He Brought His Assistant On Our Honeymoon And Gave Me A Separate Room novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Stool That Didn't Wobble

Rochelle eats alone while Tripp and Camille share a candle, walks the beach path to a bar, and meets a funny stranger named Rhett; Tripp texts that she should stay there.

At eight o'clock I sat down alone on the terrace, in the green dress, and ordered dinner for one.

My husband and Camille were two tables away.

They had no laptops and no calls, only a bottle of wine and a candle between them.

Tripp saw me and lifted two fingers from the tablecloth.

Camille smiled and mouthed, "Come sit!"

Tripp shook his head very slightly, and she turned back to him.

I understood that I had been invited and uninvited in the same second.

The waiter set a bowl of conch chowder in front of me and said, "Anything else, Mrs. Draycott?"

"A better husband," I said.

He pretended not to hear, which was kind.

I ate every spoonful, because I had flown nine hours and skipped lunch, and I was not going to starve to make a point.

When the plate was clear, I picked up my bag.

Tripp was laughing at something Camille had said.

I knew that laugh.

He used it on me when we were twenty-four, in the first year, before the company had a name.

I walked out past their table without stopping.

"Shelly," he called, easy and loud. "The beach path, remember. The bar at the end. You'll like it."

He had said it twice now.

I did not turn around.

The path was white sand between two rows of low lamps, and the ocean was just on my left, black and quiet.

I took off my sandals and carried them.

For the first hundred steps I was angry.

For the next hundred I was only tired, and for the last stretch I was almost glad, because nobody on the island was watching me.

The bar was a thatched roof over eight stools, with strings of bulbs and a bartender polishing a glass.

Six stools were empty and two were taken, and one of those held a man with a paper napkin folded into a small boat.

He looked up when my feet hit the boards.

"You'll want that one," he said, and nodded at the stool beside his own. "The other one wobbles. I've been sitting on it for twenty minutes and I'd like to see someone else fall off."

"That's generous."

"I'm a generous man. Ask the napkin."

I laughed before I could stop it.

It was the first time I had laughed since the airport.

I sat, and the stool held.

"Told you," he said.

He was somewhere in his mid thirties, with dark hair going grey at the temples and a sunburned nose, in a white shirt that had been washed too many times.

His hands were big and careful.

He set the napkin boat in front of me.

"I'm Rhett."

"Rochelle."

"What are you drinking, Rochelle?"

"I don't know yet. Something that isn't a wedding toast."

The bartender, a man in a faded green shirt, put a glass of rum and lime down in front of me without being asked.

"On the house," he said. "You look like the woman from the front desk."

My face went hot.

"I saw it from the door," Rhett said. "I was waiting on a key. For what it's worth, you did that well."

"I paid for my own room."

"I noticed."

"It was petty."

"It was a clear message," he said. "Petty would have been the minibar."

I drank some of the rum.

It was cold and sharp and it burned a little all the way down.

"Are you here on business?" I asked, because it was easier to ask than to explain myself.

"I used to take pictures for a newspaper. Now I take whatever work gets me to somewhere with a view." He shrugged. "Today it's a view."

"That sounds lonely."

"It's quiet," he said. "Some days they're the same thing."

He didn't look at my ring, and he didn't ask where my husband was.

I told him anyway.

Not all of it, only that my husband was on the ocean side with his assistant, and that I was in a room facing hibiscus.

Rhett listened with his chin on his hand and did not say he was sorry.

When I finished, he said, "Was the room nice, at least?"

"The bed is very white."

"Then you've got that."

I laughed again, and this time it shook a little at the end.

He pushed a bowl of lime wedges toward me and said nothing, and I was grateful.

My phone buzzed in my bag.

I took it out, and it was Tripp.

Where are you?

I typed: At the bar. It's lovely. You were right.

The reply came before I had put the phone down.

Good. Stay there.

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