Chapter 20
Three dives to go
Hugh knocks on the door to our cabin while I’m in the middle of pulling a shirt over my head.
‘One second,’ I call out. I pull down the T-shirt. ‘OK, come in.’
Hugh squeezes into the cabin beside me. ‘A lot more modesty than yesterday,’ he quips darkly, ‘things have certainly changed.’
‘Look.’ I spin around, hands on my hips. ‘First of all, can you stop referencing our little accident as a seduction ploy. I wasn’t exactly staking out your shower and planning to jump you in the hallway. Secondly, how did you not expect me to be upset about your paper?’
‘I honestly felt like you knew that was where I stood.’ Hugh runs a hand through his hair. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he says quietly. ‘I thought we were having a good time together.’
‘We were,’ I say, emphasising the past tense. I don’t want to be in this tiny room with him. It smells like his cologne, which makes me want to wrap my arms around him, but my head wants to rip him to pieces. The tension inside me makes me want to explode.
‘And now it’s just ruined? For the rest of the trip?’
‘I mean . . .’ I trail off. I shrug my shoulders. ‘I have to focus on finding this fish.’
‘I could help you do that,’ Hugh says, his voice bordering on pleading.
‘I don’t know how or why you would.’ I cross my arms over my chest. ‘Entertaining this at all was a bad idea.’
Hugh’s eyelashes flutter. ‘Got it,’ he says quietly.
‘Excuse me.’ I sidestep him and exit our room, suddenly desperate for some fresh air.
I fidget restlessly until I eventually doze off on the platform in the sun, with Pippa swaying on the hammock above me. Our next dive is in a couple of hours, then we’ll eat lunch and prep for our final late afternoon dive. I know I should be doing everything I can, reviewing Millie’s notes or looking at the pictures I’ve taken so far, but I can’t bring myself to look at my camera. I know I won’t find what I’m looking for. Instead, I drift in and out of sleep as the boat gently rocks back and forth.
I am just about to drop back to sleep when I hear the words ‘butterfly wrasse’. For a moment, I’m not sure if I’m already dreaming. I open my eyes a crack to figure out where the conversation is coming from. It’s Vanessa’s voice talking about the wrasse, but I can’t see her from my vantage point. I’m about to get up when I realise why – Vanessa is in the crew’s cabin, the one whose windows point out onto the platform. I’m right next to her, just on the other side of the glass. Whoever is inside can probably see me, but I’m not sure if they know I can hear.
I close my eyes and lie perfectly still.
‘Haven’t seen one,’ I hear Vanessa say.
‘You’re sure?’ asks Hugh.
That dirty bastard , I think. He’s interviewing them for his paper. He’s getting proof that the wrasse doesn’t exist from the people who dive here for a living. I feel like someone’s reached into my chest and grabbed my heart . . . first-hand proof of the wrasse’s extinction is the last thing Millie needs. I’m seconds away from getting up and storming into the room myself, just to point out the hypocrisy of Hugh saying earlier that he would ‘help me’ find the wrasse, when I hear him ask something else. I make out the words ‘where would you look?’ before I slightly shift my body and press my ear closer to the window.
‘If the last place they were seen was Norman Reef, then I would try that,’ Vanessa says.
‘What are the odds we could do our afternoon dive there?’ Hugh asks. We have two more dives today, a midday and a late afternoon.
‘I can ask Aaron . . .’ There’s a pause. I remain as still as possible. ‘Wasn’t Millie the one looking for the butterfly wrasse?’
‘I’m just trying to be helpful.’
The fist around my heart relaxes. Seconds later, I hear Vanessa call out to Aaron to come down into their room.
‘Norman for the late afternoon dive?’ he asks. I can picture him poking at a map.
I hear footsteps coming around the platform and close my eyes, pretending to be asleep. For a second, I think it must be Andrew, because I hear Pippa shift in the hammock above me.
I crack open one eye ever so slightly.
Hugh is seated right next to me, staring at me. He clears his throat when he sees me opening one eye.
Pippa climbs out of the hammock. ‘I’ll let you two catch up,’ she says, making her way into the shade of the captain’s room.
I stare at my feet. I should thank Millie for making me get a pedicure before this , I think.
‘You’re not very good at pretending to be asleep,’ Hugh says.
‘I wasn’t pretending. You woke me up,’ I reply, although my voice comes out a little higher than normal, exposing my lie. ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ I mumble.
‘Do what?’
‘Ask Vanessa and Aaron where to find the butterfly wrasse.’
‘Yes, I did.’
