Enchanted
As if he can sense Anna’s thoughts, Tolly says, “Not far now.”
They round the next headland and Anna is relieved to see a beach. It is larger than most of the ones they have passed.
“Stop paddling,” Tolly instructs. “I will guide us in.”
Anna is happy to be obedient. She lays her paddle across the front of the kayak as Tolly powers them through the last stretch and up onto the sand. The beach is deserted, but stacked stones and random boxes raised on legs show it experiences regular occupation by humans. Anna waits until Tolly has got out, knowing he will steady the kayak for her. Still, she stumbles as she exits and Tolly catches her. She would like to admire the hard planes of his body against hers, but the arm clamped around her belly has given her a more urgent consideration.
“What’s the etiquette here?” she asks, ducking her head to remove her life vest. “Do I find a bush or dig a hole or what?”
Tolly grins. “This is a campsite. It’s got toilets.” He points and she sets off. The porta potties are ugly and strangely alien to this beautiful area, but they are probably a necessity to prevent further damage to the environment. When she exits the chemical toilet, she sees Tolly waiting for her. He’s carrying a container of water and a bundle of firewood. She looks around. There is no sign of a hotel or other accommodation.
Cautiously, she asks, “We aren’t planning on staying here overnight, are we?” There are limits to her adventurist spirit. Best to be upfront about them. “I’m not a keen camper.”
“No,” he admits. “Marco will be along later to take us off. This is just dinner.”
While Tolly bustles about laying and lighting the fire in a ring of stones, Anna sits on a picnic table to watch the sun set. Her stomach has long forgotten the burger at lunch and the snacks Tolly provided along the way. It growls. From the depths of the kayak, Tolly produces a small cool bag. He sets a line of foil wrapped parcels into the fire to cook. It isn’t long before he joins Anna and hands her two parcels on a flattish stone as a plate. They sit shoulder to shoulder, and despite their shirts separating their skin, Anna is hyper-aware of the contact. She unwraps the foil to find bamboo skewers with pieces of fish and vegetables. She blows on her food and then delicately lifts the skewer to her lips to nibble at anything cool enough to eat without scorching her tongue. As they eat, the sun disappears, a ball of brilliant orange slipping below the endless sea. The darkness soon closes in, the little fire in the stones the only source of light.
Anna breathes out slowly. She takes a sip from her refilled water bottle and thinks about their day. She knows the effort it must have taken on many people’s behalf to organise this trip, especially at short notice. It would be easy to overlook it, it is so unobtrusive. But Anna grew up with staff easing her path through life. She recognises the patterns. Food ready prepared, firewood handily available and, of course, the trips to and from the island facilitated by the taciturn Marco.
“Thank you for today,” she says to Tolly, her eyes looking out to sea. “And thank your staff too for arranging it.”
“No problem,” he says, but it is not clear if he is speaking for himself or his staff.
She lies back. The dark is absolute; there is no moon. But the sky overhead seems ablaze with stars. Some of them are startlingly bright. She wishes she could identify them all, but beyond the easy-to-find constellations of Orion, Cassiopea and the Plough, she has no clue. She thinks she finds Venus near the horizon, but she cannot be sure.
Tolly crumples his foil and lies back to join her. The temperature is dropping, and she is happy for the added warmth emanating from his body. Her muscles are tired. She must remember to stretch them before she goes to sleep later, or she doubts she will be able to lift her arms tomorrow. Strangely, she doesn’t feel the need to fill the vast starlit void with chatter.
Her mind tunes in to the rush of the waves coming into shore, their gentle retreat. If the table were not so uncomfortable, she could fall asleep. She has not felt so at peace for years. This must be why Tolly likes it.
A bark startles her and she almost falls off the table. Tolly’s hand catches her. Through it, she can feel him chuckling. Despite her faith in him to keep her safe, she can’t help asking, “They don’t have dingoes, do they?”
“No. They have foxes, but that’s a sea lion. Be glad it isn’t breeding season.”
Not much later, her ears pick up the sound of an engine, a discordant industrial mutter amid the natural rhythms. Their day is ending. She is tired enough to welcome the motorboat’s arrival but inexplicably sad to be leaving the island.
