More Than This

by Stephanie Taylor

  “Descendez, reste en bas!” shout the armed guards. “Get down, stay down!” they repeat in English. Even in the middle of the confusion, people obey.

  Near the railing that looks out over the seventh arrondissement below, a guard pins one of the men in black against a thick beam. His face is pressed to the metal, hands behind him as the guards chase after the other man. Holly watches from under the shelter of River’s strong arm, heart racing. It’s all happening at lightning speed, but the seconds pass by in a way that feels like time has slowed to an interminable crawl. In these weird seconds and moments, the entire trip so far spins through Holly’s brain like a movie: the flight across the Atlantic; getting mugged (that feels like years ago!); going to the modeling agency by Harrod’s; seeing The Cure in Amsterdam and sending off an email to Bonnie during the stolen minutes while River was at the store. Bonnie! Her mind reels as she thinks of home. She’ll need to email Bonnie again—or, better yet, call her—as soon as she can. River will just have to deal with her breaking the rules of their game. And after this fiasco, how could he not understand her need to reach out and touch Christmas Key in any way she can?

  The thoughts that fill her head feel lucid and linear, but as the guards capture and pin the other man, Holly realizes that she’s in shock. She’s watching people with machine guns, actual heavy artillery, as they apprehend suspects, and the only thing she can think of is Main Street. The light posts wrapped in tinsel for the holidays. The front window of Mistletoe Morning Brew painted to reflect whatever is going on inside during any given month. The way people slow in their golf carts to chat with each other outside her office window every day.

  “We can get up,” River croaks, sounding a little out of it himself. He gets to his feet stiffly, offering Holly a hand. The people around them look this way and that, making sure the coast is clear before they stand. A new wave of confusion winds its way around the top deck of the tower as people who speak a multitude of different languages try to figure out what’s happening and what just went down.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Holly asks, reaching down for her backpack. “I don’t understand.”

  River takes her hand and laces his fingers through hers with urgency. He’s holding her tightly and watching the guards for an indication of what happens next.

  “I think they’ll have us clear the tower,” he says. Holly’s not sure whether he’s overheard this or is intuiting it, but she nods mutely, leaning into his arm for physical and emotional support.

  The two men in black are hogtied and lifted from the ground by their bound wrists and ankles like they’re made of foam, and the guards surround them both as they spirit them away. The remaining guards assume positions near the elevators and start to shout orders in English.

  “Line up, single file here, please,” says a woman in fatigues with a severe bun and a rifle strapped across her chest. Her English is precise and barely accented. “We will be taking the elevators down immediately and evacuating the tower as quickly as possible.”

  “Stay calm, please do not panic,” says a male guard. He paces through the crowd, eyeing each of them warily. “Please be aware of your surroundings, and do not leave anything behind.”

  Holly and River trip through the line behind everyone else, waiting their turn to step into the elevator. It’s a surreal feeling. Everyone around them looks just as stunned as Holly feels.

  They don’t speak on the way down to the ground level, and when they step off the elevator, River grabs Holly’s elbow and guides her through the line of people waiting to exit the monument. On their way out, guards search their bags once more and they’re forced to show their identification and to write down contact information in a log book.

  The streets around the tower are shut down to both pedestrian and automobile traffic, and there’s an eerie quiet as they walk back up to Trocadéro, taking long steps to get themselves away from the tower as quickly as possible.

  “What the hell just happened?” River finally says, stopping in his tracks. Holly stops and turns to face him, hands looped through the straps of her backpack. “Who were those guys?” Several different layers of understanding and confusion are peeled back behind River’s eyes as Holly watches him.

  Holly thinks for a moment. “I don’t know,” she says. “But it was terrifying.” Her chest tightens with a feeling that’s as solid and undeniable as concrete. Without another thought, she realizes what she already knows in her heart to be true. “I want to go home.”

  “Yeah, let’s get back to the apartment and just grab something to eat so that we don’t have to leave again today.” River holds out an arm so that Holly can tuck herself beneath it.

  She stays put. A certainty builds inside of her that she hasn’t felt in a while. It’s the certainty that saying yes to everything can’t be right. Saying yes to some things is good, but there’s a time and a place to tap the brakes, and for Holly, this moment is it.

  “No, I mean home. Christmas Key. I’m ready.” She stares up at him, unblinking.

  “But we still have a week and a half.” River frowns at her.

  Holly shakes her head. “I need to get back.”

  A dark cloud passes over River’s handsome face in stark contrast to the blue skies overhead. “You need to get back, or you want to get back?”

  Holly shrugs and looks around as people stream past them and away from the tower. “Both, I guess.”

  River stares at a spot just beyond Holly’s right shoulder. “So we have one scare and you go running back to the island, huh? Is this how it’s always going to be?”

  “One scare, River?” Holly asks incredulously. “In addition to being robbed, we just got caught in some sort of terrorist nightmare at the top of the freaking Eiffel Tower,” she spits, pointing at the iron pyramid in the distance. It stands proudly against the late Spring sky, its solid countenance giving no indication that anything is amiss.

  “We don’t know that,” he argues. “It could have been two protestors who got out of hand.”

