My hands grip the railing and I glare at the perfect view. What the hell am I going to do? The issues with my mother would be enough to make me feel like I was drowning without an unhappy ex sharing my room for the next two weeks.
The balcony door beside mine slips open and Drew walks out, pulling her endless blonde hair free of its ponytail. She’s removed the hoody she wore earlier, stripped down to the tank beneath. I see ice-blue bra straps, a hint of lace under the shirt’s thin fabric. Collarbone, bee-stung lips, so much exposed skin. She always looks like her clothes can’t quite contain her.
And in response I feel that same fizzle inside me, that bizarre, unwelcome spark I’ve had before. My gaze darts to the hint of lace beneath her shirt and darts away.
I’m better than this. And for the next two weeks, I’m going to have to be a lot better than this.
“Pretend I’m not here,” she says, with knowing brown eyes that seem to see right through me.
“I plan to,” I reply dryly.
3
DREW
Joshua. So far, he’s exceeding any and all expectations.
Because I expected him to be a dick, and my God he’s killing it.
I leave him standing outside, staring at Diamond Head as if it’s done something to him. I picture him mentally crafting a list of things he hates:
1. Drew
2. Threats to Mother’s silver
3. Dormant volcanoes
4. Drew, again
The bed—white, fluffy, oversized—calls to me but I don’t dare lie down. I’m way too tired—there’s not a chance I’d get back up before I have to meet the Baileys down at the oceanfront bar. Instead, I shower and wander the grounds, trying to stay awake.
My phone buzzes in my pocket while I’m perusing one of the shops in the center of the hotel. I know it’s Tali before I even answer the call, because she’s the sort of person who writes down what flight you’re on and checks to make sure you landed safely. She’s going to be an amazing mom.
“Did you make it in one piece?” she asks.
I go outside and sit on a bench, groaning a little. How am I so stiff from sitting all day? “Barely. And I’ll give you one guess what Joshua said. First thing out of his mouth.”
“Don’t steal the silver?” She’s heard, obviously, about the first time I met him. Her soft giggle lightens my mood just a little.
I kick off one flip-flop and dig my toes into the grass. Even the Halekulani’s grass is quieter and more elegant than anyone else’s. “He would have, I’m certain, if they’d traveled here with it. And seriously, why is silver still a thing? It’s something people put in their mouths. If I don’t want a diamond you’ve put in your mouth, I sure as shit don’t want metal you’ve put in your mouth. But anyway…no, he did not bring up the silver. He said You’re sweating, the way someone else might say You’re bleeding. Like…it was a thing decent people don’t do.”
She laughs. Tali is one of the most bubbly people I know, and now that she’s carrying what’s politely referred to as a honeymoon baby, though the baby was in there before any honeymoon occurred, she’s positively giddy. “And I’m sure you responded with your customary restraint,” she says.
I lean backward, staring absentmindedly at the pretty white dress in the window. It’s delicate and girlish, nothing I would ever wear. “I was lovely to him,” I reply. “Sort of. It’s all vague because I’m tired but I’m almost certain I behaved like an adult. Anyway, how’s my future godson?”
“You’re as bad as Hayes. We don’t know it’s a boy. But to answer your question, she is a monster who, according to the lady at Whole Foods, is stealing my beauty. She literally said that to me. I can tell you’re having a girl because she’s stealing your beauty. Have you told Davis you’re not going to rehab?”
Oh, right. My manager pulled a lot of strings to get me into some swanky rehab center in Utah, which would make him sound like a prince among men, except he did it without asking me, and I don’t need rehab. We’re still on our six-week break from the tour, so for once he can’t threaten me with phrases like breach of contract.
I pull my hair off my face. “He’ll probably figure it out when I don’t get off the plane.”