“Marco,” Tolly says, a regretful tinge to his voice. He sits up. The little fire is down to glowing embers. Using his phone light, Tolly stows their waste in the kayak and then returns for Anna.
The motorboat is idling, not far out to sea, its lights shimmering on the water’s surface. Anna reckons she could wade out to it if she didn’t care about getting wet. Instead, Tolly instals her once more in the kayak, then pushes it out to sea to turn it around. Anna feels the kayak dip as his weight transfers to it. A few strong strokes later, Marco is wordlessly half-hauling, half-helping Anna onto the boat. He ignores her as he holds the kayak steady for Tolly, and then the two of them haul it out of the water and store it down one side between the guardrail and the cockpit. Anna retreats to the seating area to make sure she is out of the way as the two men move about. She gives in to her tiredness and lies flat. The foam pad on the bench seat is certainly softer than the picnic table. She wonders how Tolly can still be going – she is exhausted. Looking up at the stars, she thinks about home. Not London, where the ever-present streetlights make it impossible to see the heavens, but her family home across the other side of the world. She imagines her father and mother and Eleanor and the twins looking up at the very same stars.
Then Tolly’s hand is on her shoulder. Her eyes open. Sense returns quickly. “Are we at Two Harbours?” she asks.
“LA.”
“But the kayak?”
“We offloaded it. You slept through it all.”
“Oh.”
She stands. Marco is waiting by the boat platform, ready to help her step on to the quay.
She looks at him. She wonders if he is Hispanic and decides to risk it. “Gracias,” she says. His eyebrows shoot to his hair.
“De nada,” he responds and his face creases up with humour. Anna can’t help but feel she is the joke.
A similar expression is on Tolly’s face.
As he leads her down the dock, she leans closer. “Does Marco speak English?” she asks.
“I should hope so,” Tolly replies. “He’s an ex-Navy Seal.”
“Oh,” she says. “Have I just insulted him?”
Tolly actually laughs out loud. “On the contrary, I think he’s just fallen a little bit in love with you.”
“If he speaks English, why did you speak Spanish to him?” Anna’s brow crinkles.
“He is helping me practise.” Tolly stops in front of a big grey SUV. “This is my car. I’ll take you to your hotel.”
But Anna realises she doesn’t want the day to end. Not yet. “Perhaps we could go somewhere?”
“You’re tired,” Tolly says. “You fell asleep on the boat.”
“Precisely. I’ve just had a nap. Besides, I’m hungry.”
A slight smile hovers on his lips. He nods to the end of the carpark. A taco truck is pulled up, its pale white light highlighting its complete lack of customers.
As they draw near, Anna notices the truck is old, which is not in itself a problem. But there are two servers in the truck and neither of them is wearing gloves or hats.
“Are you sure?” she asks Tolly.
“Street food is big in LA,” he says. “The quality rivals restaurants.”
His words are full of an infectious confidence, although Anna is still reticent enough to order a vegetarian black bean taco. Tolly goes for seafood. There is a rapid exchange in Spanish between the two servers and Anna looks at Tolly. He shrugs; it was obviously too fast for him to translate. Anna is heartened to see the server wash his hands before cooking their food. Hers comes first, followed a few minutes later by Tolly’s. The other server seems to be moving about the van, packing things away. Sure enough, as she and Tolly wander across to a bench facing the marina, the truck closes its side. By the time her food is cool enough to eat, the truck has left the area.
“I had fun today,” she says, looking out at the neon lights reflected in the water. It is such a contrast that the beach on Santa Catalina Island already seems like a dream. A fleeting experience that happened in another lifetime.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks.
“Probably dying.” She smiles up at him. “Then I’m on a late flight out.”
“I could pick you up tomorrow? Take you out again.”
Anna laughs. “I don’t think I could survive another date with you quite so soon.” Then she realises what she has said and bites her lip. “Not that this was a date.”
