Diving In (8 page)

Rachel let out a frustrated breath into the phone. “You dork, I’m really, really engaged. You know how this stuff works with us,” she added. “Where I go, you go.”

He smiled to himself, knowing how far from London he was at the moment. “Not always,” he said. “So, how long have you known this guy?”

“Long enough.”

He chewed on a thumbnail, hearing the defensiveness in her voice. “Does Romeo have a name?”

“Of course.” She paused. “Oliver Alcock.”

His head flew up. “You’re shitting me.” He glanced guiltily at the children watching the fish, then stood and walked out of earshot.

“He’s English,” she said.

“Sure he is.”

She frowned. “What do you mean? I met him in London. He was born here.”

“He can’t be
all
English, though.”

“I suppose he might be Welsh or Scottish or something.”

“It’s obvious what he is, Rache.” He paused for a full two seconds. “All cock.”

She let out an exasperated exhalation. “I give up.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t notice, though,” he went on, unable to hold his laughter any longer. “Or are you waiting until after the wedding before you go that far?”

“I’m sending the invitation to your place in San Francisco. And if you don’t send back the RSVP envelope, I won’t let you in the church.” Then she hung up.

Feeling a little guilty, but still chuckling, he walked into the springy lawn of the courtyard. He waited a minute before calling her back.

“Sorry I was a dick,” he said. “So to speak. Not one-hundred-percent dick, of course—”

“I’ve got you all figured out.”

“I’m so glad,” he said.

“You’re jealous.”

He snorted. “Of Oliver Allpenis?”

“You’re making fun of his name just because your life is empty.”

“It isn’t…”

“You’re worried about turning thirty. You’re ready to find your own soul mate.”

“Maybe your dude has a cousin.” He put his hands on his hips. “Vanessa Vagina, perhaps.”

“You always make jokes when you’re hiding your feelings.”

“Okay, last year I might have said something about wanting to settle down, but I’m over it. I’ve got more on my plate now. Serious stuff. Mom and Dad were already retired by the time they turned thirty. I’m just getting started.”

“You’re lonely.”

“That’s irrelevant. I’m not going to date anyone seriously until I’ve got my first mother lode in the bank.”

“You’re being stupid,” Rachel said. “And so’s Dad. There’s no reason for you to try to get rich when the family has more than we know what to do with. Mom would never agree with what Dad’s doing. All you have to do is talk to her—”

“Never. This is between me and Dad.” He shook his head. “No, scratch that. It’s between me and myself. It has nothing to do with him. I need to do this for myself.”

“Then get a regular job. You know people. You don’t have expensive taste—you don’t need a fortune. Become a dog-walker, or work in Jordan’s restaurant—you don’t need to be rich to be in love.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “We had it so good,” he said. “I want my own kids to have the same great childhood.”

“Oh, Ansel, you’re just as ready to settle down as I am,” she said. “Let me help. I have tons of friends all over the world. There has to be somebody who we could both tolerate.”

“That’s so romantic of you.”

“A woman.” She smiled. “I’ll find you a woman. Then you can bring her to my wedding and enjoy yourself.”

“No. Congratulations on your impending nuptials with Lord Phallis-on-Trent. Leave my love life alone, and I promise I won’t say another word about it.”

“But I know so many great women…”

“You want me to show up at your wedding, you stop talking about setting me up. Got it?”

“But…”

“I’m serious, Rachel. No.”

“Not even a teacher? She’s totally cool. Funny, smart, cute—”

“No.”

“Fine, fine,” she said. “Whatever you want. I’d never do anything you didn’t want me to.”

“Except get married,” he said before hanging up.

* * *

Nicki managed to avoid him for three days. As promised, he didn’t intrude. They ate their meals separately, nodded at each other from a distance, kept to themselves.

She thought she was doing pretty well until she talked to Betty on Thursday afternoon. Apparently, her achievement in the wading pool wasn’t as impressive as she thought.

“I’m sure it meant a lot to you,” Betty said, “but it doesn’t really translate to the blog. People could relate to you lusting after the unattainable Thor, but I’m afraid this just makes you look kind of insane.”

