On the Island (On the Island, #1)

by Tracey Garvis Graves

I waited for her to open her eyes. They were amazing, big and dark grayish blue. They were the first thing I noticed when I met her. She had come to our apartment to interview with my parents, and I was embarrassed because she was beautiful and I was skinny and bald and looked like shit.

“Yes. She told me to ask myself if my life was better with him or without him.”

“I wonder how many more chickens there are.” “I don’t know. But we’re going to find every one of them.”

“Do you want to know what your very best quality is?” “Is it that I’m so good-looking?” he deadpanned. I started laughing again. “I see the compliment I paid you went straight to your head. No, that’s not it. I want you to know that it’s almost impossible not to be happy when you’re around.”

I had every reason to dress up. Dinner was always special when you killed it, instead of the other way around.

The selfish part of me, however, couldn’t fathom not falling asleep in his arms or being with him every day. I needed T.J., and the thought of being away from him bothered me more than I wanted to admit.

“I’ve been in love with you for months. I’m telling you now because I think you love me, too, Anna. You just don’t think you’re supposed to. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. I can wait.”

I jumped into T.J.’s arms as soon as the door closed, wrapping my legs around his waist. He carried me down the hallway while I kissed his neck. “Where?” he asked. I grabbed the doorway when we reached the spare bedroom. “Here.”

“So you’re saying you had a pet chicken named Chicken?” David asked. “It used to sit in Anna’s lap,” T.J. said. “Amazing,” David said.

I kissed her as soon as we were inside her apartment, and I wasn’t gentle about it, holding her face firmly in my hands and pressing my lips hard against hers. She wasn’t anyone’s to own—I knew that—but right then she was mine.

“No. It’s because I would never marry a man who only asked me because he felt he had to.”

“But there’s no way I could ever hold a baby in my arms that had his eyes, or his smile, if I couldn’t have him, too.”

“I’ve thought about you all day,” he said. “On the island, I promised that if you just held on we would spend this Christmas together, in Chicago. I will always keep my promises to you, Anna.”

“You were right. I did need to be on my own. But some of the things you wanted me to experience already passed me by, and I can’t go back. I know what I want and it’s you, Anna. I love you, and I miss you. So much.” “I don’t fit in your world.” “Neither do I,” he said, his expression tender yet resolute. “So let’s make our own. We’ve done it before.”

Is your life better with him, Anna, or without him? I decided, right then, standing on that sidewalk, to stop worrying about things that might never go wrong.

“I never wanted anyone else, T.J. I just wanted what was best for you.” “You are what’s best for me,” he said, cradling my head in his arms, his legs intertwined with mine. “I’m not going anywhere, Anna. This is right where I want to be.”

“I want you to be my wife. There’s no one else I want to spend the rest of my life with. We can live out here, you, me, our kids, and Bo. But I get it now, Anna. My decisions affect you, too. So now you have one of your own to make. Will you marry me?”

“Two will be hard,” everyone said, but T.J. and I know what hard is, and being blessed with two healthy babies isn’t it. I’m not saying it’s easy, though. We have our days.

A police officer from Malé called us with a few questions, hoping to close out the case of a missing person. The family of a man who disappeared in May of 1999 had recently discovered a journal in his belongings. In it, Owen Sparks, a dot-com millionaire from California, wrote in meticulous detail about a plan to trade his high-pressure lifestyle for the peace and solitude of island living in the Maldives. They followed his trail to Malé, but that’s where it ended. The officer wanted to know more about the skeleton T.J. and I discovered. There’s no way to know for sure if it was him, but it seems likely. I wonder if Owen would have made it if he’d had someone to lean on, the way T.J. and I did. I guess we’ll never know.

I often think about the island. When the kids are older, we’ll have quite a story to tell them. We’ll edit, of course. We’ll also tell them that this house, and the property that surrounds it, is our island. And that T.J. and I are finally home.