I pull myself out of my reclined position and sit up straight. ‘No, you didn’t. You don’t have to prove to me that you want to help me. It’s too late.’ Why is staying angry at Hugh so hard? I think, watching the sun catch on the perfect slope of his nose.
‘It’s never too late,’ Hugh says matter-of-factly. ‘And I am not just doing it for you.’
‘Really?’ I raise my eyebrows. ‘Because I feel like you lied to me, then you tried to downplay it, then you realised,’ I drop my voice to a whisper, ‘Andrew wasn’t as good a buddy as I was, and now you’re trying to make up for it by helping me find the wrasse.’
‘Did you ever think that maybe I like to do things by the book, with integrity, and that means giving you the best shot at finding the butterfly wrasse even if that means proving me wrong?’
I pick at the hem of my T-shirt. ‘No.’
‘Well then. And—’ Hugh drops his voice low, ‘—yes, you are a better buddy than Andrew, and I was hoping you would consider trading back.’
I fight off a smile. ‘I’m still mad at you,’ I say under my breath.
‘Andrew,’ Hugh calls, getting to his feet, ‘we gotta talk, buddy.’
‘Looks good,’ I say, testing Hugh’s regulator and double-checking the pressure in his air tank. I gently pull on the straps of his BCD. ‘You’re all set.’
‘Now I get to do you.’ Hugh’s voice is low as he runs his fingers up and down the zipper of my BCD. A shiver runs up my spine. I try not to focus on how right it feels that Hugh is back to being my buddy. I try instead to manifest spotting the butterfly wrasse through positive thinking. I can do this , I repeat over and over in my head.
Pippa had laughed when I apologised for abandoning her so quickly to be dive buddies with Hugh again.
‘I knew you two would work it out,’ she said, waving it off with one hand.
‘We haven’t worked anything out,’ I retorted back stubbornly.
She smirked at me.
Now she’s bickering with Andrew about how much weight he needs on his weight belt, convinced that he needs more to stop him from constantly floating upwards. Hugh must overhear them too because he starts to chuckle under his breath.
‘Let’s do this?’ he asks, holding out a hand to help me off the bench.
We approach the edge of the boat, and Hugh assumes his normal backwards, head-first somersault position. I stand awkwardly next to him, waiting to take a big step into the water.
‘Want to try getting in the fun way?’
I hesitate with indecision.
‘No,’ I decide, ‘not today. I have bigger fish to fry than gathering the courage to jump in head first.’
Hugh nods. ‘See you in there then,’ and backflips off the boat.
I take a wide step into the water, letting it rush into my ears, quieting the world around me.
We repeat the dive we did in the morning because Vanessa and Miguel said the visibility was some of the best they’d ever seen. The water is still crystal clear, with almost no current, barely any sand swirls up from the sea floor. Diving somewhere familiar is refreshing. I feel less disoriented and more like I know what I’m doing. With the absence of the current, the ocean is quieter, fewer shoals of fish rush by. I recognise a few landmarks – the sharp rise in the ocean floor as we get closer to the reef, the slow curve to the right of the first large coral structure.
I stop to hover over a staghorn coral cluster, and Hugh hovers right next to me. To my surprise, he pulls out an underwater camera too and gives me a thumbs-up. Together we snap pictures. He slowly makes his way towards another, smaller group of bright blue staghorn corals and continues to take photos.
If this is what it feels like to be on a research expedition with a team of scientists dedicated to a common goal, I want to go on one. I feel invigorated by the common sense of purpose Hugh and I are sharing, even if our end goals are somewhat different. It feels so nice to not be in this all alone.
We’re interrupted by Miguel shepherding us along to the second tangle of reef. As we make our way there, we see a giant manta ray pass underneath us, gently cruising across the sandy bottom. It’s sleek and grey, flapping its wings like an ocean butterfly. Our group turns and follows it for about twenty-five feet until Miguel gives us the signal to turn around. We’re all spellbound.
I thought the shock of diving would wear off, that with each dive things would seem less spectacular, but somehow it doesn’t. With every dive there is more to see, another crevice captivates me, a colour I’ve never seen before saturates my view, a new fish piques my curiosity.
No butterfly wrasse are spotted, but we do catch sight of another lobster. Hugh and I poke at a couple of clownfish protecting their anemone. Vanessa finds another coral whose petals disappear as we swim by it, and we take turns watching the purple tendrils appear and retract. Andrew thinks he sees something, and calls us all over, but it turns out he just saw a clump of algae in the crevice of a rock.
On our way back we swim right past a school of angelfish, their fins glinting in the sunlight as they swish past.
I feel a low trembling of anxiety that I will never be content in a cubicle in Columbus again.