“Knew I liked you. Eliza, come meet Lux.”
I’m actually a little surprised he remembered my name. It’s unusual enough that most people need reminding, or they call me Liz, Lucy, Lex—something close, but not quite right. The fact that Jake clocked it so fast makes me like him more.
Eliza opens her arms to hug me. “Our new roommate!” she says, laughing as she squeezes me. I’m very aware that I’m salty and damp while she smells amazing—like this perfume I once smelled in a guest’s room called California Reverie. I’d even spritzed some on my wrists, walking around the rest of the day taking surreptitious sniffs of my skin. It had made me feel like a totally different woman.
“Island-mate,” I joke, and she laughs generously even though it’s definitely not that funny.
“Honestly, I’m just thrilled you’re here. I love this bastard, but the idea of several weeks alone with him on an island was too bleak to contemplate.”
Her accent is pure BBC, vowels rich, consonants clipped, and when she reaches up to push her hair back from her face, diamond studs sparkle in her ears.
“Yes, your arrival has probably saved me from a late-night castration, and for that, you deserve a beer,” Jake says.
I wonder if they always talk like this, each sentence a tennis ball lobbed, firing back and forth with the ease of sharp, smart people who know each other well.
Jake opens a giant cooler and pulls out a beer, and when he hands it to me, I actually gasp at how cold it is. We have a fridge on the boat, but Nico said ice was a needless extravagance, so pretty much everything we’ve had to drink has been lukewarm. And I haven’t had a beer since we left the mainland—no drinking on the open sea and all that.
“Your fella tells me you’re out of Hawaii?” he asks.
“Maui, yeah,” I reply, taking a sip and closing my eyes at how good, how refreshing, the beer is. “Well, San Diego for me originally, but we’ve been in Hawaii for a few months.”
“We were thinking of Hawaii after this,” Eliza says, wrapping both arms around Jake’s waist, her fingers curled around the wrist of her opposite hand. He has an arm casually draped across her shoulders, his other hand holding his own beer. “Jake’s been loads of times, but I never have.”
“It’s beautiful,” I tell her, and she gestures to our surroundings.
“As beautiful as this?”
I look back out at the sea again, at how the clear aqua bleeds into darker blue farther out, contrasting with the bright sapphire of the sky.
“I don’t know if any place is as beautiful as this,” I say, and I mean it.
Nico joins us, Brittany trailing just behind.
“Bonfire, nice,” he says approvingly to Jake, who introduces him to Eliza, who gives Nico the same warm hug, the same bright smile.
“I’ll go get dinner, shall I?” Eliza looks at our group over the rims of her sunglasses. “You’ll eat with us, right? A proper celebration?”
Given that our plans for tonight were Spam and rice, I nod, maybe a little too eagerly.
She gives Jake a quick kiss before heading for the Zodiac, which they’ve dragged onto the sand.
“Need some help?” Brittany asks, and Eliza beckons with one arm.
“Wouldn’t say no!”
Amma watches quietly, still standing in the shallows, her arms crossed. But then Nico is taking a beer from Jake, and we’re lighting the fire, and I don’t have time to wonder what her deal is.
* * *
WHEN ELIZA HAD OFFERED US dinner, I hadn’t been expecting a feast.
Grilled fish; oysters, cold and briny; roasted potatoes; delicate spears of asparagus wrapped in bacon; and a dessert that appears to be made of strawberries and whatever it is that actual angels eat.
I haven’t eaten this well in months, not since coming to Maui, really, and Eliza just keeps flitting around, offering more, opening some new container full of some new delight and constantly insisting that we take some, that they brought too much, that she gets “overly excited” in the kitchen.
And the wine …
Bottles and bottles, just as cold and crisp as the beer, and by the time the sun has set and it’s grown dark on the island, I’m full and drunk, and beyond happy.
I’m content.
It’s a sensation I haven’t felt in a while. Years, maybe.
Jake stands, popping open a bottle of champagne. We all give a drunken shout when it froths from the neck of the bottle, as Jake sloppily fills our glasses.
Once we all have some champagne, he stands by the fire, shirt half-unbuttoned, hair mussed, and lifts his glass. “To Meroe Island,” he intones, and we all raise our drinks. “To those unfortunate fuckers who crashed and died here—”