by Ali Parker
I pulled it off over my head and went through in my white tank top and hoped nobody was staring.
Like I said, I was a girl who liked comfort.
Consequently, I hadn’t worn a bra.
Once I made it through security, I found my gate. I had an hour and a half before my plane took off and that felt like torture. I had to be careful with my money because I only had enough saved to last me two months without income. Several coffee shops and restaurants near my gate tempted me to spend money on a snack or treat of some sort.
I told myself I would have to wait until I got to New York. I could order a free coffee on the plane.
But that caramel smell…
My mind convinced my mouth that I could taste the caramel of someone’s latte being made. I could hear the steaming wand of the espresso machine humming in the metal milk steamer and I was reminded of my old job. I didn’t miss the customers, but I missed the ritual of preparing lattes and cappuccinos.
My mouth had started to water. I looked over my shoulder longingly at the coffee shop.
“No,” I said out loud with a shake of my head. “Resist.”
Willpower had never been one of my strong suits. And resisting caffeine? Now that was a true test of self-control. Every second carried temptation of caramel drizzle on whipped cream or peppermint swirled in with dark chocolate mocha goodness and—
“Excuse me?”
I looked up. A tall, hipster-looking man stood in front of me. He wore a gray cardigan with brown buttons and a mustard-color scarf. His glasses were perched precariously on the tip of his nose and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. If I had to give him a name, I’d have called him Ezra.
“Yes?”
Ezra licked his lips and nodded at the seat beside me. He held two coffees. “Is someone sitting there?”
“No.”
He waited expectantly for a moment, clearly hoping I’d invite him to join me. I didn’t, but he sat anyway. The smell of his citrus cologne flooded my nose as he leaned over and handed me one of the coffees.
“I noticed you kept scoping out the coffee joint,” he said. “Thought maybe you needed a fix before your flight. Wasn’t sure what your poison was, so I went with hazelnut. Was I close?”
Not even a little bit, buddy.
I accepted the coffee anyway. It seemed rude not to after all the trouble he’d gone through assuming I wanted to have a forced conversation with a stranger over suspicious coffee. “Thank you,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
“Briar.”
“I’m Brooks.”
I thought Ezra suited him better.
I sipped the coffee and let it sit on my tongue. Could you taste deceit? Was this guy trying to pull one over on me? Was I being reckless, sitting there with a stranger and ignorantly accepting his gesture of coffee?
Who cares? It’s caffeine, and it’s free.
“What’s waiting for you in New York?” Brooks asked.
“Endless possibilities.”
He arched an appreciative eyebrow and leaned back in his seat so he could cross one leg over the other. His jeans were purposefully torn and distressed. “Ah, but of course. I thought you looked like a dreamer when I saw you. You dreamed of coffee, and you got it. What do you dream of in New York?”
I contemplated his question. Maybe this Brooks character wasn’t so bad. So long as he didn’t end up sitting next to me on the flight, we were kosher. I had no interest in making small talk for an hour and a half.
“New roads,” I said. “New faces. New everything. And a chance to become someone I couldn’t become in Waynesville.”
Brooks sipped his coffee. “Is there a man in this dream of yours?”
I shot him a dark look. “My dream is good enough without a man. I can take care of myself. I can make myself happy.”
Brooks frowned. “Then why didn’t you get yourself the coffee you were clearly pining over?”
Touché, Hipster Douche. Touché.
I pushed the coffee back into his hands. “I like caramel. Not hazelnut.”
Chapter 4
Wes
“Is Katie here today?”
The young woman behind the checkout counter at the lobby of the El Cartana shook her head. Her big brown eyes flicked up to me. “No, not today sir. Was there something I could help you with instead?”
I frowned. Usually when I left the hotel, Katie was there to check me out. We’d exchange playful banter and I’d leave with a grin and a feeling of contentment. Not being able to say a proper farewell didn’t sit right to me.
