The Southern Side of Paradise Read online

  “Maybe,” Emerson said unenthusiastically.

  Caroline looked at Jack, and he looked at her, and there was something unsettling in that look, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I could tell Caroline was getting a little desperate now, because there were only so many venues that could hold 150-plus people in the Peachtree area. And knowing Emerson, she was going to have a big wedding.

  “You could do it here,” I said, wondering if that was the right offer.

  “Or at my house,” Jack chimed in.

  Emerson nodded. “That would be better, but . . .”

  “I know!” Caroline exclaimed. “I’ve got it. It’s perfect. You can get married on the sandbar.”

  Emerson gasped, and Mark laughed.

  “Yes!” she squealed. “Yes, yes!”

  I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I looked at Jack, and he smiled sadly. There went our wedding. At least we still had Starlite Island.

  “But there’s no way the sandbar will stay out long enough for us to do a reception there, too.”

  “Oh, my gosh!” Sloane exclaimed. “We could do the reception at Starlite Island.”

  “Yes!” Emerson said.

  Never mind.

  “We could transport all the guests on Jack’s boat,” Caroline enthused. She paused. “I mean, if it’s OK with Jack, of course.”

  He nodded and smiled, but I could see the disappointment in his expression. This was our wedding. I think this might have been his first lesson in parenthood: your children’s happiness is more important than your own.

  “Whatever the girls want,” he said. “I’m here to serve.”

  I was about to finally add something to the conversation when I heard, “Hello, hello, Murphy girls,” from the entrance hall.

  “Kyle!” Emerson trilled, running to meet him. Caroline was right behind her. “Thank goodness the coffee is here. My brain will begin functioning.”

  Emerson gave Kyle a side hug as he balanced the Coke crate he had converted to a drink carrier around his neck.

  I didn’t think anything of it. Emerson was a hugger. But Mark rolled his eyes and looked out the window, shaking his head. That was another thing he was going to have to get over. Emerson’s basic personality was affectionate and borderline flirty. It was who she was. Always had been.

  Caroline grabbed two cups and walked back to the table, handing mine to me.

  “Not so fast, Car,” Kyle said, handing her another cup. She raised her eyebrow suspiciously.

  He handed a fourth cup to Emerson. “Sip, please,” he said.

  “What is it?” Emerson asked.

  “Surprise,” Kyle said.

  Mark’s countenance darkened.

  Caroline and Emerson sipped, and both squealed simultaneously.

  “Kyle, you are a god,” Caroline said.

  “I can’t believe you did this!” Emerson said.

  “Green juice,” Caroline said, giving me a look that said, He sure as hell didn’t start making green juice for me.

  We had both long suspected that Kyle had a bit of a crush on Emerson.

  “Ask and you shall receive,” Sloane said.

  Emerson put her hand to her heart. “Kyle, thank you.”

  “I figured if you were going to be living here, you couldn’t be without your favorite green juice.” He shrugged as if it were nothing. But the look he gave her when he said it told me absolutely everything.

  SIX

  emerson: limelight

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it every now and then. Not every single time I saw Kyle, but occasionally. And obviously, when he was the first person I saw when I arrived back in Peachtree Bluff last January, I had to question whether that was some sort of sign. But then Mark and I fell into our old routine at rocket speed. And I knew then that Mark was the one for me. That one night I’d shared with Kyle all those years ago had been just that: a night. One single night that didn’t mean much of anything.

  I had been in LA almost a year when I met Kyle for the first time. I’d been starting to get small roles here and there, and I had that feeling, that glorious, golden feeling. Getting what you want is fabulous, attaining the goal, crossing the finish line. But the feeling you get when you know that you’re almost there, that you’re on your way to your dreams, that you might be getting everything you ever wanted in short order . . . that feeling is almost better.

  I thought of that feeling, that same feeling I had now, whenever I was with Kyle.

