The Paradise Problem (67)

It is the comfort of having an ally. It is the powerlessness of infatuation. It is the terrifying beginning of more.





Twenty-Three


ANNA


Ughhhhhhh.

What a gross, gross feeling. I have become West’s emotional rag doll.

Let me be clear: I am incredibly proud of myself. In the past week I’ve spent with this mess of a man, I’ve learned that I am capable of more than I ever imagined. I can mostly hide my horror when people around me discuss buying giant swaths of land for tax write-offs. I can make a single vodka soda last three hours. I can have my butt massaged without giggling, and I can wear a satin gown like a motherfucking boss.

But one thing I cannot do, even if I’m being paid handsomely, is allow myself to be emotionally manipulated.

My mom left when I was five—ostensibly just to “take a break” and “find herself”—and the games she played over the next nine years really fucked us up. She would call every few months and tell Dad she missed him and wanted to come home to us, and then remember that she was above it all and leave again. She would send postcards out of the blue with nothing but the words Thinking of you, but never remember our birthdays. She refused to sign divorce papers until I was fourteen and my father finally filed for abandonment. I saw the way she manipulated him, and as an adult, I can spot a mind-fuck a mile away.

See, West? You aren’t the only one with fucked-up family dynamics.

But his family, whew, it is fucked up. And if he thinks he’s going to find a gently placating and toxically enabling woman in me like he has in his mother, he is mistaken.

I will not be the toy to West’s anxious cat, even if he is paying me. I will fake-kiss him and smile at parties and wear every hideously expensive gown Vivi picked out for me, but I will not let my emotions become part of the game. And seeing the way he freaked out this afternoon, the cool distance he forced between us—fine. I can handle that. I fully support him deciding he needs to focus on the Weston detritus and on cooling whatever lusty, real, or vulnerable thing we have brewing. But what I am unwilling to do is be jerked back to his side the minute I talk to someone else.

Outside the tent, the night air is humid and thick; it feels like a storm is rolling in and man, if I didn’t think they’d make the people who work here clean it up, I’d hope for it to settle right over us. This party is gorgeous, but we’re on a perfect island in the middle of the ocean, a lush, protected jewel of land, and these fuckers have carted more junk here than I could fit in my entire apartment. I’d love to see how their props hold up in a downpour.

“You, too, huh?” a voice says from the shadows, and I squint into the darkness to see Reagan. She’s sitting on a low tree branch in a blue-and-white-checked dress and glittering ruby slippers. An adorable Dorothy.

“Did I just say that out loud?” I ask.

She looks up at me with the trademark Weston eyes. “Say what?”

“About how I hope the storm lands directly over us?”

She laughs. “No. I just meant you ditched the party, too?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“What’s your reason?” she asks, looking back down to where she’s drawing with a stick in the sand.

I squint at her in the darkness. “What’s yours?” I bounce back.

“Grown-ups being annoying.”

“Hey, bestie, same.” I walk closer, offering a high five and sitting down beside her. “Didn’t you go snorkeling with Eko today?”

Blaire mentioned Reagan having zero interest in spa day, and frankly, after West’s weirdness made an appearance, I wonder if I should have made the same call.

“Yeah, she took us to the reef off the north side of the island. It was amazing. I asked her to please not bring us back here.”

I laugh. “Bet she didn’t pack enough food for the boat trip back to Singapore, eh?”

“Sadly, no.”

“Ugh. Planning fail.”

Reagan laughs down at her sand drawing. “Five more days,” she says. “I’m having fun but I miss my dog and my friends.”

“Bet it feels like an eternity.”

“It does.”

I remember this feeling, the sense that everything was boring when I was home but that being away for even an hour meant that I was missing something intensely fun and irreplaceable, that everything, always, was completely out of my control. Being an adolescent fucking sucks.

But I know that in all the times Dad sat with me on the swings in the backyard while I cried over friends or boys or school or my mom, never once did he tell me to cheer up, to try to see the bright side, to have a positive attitude. He knew I was an upbeat kid, and when I wanted to feel bad, he let me feel bad. The only thing he ever said was “It’ll get better.” And he was never wrong.

“It’ll get better,” I say to Reagan now.

“I hope so.”

“It will,” I assure her. “In a few years you’ll have more independence. More autonomy. Do you know what that means?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s like having control over your own decisions,” I say. The tide is coming in about twenty yards away, and I wiggle my toes in the cool sand. “Soon you’ll be old enough to say no to things you don’t want to do. Right now is the time in life that teaches you you’ll get through it even if you hate it.”