Chapter Fifteen
We walked past the plane,where I fainted and had to be carried like a child, and the dock, where I fell into Coop’s arms. I swear, how many times will this guy have to “rescue” me? I must look like one of those ridiculous women who can’t take care of herself. I fight the urge to look behind me as we continue to walk. I know what his face will look like–all smug-like, cocky, and extremely handsome–so why am I fighting the pull to check to see if he is still there?
I can’t hear him. The sound of the waves crashing on the shoreline, mixed with the sound dampening sand beneath our feet, I really can’t tell if he is there. Maybe I can look back really quickly and he won’t see? I swivel my head to the right and look over my shoulder, and there he is, eyes trained directly on me with a look that says it all.
I roll my eyes at him before facing forward again. I hear him come up beside me, and he nudges me in the side. “You do know I have been here more times than I can count. Dr. Kendrig was more than just a job, Molly. Every other year, I would complain to my dad about having to come along, just a pack mule to carry Doc”s equipment. But those trips are some of my most favorite memories.” I glance over at him, and the look in his eyes says he has disappeared to someplace else, taking a trip down memory lane.
“Coop…Hello? Earth to Coop,” I take a play out his handbook as I wave my hand in front of his face. He chuckles as he swats my hand out of the way.
“So… knew where you were going, did ya?” I knew this was coming. I hold my head up high and trudge along with the blatant lie I concocted in my head.
“Yup, sure did. I had seen that cliff face on the topography maps I studied, and wanted to see if there were tide-pools there.” I shrug my shoulders, feeling sick at such a ridiculous lie. Why do I always feel the need to let my pride get the best of me? I look over at Coop and he has his fist to his mouth and is biting back laughter.
“Oh shut up.” I take both of my hands and push him away as hard as I can. Catching him off guard, he stumbles backward, his shoes getting stuck in the sand. He starts to fall backward and reaches out, grabbing onto my arms, pulling me with him on our downward descent. He lands with a grunt, and I follow his lead, crashing into his body with full force.
Coop lets out a yelp, his face contorting in pain.
“Oh, my gosh. Are you hurt?” I look around, wondering if he landed on something sharp, when the realization of his pain comes in loud and clear as I take notice of where my knee landed.
“Off,” he wheezes, “Get off.” I clamber off of his body, dropping my backpack to the sand as he rolls over to his side in pain, moaning as his hand cups his man parts, shielding them from further damage.
My hands are fluttering by my sides as I try to figure out how to help him with his situation. How does one help with this kind of injury? “Do you want a cold water bottle or something?” I suggest, as he rolls back over, a disgruntled look in his eyes at such a stupid suggestion. Yeah, Molly, he wants something cold down there. I can just picture it now: the image of Coop in the fetal position, clutching a water bottle to his… well… area. It is just too much. I bring my palm to my face, shaking my head as I start to laugh.
I’m doubled over in laughter as Coop recovers on the sand. Wiping my tears from my face, I look down at him. His arms are crossed defensively across his chest, and his jaw is clenched tightly, his eyes burning with a mixture of pain and irritation.
“I… uh… um…” I clear my throat, trying to regain control over my emotions. “Here, let me help you up.” I stick my hand out, and he looks at it, scrunching his eyebrows together as though he is contemplating something.
“It’s just a hand, Coop. It’s not going to hurt you.” He reaches out, and I help pull him up as he grunts to stand.
“Are you sure about that? Because those ‘hands’ are the ones that threatened to slit my throat, kill me, and pushed me to the sand just now, causing me injury to a very sensitive area. Which, if I’m being honest, will probably cause me to talk in a higher decibel for a while, and if we are talking about long term effects? Well, if I can’t have kids later in life, I’ll know who to blame.” He winks at me, grabbing my backpack from my hands as we start to walk.
We reach the North Shore,and I can see tracks from sea turtles dotted in the sand all along the high-tide line, so I set my backpack down and get to work.
“Okay, all we will be doing is tagging and measuring as many nest sites as we can find today.” I walk over to what appears to be a disturbed patch of sand and gently place my backpack down.
Pulling out my probing tool, I insert it at an angle to minimize the risk of damaging the eggs below the surface. When I am sure I feel air pockets below the surface, I motion for Coop to come closer. “We’ve got one,” I whisper, trying not to disturb the little babies growing in their shells. “Want to see what it feels like?” Coop nods his head and tiptoes over to me. Letting one hand go, I grab his hands and position them on the rod, placing my hands on top so I can guide it around.
“Can you feel the air pockets below the surface?” I look up at Coop, and he swallows before answering.
“I’m not sure what it would feel like without the air pockets, so I don’t really know.” I carefully remove the rod and move to another area that I am positive isn’t a nest. I stick the rod in and motion for him to come over. Placing his hands on the rod like before, I put mine on top and move the rod around again.
“Can you feel the difference?” I look up at him again, and he lets go before taking a step back.
He reaches up to move his hair out of his eyes, looks back at the rod, and then up at me before clearing his throat. “Uh, yeah. I did. That’s pretty cool. The Doc never let me do that before, but I always wondered.” We move back over to the confirmed nesting site from before, and I pull out four flagged stakes.