  “You were the one who didn’t even want to go up,” Holly points out. “You said it felt wrong.”

  “So maybe we should have gone to the Louvre first.” River makes a face that belies the shock Holly had seen in his eyes as they’d waited to come down from the top of the tower. “Listen, Hol—life is short. We can’t keep pushing things away just because we feel a little fear. Do you really want to be stuck on an island with one paved road for the rest of your life?”

  The blood in Holly’s veins runs cold. This again. But this time it’s not from Jake—it’s from River. “I’m not stuck on Christmas Key,” she says plainly.

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “But it is,” she says, feeling a calmness that she hasn’t felt since before she buckled herself into her airplane seat in Miami. “Why do people think I have to choose? And why is it so wrong if Christmas Key is what I really want? It’s always one or the other—with everyone.”

  “If you’re comparing me to Jake, then you can stop right there.” River holds up a hand.

  “I’m not comparing you to Jake,” Holly assures him. “That’s apples and oranges. But I’m tired of being made to feel like the real adventure is somewhere else when the only adventure I really want is fifty miles from Key West in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.”

  River’s jaw tightens and he looks at the concrete beneath their feet. He nods slowly. “So this is it. Again. Only this time you aren’t choosing another guy over me, you’re choosing an island.”

  “I’m happy not to have to choose,” Holly says, shifting her heavy backpack on her shoulders. She takes a step back and walks in a circle, her frustration evident as she paces. “How did this go from a trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower to us having this conversation right here?” Her nostrils flare angrily.

  “You’re just rattled, and you’re taking it out on me,” River says. His voice has grown firm again, and the discomfort he’d felt at th
e trip up the tower has been erased.

  “Rattled? Yeah, a near-death experience will do that to a girl.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” River scoffs.

  “Look, you can call it what you want, but I’m done. I want to go home. I’m tired of this game where I can’t call home, or check my email, or talk to Bonnie about work. All of that is a huge part of who I am, and that’s what’s been eating away at me—I’m missing a piece of myself.”

  River takes this in. “Okay,” he says, weighing her words. “How about if we find a way for you to check in every day or two?”

  “I’m not looking to compromise on this, River.” The indignation that’s been blooming behind Holly’s ribs suddenly wilts. “This has been a good experiment, and I’ve gotten everything I need from it.”

  “An ‘experiment’?” He gapes at her. “Coming to Europe with me was nothing more than an experiment for you? Huh.” River’s eyes glaze over as he looks at the tower behind Holly. “When did this train jump the tracks? Because I think I missed it.”

  “It didn’t jump the tracks,” Holly says. “There’ve been some really amazing things that have happened on this trip, and there’ve been some not so amazing things, too.”

  River takes a step closer and Holly can smell the perspiration mixed with the musky scent of his deodorant. “I guess I need to ask which parts have been so bad.”

  “Like I said, not being in contact with home. The idea of saying yes to everything without hesitation is a good one, but the reality is much…harder. I can’t fly by the seat of my pants like you do. It’s not who I am.”

  “But you tried,” River says drily. “Or at least you tried harder than when I came to see you at Christmas.”

  “That’s not fair.” Holly’s cheeks go pink like he’s just slapped them.

  “It’s not fair for you to bail out like this in the middle of a trip just because you don’t know who booked a weekend trip to Christmas Key. It’s not fair of you to throw in the towel on an adventure where we’ve seen The Cure in Amsterdam and gotten an offer to be extras on a movie set in Dublin. It’s not fair of you to lose it after two weird dudes trigger a military response in Paris. It’s not fair to just give up on the rest of the trip.”

  “Oh, we’re doing the not fair game?” Holly lowers her chin and raises her eyebrows at him. “How about this: it’s not fair that you get to infringe on me running my business and that you pass judgment on where I want to spend my life.” River opens his mouth to protest, but Holly plows on. “It’s not fair that I lost my phone, but you still had yours handy to put Sarah’s number into. It’s not fair that you’ve called all the shots on this trip, from us going on that swing over Amsterdam, to telling me I was eating too many desserts.”

  River closes his eyes with exaggerated patience. “I knew you were going to throw that back at me. I was kidding, Holly. That was supposed to be a joke. And I only took Sarah’s number so that we could follow up about going to Dublin.”

  “Whatever. The point is that you want me to be things that I’m not, and in the end, that’s totally unsustainable.”

  River has no comeback for this. It’s like he knows he’s lost both the battle and the war, and so he just stands there, letting Holly continue to lob grenades at him.

  “So is this what I think it is?” he finally asks.

  Holly shrugs. “I’m not sure. I think we should take this trip for what it is and assess the damage when we get home.”

  River’s face is awash with regret and disappointment. “Wow,” he says. “And here I was thinking that this trip was pretty fantastic. I had no idea you felt imprisoned.”

  It’s a decent description of how Holly’s been feeling, even though she hasn’t thought of it in those exact terms. “I’m sorry, River.”

  “No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” he says, holding both palms out to her. “Clearly my idea of a fun adventure is your idea of unwilling captivity. I can’t…” He runs his hands through his hair, shaking his head. “I’m kind of at a loss for words here, Hol. This conversation totally veered off course.”

