SECOND TIME AROUND by JAIMI-SAM RATED FRC

Written for and winner of the 2009 TIWF Forum "Kiss a Brother" Challenge.

When Alan Tracy visits the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy to attend the wedding of an old friend, the last thing he expects is to encounter an old love of his own.

"Your first time coming to Saint Barths, m’sieur?" The pilot’s French accented voice roused Alan Tracy out of his thoughts. He was the only passenger on the seven seater Britten-Norman Islander III, now circling the tiny Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy.

"No," Alan said, after a moment, looking out of the left side window at the island, which from this angle resembled a green upside down L, edges scalloped by the jaws of an enthusiastic giant caterpillar. "But it’s been a while."

The pilot smiled. "Ah. Well, some things, they change, but this runway, she never does. Buckle up, as you Americans say."

Alan patted the buckle of his seatbelt, still fastened from their takeoff from St Maarten ten minutes before. "Never took it off."

The pilot laughed. "You ‘ave landed here before."

Alan looked back out of the window. The weather was clear and bright, the sea sparkling in the sun, the blues and greens vivid in the way they always seemed to be in this part of the world. The Islander dropped a red-tipped wing as she banked into position, approaching the island from the east. The bottom of the upside-down L rushed to meet them with alarming speed. Down, down they dropped, swooping lower and lower until Alan could read the license plates on the cars that were parked near the four-way junction at the top of the hill. Hell, he could pick out the individual grasses that waved in the offshore breezes either side of the road, never mind the smiles on the faces of the plane-spotters as they waved to the approaching aircraft.

"Why doesn’t the government here give in and allow VTOL landings?" Alan said, his jaw tight. Like most career left-seaters, he was a better pilot than he was a passenger, and he had to fight to keep his fists from clenching in time with his stomach as the Islander’s landing gear threatened to brush the tops of the cars.

"Too much noise, too many visitors," the pilot responded, weathered hands working the plane’s yoke against the crosswinds with the ease of a longtime pro. "When they ‘ave to come here in one of these, a special license is needed, no private planes. If the Collective allowed VTOL, anyone could land here."

Turbulence buffeted the small plane’s fuselage, then they were past the hillside and nose-diving toward the runway, a heart-stoppingly short two thousand feet of concrete that was all that stood between them and the tourists on the beach right beyond it. Alan got a brief impression of red roofs sweeping by at the base of the hill to his right, and then the Islander was touching down, wheels skimming and then holding the hard surface. By then the roller coaster-lover in him had won out over his ingrained distrust in an unknown pilot, and he was grinning with exhilaration as the little plane slowed at the very end of the runway and swung around to taxi off toward the terminal buildings. He waved back to the trio of pretty girls in bikinis who were watching the landing from brightly colored beach chairs a scant twenty feet away.

"Allô et bienvenue," the pilot said, his grin mirroring Alan’s in the reflection of the cockpit glass.

In the terminal, a slender, dark haired young man carrying a sign with Alan’s name on it introduced himself as Thierry Fournier, representative of the Hotel Carl Gustav. He ushered Alan to a waiting black BMW for the short drive to St. Barts’ capital, the tiny port town of Gustavia. "Will you be in town long, M’sieur Tracy?" Thierry enquired as the car purred away from the curb.

"A few days," Alan said. "I’m just here for a wedding."

"Ah, the Broussard-Arceneau wedding?"

Alan started to raise an eyebrow, then smiled and shook his head. "I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. In a place this size, everybody would know pretty much everything."

Thierry laughed. "You sound like you have spent time on a small island before, m’sieur."

Alan snorted. "You have no idea, my friend. No idea."

The Tracys had reserved what Alan’s father Jeff had promised was the premier location at the Carl Gustav, the Royale Suite. When Alan came through the doors, he was pleased to see that his father’s advice had been wise to take – the Royale Suite perched at the very top of the hotel’s property, panoramic views of the ocean visible through every window of the oversized living room that was the center of the accommodations. Thierry showed him briefly around the beautifully appointed suite, pointing out the four bedrooms with ensuite baths, the fully equipped kitchen, the office, and last but most impressive, the walled garden with its infinity pool and inviting-looking Jacuzzi tub. "You will not be staying here alone, no?" he asked.

