. And I just want—” my voice does the wobble thing again.
“I just want to go to sleep. In a bed. That is in a room. That exists.”
Candy is looking at me with an expression that has cracked open slightly from the professional smile into something more human. She is, I think, a person who would like to help me. She is also a person who is working a front desk at two in the morning and does not make the policies.
I press my fingers briefly to my eyes and take a breath.
Behind me, Heath clears his throat.