Authors: Sarah Pekkanen
Tina didn’t expect Savannah to understand—Savannah had never hidden the fact that she thought children were life’s most highly overrated and overpriced joy—but Gio should’ve taken up for her the way Allie and Ryan had. Come to think of it, why hadn’t
he
remembered to call their kids?
She opened her mouth to say something to him, then closed it.
Breathe,
she reminded herself. She took another spoonful of soup, forcing herself to focus on its velvety texture. She’d finally achieved a state of relaxation today, and she needed to hang on to it, or the vacation would be ruined. Gio adored their kids; he just had a different parenting style.
“Someone stop me from swan-diving into my soup,” Savannah said. “I want to rip off my clothes and bathe in it. It’s just incredible!”
“I’ll be sure to let the chef know you enjoyed it,” Pauline said in a neutral voice.
There was a brief pause, then Allie said, “So catch us up on what’s going on at work, Van.” Allie turned to Pauline. “Did you know Savannah’s a real estate agent?”
Typical Allie, always taking care of everyone, Tina thought, feeling a surge of affection for her old friend. First Allie had assuaged Tina’s fears, and now she was making sure Pauline felt included in the conversation. Plus she was letting Savannah talk about herself, which would keep Savannah happy.
“There’s this one house that is killing me,” Savannah said with a dramatic sigh. “Just fucking killing me. I’ve had it on the market for months. The owner has the ugliest kids imaginable,
and he refuses to take down their photos. They’re like a hex on this house. The photos send prospective buyers running away screaming.”
Tina scraped the last spoonful of bisque from her bowl, then sat back as the waiter cleared away her dishes. She listened to Savannah’s chatter, laughing in all the right places as Savannah kept talking: “Seriously, these clients I had last year looked like apple-cheeked grandparents. You’d think all they did was play canasta and eat early-bird specials. And fur-lined handcuffs fell out of their bedroom closet when I opened the door to show it to a young couple! And then as we all stood there, gaping down at the handcuffs, the guy goes, ‘We’ll take it!’ ”
A loaf of warm bread was set out on the table, along with individual ramekins of herbed butter. The waiter served the fish, then filled up the second wineglass at Tina’s place.
“A French chardonnay,” he said quietly, since Savannah was in the middle of another story. “The light citrus notes go beautifully with the snapper. And would you care for green salad with roasted garlic dressing?”
“Thank you,” Tina said, smiling at him. A rush of contentment flooded her body, making her limbs feel as rich and loose as honey. What she’d been craving hadn’t just been sleep or a break from the high, demanding voices in her home, she realized. It was the chance to be taken care of, in the way she was always taking care of others. In the way she hadn’t been since her mother died.
“You okay?” Gio whispered in her ear. She felt his foot find hers under the table, and he rubbed his leg against hers.
Interesting, she thought. Normally, their exchange of a few minutes earlier would’ve led to a fight. She would’ve gotten increasingly stressed, Gio would’ve snapped at her to relax, and she would’ve reacted angrily. But because she’d let it go—mostly
because there were witnesses around—
Gio
was the one trying to make up.
She gave him a fleeting smile, suddenly wanting to keep him off guard for a while longer, then glanced at Savannah and wondered, for the dozenth time, exactly what was going on with Gary. Clearly Van didn’t want to talk about it, but Tina knew the fact that he wasn’t along on the trip—not even for a few days—wasn’t good. No one was that busy.
* * *
Dwight wasn’t talking much, but that was typical, since he was always a little shy in a group, Allie thought as she brought a forkful of tender fish to her mouth. He looked like he was having fun, which was the most important thing.
She glanced around the table, taking in the faces of her dear friends: Savannah was gesturing with her fork, her white teeth flashing as she talked, while Gio took a bite of the snapper and rolled his eyes in appreciation. Ryan was throwing back his head and laughing at Savannah’s outrageous stories, and Tina looked so relaxed, with her cheeks glowing pink from the sun and the worry lines erased from her forehead. Pauline was buttering a slice of bread, and Dwight turned to meet Allie’s gaze. She lifted her wineglass to him in a quick, private toast, and they drank together.
Their group wasn’t perfect, of course. Allie sensed Savannah grated on Pauline; little clues—like Pauline’s overly formal response to Savannah’s compliment about the soup—were seeping out. But Pauline hid it well. The others might not have even seen the annoyance that had briefly flashed in Pauline’s eyes.
