Diving In (14 page)

“Rachel’s been talking about setting me up.”

“I would never be a part of anything like that.” She shoved her glass into the top rack of the dishwasher.

“Why not? We had fun once,” he said. “And neither one of us is getting any younger. Maybe you didn’t like turning thirty any more than I did.”

She shook her head. “No, no, no.”

“Even if it wasn’t your idea, I wouldn’t put it past Rachel.”

“Of course it wasn’t my idea. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known there was any chance you’d be here.”

“Of course there was a chance. It’s my condo.”

“Your
parents
’. She said they have a bunch of these all over the world.”

Eyes widening with triumph, he pointed at her. “She lied. They don’t. My parents have way too much liberal guilt.”

“She didn’t know you’d be here,” she said through her teeth. “She set it up
weeks
ago.”

“You never know,” he said. “She
is
my twin. Maybe she used her mind control powers on me. Made me think coming here was all my idea.”

“This is possible in your world?” She flung up her hands. “Maybe you should stop wearing tinfoil hats to bed to break her transmissions into your brainwaves.”

“You share a uterus with anyone?”

She sighed. “No.”

“Then you have no idea. One day they’ll research it and prove what I already know.” He leaned forward. “Somehow, this is my sister’s doing.”

“I won it in a raffle.”

“Were international monitors there during the draw?” he asked. “Because unless an ex-president was watching, I’m assuming she stuffed the ballot box.”

“Believe what you want. I had nothing to do with it.”

He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“I didn’t.” Was he going to make her say the obvious? “You walked out on me. I made Rachel promise me there was no chance you’d be here. When I saw you, I ran. I stayed because I wanted the condo, not you.”

He drew back and stared.

“Maybe now you believe me,” she muttered.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I thought you said it was no big deal.”

“It wasn’t. Now it’s a mess.”

“Driving to Hana wasn’t my idea,” he said.

“It was your birthday!” She took out a fresh glass from the cupboard, shoved it under the fridge’s water dispenser, and jabbed the button. “You were moping around, alone, depressed. I felt sorry for you.”

“Is that why you kissed me, too?”

Her hand froze, holding the glass midway to her mouth. He was throwing her a lifeline; why not take it?

But man, it was his birthday. She knew what it felt like to be pitied, and even Ansel didn’t deserve that. “You’re a good kisser. It was hard not to respond.”

His eyebrows rose on his forehead. After a long moment, he ducked his head, looking as if he might be chewing on a grin. “Why, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Then he sighed, all humor disappearing. “Maybe I’m the one who should apologize.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Of course I should. It’s not your fault Rachel tried to play us. And I have a bad habit of hitting on every woman who crosses my path.”

Ouch. She smiled tightly. “Exactly. That’s why I didn’t want to cross it again.”

He flinched. “I can believe that. For what it’s worth, I’m trying to change. I thought I had.” He held out a hand. “Friends?”

Holding her fake smile in place, she moved her glass to her left hand to shake quickly, not paying any attention to how nice it felt to touch him again, even for a moment.

“Friends,” she said.

* * *

“You were right,” Nicki told Betty the next morning. She sat with her phone in a café near the beach, drinking six sugar packets dissolved into a cup of hibiscus tea. The tea was for the vitamins. “He’s just like pizza. I’m never afraid of things that are really bad for me.”

“Oh, you’re afraid,” Betty replied.

“I finished the blog post for next week already.”

Betty perked up. “You wrote about him?”

“No way. It was about bridges.”

“Bridges,” Betty said, sinking back into a monotone. “How exciting.”

“Welcome to my world,” Nicki said. “Let me read it to you…”

“Don’t bother. I’ll see it next week.”

“Why wait? Listen up.” Nicki took a gulp of her tea. “Poor Phoebe declares that if she were the one designing bridges, every bridge would have a backup bridge underneath it, and there would be foam insulation between each layer just like the cream filling in an Oreo.”

“You’ve written about bridges before.”

“Totally different kind of bridges. This isn’t the Bay Bridge we’re talking about. These are like stone walkways over waterfalls. Honestly, you have the sensitivity of frozen green beans.”