Tolly is silent as he finishes off his food and Anna thinks she has blown it. “Anyway, haven’t you got things to do? Places to go? People to see?” She tries to keep her voice light-hearted, to put herself back in the friend-zone. Cool, calm friendly Anna. Nothing to see here. No inconvenient yearnings. She almost wants to laugh at herself. She has watched so many men try to row themselves back from this same position with her, and it has never worked. The red flag would go up and slowly but surely she would withdraw. Once they have shown their hand, they can never be trusted again. Everything from that point forwards would always be tainted with the knowledge that their endgame was to take her to bed.
“There’s an announcement party tomorrow night that’s non-negotiable.” He shrugs and Anna is surprised by his next words, “But if you’re not up for anything energetic, we could do a drive along the Pacific Highway in the morning? Maybe have lunch in Santa Barbara?”
“That sounds lovely,” she says, keeping her words low key, almost uninvested. “I’d like that.” Perhaps she hasn’t blown it. Or perhaps he missed it. No. That’s just wishful thinking. He had seen it but decided to ignore it. She tries to imagine it from his side, living here far from his homeland and his family. Their backgrounds are not dissimilar. After all, he dated her sister, if any proof is needed. She closes her mind against the thought. Perhaps there is a familiarity to her that is comforting, worth overlooking her faux pas.
Tolly wolfs his food down, but Anna eats slowly. The food is tasty and far more filling than she expected. In the end, she folds the wrapping back over half of it.
“Finished?” Tolly takes it from her hand and walks over to the nearest bin. It’s overflowing, so he continues along the waterside. When he returns, his hands are in his pockets. “Let’s get you back,” he says. “Make sure you are ready for tomorrow.”
This is it. The end of a perfect day. Anna walks beside him, close enough to be familiar, not close enough to risk touch. If she does that, there is no overlooking it. He walks her around to the passenger side door. The car automatically unlocks, but Tolly doesn’t open the door. He stands by the handle.
“What if it was?” he asks.
“Was what?”
“A date.”
Anna’s eyes scour his face, but there are no clues there. Whichever way she looks at it, it appears as a trap. So she sidesteps. “It would have been the best date I’ve had. No- ne ever gave me an eagle before.”
He doesn’t respond. His eyes fix on hers. Then his hand comes up. His fingers brush her cheek as they snag a strand of hair and gently push it back. Then his hand stops, his palm flattening against her head. He is so close, far inside her personal space. His lips lower until they are just over hers.
Every particle of self-preservation, every iota of sense is screaming at Anna, Abort, abort, abort . But deep inside her, long buried, a dragon is unfurling and roaring, Yes! She hesitates, then closes the gap. Her lips brush his, tentatively, as if hardly daring to believe she is being permitted this. That tiniest touch is enough to set her body afire. His arm slides around her waist and along her spine, easing her closer. And then his mouth covers hers fully. When his tongue enters, all that heat concentrates deep in her belly, burning through restraint. He tastes of chilli and the fire in her mouth leads, like a line of petrol igniting, straight to an inferno in her belly. She presses herself against him. There’s no mistaking his response to their kiss. If she has any thought they might still be in a friend-zone, that is now obliterated.
Anna doesn’t want the kiss to end, but a girl can only restrict breathing for so long. When she draws back, she feels unsteady. His breath echoes in her ear, panting as much as she is.
Then words: “I don’t know what you put in your lipstick but, wow, my lips are numb.”
And all of a sudden, the haze of desire is gone. Anna’s mind is quick and it slots into gear, pushing passion aside in favour of hard-nosed practicality.
“Do you trust me?” she asks.
He nods, his brow furrowing.
“Then let me drive and get in the passenger side.” She opens the driver’s side door.
“Whaa?”
“It’s not my kiss. Although, thanks for the compliment. It’s the shellfish. You are about to start feeling unwell. Now I can take you to a hospital, but I am aware you are a celebrity. Or I can take you back to your home and look after you there. In most cases, this will resolve with time. Don’t try to talk. Speech will already be disrupted. So, hospital?”
He shakes his head, although there is fear in his eyes.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she reassures him as she walks him to his seat. When he’s safely strapped in, she climbs into the driver’s side and starts the big car. She enters North Hangar Avenue into the sat nav, hoping she’ll recognise landmarks when she is close enough. Releasing the parking brake, she is grateful that, like many American cars, it’s an automatic and easy to drive. Then she turns out of the carpark onto the wrong side of the road.