"No. Well, for a couple of days. Three of my brothers are coming in with their wives. Luc Arceneau is an old family friend." And International Rescue agent, he added, but not out loud.

"You are not married, m’sieur?"

"I was." It was amazing to him, even now, how the loss could still twinge at his heart. He forced the corners of his mouth to lift a little. "It’s been a few years."

Thierry’s dark eyes were sympathetic. "Do not feel sad, m’sieur. Saint-Barthélemy can be a surprising place. I have seen many who have left this island with completely different lives than when they arrived."

He took his leave then, making Alan promise to call him if he needed anything. Alan closed the doors of the suite and let the peace wash in, something he found himself craving more and more these days when he could escape from the noise and frantic activity of his normal life. He and his brothers sometimes wondered at their father’s prescience in hiding the headquarters of International Rescue on a remote South Seas island. The older they all got, the more they treasured those brief times when they weren’t needed in some way or other to fish the world out of trouble. The peace of their home island restored their souls, somehow.

Alan drifted back out on to the patio, looking down at the tiny harbor of Gustavia with its red roofs and pristine, squared off piers. White yachts dotted the waters as though a flotilla of migrating birds had chosen the harbor as a resting place. Several of the bigger cruisers looked familiar – he thought he recognized them from the previous summer, when he, Gordon and John had spent a few days in Cannes. The very fact that they’d been able to do that, three of them spend a few days away at the same time, was of course a testament to the fact that IR wasn’t just family any longer. Despite their father’s initial objections, expansion had been inevitable. It had been fifteen years ago this year that they had launched IR with the rescue of the Fireflash’s maiden flight – Alan was thirty-six now, his oldest brother Scott, IR’s field commander, was forty-five, and the other three were scattered in between. Even with the most stunning advances in technology that the brilliant mind of Brains, their chief engineer, could come up with, there was no way to compensate for the fact that they needed more strong, young bodies to do the heavy work of rescue. They’d recruited them by ones and twos, here and there, after exhaustive investigation and background checking, from crack military organizations the world over. The criteria had been simple: men in women in top physical shape, accustomed to the structure of a military-type organization, who were willing to lie to their friends and family from that moment on about what they did for a living. We’ll give you the world, they’d said, and you’ll never live a more rewarding life. But you won’t be able to tell anyone about it, ever, and your most incredible achievements will go to your grave with you. Most of them had been more than willing to take the trade.

The expansion, begun almost five years ago, had enabled the Tracy brothers to have much closer to real lives...which, contrary to Jeff’s fears, had led to a stronger organization, the ability of all of them to continue on with his legacy. There had been marriages, of course, and children...and Tracy Island now had its first real school. It had all taken some getting used to, but they were working it out, bit by bit, making up the rules as they went along.

Alan’s cell phone rang, intruding on his memories. "Bonjour, Alan," Luc Arceneau’s voice crackled, made tinny by distance and static. "This connection, it is very bad, can you ‘ear me?"

"I can hear you, Luc. Where are you?"

"Delayed, my friend, some... official business. I am afraid we will not be able to ‘ave our dinner tonight."

"That’s OK, buddy. Tell you the truth, I’m a bit jet lagged. I could use the rest."

He heard Luc’s laugh. "You’re getting old."

"We’re both getting old," Alan reminded him, smiling.

"Oui, c’est la vie. If you feel like some company, Sylvie is ‘aving a quiet little party tonight at Le Yacht Club, for our guests who arrive early. I know she would be ‘appy to see you there."

"A ‘quiet little party,’" Alan repeated, disbelieving. "This I have to see. Unless Le Yacht Club’s changed a helluva lot since the last time I was there."

"It ‘asn’t," Luc assured him. Through the static, Alan could hear somebody else’s voice. Then Luc came back: "Alan, I ‘ave to go. I will see you tomorrow. À bientôt!"

