Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
“We’ll get ourselves there.” I say it more sharply than I’d intended, and my words are met with a nervous pause. I wince, and my eyes land on a discarded crate with a word stamped in red across the bottom. Desperate to alleviate her worry that this is about the continued friction between me and my father, I add a bewildering lie: “She’ll be coming from Cambodia.”
Oh God. God. Why did I say that? No one handed me this shovel, but I’m digging my own grave anyway.
“Cambodia! How exotic!”
“Right.” I squeeze my forehead. Panic is setting in. “So we’ll meet you there.”
She leaves another pause, and I realize I can’t escape it after all. “Liam, darling,” Mom says quietly. “Even if you travel separately, perhaps you could call your father beforehand? I’d like you two to iron out your wrinkles before we arrive on the island with everyone else. I don’t want any tension to be visible from the outside.”
I take a deep breath, trying to not react to her use of the word wrinkles to refer to my father’s enormous betrayal. “Mom,” I say, wincing when a delivery guy on a bike darts through the alley, almost clipping me with his handlebars. “I think these are more than wrinkles. I need an apology.”
“Well…” She sighs again. “I’m sure he regrets what he did.”
“Has he told you that?”
“We haven’t discussed it, but I apologize on his behalf. Does that work?”
I stare at the wall across from me. My parents haven’t discussed the absolute shit show that resulted in my father and me not speaking for nearly five years? What a perfect example of the Weston family dysfunction. “Not really.”
She ignores this. “We’ll both be on our best behavior,” she assures me. “I won’t say a word about her clothing. Or her hair.”
I tighten the grip on my forehead.
“You need to leave by Wednesday afternoon,” she continues. “May first. The private transport will meet you at the airport, so please send along your commercial flight information and I’ll arrange it.” She says “commercial flight” like she’s expecting a rotten banana in her inbox. “We’ll arrive in Pulau Jingga the day before you and have activities and a wonderful ten days planned for everyone.”
Ten days. Ten days on a private island with my family. Ten days on a private island with a virtual stranger.
If I’m lucky.
For a fevered second, I consider telling my mom everything, untangling myself from this web of lies. But I know she’ll tell my father, who will only use the information as leverage. Renewed fury climbs its way up my throat like a predatory vine. I swallow the impulse to come clean.
“Liam? You heard me, honey? Arrive in Singapore by the third.”
I close my eyes and rub at my temple where one hell of a headache is starting. “Got it. We’ll be there.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can help with. I’ll email over the wedding itinerary. Love you, sweetie.”
“Love you, too.”
Mom hangs up and I stare down at the screen. Not to be melodramatic, but it feels like my life has just been sawed into two halves: before and after. Sure, before was a pile of lies, a complicated cover story that started with an innocent scam and slowly turned into full-on deception. Before was a boulder, precariously balanced on the edge of a cliff. But before had also reached a sort of uneasy stasis, a tentative calm.
After is the wake of chaos and destruction when the boulder gets a sudden, hard shove.
The way I see it, I have three options:
Fake my own death.
Finally admit to my parents that I’ve lied to them for five years.
Fly to Los Angeles and bargain with my wife.
Three
ANNA
I’m about two hours into an edible, watching Conan the Barbarian with a mixing bowl of Froot Loops on my lap, when the doorbell rings.
“What time is it?” I ask the television. “Who’s at the door?”
Conan doesn’t answer either question, but he does begin what is one of the best lines in cinematic history.
“Run from me… and I will tear apart the mountains to find you!”
I raise a fist into the air and shout along with him, “I will follow you to hell!”
The bell rings again, and I haul myself up from the couch, wrestling one of my feet into a Big Bird slipper. The doorbell rings a third time and I give up on locating the second slipper, swing the door open, and come face-to-face with a beautiful stranger on the other side of the threshold. Thick golden-brown hair and warm honey eyes lined with absurdly thick lashes. Tall, serious, sober. A sharp contrast to the passing glance of my reflection I got this morning: faded pink hair, bloodshot eyes, yesterday’s smudged eyeliner. Unkempt, unemployed, baked.
He gives me a wary smile before his shocked gaze sinks to my legs. Which is when I remember I’m not wearing any pants.