“Will she come back here?”
“Eventually. We all do.”
It wasthose words I thought of as the plane took off.
Will she come back here?
Eventually. We all do.
I didn’t look down at the island. I hated flying as it was, and I wanted to spend the time writing rather than having a panic attack about being in a metal container thousands of feet in the air for the next god knew how many hours. I had a new laptop and a word document open on it, and a job to do. A new one.
New York was meantto be the city of dreams. When you came from an island that most people dreamed about it was difficult at first to see this. I was used to crowds of people, but on a beach or at a club, not travelling along a subway, unsmiling.
But I found its charm.
It was there in the people, their stories. The luxury of Ibiza wasn’t there, and the blue skies became a thing of memories, but people filled my days while I mooched around Brooklyn, looking at the bars and restaurants, drinking a Manhattan cocktail with the five o’clock crowd and an Iced Tea with the ladies who lunched. I scoped the place out, watching for premises to come on the market and avoiding people that might know my family back home, although I was kidding myself if I didn’t think that at some point I’d be recognised.
I caught sight of Jameson in every crowd, found her in every bar, spotted her on every sidewalk. But I never saw her. It was a big city, tall and wide and loaded with people from everywhere, yet still I’d expected to see her.
The muscle that beat in my chest expected to see her.
Late summer turned into what the Americans called fall, when the leaves started to turn colour and the outside of coffee shops smelled of pumpkin spice. I was in Central Park, taking a walk, when my phone rang and Lala’s name appeared on the screen.
We’d strangely stayed in touch after I left the island, exchanging messages and the odd photo. She liked to take selfies outsideCòctels, and I liked to send pictures of buildings that I found boring but she seemed to know the history of – or at least which famous person had done what in them.
“How’s the Big Apple?” She sounded of plums still, rather than any other fruit.
“Big. Busy. How’s the White Isle?”
“Beautiful. Peaceful. Until I turn up at least. You found Jameson yet?” her words were chirpy. Happy.
“I know where she lives.”
“Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“She thinks she saw you. She texted me yesterday saying that she could’ve sworn she saw you outside her apartment block. Was it you?”
I laughed, gutted I hadn’t seen her, although I knew it wasn’t time yet. “Maybe. It could be.”
Her yell of delight nearly deafened me.
“Lala, she might not want me in New York.”
There was a disbelieving laugh. “She’s talked about you loads in the last few weeks. She’s started going out a couple of times a week with a girl who’s on her course for cocktails, and she keeps mentioning that she’s thinking of sending you recipes. Then she asks if I think she should contact you.”
“What do you tell her?”
“Wait for a sign from fate.” She laughed again. “When are you going to give her that sign, Tommy?”
We talked some more, about general shit, before she hung up in a rush, someone appearing that she absolutely had to see.
I meandered back, making a call to organise interviews for staff, and then confirming a meeting with an investor. Some things hadn’t changed.
That evening I went to a bar with a friend I’d made, a restaurant owner who’d holidayed in Ibiza where we’d met briefly before. Then I went home to my half empty rental and wondered whether I missed the island as much as I thought I would.
I didn’t.
