She turns. Something crosses her face, quick and unreadable, before her expression settles into careful neutrality. “Hey.”
“I’m heading down to the pool area,” I tell her. “The suite’s yours for the day.”
“Oh.” She blinks. “You don’t have to leave on my account.”
“I’m not.” That’s mostly true. “I have some work to catch up on.”
She lifts an eyebrow at the laptop bag but doesn’t comment on it. “I was going to explore the resort in a bit,” she says. “Maybe hit the beach.”
I nod, even though I’m not sure why she feels compelled to give me her day’s itinerary. The ocean fills the sudden silence between us. For a second I think she’s going to say something about the morning, about the bathroom, about any of it. She doesn’t.
“I’ll check with the front desk about the room situation,” I say. “See if anything’s opened up.”
Her brows rise in response. “Right, good idea. Fingers crossed!”
I grunt in agreement, still hesitating to leave for reasons I prefer not to consider. “Enjoy your day, then.”
I close the sliding door before I can do something idiotic like tell her to be careful on her own today, or ask her what she thinks about while she looks at the ocean. Laptop bag in hand, I exit the suite and head for the elevator.
The pool area is already busy by the time I find a lounger. I choose one near the far end, angled away from the main crowd, partially shaded by a palm tree. Close enough to the tiki bar to order water but far enough from the speakers pumping out soca music that I should be able to focus.
I set up the laptop, tilting the screen against the glare that immediately renders it nearly unreadable. The Barbados sun is not conducive to working, which everyone else here seems to have figured out already. I adjust the angle. Worse. I cup my hand over the display like a visor. Marginally better, but now I look like a man trying to hide that he’s watching porn in public.
The humidity is a problem too. Within five minutes, a fine layer of moisture has settled over the keyboard, and my water glass is sweating a ring onto the side table that’s creeping toward the laptop’s charging port with the slow inevitability of a hostile negotiation. I relocate the glass. It sweats a new ring. I relocate it again, then finally give up.
Seventeen unread messages wait in my inbox, six flagged urgent. The subject lines blur. HoloTech integration timeline. Q3 board materials. A penetration test summary from my CTO that three days ago would have consumed my full attention for an hour. Buried in the queue, an update from legal on theMeridian deal. The acquisition is stalled without me, nine billion dollars in limbo because my cardiologist decided I needed a tan.
I read the first email twice without absorbing a word.
The cursor blinks. I rest my fingers on the warm keys and stare at the screen, seeing nothing but Ella’s face.
I’m pulled back to something she said on the plane, about the way she decided to move to Sedona. Picking the town randomly, by closing her eyes and pointing at a map. How her finger landed on a tiny town in the Arizona desert, and she just went. No research. No due diligence. No spreadsheet weighing cost of living against employment prospects against long-term viability. She closed her eyes and trusted whatever was going to happen.
I’ve never made a decision that way, let alone one that would determine the trajectory of my entire life. I’m not sure I’ve made a decision in the last decade that didn’t involve at least two consultants and a contingency plan. And somehow she ended up in a place she loves, working a job that makes her happy, with friendships strong enough that she’d been planning this trip with one of them.
And, in what I’m gathering is true Ella style, when those plans fell through, she adjusted. Didn’t let it stop her for second. Instead, she came here solo. To a foreign country, to a luxury resort she’d never been to. That takes something. Not sheer impulsiveness, which is what I would have called it a day ago. Something braver than that.
Something I would even call admirable.
While I’m grappling with my warming regard for the woman who’s participated in upending my entire vacation, an attractive blonde in a coral bikini settles onto the lounger two spots down. Expensive swimsuit, Chanel sunglasses. She arranges herself with the awareness of someone who knows she’s being observed, adjusting the angle of her lounger so it happens to face mine.I catch the glance she sends my direction over the top of her sunglasses. Appraising. Available.
I return to my inbox.
The third email is from my assistant, Martha. Subject line: VACATION MEANS VACATION, ALEC.
Shit. Busted. I close it without reading.
Other guests drift through the frame of my peripheral vision, laughing, ordering drinks, doing whatever it is people do on tropical vacations. A couple on the loungers across the pool is sharing an elaborate cocktail in a coconut with two straws, their legs tangled together. I look away from them too.
I don’t need any reminders that this resort is designed for romance. I’ve got a perky brunette suitemate whose very presence has everything male in me itching to ditch my laptop and go back to see if Ella’s still there.
Because evidently, I’m a glutton for punishment.
I catch myself starting to smile over the way she outmaneuvered me in our battle for our favorite side of the bed. I could have fought harder on that, but for some reason I decided to let her win. Maybe it was because of how stubbornly she asserted herself. Maybe it was because she was so fucking adorable doing it.
But I think it was actually because of the monster. The childhood nightmare she used as supporting evidence for why she deservedmyside of the bed.
And now I’m sitting poolside with seventeen urgent emails and a laptop slowly being dissolved by tropical humidity, and what I’m thinking about is seven-year-old Ella, so scared of a monster on the right side of her bed that she’s slept on the left side ever since. There’s something about that. Not the fear. The loyalty to it. The way she carries her own history so lightly, turning wounds into punchlines without ever pretending they didn’t hurt.
