CHAPTER 2
After leaving the smoothie shop, I stop in an upscale clothing store to buy a replacement for the T-shirt that Strawberry Shortcake ruined. She was cute, petite, and after her not-so-smooth move, covered in strawberry juice.
Me too.
The retail clerk’s lips pucker and his eyes widen, as if I’m a vagabond off the street who needs to wear a bib. He says, “Sir, we don’t allow food or beverages in the store.”
Having already drank my coffee and eaten my blueberry muffin, I hold up my hands and say, “I don’t have food or beverages.”
He looks pointedly at my shirt.
My eldest brother would put my ego in check, but he’s not here, so I gesture to the display of casual linens, cottons, and resort-style clothing. “I’ll take one of each in a large. My tailor can make any necessary alterations.”
The clerk swallows thickly at my command. Then, as if just to be sure that I’m not a hobo who got sick all over himself, he asks, “And how will you be paying?”
“Amex. The Black Card.” I draw it from my wallet just to drive home the point. I don’t flaunt my wealth, but I’m not going to have some kid in a men’s clothing boutique question whether I belong in his store. I’ve worked too hard to be made to feel small.
He scuttles around, gathering the requested garments.
Standing tall, I wait by the register. When he folds everything neatly, I take one of the shirts, tear off the tag, and dispose of the one covered in the smoothie.
“Do I dare ask what happened?” the kid behind the counter asks.
Strawberry Shortcake barges into my mind with her long brown hair streaked blonde by the sun, striking blue eyes, a permanent tan, and a megawatt smile.
She wasn’t so much a klutz, more like an absolute menace. Flirting with her tempted me, but I’m leaving tonight, so there’s no point.
Not that there ever is.
My twin, Ryan, would’ve laughed it off, gotten her number, and would be smooth-talking her by sunset.
“You have some dangerous people in your town,” I say, answering the clerk’s question about my shirt.
“I take it you’re not from around here.”
“Based in New York. Traveling for business.” My office is in lower Manhattan. Wall Street adjacent. And that’s where the big bucks are these days. They say the city is saturated, but there are still a few diamonds in the rough, and I’m polishing them to a shine.
He bags up the clothing and I send my assistant a message to have the items delivered to my hotel room. I won’t be parading down the street, laden with bags like a tourist. Flicking my card at the kid, I tell him someone will be by to collect my purchases.
I don’t know how Angela does it and I don’t care, except that it gets done. The woman is a saint disguised as a middle-aged executive assistant with a sharp eye and the kind of efficiency my rivals dream about.
Yeah, I know I’m surly and I don’t care about that either. My methods don’t matter so much as the results, and they speak for themselves.
Clean shirt on, I march out of the clothing store and my phone beeps with a message. Angela confirms my requests and then asks me to call when I’m available.
This means one of two things. One, she’s requesting time off—not happening. This is a busy time of year with multiple accounts, litigation, and a lead that I can’t pass up. I require her help with the legwork.
The other possibility isn’t something I want to think about today or ever. I left the island and became one, a man unto myself—self-made, self-sustaining. Well, with Angela’s help. Not going to deny that.
When I return to the hotel, I tap my phone to dial my assistant. “Angela,” I say, giving her permission to deliver whatever request or news required me to call.
“Check the bedside table.”
“Don’t be cryptic.”
“I didn’t open it myself, but I think you’ll understand once you see who it’s from.”
I limit the information available to my associates, but Angela is perceptive and knows that there is only one person in the world who has the ability to throw me off my game. No, it’s not a woman, because I don’t let them get that close.
Angela knows not to send the old man’s calls through and not to pre-screen any correspondence. She gives any mail directly to me. The old man didn’t advance to the technological age with email and texting, so I never have to worry about that.
On the lacquer table beside the king-size bed in my hotel suite sits a thick white envelope, embossed with my name in black. The return address on the back panel instantly makes my stomach of steel swim with dread.
I hang up the phone and repeatedly turn the envelope over in my hand, debating whether to open it.
One of these days, I’m going to get the call that the old man passed away. Apparently, today isn’t that day because this is the size and shape of a birthday invitation—roughly the same as the ones he’s sent for the last few years.
Do I bother sending my regrets? No, I’m well past that. Chip, my grandfather, gets silence just like the kind he gave. I washed my hands of the salty water surrounding that island and built something more solid under my feet than sand.
My phone beeps again, only this time it’s a message from my buddy Winston in the group chat whom I met with earlier, along with some other guys from college before I dropped out.
They thought I was crazy, but I wanted to make money rather than spend money and rack up debt. The prevailing wisdom is you have to spend money to make money, but I’m doing just fine.
More than fine. I’m a shave under a billion and I’m barely over thirty. Chip can keep his sage wisdom and whatever pennies he has left. I toss the envelope in the bin.
My phone beeps again, this time with a few photos from earlier.
The guys and I chartered a plane, skydived, and landed on a private island off South Carolina.
One of my clients owns it and said I could hunt, fish, or chill anytime I wanted.
I’ll own an island before long and it won’t be that one or Coco Key.
I’m thinking near Fiji—in other words, far from here.
In the meantime, we played an aggressive game of flag football and I have the bruises to prove it.
