Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Dripping puddles and shivering in the wind, Lulu and Tyler flew the last, short zip into the base station.
Carolina, the lanky guide, approached her. “You did it! How did you like it?”
“I loved it,” Lulu answered honestly.
“It’s good you didn’t walk the rest of the way,” Carolina said, unhooking their trolleys. “This rain may be dying down, but I just heard that one of the guides spotted a jaguar near one of the platforms.”
Tyler turned to Lulu and smirked with satisfaction. “Told you so,” he mouthed.
Not “Wow, I saw one of Costa Rica’s rarest animal sightings.
” Not “Phew, thank goodness we didn’t get eaten by a wild cat.
” But “Told you so.” Pretty much the same thing her three-year-old might have said under the circumstances.
Lulu shook her head at the ground; she knew she was falling for him because in this new, bizzarro universe, she found his remark endearing.
The guides helped them out of their harnesses, and Tyler asked, “Do you know where we should meet up with our group?”
“Your guide took them back to the hotel about an hour ago. He said to give him a call when you’re down, or if you want, you can walk back. It’s not too far.” She checked the sky. “It looks okay. For now.
“And one more thing,” Carolina added. “He said I should tell you that to be on the safe side with the weather this evening, he canceled the horseback riding.”
Lulu bit back a laugh. What a relief not to have to ride some random, small gentleman for two hours.
Lugging her clothes bag out of a locker, Lulu thrilled to find her dry bikini stuffed at the bottom. She changed in the bathroom, wrung out her wet shirt and pants, and stood bathing in the hot air of the hand dryer for a generous number of cycles.
When she came out, Tyler handed her an empanada stuffed with ground beef and onions he had bought from the zip-line café. Suddenly, she got a whiff of a pungent scent. “Ugh! What is that smell?”
Tyler beamed. “That’s the cologne you gave me the night we went dancing. It’s a bit strong, right, but it’s got to be better than what I smelled like after all that hiking.”
It was not. And frankly, she would have to let Ariana know that pranking was still not her thing. She didn’t really get it. Cologne that smelled bad was really just a prank on the people who had to smell it. In this case “the people” being Lulu.
At any rate, at least the smell was not emanating from the empanada, which had cooled enough for her to wolf down, and which turned out to be so delicious and savory that they bought two more.
Lulu brushed a crumb off her chin. “What are you thinking about getting back to the hotel? I’d be up for walking if you are.”
“You wanna walk?!” he asked. “After all that hiking?”
She looked at the sky, lighter than it had been when they flew on the zip line, and gave a nod.
“Then walking it is,” Tyler agreed.
Still coming down from the zip-line excitement, they walked down the road in the dim light of the overcast afternoon.
Arenal might have been smack-dab in front of them, but the clouds were so dark and low now that it was impossible to see.
The air carried the post-rain chill on a breeze, and in her slightly damp clothes, she shivered.
“Here.” Tyler took off his denim shirt, which smelled vaguely of the off-putting cologne mixed with the alluring eau du Tyler.
She would focus on part B. He dropped the shirt around her shoulders, leaving his T-shirt to hug the contours of his chest.
“You’re not cold?” she asked.
“Walking next to you? Nah. ’Cause you’re so hot.”
She slit her eyes at him. “You’re cute. But you’re corny.”
For a beat, he stared at her. Then busted out in a laugh. “Oh! I thought you said horny!” He nodded. “I was thinking…she’s not wrong.”
She grinned at him and they paced, pausing to wonder at a small, scampering mouse, and to check out the roadside ferns that grew like oversized ostrich feathers. She didn’t know when they decided to hold hands, but there they were doing so. As normal as breathing.
At a leisurely pace, they meandered downhill, and Lulu felt the easy naturalness of walking side by side with Tyler, matching his familiar pace.
Their silence was comfortable and left her more in tune to the sounds around her, like the high call of the dart frogs that hid below the dead leaves.
The noise pinged from here and there, like text notifications on a cell phone, but the tiny creatures were too elusive to spot.
Suddenly, Tyler pointed ahead to where a patch of leaves rustled beneath the underbrush.
They halted their steps, waiting and watching until Tyler, impatient, inched down the road, still searching for the source of the wiggling foliage.
When a scuttling sound emitted from beneath the gigantic leaves, he paused again.