Savannah finally wrapped up a story about a brother and sister who’d squabbled nonstop during the sale of their parents’ home, before breaking down and sobbing on the day the final papers
were signed, delaying the proceedings by nearly an hour as they apologized for all their transgressions against each other, down to the time the brother had falsely blamed the sister for knocking over the family Christmas tree when they were five years old.
“Do you have any siblings, Pauline?” Allie broke in when Savannah paused to take a sip of chardonnay.
Pauline dabbed her lips with her napkin before answering. “Just one,” she said. “An older sister.”
“Are you close?” Allie asked.
“Not particularly,” Pauline said.
It seemed like a perfectly normal question, but had she overstepped? Allie wondered. Pauline’s voice had seemed . . . strained.
“How about you, Allie? Any siblings?” Pauline asked.
“No,” Allie said. She must’ve been imagining things; Pauline sounded perfectly normal now. “I’m adopted, and my parents wanted another child, but it never worked out. We live just a few minutes away from them.”
“Which is nice, because we have built-in babysitters,” Ryan said. He winked. “They don’t even charge us that much.”
“Are they taking care of the kids while you’re on this trip?” Pauline asked.
“Yep,” Ryan said.
“They’ve got my kids, too,” Tina said. “I hope it’s not too overwhelm—— No! You know what? I’m not going to feel guilty. Not tonight.”
Savannah lifted her glass. “Good for you! To shameless self-absorption!”
Tina laughed and clinked her glass against Savannah’s. “To over-the-top indulgence!”
“To gluttony!” Ryan shouted, getting into it.
“To—to . . .” Dwight began, then he stopped and silence filled the room.
“To . . . d-debauchery and hedonism!” he finally shouted, and everyone cheered.
The waiter cleared the plates and brought in dessert. When Allie’s fork broke the crust of her little cake, molten chocolate ran out. She speared one of the raspberries rimming her plate and swirled it in the chocolate, then almost moaned in delight as the flavors exploded on her tongue.
“So after we finish massacring this meal,” Savannah said, “would anyone be up for a moonlight swim? Or maybe a soak in the hot tub?”
“Me!” Tina shouted.
“Who else?” Savannah asked. “Dwight? You in?”
“Sure,” he said.
“What a perfect way to end the night,” Pauline said.
“Oh, it’s only nine-thirty,” Savannah said. “The night’s just beginning.”
Allie hid a yawn. True, it was relatively early—but they’d traveled half the day, including the bumpy Jeep ride to the villa in Negril, and they’d been drinking since morning. Plus so much time in the sun and water, combined with the sleepless nights of the past few weeks, had made her feel so drowsy she wanted to drop her head onto the table and drift off.
“C’mon, guys, we’re in Jamaica, not on a seniors’ cruise,” Savannah said, looking around the table.
“She’s right,” Gio said. “Strap one on, people.”
“That’s the spirit,” Savannah said. “I’m thinking a game of pool, a dip in the hot tub, maybe a visit to that tiki bar on the beach . . . Oh, and I brought this for you, Dwight.”
She reached under her chair and held out a small square package wrapped in green foil.
“It’s just a little gift,” she said. “Something I thought we might enjoy this week.”
Dwight tore open the paper, revealing a homemade CD.
“I burned the songs. They’re all from the nineties,” Savannah said. “College music.”
“That was really nice of you,” Allie said.
“I couldn’t risk leaving the music to chance,” Savannah said. “If this house was stocked with inadequate tunes, I’d have trouble dancing. And you know how much I love to dance.”
“ ‘Closing Time’ . . . ‘Baby Got Back’!” Dwight read. “ ‘Then the Morning Comes’ . . . How does that one go again?”
“The Smash Mouth song? . . . ‘Paint the town, take a bow. Thank everybody, you’re gonna do it again. You are the few, the proud, you are the antibody . . .’ ” Ryan sang.
“Hey, our boy can sing!” Savannah said. “Do we have a karaoke machine in the house?”
“We could get one,” Pauline said. “I’ll have it delivered tomorrow.”
“A woman of action!” Savannah cried. “That’s what I like to see!”
Allie thanked the waiter as he refilled her wineglass. Unlike people who loved to debate buttery notes and subtle finishes, she’d never appreciated wine, but she knew one thing: This stuff was good. It tasted so different from the chardonnay she bought at the grocery store and kept in the fridge.
