The Light of the Blue Pearl (12 page)

“Hey!” she said, elbowing him in the
side.

“What?! You did,” he said. “And you just
confessed it, so I was right.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “You were
right.”

They lay there quietly for a few minutes
soaking in the sun and occasionally nibbling on their last bits of
pineapple and chocolate.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” he
asked.

“Sure,” she said.

He put everything back in the basket and she
helped him fold up the blanket. After returning everything to the
car they made their way back down to the beach.

They were quiet for a while before he
finally asked, “So why don’t you date?”

“Boy, not wasting any time there, huh?” she
said.

“Why don’t you, Mr. Workaholic?” she fired
back.

He laughed. “Touché,” he said. “I suppose no
one ever caught my eye. I do work a lot, that has been my main
focus lately, but ultimately I haven’t seen anyone worth the
effort.”

“Worth the effort?” she asked. “For a date?
But planning a mystery trip for me to go on was what, a piece of
cake?”

“Well…you caught my eye,” he said.

She stopped and looked up at him. “I caught
your eye?” she asked, less of a question and more of a
realization.

He stopped too and turned to her. “Yeah…you
caught my eye,” he said. “And after you caught my eye, I couldn’t
stop wondering why you always kept to yourself. I mean…you’re
beautiful.”

Obviously a shy soul as well, he was
blushing and not wanting to meet her gaze.

She was speechless. She really didn’t want
to have the “why don’t you date” talk right now, plus she was not
used to being called beautiful.

So she did the only thing she could think
of. She reached over and took his hand and started walking down the
beach again.

He didn’t argue with that and held her hand
tightly as they traversed the sand and made their way down to the
water.

After they walked in silence for a few
minutes he stopped. She turned to look at him, puzzled.

“So…I told you my reason, are you going to
tell me yours?” he asked.

It appeared the inevitable was upon her,
despite all of her efforts to avoid it; unless she lied.

“I suppose no one ever caught my eye either
and I’m not really one to make the first move anyway. No one ever
asked me out,” she said, actually telling more truth than she had
anticipated.

“Well I find that hard to believe,” he said.
They continued walking down the beach; her fingers nestled cozily
between his.

They had walked a long way before either of
them realized that lunch time had long past.

“I guess we’d better get back,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said. “This was nice
though.”

He smiled in agreement as they walked back
to his car. “So do you still want to cancel Thursday?” he
asked.

She laughed. “No…I don’t,” she said.

“Well good, cuz those movie tickets cost me
a fortune,” he said.

She giggled. “Oh yeah, compared to a trip to
Belize, they’re highway robbery,” she said.

“So do you think you’ll ever go back?” he
asked. His words echoing the same ones Ian had said to her just
before she had boarded the plane.

She answered him the same way. “Yeah, I
think I will.”

A pang of guilt suddenly hit her again
knowing that she hadn’t told Scott about Ian. But other than a
couple of casual dates with him, there really wasn’t much to
tell.

True, she had felt very comfortable with
Ian, and she did miss him. But she knew she would never see him
again so what did it matter?

She didn’t like how things were starting off
with Scott though. She actually really liked the guy, but she was
lying to him. She may not have had many relationships with people
in her life, but she knew enough to know that that wasn’t good.

After he dropped her off and she was back in
her house she decided she would have to tell him the truth on
Thursday. It was the only decent thing to do. He had given her so
much already and it wasn’t fair to lead him on.

Trying her best to push it out of her mind,
since it was a couple of days away, she relaxed a while before
getting ready for work.

W
ork had been
rather dull again. She wondered if it had been dull before her
trip, or if she had just been too numb to even care.

Either way, it was dull now and she almost
couldn’t stand it.

She only had to speak with patients and a
few staff members on occasion, and suddenly she found herself dying
for some kind of interaction with people. That was a very strange
feeling.

Before her trip she kind of hated people,
they drove her nuts if she was honest. Most of them so
self-centered and whiny, especially at the hospital; and that was
mostly the staff members.

Ironically the patients were easier to deal
with. She didn’t have to deal with them as often, since she handled
mostly their paperwork, but on occasion she did interact with
them.

She always found their attitudes refreshing.
Maybe it was their fear; most people in their situations were
humbled and had relinquished their egos at the door.

Sometimes there were people who were
fighting the staff tooth and nail; that was from fear too. But
those kinds of patients, the difficult ones, were rare.

She hadn’t seen Scott that night, and truth
be told she had been disappointed by that, but she hadn’t always
seen him before either so nothing was really different.

Pulling into her driveway and walking to the
door she half expected to either see him or find a box, but there
wasn’t anything waiting for her.

Life it seemed, for the most part, had gone
back to normal. She wasn’t terribly pleased by this; in fact, she
was on edge.

She was nervous about Thursday, not terribly
thrilled about having to break the news to him. But at the same
time not thrilled about what breaking the news was going to
mean.

Her life was boring. It had no meaning,
nothing at all. Before her trip she got up, wasted a bit of her day
doing nothing, ran occasionally and went to work.

That was it. Aside from the usual boring
details of going grocery shopping and maybe reading books or
watching movies, that was her life.

She didn’t have any pets. She really didn’t
have any friends to speak of; she doubted that any of her neighbors
had even noticed that she had been gone for a few days.

The idea that she wasn’t even missed hit her
particularly hard in the gut. Although it was true she had designed
her life this way, for other people’s benefit as well as her own,
she suddenly woke up to the fact that in doing so she had isolated
herself into oblivion.

