There’s no such thing as a clean breakup, Ayers thinks.
When she and Mick hashed it out, Ayers told him exactly how she felt—his infidelity with Brigid was insurmountable. Mick said that he had bumped into Brigid on the ferry and Ayers believed that—but she still didn’t trust him, with Brigid or with anyone else.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.
Deep down, she acknowledges that the fault is not entirely Mick’s. Ayers wanted a chance to be with Baker and she refused to sleep with him while she was still with Mick. She had only gotten back together with Mick as a way to exact revenge on both Baker and Cash for withholding the truth about who they were, and then once she and Mick—and Gordon—were back in their routine, Ayers was comfortable, if not particularly happy.
Now that she has slept with Baker—and without protection, like an irresponsible idiot—and now that Baker has left to go back to Houston, Ayers is neither comfortable nor happy.
She had meant to take it slow and steady with Baker. She had vowed to wait until he came back from Houston to consummate their relationship. But passion and high emotion had ruled and although their night together had been unforgettable—at least for her—now the anticipation is gone. Baker might decide Ayers isn’t worth returning for.
Monday morning, there’s a knock on her door. Ayers is in bed. Mondays she’s off from both jobs, though she has Maia tonight. Ayers is picking Maia up in town at six and they have plans to get takeout from De Coal Pot.
Ayers doesn’t like unexpected knocks at the door. Who could it be at nine thirty in the morning? Her landlady? Jehovah’s Witnesses?
She pulls a pillow over her head. The door is locked. Whoever you are, she thinks, please go away. Monday is her day of rest.
“Hello?” a voice says, loud and clear. “Ayers?”
It’s Mick. He still has a key. Why didn’t she ask for her key back?
A second later there’s a flutter of footsteps as Gordon comes running into the bedroom and jumps up on Ayers’s bed. Mick is no dummy, she thinks. He sent his goodwill ambassador in first.
But Mick soon follows. “Get up,” he says.
Ayers flips over and partially opens one eye. “What are you doing here?” Does she need to remind him that they’ve broken up? What if she had company?
“It’s Monday,” Mick says. “We’re going to Christmas Cove. The boat is anchored in Frank Bay. I have rum punch, I have water, I have snacks, I have your snorkel and fins.”
“It’s over, Mick,” Ayers says. “We’re through.”
Mick sits on the bed and brushes Ayers’s hair out of her eyes. “We’re not through,” he says. “We’ll never be through.”
He looks unreasonably good, for Mick. He has a day’s worth of scruff, which is how she likes him best, and he’s gotten some sun on his face, making his eyes look very green. Gordon has already snuggled against the curve of Ayers’s back. Ayers closes her eyes for one second and travels back in time to before the disgusting discovery of Brigid, back when Mick and Gordon were “her boys,” back when life was calm and happy.
But she can travel backward only in her mind. In real time, she has no choice but to move forward. Baker. And Floyd too, she supposes. Assuming they come back.
“I slept with Baker last week,” Ayers says. “The night we broke up.”
Mick’s eyebrows shoot up in an expression of surprise, and then a split second later, Ayers sees the hurt, which was her aim. “Banker? Wow. You wasted no time.”
Ayers props herself up on her elbows. “I like him,” she says. “He’s a grown-up. He doesn’t lie to me.”
“Doesn’t he?” Mick says. “He didn’t tell you who he was. And his father”—Mick whistles—“didn’t exactly serve as a role model in the honesty department.”
Ayers should never have told Mick anything about Baker. “He’s not his father,” she says. “I’m nothing like my parents. You’re nothing like yours.”
“Point taken,” Mick says. “I’m sure you want me to be angry or jealous about your tryst with Banker, and I am.” He takes a couple of deep breaths and Ayers can see his Irish temper eddying beneath the surface. Baker is bigger than Mick, but Mick is fiercer; if they ever came to blows, Baker would lose. “But I’m glad you got it out of your system. I had my fling and now you’ve had yours—”
“It doesn’t work like that, Mick,” Ayers says. “I didn’t do it for revenge. This isn’t a tit for tat. And by the way, I waited until we were broken up—”
“You waited, what, an hour? And we aren’t really broken up. We had a misunderstanding, and you overreacted. Bumping into Brigid on the ferry doesn’t warrant a breakup. Check the relationship rule book. Ask your friends.”
“I don’t have any friends,” Ayers says.