“Can I leave her a note?” I asked.
The young woman, whose nametag read Abby, nodded. “Of course!” She opened a drawer, rummaged around, and pulled out a notepad and pen. “She comes in tomorrow morning as usual. I’ll make sure this gets to her.”
I scribbled out a quick note for Katie, thanking her for the drink last night and her company. As always, she was a great part of my trip. I told her the next time I saw her, I’d probably have new books in tow. I signed it from W. so as not to tip off any of the employees who might catch a glance of the note, passed it back to Abby, and thanked her.
She checked me out and I collected my bags and made for the valet, where I caught a hotel car down into town. Cruz Bay was bustling with activity when I arrived at the docks. People were milling around, trying to sell handmade trinkets, pashminas, tourist shirts and hats, jewelry, key chains, picture frames, and much more. I politely said no thank you to the vendors as I made my way down the dock to the ferry. A line had already formed of people showing their tickets to two men in reflective vests at the ramp to get on the ferry. As I approached, I held up my ticket and they waved me on board.
I made my way up to the highest deck and moved to the front of the boat. I liked to have a view as we sailed to the bigger island, St. Martin, where I would catch my flight back to New York. Others had the same idea, and soon, the top deck was full of people with binoculars and cameras. They all crowded the railings to capture pictures. Some took selfies while others asked strangers to take their photos for them.
I soaked in the view through my eyes instead of a camera lens.
When the ferry left, the horn blew loudly enough to startle some of the passengers. Amused, I smiled down at the water. The sun beat down on my shoulders and back, and before long, I was sticky with sweat and saltwater.
At St. Martin, I caught another car. This one took me to the airport. It was a small building located right smack on one of the public beaches on the island. No word of a lie. There were signs planted in the sand warning people that the plane jets could blast them clean off their feet if they were in their path. The planes came in freakishly low, sailing right over the heads of beachgoers going about their afternoon in the sun to land on the tarmac roughly five hundred feet from the shoreline.
The first time I’d seen it, I couldn’t make sense of it.
Who chose such a bizarre place to build an airport? Why not go a little farther inland?
I supposed it made landing easy, but still, people were stupid by default. If their eyes were glued to their phones, they hardly noticed a damn thing happening around them. I should know. As a writer, I spent a good bulk of my time people-watching. I watched for behaviors and mannerisms, things I could mimic in characters in my books to create genuine, three-dimensional people within my work. In all my years watching strangers, that is something I’d concluded—when looking at their phones, people were as clueless and occupied as a dog watching its master holding a piece of cheese.
The airport wasn’t all that busy this morning. Mondays weren’t a big day for arrivals or departures apparently. I checked in and went through security in less than twenty-five minutes before I settled down on a leather chair in the only cafe in the airport. I sipped a decaf Americano because the last thing I wanted was to feel jittery on my flight, and I pulled out my notebook. I rested it on the armrest and wrote a few pages while I drank my cof
fee and waited for my boarding time.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, I was in my front-row first-class seat on the plane. I still had my notebook out, not because I wanted to write right then but because I wanted to look busy and focused so that whoever sat beside me didn’t try to strike up a conversation. The last thing I wanted on a flight was an obligatory conversation with a stranger.
Sure, I could use it as material for a book, but sometimes, a guy just wanted to fly in peace. My game plan, should things go how I wanted, was to recline my seat, close my eyes, and sleep for most of the flight. Maybe I’d have lunch when the meal cart went around. Maybe I’d continue to sleep.
Time would tell.
As the rest of the plane filled up, I found myself crossing my fingers that nobody sat beside me. Those were the best kind of flights.
My hopes were dashed when a seventy-five-year-old man in a tropical-printed shirt sat down beside me. He had a backpack with him, and stitched onto the front was a large Canadian flag. His wife, or the woman I assumed was his wife, had the aisle seat on the other side. She too had a Canadian flag on her bag.
