St. Patrick's Day on St. Barts by Stephanie Taylor

Author:Stephanie Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stephanie Taylor

That night, a sharp pain in Lucy’s side woke her in the dark. She shot up in her bed, hand flying to her ribcage, face contorted in pain. With several deep, cleansing breaths, she got the ache to subside enough to swing her legs around and put her feet on the floor. She reached for her phone and texted Nick.

Are you awake?

She waited for a response. Of course he wasn’t awake at three o’clock in the morning. Lucy locked her phone and set it on the nightstand.

The windows that looked out over the balcony were covered with a curtain that she pulled back, wincing in pain as she did. She unlocked the sliding door and opened it, stepping out onto the cool tile and feeling the night on her skin.

Mercifully, the pain ebbed away, leaving a hollow feeling in Lucy’s chest. She sat on one of the chairs and put her bare feet up on the table, watching as the stars blinked above the water and the earth. It didn’t happen often, this sort of middle-of-the-night panic attack that left her with a sharp pain or gasping for breath, but occasionally she woke up after midnight with a cry or a start, as if she’d just realized how truly alone in the world she was.

Lucy rested the back of her head against the chair and looked out at the sky. As she did, hot tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, running down her temples and into her hair. It wasn’t loneliness, per se, but the particular reckoning a person did every so often with the very fact of being alone. She reached up and wiped the tears from her skin with the back of her hands and stood up. Sitting here at three o’clock in the morning feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Going back to bed wasn’t going to get her anywhere either, as she felt the last vestiges of sleep recede and leave behind a wakefulness that grew under the light of the moon.

Wearing a white satin robe that was open to reveal her navy blue men’s pajamas and a pair of matching white satin slippers, Lucy padded through the hallway to the elevator, punched the button, and rode down to the lobby.

There was no one behind the front desk, and the lights were turned down low. Out on the pool deck Lucy counted three heads: a woman sitting on the side of a lounge chair, facing a man as they talked quietly, and closer to the water, a man whose laptop screen glowed in the dark night. Lucy followed the light of the screen like it was a beacon.

As she got closer, she realized what she felt she’d known all along: the man with the laptop was Nick.

“Hey,” she said, stopping next to him. Her robe swished around her.

Nick looked up in surprise. “Hey yourself,” he said, setting his laptop at the foot of the lounge chair and turning to look up at her.

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