WHO: Leilani Blake and Wesley Atwood. WHEN: Monday, April 8, 2019 around 9:00 AM WHERE: Grand Dining Room SUMMARY: Leila and Wes meet up for breakfast where she tries to talk to him about the possibility of seeing Sydney and they end up having a moment regarding Jude and Jeremiah. WARNINGS: Depression and introspective talk of loss.
Twenty-four hours ago, Leilani had been wearing sunglasses to hide her red-rimmed eyes that were swollen from a lack of sleep and the uncontrollable tears that refused to stop falling. This morning, she hadn't had much of an opportunity to catch up on her sleep, but it was the bloodshot sensitivity to light that was hiding behind her dark lenses now.
She wasn't sure what time Wes had returned to the room — or if he had at all, for that matter. Leila had vaguely been aware of the fact that both beds had been empty when she'd finally dragged herself back to the room around three o'clock in the morning. That was about the only thing she'd been aware of, because when she'd woken up around six, she'd been planted face-down across her bed, feet hanging off the side of the mattress, fully clothed. Wes' bed didn't look touched at all.
She was worried about him. She didn't know if he was avoiding her, specifically, or if he just needed space to deal with being here. Same as she had, she guessed. She'd walked around for a while before Brand had joined her at the pool for his smoke break. Leila had never been a smoker, and wasn't aiming to try, but one vice led to another and she'd planted herself in the bar until the tequila had decided that she wasn't actually going to see the sunrise.
The inside of her head was banging louder than an EDM concert when she roused only a few hours later. A couple of Ibuprofen, a bottle of water, and a long bath seemed to be a healthier choice than the so-called hair of the dog, but she was still battling regret and a foul mood by the time she'd dressed, applied enough makeup to cover the dark shadows beneath her eyes, and set up a breakfast date with Wes so that they could at least touch base. They'd agreed to share a room and Leila had thought the company might help with being here, difficult as it might be, but now she was starting to wonder if the flight down was the longest amount of time she and Wes would be able to spend together without outside intervention.
Shortly after nailing down a time to meet, she left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby. She couldn't remember riding it up earlier, but a shiver did run down her spine as she recalled the sound of that scream she'd heard the previous night. It had completely slipped her mind until the doors slid shut, and Leila couldn't help but wonder what had come of that. Although she'd waited around to find out if the sound had been mechanical, as she'd been hoping, it hadn't come again. Now she hoped that everyone was safe and accounted for this morning….
Instead of being seated in the dining room, she leaned against the wall just outside the large doorway and occupied herself with her phone and the hotel's network while she waited for Wes to join her. They'd learned at dinner that the place was large, and she didn't want him to have to hunt for her this morning.
“Hey,” Wes called as he rounded the corner nearly fifteen minutes after their correspondence on the network. “Ready to head in?”
He wasn’t oblivious to her sunglasses, but instead chose not to say anything. He imagined she wouldn’t be the only person amongst them to wear them. There were circles beneath his eyes, but Wes didn’t look fatigued. If anything, he looked peaceful. He had dug deep to put up sturdy walls against those that insisted on caring about him--helping him.
“I didn’t read the menu,” he added. “Is there anything that sounds particularly good?”
"Brooke says the waffles are the best thing she's ever eaten. Brand and this guy from Texas also give the food two semi-reluctant thumbs up. So...you're probably safe with whatever looks good." Leila looked up from her phone and gave Wes a quick look over before she pushed away from the wall. He didn't look much worse—any worse, really—than yesterday. Something about that nagged at her, but she nodded anyway.
"So where did you really end up spending the night last night?" she asked as they entered the dining room.
The dining room was beautiful. He wondered for a moment if their friends had noticed. Or if they’d started a food fight. The latter seemed more likely of the two options. He glanced up at her question and smiled. “Here and there,” was his noncommittal answer.
Wes snagged two plates and passed one to Leila before collecting napkins and rolls of silverware. “Did you get any sleep?”
"Here and there." He might not have been able to see her eyes, but the tilt of her head and her body language spoke volumes. Two could play his game.
But Leila did thank him as he passed her a plate. "What about today? What are your plans? Brand said he's thinking about going on one of the tours the hotel set up. I'm not sure that's my idea of fun—oooh! Wait. That's right. None of this is." She eyed the selection of parfaits and cereal, but her hangover demanded something more substantial to soak up the rest of the toxins in her body. "But I guess it would be an opportunity to get out of here for a few hours."
“I didn’t really make plans,” he said, moving on with the conversation and through the line. He wasn’t hungry. He passed by most of the offerings, tapping the edge of the plate lightly against the palm of his hand. The idea of trekking through the island pretending to be happy was likely worse than the idea of being on the island at all—or choosing to stay in the same room as his dead best friend’s girlfriend.
