All of Me

4. Chapter Four - Tomorrow-1

4

Chapter Four - Tomorrow

Three years later…

The Island, San Juan Islands, Washington State

Lazlo Schuler pulled his car off the ferry boat and onto the island. The trip from Seattle had taken longer than he had expected, and he wondered now how wise it had been to drive rather than catch a plane and rent a car.

Luckily for him, the house he had rented for the next month wasn’t far from the ferry port and soon he was inside, waiting for the realtor to leave him alone.

That was why he was here, after all. To be alone.

Lazlo Schuler was tired. No, more than tired; he simply had nothing left in him. In the last few years, he’d almost lost his beloved sister, India Blue, for the second time, and their adored Korean friend to a psychopathic killer, almost lost another to a vengeful ex-wife, and had lost his close friend Coco to an unexpected pregnancy complication. He was tired of loss, of grieving.

And he was tired of work. He managed not only his sister’s career but others in the entertainment business, and most of them demanded more time than he could give.

But not India. He would work twenty-four-seven for his adopted sister, but it was she who sat him down two weeks ago and had gently told him she was worried.

He had gaped at her. “Indy… you’re worried about me?”

She nodded, her dark eyes full of love and concern. “For a long time now. You’ve been our rock, all of us. With what happened to Sun and me, for losing Coco, and what’s just happened to Jess, you’ve been there for all of us.”

“That’s my job.”

“But you never, ever ask us for anything,” India said, a note of frustration creeping into her soft voice.

“I don’t need anything, bubba. Now that you’re safe, Jess is safe, I have no worries.”

But even as he’d said it, he knew he wasn’t convincing India because he knew it wasn’t true. He wasn’t doing okay, not at all. Sleep evaded him every night and to distract himself from the nightmares that plagued him, he would work. The clients who weren’t personal friends were delighted, of course, but Lazlo was exhausted.

The final straw came when India played a curveball, and Lazlo came home one day to find his best friend, Alex Rogers, waiting for him.

Alex had been AWOL for a couple of years, ever since Coco Conrad, his roommate and the mother of his unborn child had died unexpectedly. Alex had been beyond grief and had disappeared back to his family in Canada. None of them ever thought they would see him again.

“But India called me and begged to come,” he told Lazlo that evening. “Because she’s scared out of her mind for you, Laz. Don’t forget Indy knows the signs of a breakdown; she had that with Massi, and she got him through it. She sees the same signs with you, but she says you won’t give anything away.”

Alex talked to him over the next few days and convinced Lazlo to take a break. “Listen, I’ll take over for you while you’re on sabbatical. I’m not trying to steal your clients, but I need something to do. Hanging out with my family has been what I needed, but I want to get back to work. I’ll even do it for free. It’s not like I can’t afford to. I’ll just be a placeholder.”

Lazlo trusted Alex at his word and after that evening, he had slept better than he had in years. He knew he needed to get away, but he was still too loathe to leave the country in case India needed him. She rolled her eyes, but as they talked about various locations, it was India who had suggested Washington.

“Remember when we went on that shindig with Quartet? We all stayed in that hotel on San Juan Island? It was bliss and well out of the way, but not isolated. Those islands, man, that would be prefect.”

Lazlo had agreed, and so now as he bid the realtor to his rental goodbye, he closed the door and went into the living room. He’d rented the place furnished because he didn’t want the hassle of being in an empty house—he was there to chill, after all.

In the corner of the living room sat a few boxes he’d had shipped: mostly books he’d been meaning to read for a while. He retrieved his laptop from his bag and flicked it on, making himself a cup of coffee while he waited for it to boot up. He couldn’t resist checking his emails but laughed aloud when he saw twenty emails from India, all of them reading the same thing.

Don’t you dare, Schuler. Your out-of-office is on and I have spies EVERYWHERE.

Lazlo grinned and replied to one of them with:

You are scary, but I love you. I promise, no work, just play. Laz.

As evening fell over the island, Lazlo walked around the little neighborhood. There was a pathway down to the beach, and he went down to it, watching the sunset, scanning the water for any orca sightings.

He was about to turn around when he saw a figure further down the beach, a woman walking a dog. He looked away, not wanting her to feel threatened at all by a lone man staring at her, but her dog clearly had other ideas. He skittered up to Lazlo, yapping happily and jumping up for a fuss. Lazlo grinned and bent to stroke the black-and-tan spaniel. “Hey, boy.”

The dog’s owner hurried up to them looking harassed. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s no problem.” He looked at the woman curiously. Even though the sun was dipping below the horizon, she wore sunglasses, and her hair, long, almost to her waist, was a deep almost-black. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he didn’t want to intrude on her privacy.

She clipped her dog’s leash onto his collar and nodded politely at Lazlo before turning around. Lazlo in turn walked back to the pathway that led to his street and went home. It was nagging at him who the woman reminded him of—she couldn’t be more than thirty, surely? What he had seen of her face was lovely: the sweet flush of pink on her cheeks, the full mouth.

Lazlo chuckled to himself. He hadn’t come here to find a woman, but maybe, actually, it wasn’t a bad idea to get back out in the game. Nothing heavy, nothing that would require a commitment. But fun. Some fun.

That was a word he hadn’t applied to himself in way, way too long.