Abigail had finished her Bloody Mary, tasted her own Greyhound, and was now halfway through her smoothie. She was a little tipsy and had to pee. But it felt good to be in the pool, making small talk with this stranger, and not obsessing over what she was going to do about the Scottie situation. She was all set to tell Porter that she had to go to the changing room for a moment but that she’d be right back, when the door quietly opened. She felt cool air move through the grotto room and expected to see the waiter coming to see if they needed more drinks. But it was Scottie, dressed in jeans and a hooded jacket. She could tell it was him by the way he purposefully strode along the edge of the pool to where she and Porter were lounging.
“Hi, Abigail,” he said.
“Hey,” Porter said, filling in the unnatural pause. Abigail hadn’t spoken yet. “You must be Bruce. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m not Bruce,” Scottie said.
“What’s your name again?” Abigail quickly asked Scottie, and he glanced at her with almost a hurt look.
“Scott Baumgart,” he said, crouching and shaking Porter’s hand.
“Scott and I met on my bachelorette weekend, and then totally by chance he showed up here,” Abigail said. “Small world.”
“No shit,” Porter said, then stretched his hands out, looking at his fingertips. He said, “I’m pruning up. It’s time for me to take off.”
Abigail didn’t know if he was actually wanting to get out of the pool or if he was sensing the weird tension between her and Scottie.
“Nice meeting you, Porter,” she said, then turned to Scottie and added, “I’d love to talk with you for a few minutes. Can we meet outside the changing room?” There was no way she wanted to be alone with him in the pool area, she in her bathing suit, he looming over her with all his clothes on.
“Sure,” Scottie said, and Abigail followed Porter up the stone steps out of the pool. She walked past Scottie without looking at him and went straight into the changing room.
She took her time showering, then slowly got dressed. There was a pitcher of ice water available—had that been there before?
—and she drank two tall glasses. There were actually three exits from the changing room, one that went back out to the pool, the one she’d come in from that led to the tunnel back to the lodge, and another exit, which Abigail assumed led toward the ground-floor entrance. She decided that Scottie would most likely be waiting for her there. Before pushing through the doors, Abigail went through a mental checklist. She tried to remind herself that when she’d met Scottie he’d seemed like a nice person. He was attentive, he told her about his unhappy marriage, how much he loved his dog, how much his own parents loved his wife. He wasn’t necessarily a monster. He was a human being. She needed to try to appeal to this side of him first. Tell him that she was sorry he’d come all this way, but she really was in love with Bruce, and she wanted to make the marriage work. Ask him nicely to just leave.
And if that didn’t work? Well, then, she was fully prepared to unload on him, tell him he better get the fuck off this island before she alerted the authorities. Tell him that as far as she was concerned nothing had happened between them in California, and that Bruce would believe her. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but she needed to be prepared.
She pushed through the doors, which brought her to a staircase that led up to a reception area, although, as with all the reception areas here, there was no front desk, just the constant presence of a lingering employee. Like the changing room, the reception area was made of light wood, and one wall was covered with succulents while another had a built-in waterfall, a sheet of perpetually falling water.
Scottie was perched on a white chaise longue under a high window that showed the dark woods outside. Abigail didn’t want to talk inside, so she walked straight to the door and out into the cool air.
CHAPTER 14
At the back of the building, a path of stones led to a wooden bench that faced a grove of birch trees. Abigail sat down, and Scottie sat next to her.
“You made a new friend,” he said.
Abigail was confused for a moment, then realized that he was talking about Porter, the man in the pool.
“I did,” she said, already annoyed, and decided that she should probably just skip the treat-him-like-a-nice-guy plan.
“What kind of friend is he?” He unzipped his jacket a little, and she saw that he was wearing a flannel shirt, maybe even the same shirt he’d been wearing in California. Looking at him now, she wondered how she’d ever found him attractive. He was handsome, in that wiry way she liked, but his skin was too orange, as though he went to tanning booths. Also, he was far too intense, the way he sat with his head cocked her way, his hands—he wore three rings—thrumming on his kneecaps like he was waiting to pounce.