As he passed by the sausage and eggs, he pressed a portion onto his plate and grabbed a piece of bacon, waiting for Leila to finish before they could find a table. “Are you thinking about going on a tour?”
Leila took a couple of slices of bacon and then skipped over everything else to make a beeline for the waffles. It wasn't just because Brooke had recommended them; the words 'Belgian waffle' had a way of making her want one, despite the queasy feeling in her stomach. She ladled the pina colada sauce on, followed it with a heaping scoop of whipped cream, and then joined back up with Wes.
She shrugged in answer to his question. "I don't know. You got an alternative in mind?" When they found an empty table, she set her plate down and then looked back over her shoulder to search for the station where the beverages were set up. "I need coffee. Want something to drink while I'm over there?"
There were lots of things he could do. Continue the hours of pacing along the accessible parts of the hotel. Attempt to find the hiring manager at the bar. Take freelance writing jobs online. Find the local hospital and donate blood. Her voice called him back to attention.
Wes glanced up as she made a move to leave. “I can get that for you,” he said, already taking two steps toward the beverage table. “It’s no problem.”
Her mouth was open to protest, but Wes was already gone. With a sigh, Leila dropped down into one of the upholstered chairs and unrolled her silverware to place her napkin in her lap.
It wasn't lost on her that Wes hadn't given her a real answer to one damn question she'd asked him this morning, even though none of them were really life-or-death serious. With the back of her fork, she pushed the bacon around on her plate until he returned with the coffee she'd wanted. "Thanks," she said as he set it down, and then she went about adding cream and sugar to make it palatable.
There were things on her mind, lots of them, and her head wasn't a suitable place for any of it right now. But there was something in particular that she'd been turning over and over since she'd first talked to Wes about the invitation, and if he wasn't in the mood for small talk, she didn't see why she shouldn't go for broke and bring the topic up now.
"You know there's one thing we haven't really talked about since we decided to come here, right?"
He arched an eyebrow at her question, but didn’t bother to look up. Instead, he pushed food around his plate and broke the bacon into smaller pieces until it was nothing but crumbs. He didn’t answer right away, but took a long sip of orange juice before he did.
“How much you love me?” he teased, though the tone felt flat and empty. “We never need to discuss that.”
"True. Maybe. But the thing I was referring to, well, it's going to be hard not to discuss that, if that pops up on the other side of the egg station one morning." Leila cut a wedge from her waffle and dragged it through the excess sauce. But she didn't eat it. "Have you talked to her at all? You know the odds are pretty good that she'll show up."
Play dumb. It was his mantra. Pretend it was fine. Just keep going. He didn’t talk about her in the same way that he didn’t talk about them. It was a part of his past he carried around with deep regret.
“Brooke?” he offered, nudging the contents of his plate to one side or the other until it looked like he’d eaten something. “She’s always around here somewhere. Did I tell you I met someone at the bar last night?”
She sat back in her chair, waffle still stuck to the end of her fork. Was he being serious? And yet...she couldn't help but take the bait. "No. Who'd you meet?" Leila finally tasted the waffle and had to admit that Brooke was not entirely wrong. Her expression, however, suggested it was the most foul thing that had ever been in her mouth. "I wasn't talking about Brooke, b-t-dub, and you know it."
At Leila’s facial grimace, Wes canted his head to the side. He took another sip of orange juice before checking his watch—a bad habit—it had barely been ten minutes. “Her name is Temperance. She seems pretty nice. I almost knocked her over at the bar and bought her a drink in apology. Have you met anyone new lately?”
Leila cut another bite of waffle and lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted gesture. "I've been talking to some guy from Texas on the network. Not sure who he lost, but he's got the vibe." She'd like to say that they were the kind of people who could tease each other about meeting new people in bars or online, but they both knew each other's situation far too well—even if it was something Wes still seemed determined to not talk about.
"That's a no on Sydney then?"
If she was still eating breakfast, it must not be too terrible. He nodded about the guy in Texas. Nodded about loss. Glanced up at the name. For a second, Wes stared at Leila, guilt gripping his features as her name dug a hole in his heart. The hole he’d put there himself. His lips tightened into a firm smile.
“Is Brand meeting you for a tour, then?”
With a slight tilt of her head that mimicked his earlier questioning glance, Leila set her fork down on her plate. "So you're just not going to really answer anything I ask? A'ight, cool, cool." She stuffed the bite of waffle into her mouth, quickly followed by another, and nodded. "Cool." Only it came out more like, Kew, and she seemed a little less than cool with it all.
She was going to regret eating so fast. Taking a breath once she swallowed, she washed the carbs down with a sip of hot coffee. "I don't know. I haven't decided which tour to go on yet, if either. The whole thing…." Treating this trip like anything other than what it was seemed ridiculous, but the alternative to getting out of the hotel was to be in the hotel, and that was even less appealing. "If I go on one...will you go with me?" It was another question, but this one was a bit more important. She didn't want to be alone.
