Page 57 of Stuck in Paradise with You

That’s a lot hot. Heaps hot. Near desperate.

‘All set,’ Joe says, patting our now boarded window as if he knows he needs to knock me back into real time.

He shifts his focus between Carrie and me, then shakes his head and laughs.

Yeah, I’m as easy to read as an open book.I know it and I need to shut it down. Better yet, I need to get my venom back on because that woman who seems to be driving me crazy in every respectreallyhates me.

26

CARRIE

We’re onto the third home. Joe and Luke are finishing boarding the windows, while the rest of us pack sandbags around the entrances to the house. There’s an unspoken sense of pointlessness about this one. The colorfully painted yellow one-story is set so close to the beach – only a thin, uneven road between the sand and the house – that when the storm brings a water surge with it, the house will stand no chance.

Once the last of the sandbags are in place, hot, sweaty and dirty, I slump down onto the sack, knees bent up to my chest, and listen to my stomach grumble. We’ve been at it for a few hours already and there’s still a lot to do. More than we can get done, truth be told. Not because my watch is telling me it’s late morning but because the sea is showing that our time on Virgin Gorda is running out. The stunning blues of the ocean are currently shades of grey, much like the thick-set sky, and the waves are playing an angry song, crashing at the shoreline, each one looking like it’s capped with snow.

‘Hey.’ I glance up to see Luke rubbing his dirty hands on an old rag, his mouth twisted into a smile that’s directed at me but which doesn’t set my pulse racing like his true one. His voice issoft, calm, slightly husked – the kind of tone that in an instant thrusts me back to twenty-four-year-old me.

I’d forgotten, or scrubbed from my mind, maybe, the day Luke sent me home from the office.

Seven Years Ago

This isn’t just a cold; it’s a flu. Not the man kind of flu, but the actual limb-shaking, hot sweats, puffy face, streaming nose, excruciating throat, zero energy kind of flu. Woman flu.

It also came on from nowhere. I swear I was fine when I woke this morning – tired and sort of heavy feeling, but not riddled with germs.

By 3p.m., when Luke sent me home, ordering me to bed with a book, a hot water bottle and over-the-counter meds he picked up for me from the local pharmacy, I was feverish. The light of my computer felt like it was piercing my eyes.

Now, I’m lying on the fold-down bed of my studio apartment in Midtown, wearing my thickest pajamas, not knowing whether I’m too hot or too cold. The sun is falling behind the skyscrapers I can see from my window.

A knock on my apartment door drags me out of my self-pitying, helpless state. It can’t be for me; I don’t know anyone else in the building. I’m always working and, lately, when I’m not, I’m with Luke, at his place.

Not seeing him tonight, tomorrow, however long it takes for this stupid virus to disappear is contributing to why I feel so sorry for myself.

The knock comes again and I think, despite the fact this is clearly a mistake-of-door scenario, I’m going to have to answer.

Forcing myself up as slowly as I have only ever seen my grandmother rise – and she has two false hips – I slip my feet into my slippers and shuffle toward the door.

‘Carrie? It’s Luke.’

I stop midway between my bed and the door, surveying the used tissues scattered around the floor, the half-eaten bowl of soup on the kitchen counter and the dirty pan to accompany it, my work clothes thrown over the back of my two-seater sofa, rather than hung back up in the wardrobe.

Damn it, damn it.

And the apartment is nothing compared to how truly awful I look, I realize, when I catch my reflection in my lounge mirror.

Mustering strength I don’t feel, I quickly throw the soup and pan in the sink, collect the tissues and trash them, drag my hair into a hair-tie and cover it mostly with a wide, fabric hairband. I wipe smudged make-up from under my eyes but there’s no time to do anything about the baby-pink, button-down fleece pajamas.

My little exertion has whacked me and when I eventually open the door, I’m panting like I’ve run a half hour on the treadmill.

And there is Luke, still wearing the dark-blue suit and crisp pink shirt he had on in the office earlier – actually matchy-matchy with my bedwear, except he looks… divine. I like him later in the day, once his fresh-pressed-ness of the morning has turned into something more relaxed, a little more rugged, like the Luke I get to see in the evenings. Exactly how he looks now.

His arm is wrapped around a brown paper bag with a baguette poking out of the top – if it’s fresh, I can’t smell it because I can’t smell a thing with my bunged-up nose. His other hand is resting in the pocket of his tailored pants. He considers me, from my toes to my head, his focus eventually resting on myface, and he leans his head to the side, one half of his mouth teasing upward.

He says softly, calmly, with a slight husk to his voice, ‘Hey.’

I knew before he cooked for me that night, before he gave me drugs at the right time, before he ran me a warm bath full of bubbles and sponged my back as he talked to me, before he lay on my bed and read to me from my book as I drifted to sleep on his chest… I knew before any of that… I was in love with him.

Present Day

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