  When I saw Kyle that first morning at the LA coffee house I frequented, I noticed him. Who wouldn’t? He was devastatingly handsome. I knew right away that he must be an actor or, like me, a wannabe actor. He smiled at me, and I smiled at him, and that was it. Insignificant.

  But when he walked into the restaurant where I was waitressing that night, I recognized him immediately. And I gave my friend Ellen five bucks to switch tables with me. I had seen him twice in one day. That had to mean something.

  When I went over to Kyle’s table, he cocked his head to the side. “I know you . . .” he said, like he couldn’t quite place me.

  “Maybe,” I said. “You look kind of familiar.” He didn’t say anything, so I added, “Maybe we’ve run into each other at a casting call or something?”

  Kyle and all his friends had burst out laughing, but I sensed it wasn’t at my expense. I could tell already that there was something completely genuine about Kyle that you couldn’t find much in this town, where everyone spent most of their time trying to be someone else.

  “What?” I had asked, amused by the fun they were having.

  One of Kyle’s friends smacked him on the back and said, “This guy is about as far from Hollywood as you can imagine.”

  Kyle shook his head. “Yeah. No offense—I think what you do is awesome—but I’m not into all that.”

  “It’s a shame,” I said. “With that face?”

  “You should see his abs,” another of his friends chimed in, making him groan.

  I still don’t know why I said what I said next. It was totally unlike me. Much too forward. But with no permission from my brain, my mouth said, “I would really like that.”

  I immediately put my hand to my mouth, blushing. “I am so sorry.” I cleared my throat and smiled, recovering. “I’m kidding, of course.”

  “No, you’re not,” another friend said.

  Kyle was clearly uncomfortable.

  “I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “I’ll get your waters, and then your waitress will be right over.”

  I grabbed Ellen and said, “You have to switch back with me.”

  She shook her head and looked at me like I was crazy. “What? Why? No.”

  “I just made a huge ass out of myself, and I need you. Please.”

  Ellen sighed. She was a nice girl. I went over to my new table and tried to forget how embarrassed I was.

  An hour later, I felt someone behind me. When I turned, I almost bumped right into Kyle.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Now I was nervous. I didn’t want him to think that I was some slutty waitress he could pick up and take home. “I’m going to Limelight to get a drink,” he’d said. “Just me. I’d love it if I saw you there. If not, I understand.”

  I shook my head. “I’m so embarrassed. I’m not like that at all.”

  He smiled at me warmly. “Like I said, I’ll be there. If you want to come, I’d really like to get to know you.”

  It was a tempting offer, but I already knew I wouldn’t go. Two hours later, though, as I was walking home, I realized that I was passing right by Limelight. I could just stop in.

  I could use a drink, I told myself. With what I was living off of, I could also use someone to buy it for me.

  Plus, a little voice inside my head said, you never know when you might meet someone who could help your love life or your career.

  I smiled to myself, thinking about the call I had gotten from my agent earlier. My agent! I had an agent! I had
gotten a callback. I felt it again, the sense that this was my moment, that I would look back on this time and realize that everything in my life that mattered was happening right here, right now. I had left Mark behind months earlier, and although it had broken something inside me to let him go, I knew I’d never be whole if I didn’t pursue my dream. And I was doing it.

  That gave me the courage to open the door to Limelight and walk through it. True to his word, Kyle was sitting alone at the bar, his back to me, sipping something from a rocks glass. When he turned to look toward the front door and smiled at me, I knew it wasn’t the first time he had checked to see if I was coming in. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, which was ridiculous. He didn’t even know my name.

  “You made it,” he said.

  I decided to get it out in the open, erase the embarrassment. “But you have your shirt on, so I’m leaving.” We both laughed.

  He patted the stool beside him, and I slid onto it. He looked into my eyes and stared at me long and hard. Then he turned back to the bartender and said, “Champagne with a splash of bourbon, muddled mint, and one sugar cube for my friend.” Then he looked back at me, smiled, turned to the bartender, and said, “And two strawberries, please.”