I twisted to my notebook, held the pen over the page, and willed him not to speak to me.
“Morning, lad,” the Canadian man said. “Always a shame to leave such a beautiful place behind, isn’t it?”
I grimaced internally but smiled at him. “Definitely. First time?”
He shook his head. “Genie and I come every year on our anniversary. But every year, it gets harder and harder to leave. She says it’s because we’re old and frail and don’t like heading back to British Columbia in the rainy fall season.”
“I hear it’s cold there this time of year.”
“It’s not nearly as bad as the other coast,” he said. “Our winters are fairly mild compared to the rest of the country. Where you from, lad?”
“New York.”
“Ah, then you have far colder weather than us.”
“I like the cold.”
“I don’t mind it either. It’s just the rain I don’t like. Seeps into your bones. Can’t warm up. But that’s not what makes it hard to leave a place like this.”
“What is then?”
The man gave me a knowing smile and tipped his head to his wife. “When you’re old like us, you don’t know how long time is going to favor you. One of these trips will inevitably be our last one together. When you start to close in on the end of the line, every minute and every day counts. So leaving the beaches and the memories we have here behind gets a little harder each year.”
I stared at him.
He chuckled and put his seatbelt on. “Look at me, going all soft on a stranger. I can see you have work to do there. Carry on. I’ll mind my own business and harass my missus instead.”
As soon as he turned around, I flipped to the back of my notebook and scribbled down what he’d just said to me. It seemed like the perfect piece of wisdom for a book.
And for me.
The air had a cold snap to it when I pushed out the doors at JFK airport and stepped out onto the busy sidewalk where travelers were flagging down taxi cabs and Uber drivers. I carried on down the sidewalk to the pickup location, where I spied what I was looking for, a glossy black Bugatti Chiron. The car headlights flashed and I grinned as I dragged my bag down the curb.
My friend, Walker, extracted himself from the car. He was a tall man and nearly every vehicle was too small for him except for big trucks. He wore a black winter overcoat and a burgundy scarf. Walker had always had a flair for fashion. It was the artist in him. He grinned like the devil as he met me in front of his car, clapped my shoulder, and pulled me into his side.
“How did the tropics treat you?” he asked, thumping me in the chest with his other hand balled in a fist.
“Fairly well,” I said as he took my bag off my hands and popped the hood of the Chiron. A small compartment sat under the hood where the engine of most cars were. This car’s engine was in the back. My suitcase fit neatly in the little pocket and Walker closed the hood. I moved around to the passenger side and we both slid into the car. It smelled like leather and money. “I didn’t get as much writing done as I’d have liked but it was productive nonetheless.”
“Is Harriet going to blow her lid when she hears your word count?”
I shrugged. “She can if she wants to. I can’t help if things are moving slowly right now.”
Walker checked his mirror before pulling out into traffic. The car hummed and my ass started to get warm. I realized he had his heated seats turned on.
“I hear you, man,” Walker said. “Deadlines are a bitch. I feel that way and all I do is slap paint on a canvas. You’re writing entire books. I can’t fathom that.”
“And I can’t fathom how you paint so well for an asshat.”
Walker laughed and rested his wrist on the top of his steering wheel as traffic came to a gridlock stop leaving the airport. He’d always been easy to make laugh. I liked that about my friend. “I can’t fathom it, either. But the models keep me in line when I’m working.”
“How did you get so lucky that you make your living—a wildly prosperous living, I might add—painting naked, beautiful women all day? I chose the wrong profession.”
“I’m sure you could spend more time with beautiful naked women if the world knew you were W. Parker.” He winked.
I grunted.
“Or you can continue living as a hermit. Suit yourself. You hungry? I could go for a bite and a drink.”
I checked the time. It was twenty after five. “I could eat.”
Chapter 5
Briar
I woke up long before my alarm on Tuesday morning.
My first morning in New York City.