“We will use these to remember where the sites are.” Feeling around with my probe, I stick in one stake, making sure to put it at least a few inches outside of the hole. “And we can also use them as a guide to measure how large the holes are. This will tell us what species of sea turtle is here.” Coop nods his head as he watches me carefully flag around the perimeter of the nest. I pull out my clipboard and write down the depth of the probe, taking measurements from stake to stake, making a note at the top to subtract a few inches from the final measurements. Walking around to all of the flags, I write a big fat ‘one’ on each of them, just in case one of them becomes displaced over the next few days, and place a ‘one’ next to the measurements on my sheet.
“Alright, this one is done for now. Let’s see if we can find some more.” He picks up the backpack and follows behind me like a hired sherpa.
We tagtwenty more nesting sites and fall into rhythm beside one another. Coop hands me tools and writes down measurements as I call them off to him, making my work fast and efficient.
We decide to take a break and head back down the beach to the plane so Coop can grab his food from the cooler. He grabs a beach blanket and spreads it out on the sand while setting out two waters, along with a couple of apples.
I pull out my brown paper bag, and Coop chuckles at me as I remove my sandwich from the bag, along with an organic granola bar and an earth-friendly bag of multi-colored goldfish crackers. “What?” I say, shrugging my shoulders.
“Oh, nothing. I didn’t take you for a ‘goldfish’ for lunch, kind of gal.” He opens his plastic sandwich bag and removes his sandwich, jelly dripping onto the paper towel on his lap as he takes a bite.
“Ugh. That is disgusting. Only barbarians eat jelly on their sandwiches.” I cringe as I watch him wipe the jelly from his chin and then gawk, melting a little bit inside as he licks it from his lips.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What kind of sandwich are you eating, then? I can smell the peanut butter from here.” He takes another gargantuan bite as he waits for my response.
“It’s a peanut butter and honey sandwich, if you must know. But not the crunchy kind. That stuff is gross. It’s creamy all the way.” I unwrap my sandwich from the beeswax cloth. Because, hello… environmentally friendly biologist over here. I try not to judge as I watch him crumple the plastic from his sandwich and shove it into the cooler.
“I have to disagree. It’s crunchy or bust. No one likes that creamy crap. Who doesn’t like a little bit of crunch to their munch? Also, haven’t you ever heard the song ‘Peanut Butter Jelly Time?’ It’s not ‘Peanut butter honey time’; it’s ‘Peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly…”” He continues to sing the song, doing a little dance, his fists going in circles like he’s stirring a pot as he sings. I cover my ears, remembering the song from elementary school.
“Thanks for that, Coop. Now that stinking song is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.” He takes another bite, and his sandwich is now gone. He eyeballs my half sandwich in my hands and smiles at me from across the blanket.
“Nope. No way. This is mine. Plus, didn’t you just say you don’t like the creamy stuff?”
He juts out his bottom lip, and gives me the sad puppy dog face, one no puppy dog loving human being could possibly resist, and my resolve to keep my food to myself dissolves. No grown man should look both that pitiful and adorably cute at the same time. Men and their food. Hopeless and Helpless.
I extend my sandwich to him, and he smiles as he snatches from my outstretched hand, and takes a giant bite out of it, before gracefully spitting it out into the sand. “Oh, yuck, Molly. That is not good. What is that?” He wipes his hand across his mouth and grabs a water bottle, swigging down half of it, before handing me back the half of the half-eaten sandwich.
“It’s Ezekiel bread with organic, no sugar peanut butter, drizzled with honey.” He stops drinking and curls his lip up in disgust.
“It tastes like stale bread, with a spread of sand drizzled with sweet stuff to give the blandness of it all flavor.” He reaches into his cooler, and before I know what he is about, he has an entire assembly line set up before him. Welch’s squeezable grape jelly, Skippy crunchy peanut butter, and an entire loaf of Nature’s Own butter bread. “Here, let”s make you a real PBJ.” I watch as he takes a heaping scoop of peanut butter and spreads it onto the soft bread. He flicks open the cap of the jelly and squirts a large amount of it across the peanut butter before placing the other slice of bread on top. He holds it out to me, and I shrink back, shaking my head from side to side.
“Come on. I tried yours.” He shuffles toward me on his knees and holds the sandwich in front of my face.
I look down and stare at the half-eaten half of a sandwich in my hands. Maybe the jelly isn’t as bad as I remember it being when I was a kid. I look up at Coop, and he has the biggest smile on his face, like a kid on Christmas morning.
I inch myself forward and close my eyes, opening my mouth as I try not to gag at the memory of the spoiled jelly from my childhood. If my dad would have only checked the jar to see when the expiration date was, maybe I wouldn’t have such an aversion to all things jelly.
My mouth is watering as I tentatively bite down on the bread and begin to chew. Flavors explode in my mouth as the grape jelly hits my tongue, the mixture from the peanut butter the perfect balance of sweet and salty.
I drop the other sandwich from my hands and latch onto the one that Coop is still holding in front of my face, feeding me like an infant.
“Mmmmmm,” is all I can say in between bites, my eyes still closed as I inhale the sandwich he made me, savoring every morsel. I take the last bite and open my eyes to lick the remaining jelly from my fingers. When I am done, I look up to find Coop watching me, the same smile on his face as before. But his eyes… his eyes are on me, and the look he is giving me isn’t one I am familiar with. It’s like his baby blues have a fire burning behind them, and I think I might be the source behind the lighting of that fire. Something in the back of my head is like a fire alarm going off. But instead of the large, obnoxious sound that makes you clap your hands to your ears, this one is a big red sign with big blinking bold words on repeat that say, ‘Warning’. ‘Warning’. ‘Warning’.