Page 52 of Stuck in Paradise with You

She cut me off and tore mine to shreds.

I’ve always thought she did it as a reaction to us ending. Not that break-ups tend to be nice but I do appreciate ours was abrupt, and I guess I thought she took it badly and reacted impulsively.

Us ending was hard enough to take, but what was harder was thinking that she didn’t even care enough, had never cared enough, to want toknowme afterwards.

I could be bitter, even hateful, because she didn’t care as much for me as I did about her.

Argh, I don’t know.Did I think that? Did I truly believe that all this time?

I’m starting to question everything I’ve always thought and that’s a dangerous place to be.

Carrie is compartmentalized. In the past. I’ve moved on.

I needed to ask one question, to get closure. Now I have it.

So why am I walking up and down this beach, too restless to sleep, feeling like someone is crushing my internal organs?

I sink down onto the sand, bending my knees and wrapping my arms around them as I sit.

Was this all on me? Did I honestly expect her to wait for me? To wait for what? I didn’t even know how things would pan out with Anya.

The moon is beautiful. Big, bright, full, its light dancing on the gentle ebb and flow of the ocean as it teases the shore. It feels implausible that a storm meteorologists are predicting will be the greatest to ever make landfall in the Atlantic is imminent.

Yet as mystifying as the night feels, something about the calm of it makes everything so clear to me.

She loved me.

For seven years, I’ve thought that my feelings were unrequited. That to her, we were a thrill, a rush, a forbidden relationship that was fueled by adrenaline. All the while, I had been in love.

But it wasn’t one-sided at all.

She ghosted me for the same reason I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye to her in person and end us properly back then.

She was in love with me. I was in love with her.

And we fucking blew it.Iblew it.

At some point, in the early hours of the morning, I fell into a restless sleep, tossing and turning between erratic andunreasoned dreams that seemed pertinent in the moment but that now, pulling on my workout clothes, I can’t clearly remember.

It’s around five thirty in the morning, the sky is grey and lightening by the minute. I pull on my sneakers and a black baseball cap, clean my teeth and head in the direction of the terrace.

From my vantage point at the top of the rock, I can easily see the change in the sea. The usual blue hue looks closer to a shade of grey. Last night, it looked like a millpond but this morning, it’s etched by an infinite number of white caps. The chop bears the imminent reality.

I stop on the walkway at a midpoint between my pod and the main house, watching the waves. The air has changed too. It’s denser. The smell has changed. It’s saltier, tinged with the smell of aquatic life.

We need to get to Virgin Gorda and back quickly. Soon, the rough sea will be menacing. The weather bods are predicting waves up to 100 feet when Isabel hits – something like eighteen or nineteen men tall. Wind gusts up to 285 kilometers per hour.

I can admit to myself, I’m apprehensive. This isbig.

I will also admit, only to myself, that I’m pleased Carrie left the island last night, even if I never see her again, because I know she’s safe.

Though, as I think that, there’s an unwelcome pressure behind my eyes and I take off my cap to drag a hand through my thick hair.

She was within my grasp, afterallthe empty time that spanned between us. Now she’s gone, again.

A guttural noise escapes me. The sound of frustration. Maybe anger. At her. At myself.

Not the focus of today, I remind myself.

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