Stormy Paradise

Chapter 1

Holly

Warm breezes sweep away any of my remaining stress the moment I step foot outside Honolulu Airport. Even with all the hustle of travelers swirling around me, stand completely still, like a stone unmoved by the river flowing around it. I close my eyes and draw a deep breath.

A few days of this air, and maybe I’ll find a way to piece myself back together.

At the Rent-a-Car kiosk, I splurge on a convertible. This is a trip I’ve been dreaming about half my life, after all. There’s no way I’m about to roam the streets of Hawaii in an economy number.

“You here on your honeymoon?” the worker behind the desk asks, not even looking away from the monitor as she asks a question probably burned into her memory by now. She’s bored, and I can’t blame her. Who’d ever want to be inside on a day like this? I can’t imagine that even the locals tire of this weather.

“I’m here by myself.”

This gets her looking up. One side of her mouth scrunches together; this isn’t a response she’s programmed to deal with. So I just shrug my shoulders and fill in the gaps for her.

“Call it a trip of self healing.”

With customs and paperwork and pressurized air behind me, I finally toss my suitcases in the back of the fiery red Mustang. After settling into the driver’s seat, I can’t help but smile to myself. It’s an unfamiliar gesture after so many tears, but that’s in the past now. And I’m determined to leave it there.

After pulling up my address for the next week on the GPS, I start my own playlist going. It features over a hundred songs I’ve chosen after many meticulous hours, knowing that my time here is precious and that every note must count.

The first on the queue is cheesy, terrible, and I would never want my friends to learn that I know all the words by heart.

So as I pull out on the highway, I sing of sponge cakes and lost saltshakers, my voice probably scaring away any wildlife or fellow tourists when I come to stop at red lights, but I don’t care.

But it’s a long drive up the coast to the secluded area where I rented a whole house just for myself. And it only takes four songs into my epic playlist for my mind to wander back to Jessie.

What could have been.

What should have been.

What absolutely wasn’t.

In an instant, I’m back to that singular night where a three-year relationship fell apart in under half an hour.

“You’re moving again? For a job?” I ask, my incredulity so thick that you could scrape it off my tongue. “After you begged me to move here six months ago for a different job?”

“I can’t lose out on this opportunity,” Jessie says. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime position. I’ll be the head of my own—”

I’m not about to let him paint his own masturbatory fantasy about what he’ll accomplish if only he can get this job. I’ve heard this whole spiel before. Hell, I’ve lived through every stage of it.

“Once in a lifetime?” I cut him off with his own words. “It’s not even once in a single year. You know used that exact line on me before we moved across the country for your amazing opportunity here, right? And I followed you. Even though I had to give up my friends and my job at Plus! Magazine, which I loved, by the way. And while you were basking in the glory of your company dinners and corporate retreats, I spent every minute looking for another job. I could have fallen into a mighty big abyss of self-pity, but I didn’t. Do you know how many job applications I filled out? Want to guess?” I give him only two seconds to shake his head in a flabbergasted manner before I answer my rhetorical question. “257. I counted them. That’s how many it took. That and four months of rejections and no phone calls. Three interviews in which I never heard back. Three! And finally, after all that time, I got a new job. Sure, it’s only for a local newspaper. It’s not as good as the one I had back in Cali, but I’m writing again. And now, after all that, you’re asking me to move again?”

All Jessie can do is give me a look. A look that says everything the words he can’t find never could. A look that’s leaving me with an ultimatum: move again or move on. On from Jessie who has been everything I ever wanted, but nothing I needed.

And I didn’t know it at the time, but that night would be the last time I spoke to him. The last I ever saw him. By the next morning, he was crashing on a friend’s couch. And a week later he was on a plane to his new once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Leaving me abandoned.

Alone.

Forgotten.

A long blink and I’m back in the present. Back on Hawaiian pavement, my crimson convertible sheening in the tropical sunlight. On my way to a retreat where I can finally focus on self-healing.

And half an hour later, I pull into the driveway. And check the GPS. And check my email confirmation.

Then I consider crying.

The listing for this house was a lie. The photos were taken from sneaky angles to make it look larger and closer to the actual surf. Instead, I’m facing the wrong way in a tiny shack that would be more appropriate for college-aged surfers. Inside is a grimy bed, a bathroom with the toilet missing its seat, and a kitchen that’s not even large enough for two people to stand in. To top it all off, the shower is on the outside and looks over a house between me and my dream view of the beach. My neighbor’s abode is a colossal structure with a fire pit, pool, and everything else I could ever want on my dream vacation. But I’m stuck in a shitty surfer shack.

As I stand out on the pathetic deck, trying to gaze around the behemoth house that has the view I should have, that’s when it happens. Besides an asteroid striking or an earthquake sinking the Hawaiian islands to the bottom of the ocean, the only thing that could really ratchet this moment from shitty to irredeemable.

Because I could make do with this hut. I could still enjoy the hiking and sunset beaches and surfing lessons. With enough phone calls, I might even manage a partial refund on top of that. But what I can’t deal with is my neighbor.

Who happens to walk out on the adjacent balcony—the one that’s perfect in every way—but him?

Jessie.

Only one thought passes through my brain as he turns and notices me.

What the f—?”

Chapter 2