Once Upon an Island

“So am I.”

I smile, even though he can’t see me. “So, nothing ordinary, like watching a rugby match, or having a picnic on the beach, or reading a good book?”

“I don’t do ordinary,” he says.

Oh right. I remember now. Mr. Fox is only interested in extraordinary things. Average doesn’t entice him.

“Well, I believe that life is made up of the ordinary moments. It’s the ordinary bits of our life that define us.”

I imagine him scowling at that.

“I disagree—”

“Of course you do,” I say.

“It’s the extraordinary we remember. The big business wins. The awards and the honors. The perfect sunset. The exceptional first date. The rise to the top. The ordinary is lost in the exceptional. As it should be. A life that isn’t extraordinary is a life not worth living.”

I frown. I don’t agree with him at all. “That’s a really sad way of looking at things.”

He scoffs. “Really?”

It’s funny how Declan and I don’t see eye to eye on anything. I’m not sure how to describe where I’m coming from, but I give it a try.

“Think of it this way,” I begin. “Some of my most treasured memories are of completely ordinary moments. For example, I remember one summer my mom and I were lying in our backyard beneath the flame tree. I was tucked into her arms, she was singing and I was looking up at the bright red flowers filling the tree. It looked as if the world was a watercolor painted in bright, cherry red. Every time I think of that moment, I feel happy.”

He makes a non-committal, unconvinced noise so I continue.

“Or, every day, my grandma would make rice. She would have me help her wash it. I’d spin my hands through the water until it turned milky white. I can still feel the grains slipping through my fingers, hear the sound of the rice swishing in the water, the tinkling of the faucet, smell the starchy scent of the rice. There’s nothing more ordinary than washing rice. But the memory of it, the routine, it makes me feel content, and happy, and loved.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I listen to the patter of the rain and wait for him to respond.

Finally, he says, “What else?”

I think about the other ordinary things in my life. My job at the newspaper, my Sunday afternoons lying on a hammock under the shade tree reading a book, the evenings I used to spend playing chess with my dad. All ordinary events, but all mine.

“I suppose, by your standards, my whole life is pretty ordinary. When we get back and I go home, it’ll be to my ordinary house and my ordinary job. But at my job, when I write that unexceptional article about the best brunch spots, maybe someone will read it and take their girlfriend to a place I wrote about and propose to her there. Or perhaps a couple will celebrate their fifty-year anniversary there. Or maybe when I write this article about luxury beachfront houses, a couple will read it and buy one and spend the next twenty years raising their family there. You never know what seemingly ordinary things can lead to.”

I sit up and pull away from Declan. I’m warmed by my passion for the subject. He drops his arms and I settle onto the bench next to him.

“I inherited my house from my mom. It’s a wooden cottage, painted white with turquoise trim, there’s a front porch with a spindle railing. It’s nearly a hundred years old, the floorboards gleam from the decades of my family walking across them, the house creaks and groans with the wind, the rooms are tiny and the walls have cracks. There’s a bookshelf in the living room my grandfather built. And the countertops are the lemon-yellow laminate my grandma picked out. It’s an ordinary, old, island cottage. But to me, it’s beautiful. That wood bookshelf is my grandpa’s love. Those yellow countertops remind me of the Sunday dinners my grandma made. I’m fixing it up, all on my own, slowly yet surely. And you better believe, that when I finish it’s going to be incredibly, boringly ordinary. Especially to someone like you. But to me, it’s going to be incredible. All the moments of fixing it, and all the moments after. And here’s another thing—” I poke him in the side and he jumps a bit.

“Yes?” he asks, and his voice has a funny quality to it.

I narrow my eyes and try to make him out, but I can’t.

“Earlier, you thought I wanted you. But I don’t.”

He shifts away from me, and I suddenly realize how much closer he’d drifted toward me during my story.

“You don’t?” he asks, apparently because he still can’t get it through his head that there’s a female in the world not trying to sink her claws into him.

“No. And even if I did, it wouldn’t work between us.” I’m certain of that.

“And why is that?” he drawls. His voice is as deep as the tropical scents coming up from the loamy rain-soaked earth. If there’s one thing you can say about Declan Fox, it’s that he’s certain of his charm.

I shake my head at that.

“Because,” I say, “I like the ordinary. The man I marry, he’s going to like the ordinary too.”

“Doubtful,” he says.

But I ignore him and sink into the image of the mystery man I’ve been waiting on for years.

“We’ll probably start out as friends. We’ll go to the beach together, go kayaking, go to brunch, he’ll be handy with a hammer and he’ll help me fix up my house, we’ll watch movies together. All those ordinary, boring things. And then one day, when we’re at the beach, watching the sunset bounce off the waves, we’ll touch. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll have touched a thousand times before. Ordinary touches. But this time, there’ll be something different. And it will have slipped up on us, between all those ordinary moments, that we won’t have realized we had something until right then.”

I’m carried away, all warm and fuzzy in my daydream of how I meet Mr. Right that it jars me out all my good feelings when Declan snorts.

I stiffen. “What?”

“That’s unrealistic.”

I bristle. “It is not.”

He shakes his head and I feel his condescending air. “Your vision makes for the most boring, unsustainable relationship on the planet. That relationship will die of monotony in two years. Either one or both of you will experience lust or the excitement of love somewhere else and stray. It’s clearly doomed.”

“That’s so like you,” I say. I’m starting to get cold again now that I’ve pulled away from him. I wrap my arms around myself and try not to shiver. “Don’t tell me you think the only kind of lasting love is the extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime, dance-on-oceans-of-sparkly-magic, rainbow-scented romance where every moment is filled with excitement.”

“Well—”

“Gag me.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t believe that.”

Oh. Okay. “Then what do you believe?”

He’s quiet for a moment. I can’t hold it back, I give a big shiver in the cold of the continuing rainstorm.

“Oh, come here,” he says, and he pulls me to him again. When he wraps his arms around me I melt into his side. When I do, he says firmly, “Don’t get any ideas.”

“Don’t worry.”

Thunder rumbles and a flash of lightning lights the gazebo for half a second. I see his lips lift in a sardonic, half-smile at my response. Then we’re left in darkness again and I can’t see his face.

“I believe in love at first sight,” he says.