Chapter Eight #3
Lulu turned and strutted away, trying to keep her steps calm and even. She was, and always had been, the cool head in this relationship. Wait. Non-relationship. There was no relation between them, nor a ship for her to sail away on, she reminded herself.
She wasn’t far into her measured march—stalking off to where, she had no idea—when she heard lighter footsteps behind her. “Lulu!” Ariana jogged to catch up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” which she was beginning to realize was a lie that was coming so easily it could be a mantra.
“It’s just. He’s so…” her words devolved into a low growl in her throat.
Why, here with the sun and the beauty of nature and the way he was so sweet with those pickleball teens, why had she expected he would be any different?
And why the hell did she even care anymore?
The weirdest part was that she kept feeling like she wanted something from him.
Like affection. And to her dismay, something else fizzed in her veins, too.
She couldn’t even put her finger on it—but it felt uncannily like desire.
And for the life of her, she swore she was getting reciprocal vibes off him as well.
Lulu kept marching, with Ariana following, until they reached a sloping vista. A view, ironically gorgeous, stretched out in front of them. It was the golden hour, and the boulders that overlooked the valley dripped with light. It hurt, how pretty it was.
It wasn’t only her embarrassment at being manually lowered down a waterfall rappel, or Tyler’s empty promises of support, that weighed on her.
But the beauty of her surroundings served to highlight the contrasting emotions tumbling around in her chest. She missed her daughter.
She missed Laverne’s and Rooster’s comforting annoyances.
And try as she might to keep the thoughts of her tenuous hold on her job at bay, the dread kept popping back up in her mind.
And with it came a persistent worry that maybe that job was not the right fit for her, even after all these years of hanging on to it with such tenacity.
Sighing, Lulu sat on one of the ancient smooth stones.
Ariana, without a word, took a seat nearby on a rock lower to the ground.
In the background, she could still hear the waterfall’s muted roar.
Lulu counted her breaths and let the sound sink into her skin.
They sat in companionable silence as the cloud forest sprawled like a deep green quilt thrown over spent lovers.
After some time, Ariana said, “You know, I don’t think he was intentionally being an asshole.”
Lulu laughed. “I don’t know if that’s really a point in his favor.”
Ariana took her camera strap from around her neck and flipped through her footage. She faced the screen toward Lulu and hit play. The view panned from Lulu, standing at the top of the ledge strapped into her harness, to the falls, then to Tyler, who gestured toward Lulu as he spoke to the camera.
“She can do this,” Lulu heard. So that’s what he was saying to the camera while she stood up top trembling.
Lulu’s shoulders softened just a touch. “I’ve known her for a long time.
She’s a competitor. Tough. We used to play tennis together, and she’s never been the type to back away from a challenge. ”
Maybe that’s how she was at eighteen, but is that how he saw her now? She swallowed hard. More importantly, how long had it been since she had seen herself that way?
“Yeah. Well. Despite saying one nice thing,” Lulu said, “he’s still kind of an asshole.”
“Yeah.” And sweetly, Ariana added, “But kind of a nice asshole. I mean, nobody’s perfect, right?”
Pressing her lips together, Lulu shook her head. “No. I’m not, that’s for sure.” Blowing out her frustration, Lulu repeated, “Nope. Definitely not perfect.”
There was so much trust to be built in a new friendship, and Lulu hesitated, waiting, trying to sense Ariana’s willingness to break into that personal space.
It was the same lesson she taught to her students—used to teach to her students, she thought remorsefully, and what she hoped to instill in her daughter as well: There was no success without calculated risk.
Not in business, and not in companionship, either.
And although a lot of folks associated risk with money, the hardest risk to take was trust.
She decided to put herself out there. “I just didn’t expect him to be here.
It threw me. I mean, this trip was supposed to be a chance for me to stretch myself, you know?
Get out of the day-to-day routine and do something different.
But him being here? And the way I…” She hesitated to put a label on it.
“The way I react when I’m around him. It complicates the plan. ”
Half kidding, she asked Ariana, “Got any wise advice for someone who has no idea how to navigate hanging out with her married ex-boyfriend on her first vacation out in the world in several years?”
