Diving In (19 page)

But he couldn’t fall back asleep.

Did he throw money away on lost causes? The investments Brand had the biggest problem with were the ones Ansel enjoyed the most. When he met people who just needed a few thousand bucks or maybe a little more to pursue their dream instead of slaving away in a cubicle or cash register, how could he not want to help? Money was—or had been—like his mutant superpower—nothing he deserved, just something he’d inherited. He couldn’t resist using it any more than that girl with the kiss of death.

Great
, he thought, pounding the pillow. What a wonderful analogy for a venture capitalist. Everything he touched turned to stone.

Giving up trying to go back to sleep, he put on shorts and a T-shirt for a run. The resort had a path that led up to the golf course. Nice view of the ocean, the mountains.

The condo was quiet. No surprise; it wasn’t even six yet.

He banged the cupboard door as he removed a water bottle then went ahead and used the ice-crushing feature on the refrigerator’s water dispenser.

Still no sound from her room.

He took out his phone, synced it with the stereo, and turned on his running music. As it blasted out its one-hundred-eighty techno beats per minute, he said, “Whoops,” waited a few seconds, then turned it off.

And waited, listening.

A door opened. Nicki came out, squinting at him with her hair mussed and a splotchy left cheek, where, just seconds ago, it must’ve been pressed against a pillow. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Sorry! So sorry.” He flinched, actual guilt poking him. He screwed the cap on his water bottle and shoved it into the hip pouch he carried with his phone. “I’m going for a run. Go back to sleep. So sorry I bothered you.”

“I thought there were contractors remodeling the kitchen or something.”

“Nope. Just me. Sorry.”

She ran a hand over her hair, grimaced, and looked around. “What time is it?”

“Early.”

“So it’s morning, not night?”

“About six.”

She sighed. “Oh. That’s not bad. I thought it might be the middle of the night.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated again, even though he was enjoying their chat. She had a cute chin. Six feet tall with a cute chin. He had a good view of it from his position a few inches below her.

“You said you were going for a run?”

He nodded.

“I didn’t know you ran,” she said. “I run.”

He tried to keep his voice casual, indifferent, unsuspicious. “Want to come?”

“I wouldn’t want to make you wait. You look ready to go. I’ll need a minute.”

“I’m still trying to get some good tunes on my phone. That’s how I woke you up, being stupid with it.” He waved it at her. “Go ahead and get ready. I’ll probably be here a little while.”

Probably.

“Great. That’s great. I was getting tired of running alone,” she said, returning to her room.

Tired of running alone.

Smiling, he put his phone away.

Chapter 14

J
OGGING
ALWAYS
RELAXED
N
ICKI
. N
OTHING
like authentic agony to put the imaginary variety in perspective. She was too tall and heavy to be fast, but she’d loved running since she was a teenager and got out every other day, no matter what.

They started their run along the golf course, dodging early morning tourists, bikes, strollers, people on their way to work and those already there, trimming the hedges, adjusting the sprinklers, maintaining the unnatural grass. From there they joined up with the paved path along the beach to Kaanapali. The dawn sky was lavender.

“Am I going too slow?” he asked.

Perhaps because he adjusted his stride to hers, their pace matched, and only a few times did she have to run harder or slower to stay at his side. “Not at all.”

“Am I going too fast?” He turned to her with his hand on his chest, tongue wagging out of his mouth. “Please say yes.”

She laughed and slowed to a walk. “You’re right. I could use a break.”

He bent over, hands braced on his knees. “I’m more of”—he gasped—“an intervals runner. Lots and lots of them.”

“Got it.”

“Sometimes I have an interval that involves coffee and a muffin.” His hair, damp with sweat, flopped over his eyes.

It was a good feeling, being good at something. All week she’d been a sad combo pack of phobias and lust, but now she was on her own turf. “Keep moving your legs. It’s not good to stop.”

Nodding, he started walking, only to trip over a twisted wad of fuchsia vinyl on the path. He picked it up and shook out a long, partially deflated pool toy. “Just what I needed. A watercraft.” Balling it up, he strode over to a waste can next to a tourist kiosk outside of the hotel they were passing. As he was throwing the litter away, his phone chimed. He took it out, glanced at the screen, and put it back in his pocket.