“I wish you’d fire him. Why is your life so full of men I want to punch?” she asks. I brace for her to ask about Six, brace for the moment when I have to admit he no-showed on this trip—which only sounds forgivable if I explain that he’s in jail—but she’s still focused on my awful manager. “Please call Ben. He’s a brilliant lawyer. I know he can get you out of your contract with Davis. And my husband trusts him—you know Hayes doesn’t trust anyone.”
“He trusts you,” I remind her.
I can hear the smile in her voice. “I guess that’s a good thing, since I’m his wife.”
Tali and Hayes? They’re that road trip sort of couple. The ones who don’t know what’s coming but are in it for the long haul. Marriage thrills them both, and watching them terrifies me.
Because anything that thrills you will hurt that much more when it’s lost.
The Baileys are all gathered by the time I get to the oceanfront bar for the hotel’s nightly sunset show. Sloane is still dressed like she’s here to learn about tax loopholes for rich douchebags, but Josh has changed into a t-shirt and khaki shorts and I can’t entirely explain the small jump in my gut at the sight of him there, sprawled in a chair he’s too big for, with his very well-defined biceps on display. It’s sort of like when you hear about someone’s fetish and feel simultaneously disgusted and titillated by it.
I take the empty chair next to Beth, who smiles at me as if I’m her favorite person. “Has anyone heard from Six?” I ask.
She shakes her head, a flicker of worry in her gaze. “He won’t be able to contact us until he’s out on bail tomorrow,” she says. “His lawyer is keeping in touch, though. I just hope he doesn’t miss all of Oahu, but we’ll figure it out.”
I blink at her. She said three days at the airport, but we are in Oahu for six. I’m beginning to worry Beth is one of those relentlessly optimistic people who hope for things fruitlessly, continually readjusting what they wish for, only to conclude it was all for the best in the end when nothing works out.
“Even if he misses Oahu, there are other islands for you to see together!” Beth says, patting my hand. “It will be fine. We’re just happy you came.” I nod, but the truth is I’m so tired I feel numb, so tired my body is simply shutting down from fatigue—it’s seventy-eight degrees and I’m shivering—and I’m alone, on vacation with strangers. I’m also still reeling from the conversation with Davis just before I came down from my room. I don’t give a shit if you need rehab, Drew, he said. I only give a shit if it looks like you need rehab, and it definitely looks like it. So you’d better get your ass on that plane.
Things, in a nutshell, feel slightly less fine than I’d like.
The mai tai I ordered as I walked in is delivered and Sloane raises a polite brow, as if to say Are you sure that’s a good idea? I wonder if the Baileys will still be happy I came once I push Sloane into a volcano.
Beth orders several things for the table, and chatters about the many, many plans she’s made for the trip. She is everything my own mother is not: cheerful, accepting, willing to overlook the occasional felony. Six has a chip on his shoulder about his father, who thinks playing guitar is a hobby no matter how much Six earns doing it, but he doesn’t say much about his mom. Maybe that’s how you know he’s got a good one: she’s like the foundation of a building, attracting little notice, there simply to hold him up.
All guesses, however. I don’t actually know a lot about good moms.
Beth notices I’m shivering and tries to make me take her wrap, which is when Josh’s attention focuses on me. His eyes sharpen, as if he’d forgotten I was here at all and remembering is unpleasant, and then his lip curls in sheer disdain. Put her in a van and she vomits, he’s thinking. Take her outside and she can’t regulat
e her temperature. Aside from stealing people’s silver, what does she do well?
It’s just like spending time with my family, which is why I generally don’t do that. And under normal circumstances I could shrug it off, but it’s harder to do right now when I’m this tired and this disheartened. Tonight, it doesn’t feel like a blip. It feels like disappointing people is how I’m destined to spend my entire life.
I’m relieved when we all go our separate ways. I stumble into my room, eager for bed, but am drawn to the balcony instead. A full moon hangs low over Diamond Head. It seems like the sort of crap I should photograph and post on Instagram to prove to the world I’m occasionally sober, but I’m too tired. Yawning, I turn to go inside when something catches my eye: a solitary figure, standing on the sea wall. Joshua. He’s probably out there wondering how he can harness the power of the sea for evil, but then he looks down and stares at his hands, as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders and I feel something a little like worry.