  I laughed. “That’s not what I order.”

  Kyle smiled confidently. “It’s what you’ll order from now on,” he said. “Trust me. It will change your life.” I smiled back at him. “I’m Kyle, by the way.” He held his hand out to me, and I shook it, holding it longer than necessary.

  “Emerson Murphy,” I said as the bartender set the drink down in front of me.

  I took a sip.

  “Well?” Kyle asked.

  I smiled. “It’s fabulous.”

  “Perfect drink for a starlet.”

  I could feel my eyes widening, that familiar sense of pride I got when thinking of my hometown welling up in me.

  “What did you say?”

  “Perfect drink for a starlet?”

  I laughed. “Oh! I thought you said Starlite. It’s this little island across from my house where I grew up. My sisters and I spent our summers playing there every day. It’s kind of . . . heaven on earth.”

  Kyle smiled. “Then that’s your drink. The Starlite Starlet.”

  The bartender came over. “Anybody need another?”

  “We’ll have another Starlite Starlet,” Kyle said.

  The bartender laughed. “I like that. Can I add that to the cocktail menu, man?”

  When the bartender was gone, Kyle said, “I hear having a drink named after you is the first step to getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”

  It felt significant, having my drink on the menu, having the island where I had grown up associated with me, associated with LA in any way. In that moment, my two worlds converged. Sitting with Kyle that night was the first time I’d even felt like that was possible.

  Two hours later, I asked Kyle to walk me home. I should have been bone-tired from the day of auditions, the evening of waitressing, and the night of drinking. But I felt alive, on fire, like anything could happen. Kyle’s confidence was rubbing off on me already.

  “I never asked you what you do,” I said, as we were walking.

  Kyle took my hand. “Oh,” he said, “a little of this, a little of that.”

  I felt my warning bells go off. I stopped walking. “Please tell me you aren’t a drug dealer or the head of a prostitution ring.”

  Kyle dropped my hand and laughed so hard I was afraid he had quit breathing. “No, no. I own that coffee shop you were in this morning.”

  I looked at him, wide-eyed. “You knew I was in the coffee shop this morning? I thought you weren’t sure where you’d seen me.”

  He took my hand again. “When Emerson Murphy walks into your coffee shop, you don’t forget.”

  He was cute.

  “So why coffee, Kyle?”

  “Just a hunch. I think coffee is going to be really big.”

  “If your coffee skills are anything like your cocktail skills, then I think you have a bright future.”

  When we got to my building, he insisted on walking me to my door. I slid the key into the lock and bit my lip. I had turned over a new leaf, and I had promised myself no more sleeping with virtual strangers. If I invited him in, was that what he would expect?

  As I opened the door, Kyle said, “It was really nice to meet you, Emerson Murphy, Starlite starlet.”

  He didn’t so much as lean in to kiss me. As he turned to leave, a strangled “Wait” escaped my throat.

  He turned and smiled at me again, those rows of teeth so perfect. His hands were in his shorts pockets, making him seem like a little boy. I bet he wore shorts even when it was cold outside. He was one of those guys.

  I smiled coyly. “Do you want to come in?”

  He exhaled like his life was hinging on that question. “Thank goodness,” he said. “I really need to use the bathroom.”

  We both laughed, and I pointed toward the bathroom door.

  When Kyle reemerged, I was sitting on the couch and had poured us each a glass of the cheap white wine I had in my fridge. I was really lucky I didn’t have a roommate. I would never admit it to anyone, not even my mom, but the reason I didn’t have a roommate was that Caroline paid half my rent. She was a good sister. I’d promised to pay her back one day, and she had said, “I think of it as a nondeductible charitable expense. I’m a patron of the arts.”

  “I’ll warn you, this is not quite as good as the Starlite Starlet.”

  Kyle sat down close to me, angling his body so he could see me, and took the glass of wine. “I like the quote on your mirror,” he said.