Nicki took the opportunity to take one of the flyers in a display, not getting close enough to the kiosk to let the guy setting up behind the counter lasso her into booking an excursion.

“I don’t mind if you want to take a call,” she said.

“It’s just Diane. I’ll call her back.”

“I really don’t mind.”

“I’ll really call her back,” he replied.

She looked over the brochure as she continued with Ansel along the path. Maybe she’d just imagined the other woman’s jealousy. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d projected her own feelings onto another.

“Snorkel tour?” he asked, peeking over her shoulder.

She nodded.

“Check it out.” He pointed. “It says it’s appropriate even for those not familiar with the water.”

She looked up at the vast blue sea. “Sure, but what if you’re familiar in a
bad
way? Like how you know
The Exorcist
by heart after seeing it on TV late at night twenty years ago and now you still get the creeps whenever you see a priest?”

“You’ll do fine.”

She studied the boat departure times. Early. Weather dependent. To various spots that promised fish and coral, turtles, even an eel. The pictures were stunning. Aerial shots of geological wonders, turquoise water, and everyday people splashing around with fins, cameras, and snorkels. Even little children.

Before she flew home, she’d do it. If there were any priests on the tour, she’d pass; otherwise, she was going to snorkel in the ocean and see a damn fish somewhere other than on her plate. Afterward—and she’d pay the ransom to get photo evidence of the thing, whatever it was—she’d retire to her well-padded suburban apartment, her loving students, and live out the rest of her life knowing she’d done it, and might—if climate change, for instance, made it necessary—do it again.

The tickets were expensive. It was all so expensive. Inhaling the breeze off the shore, she scanned the horizon for whales. A clerk at the resort store, where she’d bought a five-dollar bottle of water, had told her she should come back in March to see the mating season. Boats went out just to watch the whales.

She tried to imagine how she would feel if she were one of the massive creatures, just trying to have a little sexy time while humans floated around giggling and pointing. It would be like if aliens were bobbing about in the sky overhead with their high-tech monitoring devices, just hoping she and one of the human males would get interesting with each other so they could snap a recording and bring it to their home planet as a souvenir.
 
They, too, would prefer to come in the spring, when the most action took place.

The brochure had color photos on both sides. Apparently, she’d have to get on a boat that didn’t look much bigger than a Fiat and had been designed for a much thinner generation of Americans; and then, once she propelled herself onto the boat, she’d have to stay there until it left the dock, ideally without physical restraints.

That was just the boat. Getting into the water—the kind with living things that were familiar with the water in a totally non-
Exorcist
sort of way—would entail overcoming at least five more steps on the fear scale. One, there was the danger of the waves, riptide, and all the understandable risks of drowning. Two, marine organisms, benign. Three, marine organisms, hostile. Four, lingering body image issues that would be brought to the surface, so to speak, by taking off her clothes in a crowd. And five…

Five was the killer.

Ansel.

Would it be easier with his company… or without?

“Ready to run some more?” she asked. She needed to work off some tension.

He bent over, coughing like a dying man, then straightened, hand over his heart. “I was born ready,” he choked out. “Boy, I sure do love running.” He pounded his chest.

“Is Rachel your next of kin? In case you don’t make it?”

“You’d think someone with your problems would be more sensitive,” he said.

She laughed.
 

It was after eight when they staggered up the stairs to the condo. Actually, Ansel staggered; Nicki jogged ahead of him and gloated. She’d figured out on the return run that he was faking his infirmity.

“Go ahead.” He tripped on the stairs. “I’ll be… fine.”

“Geezers have to take it easy,” she said. “You should’ve taken the elevator.”

“I would have, but my companion has a disorder.”

“You wouldn’t like me when I’m freaking,” she said.

“I bet I would,” he said, in such a low voice, she hoped she hadn’t imagined it.