It was six fifteen when my eyes snapped open. I gazed up at the motel-room ceiling with a downright goofy grin on my face, stretched my arms over my head, and rolled out of bed. I showered, brushed my teeth, and got dressed in one of the better outfits I owned, a pair of black pants, black boots with silver buckles, and my wrap jacket with the wide hood. I also put on a knit scarf and a bit of makeup. Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered with the makeup, but today was an important day.
I had to find a job.
Admittedly, I would rather have spent my first day in the city exploring. I’d debated all last night if I should job hunt or wander the city today. I concluded that if I wanted to start on the right foot, I should get serious right away about finding work. Being in a big city like this meant there was more opportunity, but it also meant there was more competition.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a long resume. Living in Waynesville hadn’t afforded me many chances to try new jobs. I’d worked as a hostess at a local restaurant, as a cashier at a small grocer, and at the coffee shop.
I knew it wasn’t much to go on but I had to get my foot in the door somewhere. All I needed was someone to take a chance on me. I could prove my worth over time. It was just that initial yes I needed.
My motel provided a continental breakfast. In the name of saving money, I decided to go check it out and see if it was something I could eat every morning until I found a place to live.
The continental breakfast was in the one conference room the motel had. The carpets were old and mustard colored, the baseboards dark brown, and the walls an off-beige. It smelled like dish soap, dust, and coffee.
There were eight round tables set up in the room for guests to sit and eat at. Not one of the plastic tablecloths covering said tables matched. The patterns were all different, and I spied a Christmas one in the far corner of the room. This business was clearly struggling financially and just making ends meet.
There were only three people there eating breakfast. One was a businessman reading the paper, another was an older gentleman doing crosswords, and the third was a mousy-looking middle-aged woman in baggy clothes. Her eyes flicked constantly around the room and I could feel her watching me as I approached the tables on the back wall of the room to scope
out the food options.
Unsurprisingly, there was a conveyor belt toaster alongside loaves of white bread. Farther down the line were cups of yogurt sitting in bowls of ice, two kinds of granola, some cut-up cantaloupe and honeydew, scrambled eggs that looked runny and lukewarm, and some bacon.
“Not too shabby,” I muttered to myself as I pulled a piece of bread out of the bag and set it through the toaster. While it ran through the belt, I filled my plate with some other goodies. When the toast came out, I buttered it, grabbed a small package of raspberry jam, and found a place to sit with my back to the woman who was still watching me.
I suspected she was on the run from something or someone. A bad husband perhaps. I didn’t blame her for her need to watch everyone but I didn’t want to have to make eye contact while I ate.
The food was as mediocre as I expected but more filling than anything I’d be able to buy. When I finished, I put my dishes in the gray bucket labeled “Dirty Dishes” and made my way out of the motel feeling ready to take on whatever the day threw at me.
“It’s time to start your new life,” I breathed when I pushed out of the motel doors into the cool morning air. I breathed in deeply and closed my eyes. It smelled cold and crisp. Cars rushed by on the road and I made my way to the corner so I could cross. Within seconds of hitting the pedestrian-crossing button, about thirty more people showed up on my street corner. We crossed together like a herd of gazelles, and everyone went their own ways once they reached the other side.
I clutched my phone in one hand and used it as a map as I wandered the unfamiliar streets of the city. The motel I’d booked for the first week of my stay was more central than I’d expected, just pretty rundown. It was the perfect location for me to go about on foot looking for work. About a fifteen-minute walk down the street was a busy and thriving district of shopping and restaurants.
As I passed shop windows, it became infinitely more difficult to stay focused on my task. The clothes were glamorous and chic, where in Waynesville they were common. Strut had some unique stuff but nothing like the items I spied in the windows of New York’s boutiques. I spied winter coats to die for with faux-fur trims and glistening gold buttons. I saw over-the-knee boots in rich black suede and six-thousand-dollar earrings nestled on blue velvet displays under brilliant lights.