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“You’re so beautiful, Athena,” Diego says, unbuttoning his own shirt hurriedly. She sobers up entirely as he takes it off, revealing a smooth, toned upper body. She’d expected chest hair, but instead he’s got muscular pecs and biceps honed through hours at the gym, and waxed by a professional. His body looks less like the tangled forest she’s been expecting, and more like a desert of windblown hills of brown sand. He’s breathtaking.
“You are,” she whispers back, letting her fingertips touch his tight abs. “You’re beautiful.”
In seconds, he has her dress unzipped an inch more and it slides over her hips, falling into a puddle at her feet. Now she’s just in her black bra and the black satin panties she’d chosen earlier, secretly hoping but notquitethinking that this might happen. Diego takes off his own pants, and stands before her in just a pair of black boxer briefs. His legs match his upper body: smooth, muscular, waxed. He looks like an Olympic swimmer, and Athena’s brain can’t help but think up ridiculous things, like:Thank god my first time wasn’t with some guy from my high school with pimples all over his back.AndI wonder if Harlow’s first time was with a guy this hot?
But Diego gently pushing her onto the bed clears her mind of anything but the feel of his body on hers, and she gives in to the sensations, the wonder, and the momentary pain of the act, which is completely eclipsed by a sense of peace once it’s over and they’re lying next to one another.
Diego is quiet and breathing rhythmically like he might fall asleep.
* * *
Athena floats into work the next day like she’s on a hoverboard that lifts her off the ground. She wears a beatific smile, because she now knows what love is. Or at least lovemaking. Diego had opened his eyes and they’d done it all again, and at one point, he’d looked startled and even a little fearful as the realization that it was Athena’s first time had settled over him.
“It’s fine,” she’d promised him, tucking his dark hair behind one ear as she smiled up at him. “I’m glad it was you.”
But the palpable feeling of nervousness hadn’t left him, and while he hadn’t exactly rushed Athena out of his apartment, he had gotten her dressed and called her an Uber, kissing her at the door and letting her walk downstairs alone.
Athena had barely slept—not that there were a ton of hours left in the night anyway—and when she’d gotten up and showered, it was with the knowledge that soon she’d be seeing Diego at work. She doesn’t even care that she’s left her makeup bag in the drawer of her desk, and she drifts towards Diego’s office barefaced, her curly hair pulled up in a bun to leave her neck visible, which will hopefully remind him of how much he’d loved kissing that same neck the night before.
But Diego’s office is empty and the light is still off. The middle-aged secretary who sits at the desk right outside the cluster of four offices that includes Diego’s glances at her curiously. Athena thinks her name is Ellen, but she’s new enough that she isn’t sure, so she settles for a simple, “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” maybe-Ellen says. “Can I help you, hon?”
“Is Diego coming in late today?” Athena asks, hooking a thumb at his empty office. It’s Friday, and she can’t remember a day that she didn’t see him around the library at least once.
The secretary frowns and lifts her fingers from the keyboard. “No, hon, he’s not coming in at all. And he’ll be out all next week.”
Athena’s heart pounds; she knows instinctively that she’s on a collision course with disaster. Diego hadn’t said a word about being gone from work, and all she can imagine is that something horribly tragic has happened. The parents he’d spoken of so lovingly over dinner have been in a terrible accident; he woke up feeling ill and needed to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy; someone has stolen his identity and he’s working with the FBI to break up a massive ring of forgers and thieves.
But it’s worse. So much worse.
“Why?” Athena croaks. Her face feels hot. She knows she looks like exactly what she is: a woman about to be scorned.
The secretary takes a beat before answering. “His wedding, hon. He’s supposed to fly out today for Bali to get married on the beach.”
Athena’s knees buckle and she reaches out for the nearest surface to hold her steady, grabbing for a tall filing cabinet against the wall.
She can hear the woman asking her if she’s alright, but rather than answering, Athena gathers herself and flees, rushing down the hallways and ignoring the greetings of her coworkers. Finally, she gets to her office, closes the door, and sits on the floor with her back against the heavy wooden door.
She stays that way for almost two hours, eyes unblinking, heart broken.
When she can finally rouse herself to get up off the ground and crawl to her desk, she picks up the phone and calls her mother.
Ruby
The store has been open for a while now, and Ruby knows all of the other shop owners on Seadog Lane. She knows when the tide is out so that she can walk the beach by her house, picking up shells or drinking coffee while she watches the waves and breathes deeply. She has come to understand that Shipwreck Key is, quite literally, an island unto itself, and that the way things function here is entirely different from the way they function anywhere else. For instance, if she goes to The Frog’s Grog for a drink of any sort, she’s telling Bev Byer that she’s happy to sit and talk about pirate tales and island folklore (which, to be honest, she usually is). If she drops into the Bodacious Booty Salon for a manicure or a pedicure, then she becomes both privy to the gossip of Shipwreck Key, and potentially a part of it, as everyone will want to know whether the former First Lady chose Red Riot for her toes again, or whether she’s a good tipper.
But more than that, things have settled into a routine with just a few hiccups. Harlow coming down to the island has been, in some senses, easier than she might have imagined, because the young woman was so shaken by the shooting that she’d allowed her mother to set her up in a guest room with a view of the ocean, and since then, she’s been content to wander the house with a blanket hanging from her shoulders like a cape, watching television while Ruby goes to Marooned with a Book, or sitting on the sand and staring at the water while Eldrick stands close by, watching over her in silence.
Their routine has become an easy one, with Ruby going back and forth from the bookstore and being home to cook dinner most nights, but she hasn’t yet convinced Harlow to get dressed and join her for dinner or a drink on Seadog Lane or anything.
Things got a tiny bit more complicated when Athena called her mother from the floor of her office, stunned and crying. Ruby hadn’t fully understood between the sobs what was going on, but she got enough of the story to know that her first baby needed to be with her mother. She’d arranged for Athena’s trip to Shipwreck Key, Athena took a leave of absence from work, and now Ruby has both of her girls living with her under one roof for the first time since Athena left for college five years earlier.
Even though the circumstances that brought them all together are not good ones, Ruby gets a secret thrill each morning as she walks quietly past the closed bedroom doors, knowing that her girls are tucked safely into their beds. It hasn’t all been sunshine and roses, and Athena hasn’t opened up to them entirely yet about what happened with the man at work, but the three women are happy to all be living in one place again. They function well as a unit, and they all know that they’re safe when they’re together.
Ruby feels at peace. She feels needed again in the way that mothers do when their kids come home. Her heart feels whole.
Which is why it’s so unsettling when she receives a phone call from Helen Pullman, Jack’s former Chief of Staff.
