Page 112 of Our Last Resort
“Oh, really? Where were you—”
Sabrina notices someone in the distance. Gracefully, she detaches herself from the bar on which she was leaning. Her hand is on his arm again.
“It was good talking to you,” she says.
She takes off before Gabriel can tell her that it felt good for him, too.
A few seconds later, I return.
“So what did I miss?” I ask, completely fucking oblivious.
Gabriel gives his mocktail a little swirl.
“Nothing,” he says.
The next day, Gabriel and I go to the pool.
Sabrina Brenner and her husband are there, too. Gabriel keeps them in a corner of his eye. William has on linen pants and a matching shirt. Sabrina is wearing a white bikini and has wrapped a red cover-up around her waist. She’s reading a book—Gabriel leans forward to get a glimpse of the cover, an oil portrait of a melancholic woman. William scrolls on his phone.
About an hour in, Sabrina and William get into the kind of quiet argument couples know how to have in public. They’re sitting at the edge of their respective chaises, feet on the floor, backs hunched. Their brows are furrowed, their movements abrupt. William speaks, punctuating each syllable with a little shake of his closed fist. Sabrina touches her husband’s arm, but he gets up, grabs his things, and goes.
She stays behind. Slides a finger under the lens of her sunglasses, presumably to wipe off a tear.
Gabriel has talked to this woman—this beautiful, friendly woman—twice in his entire life, but her sorrow moves him.
“She was sitting there,” he tells me. “She looked so sad.”
So you noticed it, too. This thing between the Brenners, like a frayed rope on the verge of snapping. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t in my head.
I don’t say this.
If I speak, Gabriel might catch himself. He might stop talking.
Wherever he’s going with this, I need to hear it.
Eventually, Sabrina leaves the pool, too.
Something wakes up inside Gabriel. He can’t let her go.
“I’m going to go back to the suite,” he tells me.
“You okay?”
“Just hot. I need to sit in the AC for a bit.”
I nod. It annoys me that Gabriel can’t seem to spend one full day by my side. But even I have to admit itishorrendously hot by the pool.
“Want me to come with you?”
“No,” he says, maybe too fast, but I don’t notice. “I mean, I’ll be fine. Enjoy yourself.”
Gabriel tugs his T-shirt back on and hurries away.
He doesn’t have a plan. If there is to be another run-in between him and Sabrina Brenner, he needs fate to engineer it for him. She’s not in the lobby. Not in the dining room, which is closed. She must have gone back to her suite, but—isn’t her husband there? Would she go back to him so soon after a fight?
It occurs to Gabriel that he doesn’t know anything about this woman.
He’s about to give up when he spots her. She’s walking into the lobby, coming from the direction of the entrance lounge. Maybe she just needed to take a walk. Maybe she needed to be alone for a few minutes. In any case, when she sees Gabriel, her face brightens.
