Her green truck is in the driveway—wonderful. He strides up to the door and knocks. The pineapple-mango smoothie is sweating in his hand, and while he waits, he worries that her favorite type is pineapple-banana, not pineapple-mango. He should have written it down the second she mentioned it. This is the kind of thing that Mick knows by heart and Baker doesn’t.
He hears voices. A man’s voice. Is Mick there? The voice is very deep. Not Mick’s. Mick has a reedy voice that reminds Baker of some pimply adolescent playing the oboe. So someone else is here. Another man. Someone who took advantage of the broken engagement to make a move?
Baker turns to leave. He doesn’t want to know who it is. Naturally, as Baker is retreating, the door swings open.
“Hello there, young man, can we help you?” The deep male voice is attached to a very tall, very thin older gentleman with a high forehead and curly silver hair sticking out in tufts on either side, like an aging Bozo the Clown, although Bozo might be an ungenerous comparison. Baker immediately knows that it’s Ayers’s father.
“Hello,” Baker says, retracing his steps back to the front door. “I brought some things for Ayers. A smoothie. And chips.”
“Wonderful!” the man bellows. He holds the screen door open. “I’m Phil Wilson and my sweetheart, Sunny—Ayers’s mom—is here as well. You must be the infamous…” Phil turns and calls to someone who is out of Baker’s field of vision. “What’s the soap opera guy’s name again, Sunny?”
“Baker Steele,” a woman’s voice says.
“Baker Steele!” Phil says.
This isn’t exactly the way Baker was hoping the afternoon would go, but he steps inside because he sees no other choice. “Yes, sir,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”
Ayers and her mother are sitting cross-legged on the sofa. Sunny is beautiful; she looks just like Ayers, only older. She’s slender with curly blond-silver hair; she’s wearing a beige jersey dress and lots of silver jewelry. Ayers doesn’t look unhappy to see Baker, which he supposes he should take as a win. “Mom, Dad, this is Baker,” she says. Her expression is neutral, as though she’s introducing her parents to the pizza-delivery guy.
“You’re the one who impregnated my daughter?” Phil says.
“Um…” Baker looks to Ayers to see if she confirms this.
“Dad, please,” Ayers says. “Yes. Baker and I were together. This is his baby.”
“We’re over the moon,” Sunny says. “We flew all the way from Nairobi to be here.”
“Nairobi, wow.” Baker looks at the photographs hanging on Ayers’s living-room wall—her at the Great Pyramids and the Taj Mahal—and he picks out younger versions of Phil and Sunny. “You’re world travelers.”
“Nomads,” Phil says. “The earth is our home.”
“Where are you staying?” Baker asks. He looks around Ayers’s studio; Winnie is asleep on Ayers’s bed. “Not here?”
“We have a room at Caneel Bay for now,” Phil says. “We’re planning on staying a few weeks, then maybe spending some time in Jamaica, the DR, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines…”
“Bequia is supposed to be relatively unspoiled,” Sunny says. “We’ve avoided the Caribbean for the most part because it’s so tacky.”
“Gee, thanks, guys,” Ayers says.
“St. John is different,” Phil says. “It still has that rugged-nature-lover vibe.”
“With spots of luxury,” Sunny says. “Like Caneel.”
“There aren’t any all-inclusives,” Phil says. “Just the term all-inclusive makes me shudder.”
“They’re travel snobs,” Ayers says.
“Anyway, once we complete our little jaunt, we’ll come back here and wait for the baby to be born,” Sunny says.
“That wait could be weeks or months,” Phil says. “So I was going to look into buying a time-share at the Westin.”
“We’ll need a home base here if we ever want to see our grandchild,” Sunny says.
Baker hates to be opportunistic, but…“If you decide you do want a Westin time-share, I can help you,” he says. “I’m working at their sales office right now.”
“Great!” Phil says. “We’ll take one.”
“Dad,” Ayers says. “Don’t tease.”
“Who’s teasing?” Phil says. “I’ll be by to see you in the morning.”
“Free breakfast with mimosas,” Baker says. “And a hundred-dollar resort credit.”
“Hear that, gorgeous?” Phil says to Sunny. “She loves free stuff. We got a discount on our room at Caneel because she told them she’s a travel blogger.”
“We should ask Baker some questions,” Sunny says. “We know nothing about you. Freddy told us the two of you are just casual acquaintances.”
“Mom!” Ayers says.
“Freddy?” Baker says.
“That’s my daughter’s nickname,” Phil says. “Short for ‘Ready, Freddy,’ which was something she used to say often as a child. I can’t believe you don’t even know her nickname.”
“Nobody knows my nickname,” Ayers says. “No. Body.”
Baker is still holding the chips and the smoothie, which is turning his hand numb. He’s afraid to make himself any more comfortable until he’s invited to do so. “Well, I grew up in Iowa City, went to Northwestern, graduated with a business degree, worked on the commodities exchange in Chicago for a few years, and then my soon-to-be-ex-wife, Anna Schaffer, got a job offer in Houston. She’s a cardiothoracic surgeon.”
“A cardiothoracic surgeon?” Sunny says. “That’s impressive!”
Yes, yes, story of Baker’s life—the most impressive thing about him is his wife’s career. “We’re in the process of getting a divorce,” Baker says. “She fell in love with a coworker of hers, a doctor named Louisa Rodriguez”—Baker glances at Ayers’s parents; they seem unfazed by this—“and I have custody of our son, Floyd, who’s four.”
“We’d like to meet Floyd!” Phil says.
“Another time,” Ayers says. She checks her phone, which is sitting in front of her on the coffee table, and what can Baker think but that he’s overstaying his welcome.
“My brother, Cash, and my mother, Irene, are also living with me right now,” Baker says. He takes a breath. He has to put down the smoothie. “Here.” He sets it down in front of Ayers. “I brought you this. It’s pineapple-mango. Your favorite.”
“My favorite after pineapple-banana,” she says. Baker deflates and hands
