Love and Chaos Read Online Free PDF

sat in a corner and zoned out while everyone else partied, and next thing I knew, we’d landed. Everything had the glow of early dawn, and I could smell the ocean. We were finally in Turks and Caicos, a tiny, rustic, decidedly un–New York group of islands somewhere in the Caribbean. Sunshine and bare feet. Exactly what I need.
    Forty days till I turn twenty-three.
    Within minutes of landing, we’re in open-top jeeps on the way to the party. I’m in the back of the smaller jeep, next to some Swedish guy called Lars, but he’s been on the phone most of the time. Stef’s sitting up front. He’s hungover, I think, and very quiet underneath his straw boater hat. (“It’s ironic!” he said, when I raised an eyebrow at it. “If you have to explain that it’s ironic, it’s probably not,” I replied.)
    I love— love —the Caribbean. I love sandy roadsides and paint-chipped houses and blue skies that look like they stretch forever. I love the big, strange blocky buildings that pop up now and again by the side of the highway, banks and hospitals and supermarkets, with parking lots that could fit hundreds, as though they’re expecting a population boom any minute now. I love the eye-achingly bright light and the way the air feels so pure and warm when you breathe.…
    I’m so fucking over New York.
    And I’m really over Brooklyn.
    The hot sun on my bare skin right this second is possibly the best thing I’ve ever felt. I’m sitting on my fur/army coat, wearing a little white sundress that I put on when we landed, and my studded Converse because I forgot to pack my flip-flops. With every breath of warm salty air, I can feel my bones thaw, my jaw relax, and the cold anxiety in my soul ease, for the first time in weeks.
    When we arrive at Turtle Cove Marina, it’s shiny and new and weirdly out of place in the shabby warmth of the rest of the island. Three young men wearing white polo T-shirts, shorts, and knee-high white socks—the kind of crew uniform that tends to indicate someone’s working on a very, very, very big boat—come and grab our bags.
    Everyone surges ahead, racing down the pier as though there’s a prize at the end. There are eight of us in total: four other girls, all about my age, all gorgeous, all acting like best friends but ignoring me, all constantly reglossing suspiciously plump lips. Plus Swedish Lars, some guy called Beecher who kept cracking unfunny jokes about the mile high club while we were taking off in New York, and, of course, Stef. And me.
    Three thousand dollars.
    Don’t think about it.
    I look ahead and see a worryingly shitty-looking speedboat onto which our luggage is being loaded by the boat boys. The girls start squealing.
    “Where the fuck did you find them?” I murmur to Stef.
    “Old friends, babe, old friends.”
    Stef looks like shit. Pale and blotchy, with cracked skin in the corners of his mouth. It hits me that I’ve never seen him in daylight before. And I’ve known him for six years.
    Wow. The realization stops me for a moment.
    What am I doing here? Taking a vacation with Stef, the Jovial Medicated Playboy, and a cast of strangers?
    Standing still, trying to gather whatever wits I have left, I watch everyone else surge ahead. The girls step from the pier into the speedboat, all squealing with excitement or fear or both, even though the boat is barely rocking at all and the boat boys are on hand to help them. One is offering them glasses of champagne.
    But where are they taking us?
    And where is the host? Hal, or whatever his name is?
    Is getting on a tiny speedboat with people I don’t really know the worst idea ever? Or the best, given my reality right now?
    To stall for thinking time, I light a cigarette.
    “Hey, you can’t smoke on the marina,” shouts a voice. I look over. One of the boat boys. Tall, tan, clean-cut, blond, ridiculously chiseled, as though he was bioengineered as an example of perfect all-American manhood. “Fire hazard. Gas