She might as well not even be alive.

With that last thought she sat down, staring
at the floor. She was feeling both anger and disbelief at the fact
that she had lived 23 years of her life this way.

Yes, there was a reason; but that didn’t
soften the blow.

Having traveled to San Pedro and witnessed
the beauty of the beach as well as the kindness of the people,
being home made her realize she had locked herself away and thrown
away the key.

No one else had done that to her, it had
been her choice. She thought of her dream she had had that night,
how it seemed now that perhaps she was the wind pushing herself
back, keeping her from whatever it is she was trying to reach.

The only difference was she hadn’t been
trying to reach anything at all; in the dream, or in life.

She was simply just trying to make due with
the circumstances she had been given, with the life she thought was
already decided.

Now she began to wonder if it truly had been
decided, or if she simply had been a fool.

Fear can do strange things to someone
though, and pain and loss added to that was a recipe for nothing
good. She knew that first hand, not just from her own life but from
working at the hospital.

Sometimes there is no rational thought when
all of the above are present and it takes a huge knock to your
teeth before you wake up from it. Scott had knocked her teeth
in.

He hadn’t even realized it by planning this
trip for her, or maybe he had, he had said he noticed her sad eyes.
Those sad eyes were present for a reason, she supposed no one else
ever noticed or simply couldn’t be bothered to go any farther than
a thought.

The question now was…what was she going to
do now? Just because she had been shown the truth of things didn’t
mean she could change her mindset of 23 years. It wasn’t like
switching on a light bulb.

The pain from her past and fears that now
made her decisions for her weren’t just going to go away. Ethne was
stubborn, and she had made a decision a long time ago. It was going
to take a lot to convince her to change it.

That being said, her life really was boring,
and it was going to be that much harder to deal with this fact
now.

It was late. Even though she was a bit
worked up there was nothing to be done about it now. She rushed
through her nighttime routine and crawled into bed, hoping that a
dreamless sleep would come.

As she fell asleep she started thinking
about her pearl, and the Blue Hole, suddenly drawn to that feeling
she had experienced when she had first slipped into the water.

***

In the morning Ethne woke up, stretched and
realized she had slept more soundly than she had in a long time.
This surprised her. Especially after how she had felt when she
first crawled into bed.

She could have run a marathon on the
adrenaline from her anger and frustration that had been released
the night before. It had felt like someone had popped the bubble
she had been living in.

Part of her wanted to go back into the
bubble, it had been comfortable there, she really hadn’t been that
aware of the mundaneness of her life.

Now that she was, half of her didn’t want
the knowledge. But what was done was done. There wasn’t more she
could do now besides learn to deal with it and figure out a new way
to exist.

The first thing she had to decide was what
she was going to tell Scott, if anything, on their date the next
day. It hadn’t gone over very well last time. Even having the words
prepared, somehow he had stolen them away just with his smile.

That really was an unfair advantage, preying
on a bubble victim freshly released. Although in all fairness to
him he hadn’t known about her servitude.

All the same, she couldn’t keep pretending
to be someone she wasn’t.

After spending her day the way she usually
did she headed off to work for the night, hoping this time she
might actually get to see him. Given that she was probably about to
end things she really would need to stop hoping for things like
that.

When she walked into her office she saw a
vase with a single rose inside. There was a card, of course.

It read: “Looking forward to tomorrow.”

There was no name on the card, though it
hadn’t really needed one.

She picked up the rose; bringing it to her
nose she smelled its sweetness.

It was red; her favorite color.

When she got home that night she realized
she had barely even been aware of working, hopefully she hadn’t
made any mistakes. Although she was so accustomed to things she
probably could do it in her sleep, hell, she practically had
been.

She fell asleep quickly holding one of the
petals from the rose in her hand; no one had ever given her any
flowers before.

***

When she woke up she still had the petal in
her hand. She felt the velvet between her fingers and it made her
smile instantly. She truly was a walking contradiction at the
moment.

Today was the big day, her first real date
with Scott. Though it may be her last, she was still going to enjoy
it. There was no reason she had to tell him anything at the start
of it that much she had decided.

The date wasn’t until later that evening but
she wanted to be relaxed and ready, as relaxed as she could be
anyway, so she decided to go for a run first.

Running always helped her to clear her mind.
She loved the freedom from it; it was one of the few things she got
to do that made her feel any freedom at all – being alone didn’t
necessarily mean you felt free.

She decided to run to her favorite spot,
which just happened to be where they had had their picnic. The
weather wasn’t quite as nice, but she never minded the rain. Not
only did she enjoy getting soaked, she loved that it usually meant
everywhere she went was pretty deserted.

Her recent desire for more human interaction
did not apply to her running; she felt no need for distraction or
interruption there. In fact the idea of running with someone
confused her. Didn’t running with someone defeat the purpose of
running, of feeling free?

She thought so. She loved feeling like she
could go anywhere she wanted, run as far or as fast as she wanted
with nothing holding her back.

When she got home she felt like she was
mentally ready for the date. Unfortunately, it was still hours
away. She was pretty good at passing the time though, so that’s
what she did.

Before long the hand of the clock moved to
the six and she realized he would be arriving at any moment. She
wondered if he would actually come to her door this time, or if he
would do some other ridiculous thing; he really wasn’t normal.

She liked that about him.

The doorbell rang and she nearly jumped out
of her skin; it was not a sound she was used to hearing. Even
though she had expected him, her mind had been elsewhere.

She opened the door and saw Scott looking
out towards the street with his hands in his pockets.