Once Upon an Island

“Too soon?” I ask.

Then she lets out a half-laugh, half-sob. “No. Tell me more. Tell me all his fatal flaws.”

I pull her inside and shut the door.

“I bet he never puts down the toilet seat, and he sprinkles wee on the rim, so that if you don’t look when you sit, you fall into the toilet bowl like a slip ’n slide.”

Arya considers this then nods. “Okay. What else?”

I think for a second.

“He has long black nose hair that he tweezes every morning and he leaves the hair all over the bathroom sink.”

“Hmmm,” Arya says. There’s a bit of color re-entering her cheeks.

“How am I doing?” I ask.

“Not bad.”

Good. I steer her toward the couch and then drop a chenille blanket onto her lap.

“He probably wears tighty whities,” I say.

She takes this in, then shrugs. Apparently, tighty whities aren’t a deal breaker for her. I sit down next to her on the couch and pull the blanket over my lap too.

“Anything else?” she asks. And I get the feeling that toenail clippings, lack of toilet etiquette, nose hair clippings and tighty whities aren’t enough to ruin her image of Percy.

I drop my arm over her shoulder and give her a squeeze.

“Well, I didn’t want to tell you this, but…” I pause.

“What?” she asks.

I smile and give her a confident, you’re-better-off-without-him look.

“Well, the pièce de résistance,” I say, “is that Percy has this creepy castle back in England, and he keeps his secret wife locked in the tower room, where she moans and lurks and freaks out visitors. It’s weird and gothic. You really don’t want to join her, locked up in the tower room.”

“Your pièce de résistance is the plot from Jane Eyre?”

I shake my head. “No. It’s the plot from Percy Oliver’s life. It’s his fatal flaw. Trust me. You do not want to go there.”

Arya has the beginnings of a smile. “You’re so weird.”

“Do you feel better?” I ask hopefully.

She shakes her head. “Not at all.”

I didn’t think so.

So, we do the only thing that you can on the night when you’re expecting a proposal and instead you get dumped. We call Kate and Renee and we make a boatload of margaritas.