“That’s what this is really about,” Mick says. “Banker, Money…they’re attractive to you because it’s a connection to Rosie.”
“Baker is in love with me,” Ayers says.
“Oh, really?” Mick says. “Well, where is he now? Is he here with a pineapple-banana smoothie, waiting for you in the Jeep? Has he planned the best day off imaginable, complete with a new Jack Johnson Spotify playlist and a solemn promise that we can order the carbonara pizza and the bloomin’ onion pizza and the chocolate-banana Pizza Stix? Did he arrange for Captain Stephen from the Singing Dog to play his guitar for three hours this afternoon? Did he make a reservation for tonight at the Longboard?”
“I have Maia tonight,” Ayers says.
“I know,” Mick says. “I made the reservation for three people.”
Ayers has to give him credit for that. Maia will die of happiness, eating at the Longboard with Mick. She loves the lobster tacos.
“It’s over, Mick,” Ayers says, though even she can hear that her voice lacks conviction. “Go to Christmas Cove by yourself and when everyone asks where I am, tell them we broke up. Or better still, take Brigid with you so they figure it out on their own.”
“I called Bex at Rhumb Lines,” Mick says. “I begged her to take Brigid off my hands, but she says she’s fully staffed. Then I heard Robert and Brittany at Island Abodes were looking for someone to help out with the villas. Brigid has an interview with them on Thursday.”
“Poor Robert and Brittany,” Ayers says. They’re one of the nicest, coolest couples on island, and they have a cute baby. “But it’ll be good for Brigid to get a different kind of job. She’s a terrible server.”
“Agreed,” Mick says. “I wish I’d never hired her. I wish I’d never met her. But what’s done is done. She’ll be out of the Beach Bar by next week.”
Ayers can’t deny it—this news pleases her.
“Back to Banker,” Mick says. “Does he know that you’re ticklish right here?” Mick digs his fingers into Ayers’s ribs. She shrieks and soon they’re tussling in bed and Mick crawls on top of her and she lets him rest on her for a couple of seconds before pushing him off.
“I have a surprise for you,” Mick says. “Two surprises. One for now and one for later. Does Banker know how much you love surprises?”
Ayers does love surprises. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll come.”
It’s a swan song, she tells herself, a last hurrah. Because she has Maia tonight, there’s no danger of her sleeping with Mick. There’s no reason they can’t go out together in public as friends.
The second Ayers sits in Mick’s Jeep with Gordon perched in her lap, she feels happy about her decision. The day is crystal clear, sunny, and hot—and what else would Ayers have done with her time? She would have holed up at home and read Rosie’s diaries. She has been so engrossed in the story about Russ, she’s on the verge of becoming addicted. She has finally gotten to the part where they’re reunited. Russ knows about Maia. Rosie knows about Irene and the boys.
They’re going to be together.
It’s good for Ayers to leave the diaries alone for a while. She sips the smoothie Mick got her from Our Market and sings along to Chesney on the radio. This is what a day off is supposed to feel like.
Mick turns onto Great Cruz Bay Road and Ayers says, “Where are we going?”
“Surprise number one,” Mick says. Great Cruz Bay Road is one of Ayers’s favorite places; it has views northwest over the Westin toward St. Thomas and Water Island. Mick follows the road almost to the tip of the point, then he signals and turns into a driveway marked with a sign that says PURE JOY. This leads to an adorable white cottage with bright blue shutters. It reminds Ayers of the months that she and her parents spent living on Santorini.
They climb out of the car. “Follow me,” Mick says. He steps up onto the wraparound porch that has an uninterrupted water view.
“What are we doing here?”
“This is my new place,” Mick says.
“You bought it?”
“Renting,” Mick says. “Long-term. But it’s mine. You want to see the rest?”
He leads her inside, and everything is picture-perfect. There’s a bedroom, living room, dining nook, kitchen, and a brand-new, sparkling-white-tiled bathroom; every room in the house has a view of the water. On the deck is a grill and a hot tub, and around the corner is an outdoor shower painted the same blue as the shutters.
It’s a real place. Not a hole-in-the-wall like where Mick lives now, which meant that he was always crashing at Ayers’s in a way that felt like he was infringing on her space. For years, Ayers has been begging him to find someplace better. And now he has. This cottage—Pure Joy—is a dream.