Ariana let out a laugh that sounded more like a cough. “Not me. I’m the product of a mom who goes through men like they’re disposable contact lenses. Like each guy is just a doorstop, holding the door open for the next guy in line.”
“I don’t know about that,” Lulu hedged, feeling defensive on Gwendy’s behalf. “She and Bill seem good together.”
“Yeah. Fourth time’s a charm.” Ariana smiled, but her eyes were elsewhere.
“Advice, huh?” She tipped her head sideways to view Lulu from a new perspective.
“Might be worth giving him a chance at being friends. Try to see if you can find some common ground again, you know? It seems like his heart is in the right place. And I don’t see how it couldn’t be a good thing for anyone to have more support, more friends in this world. ” She shrugged as if to say “Right?”
As Lulu stewed on that for a moment, Ariana stretched and stood from the rock. “When you’re ready, they’ve got dinner waiting for us. And they’re gonna give us a tour of the camp.”
“You go on. I’ll be right there.”
Brushing off some of the dirt that had crusted onto her backpack on her blindfolded fall up the mountain, she wrestled with her frustrations.
The point, she remembered, the whole point had been to turn over a new Lulu, get out of her comfort zone, and enjoy some time in the sunshine.
Zero-point-zero percent of said pleasures had happened on the mountain today.
Well, sure, there had been sunshine, but that had only made it hotter.
Enough was enough. She had tried the adventure tour, but it had not worked out. Tomorrow, she could get herself back to Blue Seas. Maybe then she and Zoe could fly home to Seattle. Home was a situation that Lulu could control.
At last, firm in her new decision, she searched for her cell phone in the depths of the pack.
Of all people, Aunt Laverne, who had held her hand during the worst of her grief, would understand that this situation—a tour with imbeciles encouraging blindfolded mountain hikes and nosedives over waterfalls, her complete lack of control over her schedule, and mainly, Tyler Demming, occasionally a nice asshole, but an asshole nonetheless—was… untenable.
She turned on her phone and waited for a signal. And waited. Sucking her cheeks between her teeth, Lulu pursed her lips.
No problem. She’d get settled, get some food in her, and try to call later. It would be impossible to head back to Blue Seas tonight, anyway. Once she got a signal, she would explain to Laverne. She would assure Zoe that Mommy was on her way, and they would go home.
Ahead, Lulu spotted a string of lanterns and followed the clink of dishware and the sound of laughter to the camp.
Stopping in her tracks, she stared, amazed at the scene within the small circle of solar lights.
A cave, the entrance open to the air beneath an overhang, housed a giant kitchen.
Wooden tables had been set up inside, and the innovators had installed water pumps for the sink and counters for the propane stoves.
Quique and Ana-Sofia were spooning out scoops of rice and doling out a tomato and garbanzo stew.
Alejandro poured beer and horchata, a sweet rice water, into metal cups, and Lulu shuffled toward the table.
Tyler, with an empty space beside him on the bench, glanced up, hopeful.
But at the same time, Ariana patted the seat beside her at the far end, away from that frustration-inducing hottie.
There was an awkward moment of quiet while everyone tried to navigate Lulu’s reappearance, but with admirable effort, the chatter started up again, and Lulu relaxed and ate her dinner.
In a circle of light with the darkness gathering, Lulu listened to the conversation’s ebb and flow while the mellow sweetness of the dessert, a grilled plantain topped with condensed milk, sated her tastebuds.
The meal and the company and the beauty of the setting distracted her from Tyler’s proximity, and she felt relieved that her plans for return to civilization would be safe until morning.
Under the reflection of the solar lights, she washed her dish and cup.
Someone pressed in beside her at the sink, and she didn’t need to turn her head to recognize the infuriatingly appealing scent of Tyler Demming.
What was that? Spicy, mixed with athleticism.
Spathlete. That’s what she would name his signature scent.
On second thought, that was a terrible name for a cologne.
“What’s up?” he asked, full of good cheer.