She closed her eyes and took another sip, trying to tease out the hint of lime and the peppery notes the waiter had described, but instead her mind again fluttered to an image of the piece of paper hidden in her toiletries case. Suddenly she was wide awake.
“ ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ by Aerosmith . . .” Dwight read. “Thanks, Van.”
“Can’t have a reunion without a sound track,” Savannah said. “And speaking of not missing a thing—sleep can wait. Who’s ready for a little ass kicking in a game of pool?”
“Me, me, me!” Tina shouted. “I want to play!”
“Wait, Tina, I’m confused,” Ryan cracked. “Are you in or not?”
“Champagne, everyone?” Pauline offered, as the waiter stood by, ready to uncork a bottle of Cristal. “It’s from 1978, the year Dwight was born.”
Savannah was right, Allie decided, holding out her glass. They should stay up. The last thing she wanted right now was to close her eyes in the darkness.
THE DAY WAS ALMOST
surreal in its perfection, Savannah thought. The tropical storm was carrying rain and wind ever closer to them, but it seemed hard to believe now. The sky was an endless swath of blue, and sunlight glinted against the water, creating countless, tiny reflections so bright they almost hurt the eye.
Savannah’s skin felt warm, but not uncomfortably so, because the catamaran caught a breeze as it cut through the Caribbean Sea. She leaned back against the fiberglass hull, her eyes shielded by dark sunglasses as she watched a twentysomething crewman let out a sail. He wore nothing but bright red bathing trunks. The muscles in his back flexed as he tugged on the ropes, and his dark skin gleamed from the spray of seawater.
He’ll do,
she thought as she took a sip of her pineapple spritzer.
He’ll do quite nicely.
She’d set a goal for herself this morning: She needed to have sex on this trip. She’d been intimate with only one guy since Gary—a clichéd fling with her personal trainer, who could’ve used some of the endurance he was always preaching about to his clients—and she was horny. And didn’t women hit their
sexual peaks in their midthirties? That settled it; she wasn’t going to get back on Dwight’s plane again until she’d rolled around in the sand with a hot guy.
Allie was leaning back, snapping pictures of Dwight as he stared out at the water. Savannah glanced over at Tina and Gio, sprawled a few feet away. Tina’s eyes were closed against the sun, but she seemed to sense Savannah’s gaze and opened them. Savannah raised her sunglasses, glanced pointedly at Dwight, then stuck out her tongue and wiggled it.
When she looked back, Tina was glaring at her.
Stop it!
Tina mouthed.
Savannah winked, then dropped her sunglasses back down. She still couldn’t believe what Tina had revealed this morning. It made one look at Dwight in a whole new light. She closed her eyes, feeling drowsy from the sun and the effects of last night’s alcohol, as she recalled the conversation:
Savannah had been asleep when Tina knocked on her door.
“Go away,” Savannah had muttered, burying her head under her pillow.
“Wake up, Little Miss Sunshine,” Tina had said, bustling right in. She’d opened the blinds, and light had flooded the room.
“Jesus, Tina, I’m not one of your fourteen children,” Savannah had said, but there was a smile in her voice. “What time is it, you sadist?”
“Nine,” Tina had said. “And we’re going snorkeling in an hour.”
Savannah had lifted her head up and rolled over. Images of the previous night had drifted back to her: There was a game of pool, girls versus guys. Maybe two games? And they’d blared Dwight’s CD . . . more champagne had been brought out. Had someone dumped a bit on Dwight’s head, like they did in locker rooms after a winning football game? Oh, right, that was her . . . There had been dancing, lots of dancing on the patio by
the pool. Ryan had fallen in at one point, but he’d managed to hold up his beer and hadn’t spilled a drop, which made everyone cheer . . . Oh, and she’d tried to teach Dwight to salsa, but they both kept laughing too hard. Luckily, Pauline had gone to bed by then; somehow Savannah knew she wouldn’t have approved.
“Are you feeling okay?” Tina was asking.
Savannah had slowly sat up, wincing. “Why is a heavy-metal drummer practicing on my temples? And is everyone else up?”
Tina had nodded. “Allie went for a jog.”
“Now there’s a shocker.”
“And the boys are devouring breakfast. The chef is doing individual omelets.”
“Pigs. I’m still full from last night,” Savannah had said. She’d stretched her arms over her head. “Okay, okay, I’m getting up. Just tell me they have coffee ready.”