Chapter Eleven #4
I stared at him. “Have you never jumped off a yacht before?”
Alex scratched his jaw with his good hand. “Will you think less of me if I say no?”
“Maybe.”
“Then . . . maybe?”
I had a hard time imagining Alex scared of anything, especially after he’d had emergency stitches and taken on that primary today. “Are you scared of heights or something?”
“No,” he said. “I’m scared of hitting the water wrong and breaking my neck.”
“Alex, you won’t die unless you jump off like a doofus.”
“I’m a doofus sometimes,” he said.
“That may be true, but I think you’ve got just enough sense to jump off a yacht safely.” I stood from the hot tub, then remembered I was standing right beside him in only my bra and underwear and hurried out of it. “Come on, Chef Alex. We’re doing this.”
“You mean now?” Alex, still in the hot tub, looked as if I’d suggested bathing in jellyfish.
I snapped up two clean towels from beside the bar and wrapped one around myself before returning to the hot tub.
I tried not to laugh at Alex’s stricken face when I passed him the other.
It was nice to be the one making him flustered for once.
“Yes, now. No self-respecting yachtie hasn’t jumped off a yacht. ”
“I have no self-respect,” he said. “And my hand.” He waved it in front of me. “I can’t get it wet.”
“Hold that thought,” I said. I raced down to the crew mess and found a Ziploc bag and a roll of duct tape. Supplies in hand, I paused at the bar on the sun deck and poured out two shots of tequila.
Alex was sitting on a lounge chair when I returned, a towel wrapped around his waist. “We’re all out of gin martinis,” I said, and passed him the shot glass.
“What’s this for?”
“Nerves.”
“I don’t see how a shot will make me less likely to break my neck.”
I gave him a blank stare. “Are you going to get drunk off of one shot?” He shook his head. “Will this even make you tipsy?” He shook his head again. “Drink it or not, but I promise it’ll be worth it if you jump off this ship.”
Alex narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you get out of this?”
I shrugged. “The privilege of being the one to pop your yacht-jumping cherry.”
“That is a coveted title,” he replied, nodding seriously. “Okay, I’ll do it. I can’t deny you that.”
I held out my shot, and Alex sighed, clinking his glass to mine. After downing the tequila, his eyes darted to the Ziploc bag and duct tape. “Are you . . . planning to murder me?”
“It’s for your hand.” I sat next to him on the lounge chair and reached for his arm, slipping the Ziploc bag gently over his hand and duct taping it until it was airtight.
I grabbed Alex’s good hand and pulled him to his feet, dragging him to the best jumping spot on the aft deck.
“How far is it?” Alex asked, looking pale as we slipped beyond the railing.
“Twenty-five feet.”
“The water in the marina . . . it’s deep enough, right?”
“It’s deep enough,” I said. “I’ve done this a million times.
We’ll be fine.” We dropped our towels behind us, and I took Alex’s hand in mine again.
“Don’t chicken out, okay? If you don’t jump and I end up pulling you off, we’ll both hit the water wrong.
It will definitely clear your head, but maybe not in the way you’d like.
Hold your bad hand against your chest and just stay vertical. On three, okay?”
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to make me more or less nervous,” Alex said, squeezing my hand tighter. He looked at me, then out at the water and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I can do this. See? My head feels clearer already. I’ve completely forgotten about the charter.”
“Clearly not, since you just brought it up.”
“But I won’t be thinking about it soon,” he said. “Not once we jump off this thing. Then we’ll forget all about it.”
I kept my eyes on the water below as he spoke.
My pulse quickened with each second that passed.
Why I suddenly felt nervous, I had no idea.
I wasn’t afraid of jumping. And it definitely wasn’t because I was standing on the edge of a twenty-million-dollar yacht, in my underwear, holding the hand of my hot neighbor slash coworker, who was also in his underwear, and whom I did not have feelings for outside of a completely normal physical attraction.
“No offense, Alex, but I need you to stop talking,” I said.
“No talking. Right. Shit, I’m still talking. Okay, I’m done talking . . . right . . . now.”
“On three,” I said again. “One, two—”
As soon as the word three left my mouth, we jumped.
For a moment I felt weightless, and then we fell, and the thrill of it made me forget everything, even Alex.
I’d jumped off this yacht more times than I could count last charter season.
Every leap gave me a delicious moment of freedom, shoving me back into the world for a few blissful seconds.
We plunged into the water too soon, and the world around me disappeared.
I’d let go of Alex’s hand as soon as the water swallowed us up, but when I resurfaced, he was already treading water in front of me.
“Holy shit,” he said. He shook the water from his hair and swam closer. “Are you all right?” I thought I felt his fingers graze my waist, but the sensation was gone as quickly as I’d noticed it. A fish. It had to have been a fish.
“I told you we wouldn’t die,” I said. “How’s your hand?”
“What?”
Adrenaline zipped through me, and I laughed at the awed look on his face. “Your hand, Alex.”
“Oh.” He pulled the Ziploc-bagged hand from the water. “It’s fine. I forgot about it, honestly.”
“See? Clears the head.”
“I get it now,” he said, still out of breath. “What the big deal is about yacht jumping. My heart . . .” He took my hand and pressed it to his chest. “It’s racing.”
I glanced at his hand holding mine against him. His skin was warm under my palm, and sure enough, I could feel his heart thudding away. “Mine too,” I said, the nervousness I’d felt standing on the edge of the yacht coursing through me. “Still thinking about that charter?” I asked.
