I PARKED MY JEEP AS Banion came out of his flower shop to greet me.
“Hey yank, you still look fresh from the boat.”
“Liar!” I accused, as he opened my door. “I passed the one-year mark. I’m officially a local.”
“Yank-key,” he said, adding more charm to the word with his thick island accent. “What ya need today?”
“Three bouquets please, we have a busy day.”
“Maybe four?” He looked over at me with a knowing smile. “One for you.”
“Perfect.” Ushering me inside he began to gather the bouquets, taking stems from various buckets he kept in a small cooler. He had the roughest looking florist shop in St. Thomas but made the most beautiful bouquets. I always told him if I ever struck it rich, he would be my lone investment. He was highly underrated and undervalued due to the state of his shop, but the locals knew. And though I’d spent six summers in St. Thomas over the course of my life, I could honestly say I was becoming an expert at navigating the potholed pavement.
“When are your parents coming, yank?”
“Thanksgiving, I pray.”
“You have not spoken to them?” He peered at me over a handful of orange and purple stems. One desperate and lonely night when I had first arrived on the island and just gotten my job with Jasmine, I’d spent a few drunken hours with Banion spilling the events that led me to St. Thomas. He hadn’t let me forget the night of verbal diarrhea, nor the physical vomit I had christened the floor of his store with. Not my finest hour, or week, or month.
“We talk.”
“But do you really talk?” Banion was ridiculously tall to the point of being intimidating. His charcoal-colored skin and dark eyes were only softened by the sincerest of white smiles and a smooth voice.
“We talk. They still badger me to go back.”
“And you want to stay?”
“I’m staying,” I insisted, adding a few pink sprays to the mix. Banion shook his head. “No, the green.” I pulled a few green stems from the basket as he wrapped the leaves around the flowers and tied them without a binding.
“Beautiful,” I said, amazed at his handiwork.
“One day, when you have the time, I’ll show you how to tie the flowers.” He pushed the bouquets into my hand as I handed him the cash. Banion was old school, person-to-person was his motto. It was also one of the reasons his flower shop wasn’t as widely known. But I understood it. My motto was very much the same. In fact, if you googled Koti Vaughn, you would see closed social media accounts. Being connected used to be the bane of my existence.
Years of conditioning—prep school, followed by a five-year stint in college to get my masters—had been wasted. I was one business move away from making myself immortal before I choked. Well… before I got a reality check. And in the Virgin Islands, on one of the mountains, surrounded by sea, I was a property manager dolling out bottles of wine and Banion’s bouquets to the ones who had gambled and won.
One day-poof. Dream job, gone, swanky apartment, stripped away. I went from being the real estate wolf of Manhattan to the black sheep of St. Thomas.
My piece of the Big Apple had a worm in it.
Like Ian, I spent the first day in St. Thomas staring at the ocean in the safety of my parents’ rental house.
Life was fucked in New York.
But in St. Thomas…
“Don’t forget yours,” Banion said, handing me another armful of beautifully tethered stems.
Thankful to be jerked out of the debilitating cold of my past life, I hugged him before I stepped out into the warming sun.
I set the bags down on the porch one by one before I knocked and got no answer. “Ian?” Knocking again, I pressed my face to the living room window. The house looked abandoned. “Shit.” I gripped an extra key that I’d taken from the office since Ian had stolen mine the night before and let myself in. Aside from a crumpled blanket on the edge of the plush white couch, the place was empty. In hopes that Ian was somewhere wandering the beach, I began to unload the groceries and replaced the bottle of red I’d stolen and added an extra. I skipped the customary liquor bottles to avoid a drunken tirade. The man was already off the rails, I wasn’t about to add strong alcohol to the mix.
I was a hypocrite of sorts. I drank like a fish when I arrived on the island in ashes. I added a few things to the list to keep Ian fed and put out several items I knew he hadn’t brought with him—shaving cream, a razor, deodorant, body wash, shampoo, and extra toilet paper. Just as I’d finished unloading, he walked through the door with several shopping bags in hand. He paused when he saw me standing next to the counter.
“Hi.”
Eyes averted he spoke low. “Seeing as how my parents own the home, I won’t be needing your services, Koti.”
“Well, this request came directly from your mother.” I surrendered the last rental key on the counter. “And I told you I’d be by with groceries.”
“And I rather hoped you’d left by now.”
I bit my tongue as he moved past me and set his bags down. I eyed the contents and saw several shirts and pairs of shorts with tags. I hid my excitement that he was staying. Not because he was ideal company, but because of the financially worry-free months ahead of me.
“I’ll leave you to it. Just let me know if you need anything.”
Gray eyes met my blue briefly. “I won’t.” Devastation. It was clear as day. Anyone who looked at the man could never question what he felt. His eyes were a window, though his features remained stoic.
“You know, Ian, I came here about a year ago a complete mess—”
“I’d like some privacy, please.”
Swallowing my pride, I walked out the door without another word.
Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack.
“Fack!” It was another one of the hundreds of curses that erupted from the Kemp kitchen.
With wide eyes, I watched the wood fly across the porch and onto the sand and heard another loud crash as I stalked the house next door with my phone pressed to my ear.
“So how is my son?” His mother asked as I saw more of Rowan Kemp’s kitchen fly over the railing, off the porch, and into the sand. “Is he adjusting well?”
“Damnit! Oh, fack your motha,” Ian’s voice rang out in frustration. Giggling, I covered the mouthpiece of the phone as another cabinet door hit the sand. He’d been at it for a few hours. It started with an explosive phone call that I managed to avoid, mostly due to my taking cover in the shower and ended with a bang.
“He… is. It looks like he’s remodeling the kitchen.”
In a flash, Ian stood on the porch only in shorts, his chest heaving, a bottle of the red in his hand. He studied the wood in the sand before he glanced at my house. I ducked out of his line of sight and answered her before more banging started. “He’s fine.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful news. Maybe you could put him on the phone?”
More growling ensued and then a clear, “Damn you! EISH!”
“Well, at the moment, I think it would be impossible, he’s in the midst of demolition.”
I cringed at the ripping sound and poked my head out of my screen door just as he hurled more wood over the railing.
“You know he’s always been so good at things like that. He built his father a beautiful bookshelf for his study.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said, as Ian unloaded an entire can of lighter fluid on the discarded wood. I raced around the bottom floor of my house and collected every fire extinguisher I had before I sat them next to my front door. Seconds later I heard the whoosh of the wood go up in flames. The rising inferno seemed to fuel him as he added more of his mother’s kitchen to it piece by piece.
Rowan went on, speaking of her pride and joy. “From boy scouts all the way through college, my boy excelled at everything he did. Honor student, swimming, tennis. I had to beat the women away with a stick.”
Ian chose that moment to snap another cabinet door in half over his knee and used his empty wine bottle to bat it into the burning pile.