• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 116 0

And I started tearing up like I had just witnessed the death of my best friend. And so did she. And we’re sitting there on the beach, just crying. And we’re looking out at the water. It was that perfect water. I could almost hear the “Caaahmmm to Jamaaaaaiiccaa!” coming off the ocean. The people at the tables next to us tried to pretend they couldn’t hear us. We were that couple who was ruining other people’s paradise vacation. Everything on the island was picture perfect except us. We could have had this argument at any coffee shop in New York, but we had to have it here. I sat there marveling at that water, crying. And so did Abbie. And that was day one of our Caribbean dream vacation.

Mitch Hedberg used to have a joke about how it’s hard to get into an argument when you’re staying in a tent: “What do you do? Slam the flap?” An island is even worse. It’s not so conducive to breakups. You’re on a strip of land in the middle of the ocean. What are you going to do, fly away? Maybe build one of those makeshift palm tree planes they made on Gilligan’s Island?

For the first couple of days, we stayed in the hotel room. Abbie would disappear for hours at a time. When she got back, I’d ask where she’d gone and she wouldn’t respond, as though I wasn’t allowed to know. She had a point. We were literally too close for comfort. At a certain point I was upgraded to her business voice, which, since then, I’ve witnessed in a lot of breakups. All of a sudden she got cheery, distant, and professional.

“What can I do for you?

“Do you want to go for a walk tonight?”

And she’s like, “We’re not open past six.”

“Okay. Do you want to get coffee?”

“If you’d like to admit you’re wrong, press one. If you’d like to discuss your faults in detail, press two. If you’d like to spend less time on the road, press all the buttons at once and give up your dreams.”

Finally I said, “Why don’t we try to enjoy the things that we’d normally enjoy on an island? We’re still friends, right?”

“Okay.” We opened the hotel activity brochure and she suggested that we go scuba diving. This was insane. Abbie was almost as afraid of the water as she was of flying. And scuba diving is like flying underwater.

So we went scuba diving. Scuba diving transcends every rule you’ve ever held on to. Rules like “You can’t breathe underwater” or “If you see a shark, you should run away.” But we did it anyway. We swam through schools of thousands of colorful tropical fish. We even swam by sharks. And when we returned to the resort, I was euphoric and so was Abbie and I went to put my arm around her and she pulled away with her business demeanor and said, “That was fun.”

That night we swam out to this floating trampoline. We were jumping up and down six or seven feet into the air and laughing. I thought, This is just like it was before. This is going to work out. Abbie made a giant leap into the water. And I jumped down after her and emerged right behind her putting my arms around her waist. And she pulled away. It was just inches away, but it felt like miles. And that was the distance I would feel for the rest of my time with Abbie.

The next day Abbie decided she wanted to leave the trip early. I had to stay, to host the World Travel Awards, but I said, “Okay.” I asked the event coordinator if there was an easier way to get to the airport. He said there was a helicopter and I thought Abbie would say, “No way.” But she said, “Great. A helicopter.”

Later that day I walked Abbie to the helicopter landing and we both realized that the helicopter driver must have been fifteen years old. At most a young seventeen. The helicopter looked about as airworthy as the palm tree plane on Gilligan’s Island and I thought Abbie would say, “No thanks,” but she said, “Great. I’ll see ya.”

Abbie flew off in a rickety helicopter over the rain forest and hilly terrain of St. Lucia. She had left a relationship that by all estimation couldn’t possibly end and left an island that seemed inescapable. She just flew away.

Abbie met someone named Nathan and they’re still together today. And I met