When he spoke, his voice was quieter than it had been a moment before. “No, I’m not,” he said.
I looked up. The moment his eyes met mine the adrenaline faded, and all I felt was fear.
But it wasn’t the same fear I’d had the very first time I stood on the edge of the yacht, ready to jump.
This was entirely different and exponentially more terrifying.
More frightening than the bungee jumping, and skydiving, and zip-lining I’d done for my list. More frightening than suffering through twenty dog charters.
“It’s getting dark,” I said. I pulled my hand from his chest and looked up at the Serendipity towering beside us. “Maybe we should . . .”
“Go home,” Alex said.
Right as I turned back to him, the sun slipped beneath the horizon.
In the span of a few seconds, the sky softened into a solid wall of pink where before there had only been fire.
It was still beautiful, but it reminded me the color would drain from the sky at a rapid pace now, daylight fading until there was nothing but night. “Yeah,” I said. “We better go home.”
—
That evening, Mia, Kitty, and Greyson came outside while I was watering the peperomias. Ever since I’d gotten home, I’d been trying to shake off that look Alex had given me when we were in the water and the feeling of his heart beneath my hand.
After the girls settled on the lounge chairs, I told them all about Alex’s idea to spend the night at Coral Castle.
“That place is so weird,” Greyson said. “I went there on a field trip once, and the tour guide was this super-creepy guy who kept talking about magnetic fields. Some people say the guy who made it levitated all the stones. But other people think it was aliens. I’d believe aliens before the levitating thing. ”
“Don’t get too excited,” I said when Greyson paused to take a breath. “Your dad has to talk to the event planner first. It might not even happen.”
Greyson turned toward Kitty. “We should ask him if he’s called yet, and if he hasn’t, we should make him call right now.”
I tried to stop Greyson and said there was no rush, but she’d already dragged Kitty back through the condo.
I moved on to the camellia shrub, hoping Alex wouldn’t think I’d sent the girls over to rush him, when I noticed one person seemed decidedly unexcited about this plan.
Mia had her knees drawn up to her chin, silent since coming outside.
She stared out at the palm trees lining the back of the condo, picking absentmindedly at the leaves of my hibiscus bush.
“I know it’s not the coolest thing in the world, but it might be fun,” I said.
Mia shrugged. “I guess.”
“You could drive us down there if you wanted. You haven’t gotten any driving time in.”
Mia’s mouth parted, then snapped shut again. “No thanks. I don’t really like driving.”
What newly licensed sixteen-year-old didn’t like to drive? I thought about the conversation I’d had with my sister that morning. Was this a moody teenager thing or a grief thing? Just ask how they’re feeling, I heard Beth say.
Everything in me resisted Beth’s request. I wasn’t good at this sort of thing. What I wanted to do was suggest we watch an episode of My Super Sweet 16. That always cheered them up. But I couldn’t let Beth down. Not when she’d specifically asked me to do this.
I sat at Mia’s feet and spoke before I could chicken out. “How are you . . . feeling?”
Mia stared at me as if I’d sprouted gills.
She searched my face, seeming to gather her thoughts, and I braced myself for whatever she had to say.
I needed to be here for her, to listen, even though it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
Not because I didn’t care about Mia, but because I knew it would be painful for both of us.
We’d had enough pain this year. How would talking about it make it better?
Just as I thought she was about to speak, Mia’s expression hardened, and she shook her head. “I feel fine.”
So this was going well. But I could feel Beth telling me to try again. Fine, fine, I thought to Beth.
“Do you . . . want to talk about anything?”
The muscles in Mia’s jaw twitched. I tried to keep my face neutral, but inside I was withering. I hoped she couldn’t see how uncomfortable this was for me.
“No.” She plucked a petal from a hibiscus blossom and let it flutter to the ground. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Great . . . Not that you don’t want to talk. Great that you don’t have to . . . that you’re fine, I mean.”
Mia’s expression was stony, and it was like looking in a mirror at my younger self.
I remembered being sixteen and angry. And I’d been so angry.
At myself, at Mom, at Dad too, sometimes.
Most of the time I’d been able to keep it in, and after a few years that anger had cooled.
But it frightened me, seeing it in Mia. I knew how anger like that could tear you up inside.
See? I thought to Beth. This is why I didn’t want to do this. I’m supposed to be the distraction.
I was relieved when Kitty and Greyson returned. They skipped around the patio humming the X-Files theme song.
“I take it your dad talked to the event planner,” I said.
“Yes, he did,” Greyson replied, stopping mid-skip.
“And she said of course we could stay. I’m pretty sure she has a crush on my dad.
There are a lot of women who look at him like this.
” She opened her mouth and fluttered her eyelashes as she pretended to drool, then clamped her mouth shut again.
“Obviously I couldn’t see her, but her voice sounded exactly like that. ”
I hoped my voice didn’t sound like whatever the equivalent of that face was. “Are you sure these women aren’t having strokes?”
“Maybe they’re having strokes because they’re in love with him,” Kitty said, winking at me.
I ignored Kitty and turned to Greyson. “Did your dad say what day?”
Greyson scrunched her forehead. “Right. Sorry. I forgot. He wants to know if two weeks from tomorrow is all right. At least I think that’s what he said.
He wasn’t sure if you wanted to do it during your staycation—well, he didn’t call it a staycation, but I think he should’ve.
Anyway, the castle doesn’t have events that night, and Dad says there’s no charter the next day. ”
It wasn’t as if I had any plans besides hanging out with Mia and Kitty. “Two weeks from tomorrow it is, then.”