  I took a sip of wine and smiled. “I like it, too. I thought about getting a tattoo of it, but I couldn’t decide where.” I shrugged. “Having a decal made and sticking it to my mirror seemed like less of a commitment.”

  “Less painful, too,” Kyle said. He turned my wrist over and pretended to write on my forearm with the tip of his finger, Though she be but little, she is fierce.

  Every letter caused a trail of goose bumps to break out. When he was finished, he raised the inside of my wrist to his mouth and kissed it gently. “That would have been the perfect spot for it,” he whispered.

  I felt my cheeks flush. There was something about this guy. I was always chasing men who could help my career, give me a leg up. It wasn’t like I was sleeping with directors in exchange for parts or anything, but the people from the world I was beginning to break into were so potently attractive to me. When I was with them, I felt more glamorous, more “in.” I loved feeling that way.

  So much so that it caught me off guard how quickly I had taken to Kyle. He was different from the men I normally dated. Gorgeous, yes. But also soft-spoken. He wasn’t overtly powerful, yet he had some sort of power over me. I felt like simply being beside him opened up something inside me, something I had never really felt before.

  I had to remind myself that I had only just met the man, for heaven’s sake.

  I swallowed and nodded. “It sure would have.”

  He laughed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I just love that Southern accent.”

  I gasped. “I do not have a Southern accent.” I had lived in Manhattan for the first ten years of my life, until my dad died, so I had convinced myself that I had the neutral accent that was perfect for an actress. Yet I had to admit that Southern roles were awfully easy for me to get.

  He smiled. “No, no. I love it. I’m actually getting ready to move to Georgia. I’m opening another coffee shop there. Giving this one to my cousin Keith.”

  I thought about telling him that I had lived in Georgia for most of my life, that my mom was still there. But then I would have to go to the trouble of explaining where Peachtree Bluff was, and it wasn’t worth it. I knew I’d never see him again anyway.

  “Good peaches,” I said, leaning forward the slightest bit, indicating to him that he could kiss me but not wanting
to be so forward as to kiss him.

  He took my cue, putting his hand on my cheek, stroking my chin with his thumb. His lips met mine in a way that was soft and warm and good. It felt almost familiar, like coming home. It was the sweetest kiss I had had in quite some time. It was the first kiss, in fact, that made me wonder if maybe I had been right to leave Mark—and the life we could have had—behind.

  Now, all these years later, the script had flipped. It was Kyle I had left behind. It was Mark I had come back to. As I took the last sip of green juice Kyle had made for me and threw the cup into Mom’s bathroom trash can, taking her concealer out of her makeup bag and piling on yet more so she wouldn’t notice the deep purple circles under my eyes, the ones that were a visible sign on my face that something wasn’t right inside my body, I had to admit to myself that the Kyle in the here and now had continued to impress me just as much as the Kyle of all those years ago.

  He was different now, of course. He had grown up, become even more sure of himself, a man in every sense of the word. As I added concealer to the deep red bruise above my elbow, the one I had gotten from merely bumping the chair this morning, I had the disturbing thought that Kyle might always be the one who got away. And that, worse still, we would both be right here to remember it every day.

  SEVEN

  ansley: grack

  I had made a fledgling attempt at Instagram in the past few years to share photos of my design work. But I was less than consistent and mostly just enjoyed looking at pictures of my friends’ grandchildren. As I scrolled through my feed, enjoying the noises of my girls drying and fixing one another’s hair upstairs as they got ready for their night out, a new story popped up on Caroline’s profile, a video of the three of them singing into hairbrushes in the mirror, just like the old days. I clicked on the icon by her name to see if she had posted any pictures of Preston lately that I had missed. And I almost dropped the phone. “Caroline!” I called, running up the stairs.

  Emerson was applying blush to Sloane’s cheeks, and Caroline was holding a round brush in one hand and a blow-dryer in the other. She turned it off when she saw me in the mirror.