"À bientôt," Alan responded, but he was talking to empty air.

He felt a lot more like himself after a half hour in the Jacuzzi and a superb steak dinner, courtesy of Victoria’s, the Hotel Carl Gustav’s exclusive restaurant. He decided it couldn’t hurt to go down to Le Yacht Club, after all these years still the premier nightclub on the island, and spend a few minutes reacquainting himself with Luc’s bride to be. He’d only met Sylvie Broussard a couple of times, but he’d liked her, appreciating her diminutive dark beauty and her quick wit. The Tracys were a bright family, and he had grown up having to think fast to keep up with the verbal repartée. He’d never been able to take a woman seriously unless she could do the same.

The interior of Le Yacht Club didn’t look like he remembered; then again, it had been a long time. The dark colors of the past, the blacks and reds, had been replaced by white: the overstuffed couches, the table linens, the billowing sail-like drapes that framed windows overlooking the yachts moored right across the boardwalk. It was a welcome change, cool and fresh and soothing to his tired eyes. The crowd wasn’t too bad this early in the night; not too many recognizable faces yet, and the music was still meant to be background to the diners. Later, it would be so loud that it would feel like it was trying to replace your heartbeat, but if his recollection was correct, the place wouldn’t really start hopping until 9pm, by which time he hoped to be long gone. There was a time when he had loved the sights and smells, the music and chaos and the pounding rhythm of that kind of night life. But not any more. He didn’t know whether it had been marriage or fatherhood that had changed that about him. Maybe he’d just grown up, somewhere along the way.

He spotted Sylvie Broussard almost immediately, petite and energetic, moving between tables of her guests. Her long, dark hair was tied back with a rolled-up scarf in bright Caribbean colors, green, blue, gold. She waved and crossed the room to greet him. "Alan! Bienvenue à Saint-Barth!"

Her English was more lightly accented than Luc’s. Alan accepted her hug with a grin. "Your wayward fiancé is stuck on the mainland, so he sent me down here to keep an eye on you instead."

She laughed. "I grew up on this island. I think you will not have an easy task." She signaled a passing waiter. "Let me get you a drink. A Caribbean Cosmo, perhaps?"

What the heck. "Sure, why not. When in Rome..."

She smiled; gave the order to the waiter. "Come, let me introduce you to my bridesmaids. Luc says you have been single too long."

She led him over to a table by the window, where four women laughed with each other on one of the long, low couches. "Alan Tracy, meet my sister, Amelie, and this is my oldest friend, Colette Desmarais...and the one who seems to have lost herself in her purse over there is..."

But Alan could no longer hear her, because the woman she’d indicated straightened up at that moment, and it was Tin-Tin Kyrano.

He saw his own surprise mirrored in those beautiful green eyes; was momentarily, absurdly worried that she’d bolt, like a startled kitten. And then relief flooded him as her eyes lit up with that smile that he once thought he’d forgotten – and he now wondered how he’d ever been so foolish as to believe such a thing was possible. "Alan!" she said, rising gracefully to her feet and standing there, hand half-extended, as if waiting for him to make the first move.

He didn’t know what to do. What was the protocol, with long-term ex-relationships? Did you hug, or shake hands? She left you, something poisonous deep inside him said. Let her do it.

But the moment passed, and he saw her expression flicker with uncertainty, her hand slowly lower back to her side. He became aware of the other women watching them curiously. "You two know each another?" Sylvie was asking, evidently as surprised as they both had been. "I did not know that!"

Tin-Tin ran a hand quickly through her cloud of thick dark hair, a gesture Alan knew as both irritation and nervousness. He couldn’t reliably tell which one it was. "It was a long time ago, Sylvie," she said, never taking her eyes off him. "We were very young."

"Oh!" Sylvie clapped her hands in delight. "He was your first love? The one you..."

Alan saw the distress in Tin-Tin’s eyes, put out a hand to catch Sylvie before she went any further. "No need to dredge up the past, Sylvie," he said. "This party is about the future."

