I can't believe it has been twelve weeks since Vegas. It was the worst and best night of my life, which is not a sentence I've said out loud to anyone because the ratio of awful to wonderful is difficult to explain.
Since the roulette table. The red dress. The three men who smelled extraordinary and looked at me like I was the entire point of the room. Then left money on the nightstand.
My stomach growls.
I find the second granola bar in the bottom of my purse and eat it standing up next to the bunk, and she settles into a sort of provisional truce.
"Don't push it," I tell her.
I put one hand over my stomach for a second and let myself feel it properly before I fold the granola bar wrapper and put it in my pocket and go back up to the deck, because we're moving now, and moving sounds better than sitting with my feelings in a small room below the waterline.
The marina is already shrinking behind us.
I find a spot on the deck railing and hold on and let the wind do what it wants with my hair, which is already a lost cause. Salt air in my lungs, the cold of it, the clean particular smell of open water that is nothing like the ocean from a beach. It smells like somewhere you go to start over, which feels pointed in a way I decide not to examine.
My strawberry scent opens up a little in the sea air. I feel it the same way I feel her, that subtle shift, my body doing something honest without consulting me. Strawberry and maybe the beginning of rose but not the thorned kind. Just warmth. Just relief.
Carmen finds me at the railing with a laminated binder, a mug of tea, and a blueberry muffin. She hands me the tea first, then the muffin.
"You look done in," she says. "If you want more food, say so."
"Right now, I want to marry you," I tell her, already peeling back the wrapper. It has been a long day, and I am one inconvenience away from lying face-down on this deck until someone hoses me off.
She snorts once and opens the binder.
"There are also a few personal guests of the owners currently in residence. They'll be wrapping up their stay when the Nakamura group arrives." She turns a page. "The new guests are associates of the owners."
I've been so focused on immediate survival that I never asked who I'd be cooking for. "Who are the owners, exactly?"
"Private," Carmen says in the tone of someone who has answered this many times. "European investors. They use the island for business hospitality and personal retreats. They're not usually here during guest bookings." She turns another page. "They'll be in residence for the Nakamura meeting first. Japanese delegation. Formal. That's your first week. After that, leisure guests."
"When do the owners leave?"
"Unclear." She checks her phone. "Probably after the Nakamura group. A week, maybe two."
I've worked in service long enough to know the best owners are the distant kind. If all goes well, I won't see them much, and they won't notice me at all unless something catches fire.
"Menu flexibility?" I ask.
"High enough. The regulars have preferences. I'll send dietary notes for the business group tonight." Carmen glances down at the page. "The last chef leaned heavily into fine dining."
"And the guests?"
"Mixed feedback. Some wanted simpler food. One owner," she says, checking the binder, "Santos, specifically, has a standing request for anything that tastes like comfort."
Santos is not an uncommon name.
I take a sip of the very good tea and look out at the open water, telling myself there are probably plenty of men named Santos in Europe. Several, even, who own private islands and use the word comfort about food. The one I'm thinking of is obviously a different Santos entirely. None of this is connected to anything.
Not that I ever looked for them. I could have. Social media exists. Rich men love the internet almost as much as they love themselves. I could have found them if I'd wanted to.
I didn't.
Why would I go searching for the men who left without a word and dropped cash on the nightstand like I was something to settle up with before checkout?
My rose scent sharpens slightly. Completely meaningless. Probably the wind.
The baby rolls low in my belly, unconvinced.