“This is amazing,” Ayers says. “You’ll be much happier here.”
“We will be happier here,” Mick says. “I got it for us. See those chairs?” He points to two stools, upholstered in blue, in front of a bar counter. “Those are what convinced me to take it. I pictured the two of us coming home from work late at night and having a drink there together—and can you imagine the sunset from here?”
“Hashtag sunset,” Ayers says. “Your Instagram account will blow up.”
“We can have our coffee out here in the mornings,” Mick says.
We broke up, Ayers thinks. But Mick’s expression is so earnest that she doesn’t have the heart to say it.
“It’s nice,” she admits.
One last hurrah, she tells herself again, though Mick is slowly but surely wearing down her resistance. Her night with Baker—which had seemed so vivid and unforgettable right after it happened—is now fading from her mind.
Has she merely fallen prey to the sexual attraction she feels for Baker because it’s bright, shiny, and new? Her relationship with Mick is deep and long and intense. Mick is the person Ayers tells things, even the small, inconsequential things, because he’s the one who has shared her history. He has context.
If she starts something new with Baker, she would have to go back to square one. The thought is, frankly, exhausting.
Ayers wades through the crystal water of Frank Bay and climbs into the boat. Mick is borrowing Funday, a thirty-two-foot Grady-White, from his boss for the day, something he normally does only on special occasions. Mick loads Gordon in and turns up the music and they go zipping across the surface of the water at breathtaking speed. Ayers loves nothing in the world more than being out on a boat—Treasure Island included—though the experience is much better when she isn’t working. She fills a Yeti cup with rum punch—Mick makes the best—and belts out, “Save it for a rainy day!”
It’s well known that Monday is the weekend for people in the service industry. La Tapa closes on Monday nights after the holiday rush, as do a bunch of other restaurants, so when Mick and Ayers arrive in Christmas Cove, it’s a Who’s Who of St. John hospitality all rafted together on either side of the Pizza Pi boat. The guys from 420 to Center are there and so is Bex from Rhumb Lines and Mattie the bartender from the Dog House Pub with his girlfriend, Lindsay, who works at the Beach Bar with Mick, and Colleen from Pizzabar in Paradise and Jena from Extra Virgin Bistro. Alex the bartender from Ocean 362 is on a catamaran—with Skip. From the looks of things, Skip is pretty far along in the partying department. When he sees Mick and Ayers pull in, he raises his arms over his head and hollers at the top of his lungs, “They’re here!” As though Mick and Ayers are the king and queen of this particular St. John prom.
Ayers grins at everyone and waves. This is her family.
Mick and Ayers tie up to a sleek, black Midnight Express that has a woman on board who looks familiar. She’s wearing a tropical-print bikini and enormous sunglasses. She waves and says, “Hey, Ayers!” and then she helps Mick with the ropes and the bumpers while Ayers racks her brain for how she knows this woman.
She leans over to hug Ayers. “I suppose you’ve heard that Brent and I are getting a divorce?”
Who’s Brent? Ayers thinks. The woman pulls a cigarette and a lighter out of a pair of teensy white shorts lying at her feet and Ayers realizes the woman is Swan Seeley, the mother of Colton Seeley, Maia’s little friend. Swan has traded in her reusable shopping bags and sustainable vegetable gardening for day-drinking and lung cancer.
Ayers laughs. This is fabulous! She always liked Swan best when she was breaking the rules anyway. But a divorce is sad, right? “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ayers says.
Swan waves the sentiment and her exhale of smoke away. “Don’t be,” she says. “He’s got a gambling problem. I had to cut bait before he sank us.”
“Good for you, then.”
Swan smiles. “There are eligible men everywhere,” she says. “Just look at this place!” Her eyes scan the now-impressive raft of boats. “What about Skip? He’s single, right?”
“He’s single,” Ayers says. “But I’m not sure he’s your type.” Or anyone’s type, she thinks. Although who’s to say that Skip, who’s coming off his weird thing with Tilda, and Swan Seeley, freshly separated, wouldn’t be a good match for each other?
“There’s the hottest new dad at the school,” Swan says. “He’s brand-new to the island, relocating from Houston. I saw him last week when I was picking up Colton. Maia seemed to know him, though of course I couldn’t ask who he was with Colton in the car.”
