I floated south to Jacksonville and found myself in my childhood home sitting on the crow’s nest with a cup of coffee staring out across heaven’s reflection. Two weeks passed in which I slept most of the time. My body was so tired, when finally given the opportunity to sleep, it did. Days passed in which I slept eighteen to twenty hours a day. No drugs. No alcohol. I simply stopped long enough for my soul to catch up with my body, and when it did, it needed sleep. I didn’t know what I would do or where or how I’d eventually make a living. I had some money saved up, but one day I’d have to get a job. Start over. The only thing I knew for sure was this: I’d never trust my heart to another.

It hurt too much. Despite all my tough talk about not risking what I wasn’t willing to lose, I’d gotten in over my head and risked everything. And lost.

In the end, Marshall had won.

To add insult to injury, Marshall had given us, his “boys,” the option of accepting our bonus in a year-end cash payout or equity shares in the firm. The “catch” was this: The year-end cash payout was at 50 percent on the dollar. It worked like this: If your bonus was $100,000 on paper, the cash payout was $50,000 minus taxes at 30-something percent. In brass tacks, that meant $100,000 turned into about $35,000 in less than a few seconds. Understandably, everyone took the equity.

The second catch was, to protect us from taxes, all bonuses were a gentleman’s agreement written on paper. The only copy of that paper was kept in Marshall’s office. He had us by the short and curlies, and we knew it—but it gets better, or worse. In another twist, if any of us wanted to buy something—say a house, a yacht, take our family on vacation, pay for private school, pay off college loans, or just “cash out” so that we controlled our own money—we had to take a loan against our personal balance. And while Marshall never expected us to pay it back, he did collect interest on the loan—which he deducted from our principal equity or from next year’s bonus. This ensured that Marshall didn’t have to pay tax on our bonus money. He kept all the money, didn’t pay tax on what he “paid” out, and earned interest on money that was rightfully ours. A genius scam. Really. Wish I’d thought of it. If anyone demanded all their money, Marshall never refused it and gave it with a smile and a pat on the back as he showed them the way to the door—“Enjoyed you working with us. Let us know if there’s ever anything we can ever do for you.” As a result, everyone was loyal to Marshall—they had to be. He had all their money. When I drove out his driveway, I left all that. I’d given up everything.

The only consolation I felt was this: Amanda knew that I valued her more than the million or so equity money. That left me with one problem—she chose the money over me. Maybe Amanda was the best poker player among us. As the weeks passed, that became tougher and more difficult to stuff.

*  *  *

I grew my hair, didn’t shave, burned anything that resembled business attire, seldom wore a shirt or shoes, and reduced my life to a single suitcase. My motto became “traveling light.” And while that was a good description of my physical appearance, it was a better description of my heart. No tethers. Nothing to encumber me. Nothing to hold me back.

I was getting a bite to eat one night on Third Street in Jacksonville Beach, a few blocks from my house, and overheard a guy talking about the Bahamian island of Bimini. Even though I’d grown up on the northeast corner of Florida, I’d never really realized that Bimini sits about forty-four miles off the Florida coast. People in Miami do it in a day-trip. Sometimes, several times a day. When he finished, I said, “Any chance you’d give me a lift over there?”

He sized me up. “Long as you don’t mind working a few hours on deck before you get there.”

“I don’t.”

He handed me a business card. “Boat leaves tonight at ten p.m. If you’re not there at a quarter to ten, I’ll figure you’re not coming.”

I didn’t know how long I’d be gone or where I’d stay or what I’d do, but I had a feeling it would be longer than a few weeks, so I locked up the house, paid the property taxes a year in advance, and climbed aboard his boat.

It’d be years before I returned.

Once a British colony, Bimini is now a fishing island with a drinking problem. Given its resurgence in numbers and its appetite for fighting anglers, the bonefish rules the flats, but the top three blue marlin world records were caught in the deep waters within spitting distance of the beach. Sport fishermen catch everything in between. By boat, it’s an hour and twenty-minute trip from Miami. Less if your boat is well equipped. Its culture is everything Miami is not and wishes it was—an island. The Bahamians are beautiful, laid-back, and the British influence exists in more than just accent. The north-south island is little more than three miles long, and at its widest point, it might be a quarter mile wide. There are essentially two parallel roads, there are about as many bars as homes, and if there happens to be a funeral, the streets will shut down along with much of the town. In its heyday, it was one of the sport fish capitals of the world. Hemingway frequented here. As did Zane Grey. Multiple movie stars. The water is turquoise, the beach is white, the women are bronzed, and the breeze always blows. Early in its history, the island of Bimini was populated by a colony of freed slaves. Many of the modern-day residents are direct descendants.

I fit right in.

I landed on the island, took a deep breath, and knew that I’d found the antidote to Pickering and Sons. I slung my backpack across my back, slid on my flip-flops, and pulled my Costas down over my eyes. After finding a hotel room “by the month,” I began strolling the streets. A few blocks later, I stumbled upon Legal Grounds, the local coffee shop.

Jake Riggins graduated Miami Law two decades earlier. After an unsatisfactory decade practicing law, Jake, late forties, thumbed his nose at South Florida and took up residence on the eastern coast of Bimini, where he put his law degree to use making coffee and defending the occasional drug runner with enough money to bring him out of retirement.

Legal Grounds was a home run and exactly what I needed. Jake did coffee and he did it right. He started with good coffee—he had a thing for Tanzanian and South African but mixed in some Central American as well—ground it with a burr grinder, boiled water, let the boil run off, bloomed the coffee, and then slowly poured the water over the grounds to release the flavor. Perfection every time. Jake’s nickname was “Picasso,” and when it came to coffee, he was.

After a few weeks of sun, Jake’s coffee, and a cool island breeze aided by not a single care in the world, I found my rhythm in Bimini. A month in and I bought a hurricane shack on the northwest corner of the island for a few thousand dollars. It sat up on a small bluff beneath some huge trees, and the sunsets from my porch were, hands down, the best on the island. I had to renovate pretty much the entire thing, including the walls and roof, but I was in no hurry. Six months in and I was actually sleeping in a bed with a roof over my head and four strong walls surrounding me. In my bedroom, I had an AC unit, although I seldom turned it on. The breeze across my bedroom was plenty. I would not say that I had a plan or a goal. Not in the traditional sense of “knowing where I wanted to go in life.” I didn’t. I just knew what I didn’t want to be.

I wasn’t running to, I was running from.

Working to get my house in order made me a regular at the hardware and lumber store, where I kept bumping into an old Bahamian man with gnarled hands, sun-weathered skin, white hair, wide straw hat, deep wrinkles, and a smile that just wouldn’t quit. You know that thing that some old men have that makes everybody want to just sit and be quiet with them? He had it. He must have been eighty years old, but most every day we shared a “Mornin’” in the lumberyard or while staring at stainless steel screws in the fasteners aisle. Occasionally, he’d hold up a price tag and squint. “Forgot my reading glasses.” I’d quote him a price, he’d nod, and then about once a week, I’d bump into him at Jake’s, where he enjoyed a coffee while rolling his cigarette.