Sylvie studied them both for a moment, then caught both of them by the arms. "Come, there is a table, over here. You need to talk, mes chères. Then we will have no trouble at my wedding."

Alan glanced at her, realized from the dance in her eyes that she was joking. He let her lead him and Tin-Tin over to a table in a corner by the window. He tried to read whether Tin-Tin was reluctant or willing, but she had what he used to call her inscrutable face on. The Asian half of her heritage came in useful at times like this...and for beating him and his brothers at poker.

Sylvie made them both sit down, then patted their hands. "Talk. Make me happy. I will come later and see how you are doing, oui?"

She gave them both a mock-stern nod, and turned to go back to the other bridesmaids. They were all watching them, whispering between themselves. Alan looked away, toward Tin-Tin; sitting opposite him, back very straight.

"I’m sorry," they both burst out, at exactly the same moment. There, a little color was creeping into her cheeks now. Miss Inscrutability was gone, and she looked flustered, out of her depth.

"It’s not your fault," Alan said, quickly. "I had no idea...that is, I’ve known Luc for years, we all have...but I didn’t know..."

"It’s the same for me," Tin-Tin said. "I’ve worked with Sylvie for five years. We’re the best of friends, but she met Luc when she was at a conference in Denver and she’s always traveled to see him. I don’t know that much about him."

The tight, uncomfortable knot in Alan’s stomach was beginning to loosen now. He allowed himself to look at her, really look, for the first time. He had thought at first that she hadn’t changed at all, but now he saw that wasn’t true. If anything, she was more beautiful than she’d been, the last day he saw her. The day she’d left him behind.

"What about you?" he asked. How have you been? was just too lame for words, and he couldn’t make himself say it.

There was a stillness to her that hadn’t been there before. He hadn’t noticed that at first. The mercurial vivacity she’d always had was muted, somehow. She shrugged. "There isn’t much to tell."

There’d been a marriage, Alan remembered. He hadn’t sent an acknowledgement. He hadn’t sent one when he’d heard her husband had died, either. Now he wished he could go back and change that. "I’m sorry...about your husband," he said, slowly, carefully. "I mean that."

She smiled, and it held all the sadness in the world. "Thank you. I’m sorry about your divorce, too. Papa told me. How old are your twins now?"

Alan was filled again with the joy that always came out of nowhere when he thought about his girls. "They’re six, and growing by the second."

"Do you have a picture?"

He laughed. "That’s a silly thing to ask a father," he said, fishing out his wallet and producing a photo. "That’s Allison, my ex."

Tin-Tin took the photo carefully, holding it away from her as if afraid it would catch fire or turn into a snake. "She’s lovely."

Alan nodded. Allison was the exact opposite of Tin-Tin, he realized suddenly. Tall, with thick dark blonde hair that streaked with gold in the summer, skin that freckled in the sun. "You can see how much the girls look like her," he said.

"That’s funny," Tin-Tin murmured. "I think they look like you."

There was a long silence. Then she handed him back the picture. "What are their names?"

"Carrie...Caroline...and Kelly. The guys all wanted me to make them rhyme or something else lame like that. I wasn’t going for it."

She smiled. "How are they, your brothers? I haven’t seen any of them in such a long time."

Alan thought for a moment. "About the same, probably," he said at last. "Just...older. Scott’s mellowed a lot since he got married, but he’s still a slavedriver – and the glue that holds us together, if you ask me. And Virgil’s still the glue that holds him together. Your dad tell you all about the expansion?"

She nodded. "Scott’s run it since we began the program five years ago," Alan continued. "Father’s stepped back quite a bit from the day to day operations since you..." He almost stumbled; managed to recover and plunge on. "Dad and Johnny spend a lot of time together these days, since we all finally convinced him that Scott would sooner commit ritual seppuku with your dad’s wakizashi than take over Tracy Corp when he was gone. None of us can figure out why it took Dad so long... Johnny’s the only one who ever actually read those friggin’ annual reports, all those years."