“You won’t write just one sentence about getting a little tongue?”

Nicki hung up on her and added another sugar packet to her tea. She wouldn’t obsess over Ansel. He’d kissed her, she’d kissed him back, they’d talked about it, now they were friends. End of story. Hopefully now he would stop following her around, cooking her meals, and touching her face with his lips.

What a relief
that
would be.

She kicked back the dregs of beige, grainy syrup at the bottom of her cup. Time to get back to the business of phobia reduction. Before she went back to California, she was going to swim in the ocean, even if it killed her. Hopefully it wouldn’t. If there was one thing the kiss had done for her, it was to put her anxiety in perspective. Drowning just didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore.

The morning was warm, humid, and lovely. She left the café, sucking in the scent of gardenias and freshly mown grass, and marched to the activity kiosk between the wading pool and the bar. The guy inside was playing a game on his phone as she approached.

“Hi, this is kind of embarrassing,” she said quickly, before she lost her nerve. “I need to learn how to swim well enough to go into the ocean, as quickly as possible. I never learned. Crazy, huh?”

“Not crazy at all.” The guy put down his phone and stood. He was thirty-something, had a dimple on his chin, and was taller than she was. “It’s very common. I meet people like you all the time.”

She scanned her body for any reaction to his obvious hotness, hoping to diversify; no luck. “I don’t want to do SCUBA or anything fancy. Just learn enough so I don’t drown.”

He brushed a strand of dark hair out of his long-lashed blue eyes. “To be sure of that, you might consider wearing a life jacket.”

“I can do that?”

He smiled. “Absolutely. I rent them right here.”

How funny she’d never thought of that. “Great, but…” She straightened her spine. “I need some help getting used to being in the water without freaking out. It’s not just about drowning. Plus, I’d rather not float away, you know? Even if I can breathe.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Do you ever do that kind of thing? Just a quick intro for a newbie?”

He paused for a split second. “Of course.” He flashed another smile. “The resort doesn’t have a specific class for just that, so I’d do it off the books. No charge.”

“Are you sure?”

He leaned over, bracing his elbows on the brochures spread out on the narrow counter. “You’d be doing me a favor. I get bored sitting here all by myself.” His eyes met hers and held her gaze.

He was flirting, but she didn’t care. Unlike so many things, he seemed harmless enough. “Thank you.”

He straightened and strode out of the kiosk, gesturing at the pool. It was smaller and deeper than the splash pool, rimmed with a waterfall at one end. Much deeper. “Why don’t you get in,” he said. “Put your feet in the water while I get some floats.”

“Here?” She squinted through the glimmering surface to see the drain at the bottom of the pool. The round metal cover looked tiny, as if from a great distance. This pool was really deep. Anglerfish could live down there.

“Don’t worry. We’ll work from the edge.”

I’m used to living on the edge,
she thought.

She took off her swim cover-up, folded it, and set it on a chair with her shoes before walking over to the pool. Walking around in a bikini was like greeting the world in your skimpiest underwear. Under the Hawaiian midday sun, every lump, mole, and hair was as visible as her mom’s embroidery under a 150-watt craft light with a magnifying-glass attachment.

She sat down and slowly put her feet in the water. The slight chill in the water didn’t bother her at all; it was the threat of the vast, hungry space pulling her down. Chest tightening, she scowled at the tile bottom.
It’s right there. That’s as far as you can go.

Her handsome swim instructor rejoined her with long foam noodles in pastel colors under his arms. “I’m Lawrence, but everyone calls me Law.” He regarded her for a moment. “You okay?”

“How deep is this pool?”

“Ten feet at the deep end.”

When she sank, she’d have four feet over her head to stare up into. “Huh.”

“If you’re afraid, we can start out in the wading pool. It’s a lot warmer, too. The resort has been having issues with the pool heaters lately.”

She couldn’t give in so soon. Giving herself to fate, she shoved herself off the safety of the cement into the abyss. Before she sank, she twisted around and clutched the edge. “This is better,” she gasped, kicking frantically to fight off the anglerfish, sharks, spiraling whirlpools, black holes, doom.

