Page 32 of Love In Translation

She couldn’t keep focusing on the past. Rheo needed to turn her attention to the future. How could she improve her skills and, more importantly, get her confidence back? She hadn’t lost her ability to communicate; she was simply terrified to get anything wrong. Unfortunately, confidence wasn’t a switch you could flip, a tap easily opened.

She used to be good at her job, but her battered self-worth made her agonize over word choices, and she put too much emphasis on getting it right.

Something hard nudged her shoulder. She looked up to see Fletch, dressed only in low-riding sweatpants, holding wineglasses. He’d tapped her shoulder with a bottle of red wine. She hadn’t heard him leaving the bed or the room.

“Do you want a glass?” he asked, sitting opposite her.

Rheo nodded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she told him as he poured red wine into a huge goblet.

“Your thoughts are unbelievably loud, Rheo.” Fletcher passed her a glass. After tipping wine into his glass, he placed the bottle on the floor. He leaned back against the opposite wall, bending his long legs. He gestured to the moonlight-soaked vista beyond the window.

“That’s one hell of a view,” he quietly stated. “I forgot it was a full moon. If I’d remembered, I would’ve gone for a hike. There’s nothing quite like walking in a forest in the moonlight.”

She darted a glance at him. “I never pegged you for a romantic, Wright.”

“I’m not, and I always prefer to do any night walks alone. They’re good for thinking. You should try it sometime. You might find some answers out there.”

Not even a burning desire to sort her life out would convince her to go into the woods at night. Even in the moonlight.

“Or you can talk to me,” Fletch suggested. “Because, God knows, you need to talk to someone. You remind me of a corked bottle about to blow.”

“Charming,” Rheo muttered, but she couldn’t argue the point.

Rheo took a few sips of her wine and rested the foot of the glass on her thigh. She might as well tell him some of it. She couldn’t go into all the details—too embarrassing—but she could tell him enough for him to get a general idea.

“I messed up at work, then I messed up again. And again. It...Ispiraled out of control. I was offered—no, it was stronglysuggestedI take a sabbatical. I sublet my Brooklyn apartment and came here, where nobody would look for me.”

Fletch didn’t speak for a long time. “So, why doesn’t anyone in your family know you are here?”

He was asking her to wade into deeper waters. “Because I’m not the type who messes up at work, who has meltdowns. I’m the sensible Whitlock, the stable Whitlock, the one who doesn’t find herself in hard-to-navigate situations.”

“As your cousin does,” Fletch murmured.

“I’ve never been detained by border police, deported from countries, been kidnapped in Colombia, nor have I spent time in a Thai jail.”

Fletch’s smile was full of affection. “Carrie never managed to get a handle on her paperwork. I don’t know why not, because she’s not a dumb girl,” he explained. “She was deported fromonecountry for not having the correct work permits, and she was briefly detained by a couple of kids in Bogotá pretending to be a bigger deal than they were. She spent the day with them teaching them how to play poker. Her stint in a Bangkok jail was a case of mistaken identity. She plays up her bad-girl antics on social media because they get more clicks and a bigger reaction, Rheo.”

Oh. “Then why didn’t she tellmethe truth?”

“Did you ask her what happened? And would you believe her if she told you the truth? Carrie once told me you like believing the worst about her, and she didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Oh God, there was enough truth in his words for them to sting.

Shedidlike believing that Carrie was a screwup and that she, in having a stable job and a career, was the better of the two cousins. She had her shit together; Carrie didn’t.

God! She was so arrogant and patronizing!

Rheo stared at her feet, knowing she couldn’t examine her feelings toward her cousin right now. She had no wish to take herself apart and examine her ugly interior, because God knew what else she would find. More things she didn’t like about herself?

Luckily, Fletch changed the subject. “What do you think your biggest problem is, Rheo? Right now?”

That wasn’t a hard question to answer. “Work. My career.”

“Okay. Why?”

“After a couple of stressful weeks, I was translating for a very important trade deal when I lost my words,” she explained.

He swung his legs off the seat and rested his forearms on his knees, his glass of wine dangling from his fingers. “You lost your train of thought?”

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