Feeling good, she ducked into her bathroom for a shower. And a more aggressive shave. She could see from the lines of sunburned pink flesh on her thighs—and above—that she had overestimated what percentage of her private parts were private.

Stupid bikinis. If she were a stronger swimmer, she’d wear shorts like a boy; but added drag was the last thing she wanted. She lathered up again. If razor-burned pubes were the price for buoyancy, she’d pay it.

After she got dressed, she wrote a quick post for the blog about Satan and water sports, then called Betty to see how she was doing.

“You got twice the hits last night,” Betty said, then sighed. “Just like Jaynette at the café the other night.”

“Still haven’t talked to her?”

“I did.” Betty’s voice rose to an unfamiliar pitch. “I told her it had been great, but it was time for me to move on.”

“No! She wasn’t willing to stop seeing other people?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Betty.”

“What? It would’ve been manipulative. I don’t do ultimatums. I tell all my girlfriends, ‘If you make an ultimatum, I’m out of here.’”

Nicki juggled two beanbags with one hand while she rolled her eyes. “You aren’t even kidding.”

“Children of immigrants know what it’s like to love freedom.”

“Yeah, you’re very patriotic,” Nicki said. “How’d she take it?”

“She laughed.”

“You’re lying,” Nicki said.

“No, she thought I was joking. And then we sort of dropped it. We’re going to the movies in an hour.”

“You’re more messed up than I am,” Nicki said.

“Says the woman who wishes bridges were made out of Oreos as a security measure.”

“I’m going snorkeling.” Nicki needed to reestablish the high ground.

“I’ll need proof.”

“I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

“You’re right,” Betty said. “Half the time I think you’re making up Phobic Phoebe’s freak-outs just to make a good story, which is totally fine with me, by the way. And oh, I sent the stress balls. So don’t say I never pay you.”

“I hope you sent a case.”

“There’s a male genitalia joke in there somewhere, but I’m too gay to think of it,” Betty said.

“I really am going to go snorkeling. I’m going to take a charter tour. Maybe next week.”

“That’s great, seriously. I’ve always wanted to go on one of those. Don’t drown, okay? I want to hear how it went.”

“For you, okay. I won’t drown,” Nicki said.

“Excellent. We done here?”

“Tell Jaynette after the movie how you feel about her.”

Betty hung up with a grunt.

Nicki threw the phone on the bed and looked at herself in the mirror, frowning at her body in the lightweight sea-green dress she’d put on after her shower. In her continuing efforts to triumph over anxiety, she’d chosen a dress that reminded her of mermaids—the color, the shimmery material, the low-cut neckline.

She thought she looked pretty good.

Before she could listen to her brain’s reminders about being in Hawaii for me, myself, and I—and not he, himself, and that nice butt of his—she strode out of her room until she found him, butt and all. He was on the balcony, drinking water and staring off at the ocean. Palm trees fluttered in the distant breeze.

She took a moment to stare. He wasn’t the oversized specimen of manhood that Miles was, but he had a compact, muscular, sculptural perfection, strong but not perfect, just a man, a real human being.

“Hey,” she said, stepping out on the balcony and closing the glass door behind her. Her heart began to pound.

He turned and saw her. “Oh, my.”

She should’ve worn something else. The hot stare thing was unnerving. Plus she’d just seen how his hair was mussed. Her fingers itched to smooth down the cowlick over his left eyebrow. And her tongue wanted to make a matching one over his right.

Her hands plucked at her dress. “You seem to have recovered from the run,” she said.

He grinned. “I am feeling pretty good at the moment.” His gaze slid over her head to toe. She held herself still, let him look. “What else are you up to today?” he asked.

“I have to swim,” she said. “Otherwise the phobia builds up again. I thought I’d spend an hour in the pool where you, you know…” She trailed off when all she could think of was
dragged me around
. It sounded dirty.

He lowered his voice. “Taught you a lesson?”

Oh, he made it sound dirty, too.
She leaned against the balcony railing. “Yes. But I don’t want company this time. You might turn into too much of a crutch. I need to know I can do this on my own. While the bucket’s relatively empty.”