Page 50 of Stuck in Paradise with You

She scoffs. ‘Was I supposed to sit around and wait, Luke? Wait for what? For you to want to be mybuddy? To come to dinner with you and your family?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I should or could have done differently.’ I drag my hands over my face. This isn’t what I was expecting. I have zero clue what Iwasexpecting.

I don’t get the chance to pull all the pieces together, though, because Joe seems to appear from nowhere, and he’s standing by my side in the doorway of the pod, clearing his throat to announce his arrival.

I wonder how long he’s been listening, and clearly Carrie does too. She’s suddenly straighter, taller, mindful her client is in the vicinity, but her cheeks pinken, like she’s ashamed to have let her professional armor slip.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Joe says.

‘Not at all,’ Carrie says jumpily.

I know I can’t go back to our conversation. I asked my question, at long last. The question that’s haunted me is out in the wild and it has an answer.

Joe’s come to collect her and take her out of my life, again. Maybe for another seven years. Maybe forever this time.

It’s a good thing, I think.

Yet I can’t shake the sense that when I process her words, I’m going to be left with a void somewhere deep inside me. I hope it will only be a bareness where a long-pondered question is now answered.

I fear it’s not.

‘I’m just about packed,’ I hear Carrie say as I slip away into the night, feeling like there are a million things I should stay and say to her if this is the last time I’m going to see her, but not knowing what they are, or not able to find the words.

So, I leave without saying goodbye.

22

CARRIE

He’s just going to leave? No goodnight, no goodbye?

I can feel my eyes stinging but I’m pinning my shoulders back. Joe is my client. Luke is my ghost.

He’s haunting me now like he did in a past life. Nothing has changed.Hehasn’t changed.

Why did I tell him the truth? Why did I let those words tumble out of me?

I can’t unsay them, how it felt for him to leave me dressed in lingerie I’d picked out especially for his birthday, lying on the bed in our hotel, waiting for the man I was insanely, incomprehensibly in love with to come to me.

But I’m not fighting tears because of a memory. I’m willing myself to be strong, stoic, because he’s done it again. Just sloped off into the night. Gone.

In seven years’ time, he might even throw at me that he wished we could have stayed in touch, so that we could be…friends? Friends!

I only have myself to blame for feeling like this. I’ve done it again. Bared myself, made myself vulnerable for him. To be left feeling hollow.

God, I hate him, I hate him, Ihatehim.

I’m so consumed by my dark thoughts that I have to ask Joe to repeat himself as he stands in my doorway and tells me, ‘The jet would have been able to land in Tortola but it wouldn’t have been able to take back off, Carrie, so it had to turn back. I’m sorry.’

Can I ask him to say it for a third time? Because maybe lucky number three will be the time it sinks in.

‘I can’t leave?’ I’m trying not to be hysterical but my brain is about to explode.

‘I’m really sorry, Carrie. I’ve pleaded with air traffic control. Or, you know, my pilot has on my behalf, but the military have taken over the airport. As of two hours ago, nothing but essential flights can land or take off.’

‘But… I… The storm isn’t even here yet.’

Joe nods. ‘If there was anything I could do, I swear to you, I would.’

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