Page 64 of Caribbean Crush

She hums and shrugs. “Not really anymore. I think I might go for a swim.”

Her British accent seems more standoffish, prim, and proper than ever.

She stands, about to step around Javier and really take things up a notch, but he cuts in front of her.

Yes! Go Javier! I mostly resist the urge to throw my fist into the air, but it still lifts off my towel and hovers awkwardly near my shoulder.

“I was hoping you’d be free tonight? To go and have dinner off the ship? I made a reservation at this restaurant all the locals recommended.”

Sienna thinks it over for an excruciatingly long time before replying casually, “A little late in the day for a dinner invite, don’t you think?”

Sienna!

Javier’s eyes narrow at the same time his smile widens. He likes this. He likes her. “I came to your suite. I knocked and knocked, trying to find you.”

“We’ve been off the ship most of the day,” I tell him since Sienna won’t. “Then when we got back, we came straight here.”

“See?” His brow rises. “I couldn’t find you all day.”

Sienna inspects her nails, really putting on a good show here. Even I’m starting to sweat, and I’m not even Javier!

“She’ll go,” I blurt out.

“Casey.” Sienna levels me with an admonishing glare. “I will not. I can’t leave you. Not with everything ...” She shakes her head. “Not tonight.”

While it’s thoughtful of her to consider my feelings in all this, there is no way I’m letting her skip out on this dinner date with Javier. She helped me when I was at a low point earlier (never mind that I’m still very much there), and so now I’m going to help her.

“Javier, you have to take her. Poor Sienna has had such a rough day with me. She needs loads of wine, lots of good food, and maybe some dancing?”

Javier grins.

“Definitely dancing!” I amend.

“Case—”

I hold up my hand to stop her and push up from my lounger, already starting to wrap my towel around myself. “I’ve already made up my mind what I’ll be doing tonight.” I get my bag and stuff my paperback and phone inside. “I’m exhausted, and I’m going to shower and hit the hay early. So ... there you have it. No choice. Enjoy dinner, you two!”

I walk away, feeling lighter than air, a maniacal cupid with too much power. The thrill of thrusting those two together carries me all the way to the bank of elevators and right back to my suite, but as that door opens, I realize reality has waited for me.

It’s the quiet of the place that hits me where it hurts.

For so long after my grandmother passed away, I couldn’t take the silence in her house. On days I didn’t commute into the office, I’d take my laptop to a coffee shop (or more often, because it was free, the library) and only begrudgingly return to the house when it was close to dinnertime. Immediately upon my arrival, I’d walk around like a woman possessed, turning on the downstairs TV to the channel my grandmother always watched, the one with the news and Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and a bunch of dumb game shows I never paid attention to but enjoyed hearing in the background of my life. Then I’d crank on the radio in the back hallway. I’d get the laundry going, and I’d open the windows to let the noise from the neighborhood trickle in, and all this together nearly worked. It almost made me feel as if my grandmother were still with me.

I never did get used to living there after she was gone. Her room stayed her room even though it was bigger and she had a queen bed, while I still resigned myself to a lumpy twin we never got around to replacing. I didn’t touch her things, didn’t pack anything until two weeks ago when her items were either going with me or getting sent to a landfill.

It made me sick to do it. Her smell was so pervasive in her room that I could barely stand to go in there, but once I did, I never wanted to leave. I thrust my face into the clothes in her closet, and I wept for the woman who raised me, the one I’d give anything to see again, even for one day.

I miss her more now than ever. I wish I had her here with me, telling me what to do.

Though that’s laughable because I absolutely know what she’d tell me. She told me the same thing for years.

“Casey, you’re wasting away in that job. That Genny—” Sidenote, she never could get Gwen’s name right, or maybe she could, but it felt too good to say it wrong that she never wanted to correct herself. “She doesn’t understand what she’s got with an employee like you. You’re doing them a service in that damn position. You hate it! And don’t get it twisted. They need you; you don’t need them. You’re smart as a whip, and you’ve got looks to back it up. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I’m telling you, you’re more beautiful than any of the girls that come through working the beauty counter with me, and believe it when I say, I’ve seen some real lookers in my day. So I just don’t get it, Sunshine. Why bother sticking it out? Why not chase that adventure you’ve always wanted?”

Our arguments played on a loop, never changing. I thought she was shortsighted and didn’t understand the benefits of me slowly working my way up at a publication like Bon Voyage. Hello! No one makes editor in chief right off the bat! It felt like she was from a bygone era and couldn’t comprehend the pressures I was dealing with. I couldn’t just go and do something grand. I had college loans to pay for! A retirement account to contribute to! More importantly ... a family member—my one and only family member—who needed me.

Now, standing in the doorway of my suite, regret pools inside me. I wonder if maybe I had things twisted, if I was so stubbornly rooted in my ways that I wasn’t willing to see things from her perspective. She just wanted me to look over my options, to feel like I really had a say in my own future.

I know one thing for certain: she’d be spitting mad if she read the emails Gwen sent me this morning. When I recall them, though, the anger doesn’t burn afresh. I’m just a mass of anxiety—overwhelmed and sad.

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