"I know quite a bit about what Gordon’s up to," she said, after they’d laughed about the shortsightedness of fathers for a minute. "He and Papa work so closely together on the marine food project. It’s hard to imagine him with children, though."

"He’s a natural," Alan said, with a wry grin. "And they love him...all kids, not just his own. We always tell him it’s because he’s still such a kid himself."

The lights dimmed, abruptly, the volume of music began to pick up. Alan saw her glance toward the nearest speaker, a frown marring the skin between her eyes. He went for broke. "Tin-Tin...do you want to get out of here?"

The relief on her face was the most welcome sight he’d seen in years. "Yes," she said. "Please."

"Why did she leave? Your wife, I mean."

Alan took a moment, focusing on how the harbor lights gave the blue liquid in his glass an eerie glow. They’d stopped at a tiny restaurant a few minutes down the boardwalk and sat at one of the outside tables, ordering Caribbean Cosmos in honor of Sylvie. Despite the visible ingredients being pineapple juice and Blue Curacao, the Grey Goose vodka underneath was what really gave the drink its kick. "She didn’t transplant well, that’s what Grandma said. She tried, she really tried, but she just couldn’t get used to living on the island. Couldn’t take the isolation, being so far away from her family." He swallowed a gulp of the Cosmo, forcing it past the lump that was threatening to close his throat. "And then there was her career, too. Allison was a brilliant trial lawyer, Tin-Tin. I saw her in action a couple of times. It was in her blood, what she was born to do...her father was a partner in one of the best law firms in Boston. If she’d stayed with me, she would have had to give all that up."

Tin-Tin waited, eyes steadily on his face. She’d always been a great listener, Alan remembered. "She gave it her best shot. She moved to the island right after the twins were born." He sighed, rubbing his eyes, getting scratchy now from too many hours without sleep. "It just didn’t work. When she finally told me she had to leave or lose her mind, I couldn’t stand in her way. How could I ask her to give up her life, when I wasn’t willing to give up mine?"

"Did you ever think about it? Giving up...the family business, for her?" Tin-Tin glanced at the tables around them, not willing to risk, even now, that somebody might overhear.

"No." Alan shook his head. It gutted him, but he had always had to be honest with Tin-Tin. That was another thing that hadn’t changed between them. "Not even for a moment."

"And how is it now, between you?"

"We’re good friends." Alan was grateful that he could tell the truth about that, too. "I’m welcome there anytime, and she encourages me to see Carrie and Kelly as often as I can. And I do want to," he added. "See them often, I mean." He paused for a moment, searching for the words. "I know we save people’s lives all the time, a lot of lives...but being a father to those two girls is the most...fulfilling thing I have ever done. Do you know what I mean?"

Tin-Tin’s eyes shadowed. She looked out at the harbor, at the sleek yachts of fiberglass and steel festooned with strings of white lights, the ripples in the dark water between them catching their reflections and making them dance. At last she said, "No. I mean, I wanted to. Marcus and I tried for years, nothing. I saw doctors, so did he." She signaled their waiter for another Cosmo. "We found out that it was him. They didn’t really know why, although they had theories."

Alan gave a low whistle of sympathy. "That’s rough."

She nodded. "We weren’t sure what to do about it. Try fertility treatments, adopt... And while we were taking our time deciding..."

The unfinished sentence hung heavy in the air between them. Now it was Tin-Tin’s turn to take a hefty gulp of her drink.

Without thinking, Alan reached for her hand. "I’m sorry," he said, softly.

She looked up at him, eyes shining with unshed tears. "Thank you."

She didn’t pull her hand back right away, but after a moment Alan saw her growing uncomfortable and he released her, trying to not to make a big deal out of it. She sat back, and they didn’t speak for a long few moments, just listened to the slap of the waves against nearby hulls and the scattered laughter of a deck party a little way down the boardwalk.

"Can we walk for a while?" she asked.

They wound up taking a taxi to St Jean Beach and walking along the white sand together. They took off their shoes and waded a little in the warm tropical water. "Thank you," Tin-Tin said after a while, smiling up at him.

"What for?" He looked down at her, surprised.