What had him so distracted tonight? And why the hell is he not with the girlfriend he hasn’t seen in months?
It certainly appears I’m not the only person feeling lonely on a romantic trip for two.
4
DREW
January 22nd
Twenty-three hours a day, I’m the girl who doesn’t give a shit. I’ll do a line of coke off my breakfast bagel, wrestle someone in a bath of Jell-O, jump off a cliff when everyone else is worrying about the depth of the water below.
There is only one hour when I’m not that girl, and it’s this one. Four AM. It’s ten back home, so it would make some sense that I’ve awoken, but I’d have woken anyway because it happens without fail: my heart beating hard as my eyes fly open, scanning a dark room that is, more often than not, unfamiliar. Realizing I am terrifyingly alone and have failed at everything, even the things other people want to laud me for.
It’s the hour when I admit that I’m a fake, that this person who appears in magazines and performs for thousands isn’t me at all. She doesn’t have my name, she barely looks like me anymore, and she isn’t even someone I like…yet the only way I can succeed in life, the only way I can get what I want, is to pretend to be her even harder than I already have.
After thirty minutes of lying in bed, wondering if things will ever get better, I rise and dress to go for a run. I don’t love running, but there are a lot of buffets here and Davis will kill me if I gain weight.
I take the elevator down and wander the paths out to the street. It’s silent now but for the babble of the fountains, the occasional murmur of someone at the front desk. There’s something inherently reassuring about it. About the whole city, and perhaps the whole island: the weather is mild, the trees bear fruit. You could lose everything and somehow survive. I have more money than I could ever spend, but the idea still appeals to me.
“Please tell me you aren’t planning to run before five in the morning in a strange city,” says a low voice I’d know anywhere, mostly because only one person is that contemptuous of me, twenty-four hours a day.
I turn to find Josh there, looking at me in a beam of moonlight. His eyes are like a summer storm; that furrow between his brows deep as a trench. I feel the oddest tug in my stomach at the sight of him…and ignore it.
And I’m not letting Josh add himself to the long list of people who feel free to correct and criticize me. How the hell is it any of his concern what I’m doing, anyway? Is he worried I’m out prowling, getting ready to steal silver from someone’s one-bedroom condo?
“Fine,” I reply with my sweetest smile. “I’m not planning to run.”
And then I turn and start to run.
I head down toward the main drag, popping my headphones in as I go. I pass a long, long row of ridiculously expensive stores, the kind of places I could now afford to shop if I didn’t hate shopping.
My soundtrack is this fairly mellow band from Sacramento. Mostly acoustic guitar, but I love the way they go from subtle to big, from comfortable to goosebumps-on-my arms.
It’s the kind of music I used to write, back before I got my first record deal and discovered I was never going to be performing my own stuff. I don’t even play guitar in concert now. You’re too hot to stand there just playing an instrument, my manager explained at first. People want a show.
Maybe I should have insisted on doing things my way, but I was twenty and broke and scared if I kept holding out for more, I’d wind up empty-handed. I doubt many people would say it was a mistake, given where I am now.
The shops come to an abrupt end, replaced by a little beachfront park where a massive, twisty tree looms just off the sidewalk. I jerk to a stop and stare at it. Under the glow of the full moon, it looks magical, like something created by Disney.
“It’s a banyan,” says a voice behind me. I gasp in surprise and round on Joshua.
“Did you follow me?”
His tongue prods his cheek. “I certainly wouldn’t run this slowly by choice.”
“Why?” I bark. My foot begins to tap. This was supposed to be my time to myself. Or at least my time away from people who accuse me of class A misdemeanors. “There’s no one even out here.”
“Right. I forgot how much safer it is outside when it’s dark and there are no witnesses.” He sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You do realize that most attacks on female joggers occur in the morning?”