  They’re both silent as they stand there. Sirens fill the air in the distance and police and military vehicles move in on the Eiffel Tower, its patrons still streaming away from the monument and disappearing into the city streets beyond.

  “Let’s go back to the apartment,” Holly says softly, moving into River’s personal space. Without being invited, she puts her hands on his hips and looks up at him. “This isn’t what you think it is,” she assures him. “The whole thing just took a sharp left for me when we had to hit the deck up there and try not to get trampled. All the things that haven’t been working for me kind of snowballed and I realized that I’m at that point.” Holly tugs at the sides of his t-shirt with both hands as she gazes at the firm set of his jaw. “It’s just time for me to go home.”

  After what feels like an hour, River looks down at her face. There’s a distance in his eyes that makes Holly feel cold. River takes a step away from her, forcing her to let go of the grip she’s got on his shirt. “Then I guess you need to go. Let’s head back and change your ticket.”

  22

  Millie’s gray countenance and the look of shock in her eyes has everyone on edge. Ray’s loss has been a very real reminder that even in paradise, there’s no such thing as immortality. As planned, the women are busy cranking out meals in the B&B’s kitchen and keeping Millie company as she readjusts to a life without her husband of forty-two years.

  “I’ll just run this dish out to Millie’s and be right back,” Iris Cafferkey says to no one in particular. She slides a tray of mini-quiche off the steel countertop in the kitchen and uses her backside to bump open the swinging door.

  “I’ve got a right mind to email Holly again and tell her what’s going on,” Bonnie says to the other women. She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand and rests her hip against the counter. “I can’t imagine how she’s going to feel coming back to this and not knowing about Ray before she sets foot on the island.”

  “Still can’t understand how she could leave us for more than two weeks and just go incommunicado,” Maria Agnelli grumbles. “Doesn’t seem right.”

  “She did email me back once,” Bonnie admits. “But all she said was that she lost her phone or something and would check back in as soon as she could. I didn’t bother to use that group text thing that Jake set up to tell you all because there wasn’t all that much to share.”

  Quiet up until this point, Coco sees her entry into the conversation and pipes up. “Now, Maria,” she says indulgently. “She’s just trying to do what she thinks her grandfather would want her to do. She was always a bit of a granddaddy’s girl. And while I admire her for trying to play mayor, I think she’s out of her element.”

  “You’ve made that quite clear,” Bonnie snaps, swinging around to face Holly’s mother. “You don’t miss an opportunity to tell us all that she’s just a kid—which, at thirty years old, she is most definitely not—and that it’s time for her to hang it up and let you make the decisions.”

  “Bonnie,” Coco says in a soothing tone. “I’m not asking her to hand everything over to me. I don’t mind if she still wants to run your little meetings and sit there at her desk,” she points in the general direction of the B&B’s back office, “presiding over you all like the Queen of Main Street, I just think it’s high time she get some counsel from someone who sees the bigger picture.”

  The women in the kitchen all studiously look away from this exchange, busying themselves with refrigerator organization, counter cleaning, and ingredient prep while still carefully listening to every word that’s being exchanged.

  “Coco,” Bonnie says. Her exasperation has finally reached its boiling point. “I’m going to be honest with you, and you can thank me for it or not, but here goes: Nobody likes your damn ideas, and nobody wants you here meddling in our lives. So why don’t you just head on out?”

  The sound of minor kitch
en activity is the only noise in the room as Coco and Bonnie stare one another down. Coco’s nostrils flare, the mental calculations of her next move apparent on her face.

  “She speaks the truth,” Maria Agnelli says, putting one bony fist on her hip. “You’re too young to be this much of a sour-faced prune, Coco, and none of us like it much when you come around and stick your nose in our business like a dog sniffing at the mailman’s crotch.”

  Calista snorts from the other side of the room. “Sorry,” she whispers as several sets of eyes turn to her.

  Coco’s mouth opens and closes a few times. “Well,” she says. “I know you’re all loyal to Holly—some of you to the point of insanity—,” she shoots Bonnie a meaningful look, “but I was hoping that you’d be willing to hear the voice of reason and to consider looking after your own best interests.”

  “Coco,” Gwen says, closing the refrigerator door. Her identical sisters are at the counter next to her. “We’ve just lost someone we love this week, and one of our own is hurting. Would it kill you to back off for a bit and just let us grieve and attend to Millie?”

  Coco and Bonnie narrow their eyes at one another for a few seconds more. Finally, with the air of someone who is giving in but not entirely giving up, Coco tosses the spatula that’s in her hand onto the counter.

  “Of course,” she says in an overly gracious tone. “I can wait for Holly. In fact, I’ll just take my stuff out to her house now and set up camp there so that I stay out of your hair.”

  As she storms out of the kitchen, there is an audible sigh of relief from everyone except Bonnie. Her goal had been to shut Coco down and get her off the island for good, not to send her over to Holly’s to mess with her belongings and sleep in her bed.

  “Let’s get back to work, ladies,” Bonnie says. She reaches for Coco’s discarded spatula and sets it upright in the container that holds cooking utensils. “Millie needs us right now.”