Page 23 of Stuck in Paradise with You

‘Riiiiiiight. You know she thinks you and I are together, don’t you?’

Yes.And I have no intention of correcting her. ‘I haven’t noticed.’

‘Yes, you have. It was plain as day at dinner last night.’ She wags a brightly painted fingernail at me. ‘Let me tell you, Chalmers, I won’t be used as a ragdoll in whatever game of emotional intelligence this is.’

We’re facing each other from opposite sides of the table. ‘I can’t help if Carrie jumps to conclusions,’ I say. Then for my own benefit, I mutter, ‘She’s always been the same.’

Alisha plants her hands on her hips, looking as fierce as only she can. ‘You need to tell her the truth.’

‘Why do I?’

‘Because you’re not five years old and this isn’t the school playground. If you don’t correct her, I will.’

I reach for a tissue from a box on the desk and wave it in the air. I know Alisha well enough to know she doesn’t bullshit, so I surrender. ‘Can you give me today? Let me get through this meeting. I’ll tell her tomorrow.’ Because I fully intend to tell Joe I’m leaving the islandtonight.

Alisha’s bristles seem to soften. ‘Why do you want her to think we’re together? Are you trying to make her jealous? Are you trying to win her back?’

‘Jealous? Back? Hell, no. You couldn’t be further from the truth. In any event, she’s seeing someone, shares a life and a dog with someone.’

She’s moved on.

I’m pacing my side of the table, wound like a mechanical toy ready for release. When I find the words I’m searching for, I stop and once again face Alisha.

‘Look, it’s just safer this way. It’s an insurmountable barrier, me being in a relationship, her being in a relationship. We’ve talked about it before; neither one of us would ever cheat.’

‘If you hate each other, why do you need barriers between you?’ Alisha asks a fair question.

‘It’s something that means we don’t even have to get into what happened between us. You’re a safe space.’

She comes to perch on the edge of the table. ‘What exactly did happen between the two of you?’

I don’t think I’m going to tell her, not the detail. But I find myself moving to the window, staring out to where I see Carrie wandering the terrace and talking into her phone, and words start tumbling out of me. How it all started between late nights and office flirting. The hotel rooms and the six weeks we dated in secret, having a crash course in getting to know each other because it was always just the two of us, hiding away in one ofour apartments, eating, drinking, talking, making love, bathing together, dancing together, falling asleep in each other’s arms.

‘Then I got a message from Anya one day – a text message, would you believe? – and it said, “I’m pregnant”, with an ultrasound picture. That was it.’

‘I never knew that,’ Alisha says.

I don’t turn to look at her because I don’t think I want to see her expression, whether she’s appalled that I was seeing someone so soon after Anya and I ended, whether she pities me because I fell for a girl like I’d never even fallen for the woman I married, then she was taken away by something that completely blindsided me.

‘It threw me, completely. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and I couldn’t process all my mixed emotions, let alone share them with Carrie. It was a mess I needed to get my head around.’ I shake my head, dragging a hand through my hair. ‘But I had no time because that same day, someone from work saw Carrie and me together and snitched to the partners. So I was called into an office and told either Carrie would be moved into a department she didn’t want to be in, or I would have to leave the firm.’

I finally shift to see Alisha and find her attention fixed on me. ‘That’s…’

‘I was on the cusp of partnership, so they wanted me to stay and Carrie would have ended up managed out, but I felt responsible for the mess. I was older, her mentor, I should have known better. Ididknow better but I just couldn’t— Anyway, Anya had moved back to Chicago, to be near her parents, or so I thought, and I assumed she’d want to try to make a go of things for the sake of the baby.’ I shake my head. ‘It was an awful idea but I was all over the place and trying to do the right thing.’

‘So what did you do?’

I shrug. ‘I quit work and told them to keep Carrie but not tell her that I left so she could stay. I didn’t want her to feel guilty or try anything stupid like quitting so they’d take me back.’

Only now, relaying it, I wonder if maybe I should have let them tell her because at least then she’d have known that I did it for her. Then again, it wouldn’t have mattered. She was over us. Ready to pretend like we never happened.

I don’t realize I’ve balled my hands into fists until my knuckles are hurting under the pressure. ‘I went to Chicago, to do what I thought was decent. I tried to stay in touch with Carrie and explain everything but she ghosted me. Ignored every attempt I made because, I guess she’d just never bought in to us.’Not the way I had.

I grip the back of my neck, rubbing against the building pressure I feel. The heaviness of the time, the memory, the pain.

‘Then fast-forward six months to a paternity test and, what do you know? The baby wasn’t mine.’ I shift along the wall of windows to continue watching Carrie on the terrace, probably speaking to her significant other. ‘We could have got back together but she made sure there’d never be a chance for us.’

I had no wife, no family, no job, no home and worst of all, no Carrie.

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