Every year since we met during freshman orientation, Winston, Holt, Billy, and I take turns organizing a get-together.
There are four of us and four seasons. It was my turn in the New Year, and they know that I get extreme.
It was Billy’s turn last time, and we merely grabbed pizzas and watched a movie.
When I’m up at bat, they know that I don’t bring the noise. I deliver the goods.
Someone knocks on the door to my hotel room at the same time the guys message. A hotel employee brings in my clothing. I drop him a tip and then look at the pictures of the four of us—muddy and mean.
We text back and forth, and Billy insists he and Holt would’ve won had Ryan been on their team. My twin is a professional football player, but I’m no slouch either.
Yep, today was just a regular Monday in my life.
Tomorrow, it’s back to work, but it’s not a grind.
Nope, I’m building an empire, and not only will I someday own an island, but I’ll also commission a skyscraper to be built with my name across the top in gold, gleaming in the sun and glowing under the moonlight.
Running the hedge fund and multiple real estate investments has taken me far from the spit of land I could never quite call home.
From time to time, I wish things were still like they used to be. That if I chartered a plane, we’d all get together and be a family again.
But everything splintered when CJ repeatedly insisted that Mom and Dad were still alive. Who can trust him? My youngest brother hunts pearls, associates with pirates, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew the menace that ruined my favorite blue T-shirt.
Yeah, he’s that kind of guy.
To be fair, I have five more matching shirts at home, but still.
The problem is that Chip, my grandfather, never told CJ to cool it. He let the kid get away with claiming our parents didn’t die. Our grandfather should’ve told him to sit down and shut up. To stop because there is no sense in letting any of us have that kind of hope.
Magnus, Ryan, CJ, and I bickered. Lines were drawn. Phone calls have gone unanswered. Space continues to grow between us. It could be said that we each got caught up in our own lives and forgot about island life, and regrettably, our grandfather.
But I don’t have any regrets, because here I am, at the top of my game, and nothing is going to slow me down.
Not an old man and his birthday party invitation, not a smoothie, and not a girl with a sweet smile.
I start to pack up to head to the airport when my phone rings this time.
Magnus’s name, my oldest brother, scrolls across the screen.
I bristle because if this is about the party, it’s not happening.
Maybe it’s a big one. Is Chip turning eighty?
No, that can’t be right. Seems like the old man has been eighty for a decade.
Reluctantly, I answer the call. If I don’t, there’s a good chance he’ll land by helo on the roof of this building and bang the door down.
Without any introduction, he asks, “Did you get the envelope?”
“Yes.”
“Did you open it?”
“Of course not.”
“Open it.” Magnus speaks with the kind of authority that only his superiors would challenge.
Old habits die hard and I find myself pulling it out of the bin and obeying without thinking. I don’t look at the card, but a plane ticket for Miami falls out. I toss it in the trash. “I’m not going to his birthday party.”
As if he didn’t hear me, Magnus says, “We’re going.”
Stubborn defiance stiffens my muscles.
“Get on that plane. See you there.”
Even if I were going, which I’m not, I don’t fly commercial.
Plus, who prints airplane tickets anymore?
Oh, that’s right, my grandfather, who is squarely stuck in the past. If I didn’t know better, I’d argue that he holds CJ hostage there, too, even though he’s the youngest of my brothers and is hardly into his third decade of life.
As I finish packing, because the private plane I’m boarding later will bring me out west, not south, my thoughts wander to the more recent past. To the petite woman with her beachy, messy hair, paint splatters from top to bottom, and the most striking blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
They reminded me of the ocean at a certain time of day, at a certain time of year.
One I’ve worked very hard to get away from.
I’m not the type to pick apart or replay situations.
I’m decisive, swift, and yeah, surly. But I recall that first moment of contact when our hands inadvertently touched as we both reached for the same muffin.
It was the strangest thing, but for a second, it was like someone pushed a button and paused my life.
It was brief, but I could breathe in a way I haven’t in a long time—it was like I inhaled a big, deep, open ocean breath, scented with summer, with freedom.
Then the second time our hands touched was when she tried to share half of the muffin with me, but caused a calamity on a massive and messy scale.
She’s the kind of woman who could bring down lesser men, literally. She tried to drag me to the ground as her smoothie went up and all over.
I give my head a dismissive shake, but that doesn’t do the trick. She lingers there with questions about the future, but I’ve already painted that picture and I’m at the top, flying solo.
Uninvited, my brothers barge into the image in my mind, along with my grandfather. They chatter and bicker, one mentioning this might be the last time we see Chip.
In my mind’s eye, CJ makes a case that we’ll have fun. Ryan smiles because he’s the kind of guy who’s always along for the ride as long as it’s a good one. Then there’s Magnus, the Navy pilot. When he gives an order, I’ll end up waging a battle against my sensibilities to defy him. I’ve yet to win.
At the end of a long sigh, I relent. I tap my phone and tell Angela there has been a change in plans and to postpone my meeting tomorrow.
In the imaginary painting, CJ cheers. I roll my eyes. But there’s another figure there—Strawberry Shortcake painted herself in and I can’t seem to erase her from my mind.