“Excellent. Fantastic.” Throwing in the noodles, Law jumped feet-first into the water, slicing through the surface. He wore a sleek white swim shirt and turquoise board shorts, practically a snowmobile suit compared to her skimpy attire, yet he gasped as he bobbed back up, obviously freezing.

Poor guy. Lacking body fat wasn’t always a good thing. “Cold?” she asked.

“Never get used to it.”

“Bad luck for a SCUBA instructor.” She kept talking to distract herself from the bottomless well that was yawning open for her shivering, mortal flesh.

“I wear a wet suit for dives. Feel stupid doing that here.” He smiled, grabbed a pair of pink noodles off the side, and swam to her. “I’ll get used to it in a second. You okay?”

She unclamped one hand to wave a few fingers. “Fine.”

“Fantastic.” Smiling, he bumped her with a noodle. He had very nice teeth.

Teeth made her think of sharks, which made her think of her bare feet all alone down there in the deep, which made her pull her knees up to her chest and huddle against the wall with her face in the water, scanning for predators.

Then she remembered she was afraid of putting her face in the water so jerked it out again.

“Perfect,” he said. “You’ve had lessons before?”

She blinked at him. Her mom talked about taking her to the Y for the last time when she was seven, but it hadn’t gone well. “Not that I remember.”

“I like to start just like that,” Law said. “Face in the water. Then your whole head. Like this.” He sucked in a breath, went under, bobbed back up, went under again. He repeated this several times, finally staying up to smile at her some more. “Your turn.”

He sure was peppy. She thought she could go underwater as long as she could hold on to the ledge, so she sucked in a deep breath and went under, decided she was going to die, popped back up. No, not dead. Before she could talk herself out of it, she went under again, wondering if she’d remembered to put her parents down as the recipient of her retirement plan or if she’d left it all to UNICEF, as she’d considered last year during the famine in…

Law pulled her back up. “Terrific! You’re already staying under for five seconds. I usually save that for my second lesson.” His teeth flashed. “You didn’t even take off your sunglasses.”

She was too afraid to release even one hand from the ledge. “They’re waterproof.”

He laughed as though this were the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “Totally. Ready to try it again?”

Clinging to the tiles, her finger joints seized up like a muddy bike chain. She gritted her teeth, all of her willpower directed at loosening up, letting go, trying again. The war between mind and body, anxiety and reality, made her limbs shake.

“Whoa, you’re shivering.” Law touched her shoulder, which broke the spell, one fear vanquishing another.

“I am a little cold,” she said huskily, and he moved closer
.

Uh-oh.

“Maybe we should take a break in the hot tub,” he said. His gaze flickered downward over her body. “Warm you up.”

Death by anglerfish forgotten, Nicki gazed through her blurry, dripping sunglasses into his eyes. Was she misinterpreting again? She glanced up to look for toddlers in flippers or women’s Olympic volleyball champions.

“Hi,” Ansel said. He was reclining in a deck chair right behind them at the edge of the pool, a straw sunhat and dark glasses covering his face, a paper basket filled with something fried in his lap. “Having fun?”

Chapter 11

N
ICKI
GAPED
AT
HIM
. “W
HAT
are you doing here?”

Saving you
, Ansel thought, watching her kick the water behind her. She looked pretty good, considering just a few days ago she could barely get into the baby pool. Busy overcoming her fear of the water, she wouldn’t have her defenses up for other threats, like those from philandering swim instructors. He’d seen Law working his magic at the pool for years.

Now Law was splashing away from Nicki to gather the noodles. He didn’t look as cheerful as he had a second ago, which pleased Ansel. “Here for the SCUBA, dude?” Law asked.

“No thanks,
dude
.” Ansel shoved a coconut prawn as big as his fist into his mouth. “Are you?”

Nicki removed her sunglasses and gave Ansel a worried look. “Law’s giving me a swim lesson.”

But to Ansel’s satisfaction, the aging horndog—he had to be pushing forty by now—was already climbing out of the pool, introducing himself to an older couple who were reading the sandwich board by the kiosk. After a moment, he turned back to Nicki. “Sorry, but these folks signed up at the front desk for my noon class. Did you want to join in? You’re making totally great progress.”