Nicki was sitting on the balcony eating a peanut butter and pineapple sandwich, her main source of nutrients. Maui was painfully expensive. “Thanks.”

“Just looking out for you,” Betty said.

“Since when?”

“Fine. I’m looking out for the blog. People like to laugh
when they read Phoebe, not get uncomfortable.”

Nicki peeled the crust off her sandwich and ate it separately. “It’s hard not to share the joy.”

“Look, it’s just the wading pool. When are you going to the beach? People actually drown there all the time. I looked it up. People don’t realize how dangerous it is. They put their back to the waves and whoops, bye-bye,” Betty said. “You should go there.”

“I’d rather have sex on the registration desk with a bellhop.”

Betty whistled. “That would work. I bet that’s your subconscious talking. Have someone in mind?”

“I’ll write about whatever I want,” Nicki said. “If you don’t like it because you think it’s too much of a bummer, you can delete it.”

“Just go to the beach. Even if you don’t go in because you’re freaking out, write about that. Most people never get to go to Hawaii.”

Nicki shoved the last of her sandwich in her mouth. “You know, Betty, you’d have a lot more influence over my writing if you paid me.”

“That’s so mercenary,” Betty said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I’ll work my way up to the beach, but it’s not going to happen today.”

“Just jump in and get it over with,” Betty said. “You freak out, you recover, you’re done.”

“And then I can never do it again, because the trauma has been reinforced. I’m going to do this my way. You don’t like it, fire me.”

“Take it easy, Nemo. I’m your biggest fan. Just trying to help.”

After they hung up, Nicki decided to go for another swim. She wasn’t going to flood herself with her fears, but she could accelerate the desensitization a bit. Two swims a day in the baby pool instead of one wouldn’t hurt. Not fatally.

 
She gathered her towel, hat, sunglasses, lotion, book, magnesium supplements, bottle of iced “Calming Caress” herbal tea, and phone loaded with relaxing hypnosis sessions she’d downloaded from a psychotherapist in Scotland. Just his accent was enough to take the edge off.
You aaah the kind of pair-sin who is caaahhhm and confident…

Earbuds in place, mellow Scotsman chanting in her ears, she returned to the pool.

* * *

Head high, legs bare, sunglasses disguising her worried eyes, Nicki strutted past umbrellas and palm trees, fragrant gardens, bubbling spas, and bodies, bodies, bodies. She wasn’t the only one with rocky nips under her bikini.

She snapped a hot-pink blossom off a planter in the courtyard and stuck it in her hair, humming a recent hit single with the immortal words
Get me some
repeated for five minutes to a techno beat. When she reached the first of the hot tubs, she dropped her cover-up to her feet like a woman in a moisturizer commercial.

She’d waded across the baby pool every day since Monday, and now the blasting panic was more of a dull, distant buzz. She was ready to tackle the hot tub. It wasn’t really a pool. More like a very wet sofa.
 

Telling herself it was all for fun, great material for the blog, no big deal, she stepped into the bubbles, still wearing her glasses so she could check out the other people.

Men were everywhere at the resort. Young men, youngish men, not-so-youngish men. All of them were new, and none of them was Ansel. She scanned the area twice to be sure.

Or Miles. Since when was this all about Ansel? He was an old problem. She was here to deal with the current, real problem, which was how a wonderful guy, who was Miles, a man who devoted his life to children just as she had, a man with charm and maturity, the one she knew would’ve made her happier than anyone else, never considered her as anything other than a coworker or friend.

Ansel was ancient history. She didn’t need to forget him. That
other
guy was the problem.

Ah, the water felt good. No surge of panic, though her nerves did jump at the shock of scalding water. Instead of hunching her shoulders, slipping under the surface, waiting for them to relax into their usual flaccid, placid selves, she arched her back and tilted her face up to the sun.

The guy across from her noticed. He was almost as big as Miles, built like an action figure. Rivulets of water ran down his pecs—and his own erect nipples—and she decided he either came from a sunny location back home or had been in Hawaii for a while, because although his hair was lighter than hers, his skin was perfectly bronzed.

Under the tufts of hair. He was kind of like a blond gorilla.