Hottest new dad. That would be Baker. Ayers feels herself bristling. Naturally Swan Seeley and all the other Gifft Hill mothers will pant over Baker. Ayers wants to inform Swan that Baker is taken, by her, but she can’t very well do this when she’s here with Mick.
At that moment, who should step onto Swan’s boat but Skip, holding a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon and a bouquet of plastic flutes.
“Champagne, ladies?” He pours some for Swan and some for Ayers. “This storied bubbly has notes of Canadian pennies, your dad’s Members Only jacket, and…” He glances over Ayers’s shoulder. “‘We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together.’”
Why does he keep doing this? Ayers wonders, but Swan laughs. “Ha! You can say that again!”
Ayers turns to see a cute little speedboat pull up. Tilda is at the wheel and Cash is next to her.
Ayers is seized with panic. Cash is here? What’s Cash doing here? It’s obvious, hello, that he came with Tilda, that’s her parents’ little runabout, though they also have a sixty-two-foot single-hull sailboat. Tilda and Cash? Yes, Baker told her this the other night. It’s good, it’s great, Tilda and Cash together isn’t the problem—except, maybe, for Skip. The problem is that Cash will see Ayers here with Mick and report back to Baker.
Ugh! Arrgh! What can she do? Can she pretend she’s here with Swan? Maybe Cash and Tilda won’t stay; there are a lot of boats here already, maybe they want privacy, maybe they’ll head over to Mermaid’s Chair where they can be alone. Or to Dinghy’s on Water Island.
Go to Dinghy’s! Ayers thinks.
But Tilda has earned her place at this party; she works just as hard as everyone else. Ayers notices she gets a sadistic grin on her face when she sees Skip. She must want to gloat.
Cash and Tilda raft up with Mick. Ayers watches Mick and Cash shake hands. Ayers offers a lame little wave.
Captain Stephen starts playing the guitar and singing “Southern Cross.”
Think about how many times I have fallen…
Mick’s hand lands on the back of Ayers’s neck. He knows how much she loves this song.
The pizza arrives—one carbonara with lobster, one bloomin’ onion drizzled with lemon aioli, and Ayers’s ultimate splurge, the chocolate-banana Pizza Stix. She drinks her champagne—Skip has, generously, left the bottle for her and Swan to split—and she eats some pizza, plays tug-of-war with the crust with Gordon, and dives off the boat for a swim.
Tilda and Cash have noodles. They’re floating in the water, interested in no one but each other.
Mick is gone somewhere. Ayers cranes her neck to see if, by chance, Brigid has arrived on any of the boats. Captain Stephen stops playing and there’s the spine-chilling shriek of microphone feedback, then she hears Mick’s voice.
“You guys, can I have your attention please? Hey! Everyone, please quiet down.”
Ayers sees Mick heading toward her with the microphone. Is he going to sing to her or ask her to sing, maybe something from the Jack Johnson Spotify playlist?
It all happens so fast. A hush blankets Christmas Cove, and all eyes are on Mick, now standing in the bow of Funday in front of Ayers, who is dripping wet in her bikini.
He drops to one knee and only then does Ayers get it: the second surprise.
“This is why I went to St. Thomas,” he whispers. He pulls a box out of the pocket of his swim trunks and says into the microphone so that every single person they work and live with on the tiny island that is St. John USVI can hear, “Ayers Wilson, will you marry me? Will you be my wife?”
Ayers isn’t sure where Cash is, but she can feel his eyes boring into her. Swan Seeley claps a hand over her mouth and then everyone starts chanting, “Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!”
Gordon, who never barks, is pressing his flank against Ayers’s leg, barking.
A public proposal is never a good idea, Ayers thinks. Or is it? She can’t say no. She can’t dive off the boat and seek asylum on Little St. James Island. She could, she supposes, beg Cash and Tilda to take her back to Cruz Bay. Yes, that’s what she should do.
But what a buzzkill. What a depressing end to such a well-executed surprise. Ayers realizes that a good number of these people must have been in on it. Nobody knows that Ayers and Mick broke up and that Ayers embarked on a new relationship. They’re all caught up in the theatrics.
Rosie? Ayers thinks with a glance skyward.
But there’s no answer.
Ayers presents her left hand to Mick and he slips the ring on her finger, then stands and pulls her in for a kiss.
The crowd cheers. Ayers studies the diamond. It’s a beautiful ring; she has to give him that. The stone sparkles so brightly that Ayers is, temporarily, blinded.