"For making me talk about it. It’s been...a very hard time."

"Tin-Tin, I didn’t make you talk about it any more than you made me. We’ve just always had...that."

She thought about it for a moment, head tilted a little to one side. "Yes. We could always talk to each other."

"More like had to," Alan snorted. "I could never keep anything from you. Gordon used to call me the squealer, you know that? But it was all your fault. You’d just look at me with those big eyes and I’d spill every bean I’d ever had."

She laughed out loud. "Me?"

"Yeah, you. And that wasn’t the half of it. Remember how we used to fight?"

"Do I." She shook her head, bemused. "I don’t know why. You just made me so...mad, all the time."

"I never knew why, either," he admitted. "One minute we’d be fine, everything was good...and the next you’d be up in my face, yelling at me. I didn’t know what to do. I could never figure out what happened, why it changed."

"Well, it wasn’t all me, wise guy," she retorted. "You really could be a prize idiot sometimes, back then."

"And as they say," he grinned, "it’s always the ones you care about the most that make you the craziest."

She pushed him. He laughed, feinted, jabbed in at her shoulder. She ducked, came up with a handful of cold, wet seaweed and jumped him, trying to shove it down the back of his shirt. Alan howled and reached back with both arms, catching her off balance and swinging her around on his back like the propeller on a beanie cap. She shrieked and spluttered, threatening dire revenge, kicking and struggling until she threw them both off balance and they landed in an untidy heap in the soft sand.

When the laughter quietened, they sat side by side on the sand, gazing out at the moonlight streaking the bay. "I always envied you, you know," she said, very sober now.

"Me? Why?"

"No matter what happened, you always had that wonderful family. They were always there for you, supporting you, loving you..."

"Driving me nuts..." Alan put in.

Tin-Tin shook her head, in that quick, jerking way that meant that he wasn’t getting what she was trying to say. "You’ve always been surrounded by people...it’s like a human cushion. Even when you got divorced, you didn’t lose Allison and the girls, not really. They’re still there, whenever you want to visit them."

Alan had an idea where she was going with this, now, although it took her another long moment to put it into words. "I grew up moving from place to place, always hiding, usually running. Trying to stay one step ahead of my uncle. My father was all I had. When we moved to Tracy Island it was like this incredible fairy tale fantasy...like someone waved a magic wand and everything was suddenly the way I’d always wished it could be. We were safe, and there was a real family to be with, to be part of. And there was you."

Alan waited, knowing that there was more to come. "But it didn’t work, did it. No matter how hard we tried, it didn’t work. So I told myself that I shouldn’t be surprised, really...after all, none if it was really mine...it was all just too good to be true. I needed to move away, try to build a life that would work...a real family, not just one I was borrowing from somebody else." She was crying now, he could see the moon glistening in her tears. "And for a while, I really thought I was doing it. I found Marcus, I got married, we were going to make our own family. Ours." She brushed the back of her hand across her face, a jerky, angry motion. "And then he died. And now there’s nothing left. We were so happy, Alan...and there’s nothing left."

"Tin-Tin." Alan reached for her, then, taking her by the shoulders. "Oh, Tin-Tin. Did you ever think that maybe the only mistake we made was not giving ourselves a little time? We were both so young. I was an arrogant kid, you were trying to get over a nightmare. Is it any wonder all we did was fight? Neither of us had any idea what we were doing."

She pulled away from him, searching his face. "Alan..." she whispered.

Alan held his breath; suddenly, terrifying aware that the rest of his life was balancing on the knife-edge of this moment. He needn’t have worried, though, because whatever she was looking for in his eyes, she seemed to find it. She took his face in her hands and leaned forward.

It was just a kiss...but that kiss, that ever so slight touch of her lips on his, set every nerve ending in his body on fire. And he knew, right then and there, that anything else either one of them had ever done with anybody else was nothing, beside this.

And he knew that she knew it, too.

Alan took her in his arms, then, and proceeded to show her that no matter how many years had passed, nothing had changed between them. Nothing that mattered, anyway.