From her peripheral vision, she watched him stare at her breasts. It took every hot, steaming drop of her willpower not to cross her arms over her chest and dive under the water. If she weren’t terrified of drowning, she might have.

“Hey, baby, come here,” he said.

All the breath—which apparently she’d been holding for the last six minutes, because it came out in a tight, stale
whoosh
—burst out of her. Under her erect nipples, her heart pounded against her ribs. “What?” she whispered.

“I saw a turtle, Daddy!” A little girl jumped fearlessly into the spa and splashed over to the big man. “In the ocean! Come see!”

Smiling broadly, the man lifted the little girl up in the air. A snorkeling mask hung around her neck, and a single flipper clung to her tiny left foot. She was very young, maybe four, but she wore a spongy rubber wet suit from neck to knee that fit her perfectly.

“It probably swam away by now, honey, don’t you think?” he asked her.

“No, I told him to wait. He likes me. Come on, come on!”

The man turned away from the little girl to gaze above Nicki’s head. “She told him to wait,” he said, grinning.

A woman who’d been blessed by God’s airbrushers strode around the spa and squatted down behind the man and the little girl. She wore a black-and-neon-orange athletic bikini with the crotch coverage of, approximately, her clitoris.

It seemed the blond gorilla had all the hair in the family. Not even a single razor bump was visible. My God, didn’t that hurt?

All at once, the sporty trio glanced up at her. Nicki quickly smiled at the little girl. “Cute,” she said.
Not you,
she added silently to the woman, who’d caught her staring at her shaved labia.

The woman smiled tightly. The man didn’t look at her. “She wants to go back in,” the woman said.

“I told him I’d be right back,” the girl said.

“Well, we don’t want to be rude.” The man stood, slinging the girl over his shoulders, and stepped out of the pool, water streaking down his hairy legs like balls in a pachinko machine.

The woman rose and they walked toward the ocean. No doubt the turtle was glancing at his watch.

When she’d stopped hyperventilating, Nicki climbed out to try the baby pool again.

* * *

Ansel looked at the pizza on the counter, then at the clock on the microwave. It was past eight. Shouldn’t she be back from swimming by now? He’d seen her go out hours ago, though she hadn’t noticed him sitting in the living room.

It had been three days since she’d refused his invitation to dinner, long enough, he hoped, that she’d share a pizza with him. The delivery guy had just delivered it, and it was getting cold.

He went to the door and put on his shoes. The hotels and resorts along the beach all looked the same to newcomers; maybe she was lost.

Imagining her gratitude when he rescued her, he was a little disappointed to find her floating on her back in the wading pool within two hundred yards of the condo tower, exactly where she’d stood the other day, laughing about swimming.

He stopped and considered going back inside without bothering her, but then he saw the scowl on her face. She was glaring at the sky and breathing heavily.

“Nicki?” he asked. The pool was as big as a soccer field, but the western half of it, near the hot tubs, was only a foot or two deep. This late on a Thursday night, she had it to herself. Ansel scanned the deck chairs. Mostly to herself. A couple of guys near the bar watched her, drinking silently. Floating like a pale mermaid in a bikini, her long hair splayed out on the surface around her face, lit up from all sides by the pool lighting and tiki torches, she was quite a sight.

He couldn’t resist a moment to savor the view. Sundresses were nice, but bikinis were a gift from the divine. He called out again, louder this time, “Nicki?”

With a start, her butt hit the bottom of the pool. Rolling to her side, she pushed herself up with her arms and sat up, showing just how shallow the water was. It barely reached her navel. “What’s the matter?”

“Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

He hesitated. “It’s getting late.”

“Late for what?”

Now he felt stupid. “Never mind,” he said, turning. “Sorry. See you around.”

He heard splashing and looked back to see her striding out of the pool to a pile of towels. After a moment she wrapped herself up in her robe and came over to him, her shoes, towel, and tote bag crushed together in a mess in her arms. “I guess I lost track of time,” she said. “Swimming is so relaxing, don’t you think?”

“You didn’t look relaxed.”

“Sure I did.”

“Not really. You looked kind of angry. I thought one of those guys might’ve been bugging you.”

“What guys?”

“The drunk jerks ogling you from the bar.”