Wes felt a little bad as he watched Leila pick up the pace of her eating. But there were some things he didn’t want to talk about. She was one of them. His smile faded as he glanced up and away from their table, scouting for salvation.
But she mercifully agreed to change the subject. This question, while it was still the opposite of what he wanted to do, was simple to answer. “Of course,” he said. “Just tell me when and where, I’ll be there.” He would never leave her alone, not truly, if she needed him.
"Thank you." Leila let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Her waffle was less than half eaten, but she sat back again with her cup of coffee and looked around.
"Do you think it was like this?" she asked eventually. The dining room was starting to empty out as breakfast wound down. "When they were here?" They were never far from her thoughts, and being here like this made her wonder with every new thing she saw, what they'd felt and seen and thought about while they'd been here. "Do you think they looked around and wondered what we'd think about being here?"
Thinking about how things might have gone or might have been was hard. He thought about them constantly. His friends would have speculated about them both, he knew, because this trip had been their trip, too. That was part of surviving. The wondering. The what ifs.
“Of course they did.” He didn’t want to talk about that either. He never wanted to talk about them. Not to Leila. Not to Brooke. He cleared his throat after a moment, looking around at the other tables to take in the scene. There were all types of people. Some happy. Some sad. Some fighting. Some laughing. All of him felt the same. Pained. Tired. Gray.
“What are you hoping to get out of the tour?” he asked.
She wasn't playing his game when she didn't answer his question. She was simply stuck in a moment of remembering...and imagining. Remembering every breakfast she'd ever shared with her brother. Her mom making eggs at the stove. Oatmeal on cold days, with cinnamon and sugar. Waffles on their birthdays. Dad reading the paper when they were young, upgrading to his laptop and then a smartphone over the years. There were mornings when Jude had been at their table too. And Wes. The three boys in the same clothes they'd slept in after staying up all night playing video games or watching movies, or whatever it was they'd done when Leila was still too young to stay up with them. Imagining those same bedheads at this table, eating as much as their bottomless stomachs could hold before running out to explore the island….
"I don't know if he thought about me." There was no reason to clarify which 'he' she meant. Leila wanted to believe that Jude hadn't stayed mad at her. She wanted to believe that he'd forgiven her. That as much fun as he might have been having, that there was a part of him that was eager to fly back home so he could tell her all about it. But every time she remembered just how much he'd loved her, she also remembered the look on his face that last morning before her screen had gone blank.
It was a lie. She knew he'd thought about her. She just hoped that some of those thoughts had been good. "He was so mad."
Wes knew that wasn’t true. His friend might have been upset or hurt or angry, but he wouldn’t have spent the trip sitting in that. He would have rallied and had a great time. It was impossible, after all, to be angry around Jer and the rest of the frat bros. Their energy was infectious.
He sighed. “Leila. He loved you so much. I don’t think that anger was about you. I think he was angry for you.” He pushed his plate away from him and thanked a dining room attendant as they came to whisk it away. He folded his hands in front of him. “If anything, he’d be hurt that you think he wouldn’t think about you.” Glancing back toward the buffet of food, he gestured with his head toward the spread. “And you know they would’ve eaten so much of this stuff. I’m sure they were having a great time.” Even without them.
There was a spark of something in her eyes, but Leila choked back the words that rose up in her throat with a burning acidity. This wasn't what she and Wes did, and she didn't want to argue with him, but when was the last time they'd really been honest with each other?
"Yeah." It was the easiest reply. To everything. Yeah, Jude had loved her. She knew that. It wasn't a question in her mind. Yeah, he had been angry at her, and for her too. So angry. Yeah, he'd be hurt if he thought even for a second that she really believed she might not have crossed his mind at all. But she didn't. Then again, hurting him had apparently been the only thing she could do at the end. And yeah. They'd have eaten enough to cover the cost of their stay. At least. They were sure to have been having a great time. Until they weren't.
Sliding her chair back, she stood and exhaled a small sigh. "I think I'm leaning toward the hiking tour. Maybe. So I'll see you again around 12:45 in the lobby?"
He felt relief radiate through his body as she stood to leave. He followed suit, nodding. “Absolutely. I’ll catch up with you in the lobby before the tour starts.” It gave him enough time to find a quiet place to rest where he wouldn’t be disturbed.
Wes was eager to free himself from the confines of a conversation with Leila that dealt with the people they loved. It was too hard to talk about them even after so much time had passed. Especially when he knew how deeply Jude had felt for Leila. He quickly put distance between them, winding his way through the halls and out into the fresh air where he knew he could find a safe space to hide from the emotional exhaustion that was already threatening to overtake him.