I lean against a lamppost and start to stretch. I’m already getting stiff. “Sounds like someone’s been researching the best way to attack female joggers. And we just passed Tiffany and Jimmy Choo. The brokest, most dangerous guy out here right now is probably you.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “And on the off chance you’re wrong, Drew, how exactly would you defend yourself? You’re about three feet tall.”
“I’m five-six,” I growl. “And I’m in amazing shape. I could fight off ten guys your size.”
This is perhaps a slight exaggeration. But I definitely kicked Max Greenbaum’s ass, mano-a-mano. Possibly less impressive if we weren’t nine when it happened, and if he hadn’t been really small for his age.
His brow lifts. “Ten guys?”
“At least ten. All at the same time. Tarantino movies are a pale imitation of my fighting skills.”
He steps into the sand. “Then show me,” he says. His shoulders are relaxed. “Let me see you defend yourself.”
The crickets chirp, the breeze blows, and moonlight glances over his smugly perfect face.
“My hands are registered lethal weapons. And you’re underestimating how bad I want to kick you in the balls,” I reply. “I wouldn’t push this.”
He tips his chin and his mouth almost curves into something less severe. “Yeah? Because you’re acting like someone who isn’t sure.”
Now that he’s called my bluff, I have to go through with it, though to my surprise I don’t actually want to hurt him quite as much as I thought. I mean, yeah, I still want to hurt him. Just…less. Also, he’s a foot taller than me. It will be a lot like trying to beat up a redwood.
“The last guy I fought wet his pants. Is that really something you want to risk?”
“Feel free to just admit you’re far weaker,” he says, folding his arms across his broad chest, “and we can proceed with the run.”
Okay, I rescind my previous statement. I totally want to hurt this guy.
Fast as a flash, my leg swings out. It’s been a while, but I can still do a decent roundhouse kick, if nothing else. But just as I’m about to make contact, he grabs my leg. Two seconds later, I’m on the ground and he’s kneeling above me.
I don’t even know how he did it, but I do know my whole Max Greenbaum victory feels a little tarnished now.
He pulls me up by the forearm. “So, is there anything you’d like to say?”
“Yeah,” I reply, brushing myself off. “You seem to enjoy throwing a female on the ground a little too much. No wonder Sloane looks so unhappy all the time.”
&n
bsp; His face reverts to its previous severity. Maybe I aimed a little low, but I’m not the one who invited her.
“I’ll take that as your concession speech,” he says. “And you might want to take it easy today, by the way. Lounging isn’t really on the Bailey vacation itinerary, ever.”
“I’ll be fine,” I reply. “Worry about yourself.”
I pat my pocket for my inhaler though I have no intention of using it in front of him, lest he add asthmatic to his ever-growing list of my flaws. And then I turn toward Diamond Head and start running, knowing I’ll have to go longer and harder than I ever planned, just to prove to Joshua Bailey I don’t need his advice.
5
JOSH
There is absolutely no way she intended to run six miles this morning. She looks like she’s going to keel over as we stop in front of the hotel. “Are you going to stalk me every day?” she demands, breathing so heavily she barely gets the words out.
“I hope not,” I reply. “This barely counted as a workout.”
She is currently leaning over, palms pressed to her thighs, as she tries to catch her breath. She looks up to glare at me and I get a glimpse of very ample cleavage before I remember myself.
“Look,” I say, “all you have to do is promise you won’t run alone at five AM anymore.”
She straightens. In the early morning light, flushed and bare-faced and doe-eyed, she looks a lot younger and a lot more innocent than she probably is.
“You are way too scared of strangers, and I would just like to point out that, from a legal perspective, the specificity of that statement renders it useless. Tomorrow, for instance, I could run at 5:05.”
“It’s really a wonder no one’s beaten you to death,” I tell her wearily. “And I’m not talking about strangers. I’m talking about the people who know you best.”
The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea Page 2