But the creature, whatever it was, had stilled.
Tyler took a step closer and leaned forward, inspecting.
Nothing.
Without warning, the leaves exploded in a burst of movement.
Tyler shrieked a high-pitched bark, leapt backward, and landed on a root.
Losing his balance, he stumbled and fell with a thud onto a patch of grass.
The shrubbery shifted again and a furry, brown, knee-high creature bounded out of the bush and halted suddenly.
With a startling intensity, it scrutinized the strange, bald-skinned creature on the ground.
Tyler shot Lulu an astonished glance. His mouthed the word “Peccary!”
In the span of a heartbeat, two more of the creatures leapt from the greenery and joined their buddy. With cautious and curious hoof-steps, the pigs surrounded Tyler, who lay splayed on the ground, frozen with astonishment or terror or glee; Lulu didn’t know which.
By now, Lulu had caught up to him and her heartbeat stuttered with concern. “Shoo!” Lulu waved her arms, trying to scatter the pack.
By the time the thought crossed Lulu’s mind that they looked like cat-sized hamsters, the pigs had already staked out Tyler’s vulnerabilities.
One wild pig snuffled around Tyler’s ear in what Lulu could only describe as a romantic overture.
Another ambushed his thigh and still another tried to squirm a snout beneath Tyler’s buns.
And while Lulu would have found this assault overwhelming, Tyler reacted with a ticklish giggle as he wriggled away from the horny pigs.
And the smell! The intensity of the stench had multiplied in tandem with the tenacity of the little creatures. Of course, now Lulu realized the true nature of the cologne prank; Tyler was all but bathed in pig musk pheromones.
“Okay!” Tyler yelped, his amusement waning. “Can you get these things off of me?” he said, his voice squeaking as a curious peccary began snuggling his crotch.
Lulu, now racked with worry that her prank might cause serious damage, scoured the scene for a weapon or a point of defense. Grabbing a rotted branch, she tugged it from the undergrowth and, shaking, she brandished it toward the creatures. “Hey!” she yelled. “Stop.”
The pigs ignored her. The eager glint in Tyler’s eyes had shifted to concern.
This wasn’t working. Lulu tossed the branch aside, and going with her gut, she squatted beside the scene. Scared as she was, Lulu reacted on instinct. Her poorly planned prank had gotten Tyler into this mess. It was up to her to get him out of it.
Lulu drilled her gaze into the friskiest of the peccaries, the one going to town on the hem of Tyler’s shorts. “Hey,” she commanded.
Hearing her voice, the leader pig stilled.
Slowly, as if sensing the approach of a problem far beyond its pay grade, it lifted its snout, sniffed the air, and regarded Lulu in a challenge so intense she felt the air charge with electricity and pig odor.
At least, she hoped that smell was coming from the pigs.
The other peccaries, taking a cue, turned their wee little pig heads and joined in the stare-at-Lulu contest. As Lulu tipped her head to the side, the pigs mirrored her movement.
In a brazen act of desperation, Lulu jerked forward.
At her sudden movement, the hypnotized pigs startled and reacted with an astonished backward leap, their leader nearly somersaulting fully over before regaining equilibrium.
At a gallop, the piggies bounded across Tyler’s torso and disappeared into the safety of the underbrush.
His long hair had strayed loose from his manbun, and his T-shirt had ridden up to his rib cage, but beside that, Tyler Demming virtually glistened with wellness.
His smile wrapped 360 degrees around his head.
“Wild pigs! In the wild! Peccaries!” He laughed, incredulous.
“But thank you. For shooing them. That last part was touch and go.”
And freed from her bout of worry that something might have gone terribly wrong penis-wise, Lulu laughed, too.
“Wow. That was crazy.” Tyler sat up and looked off to where the pigs had disappeared, and understanding dawned on him.
“That cologne you gave me?” He gave her a wry side-eye. “Was that some kind of pig aphrodisiac?”
“I guess so. I didn’t think it would be so…sexy.”
He chuckled and brushed himself off. “Okay. That was pretty good. Pranked by Lulu Gardner.” He glanced at her with fresh admiration, then shifted his gaze toward the thick of the jungle.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m great. I practically petted a peccary!”
“Looked more like they were petting you.” She reached out an arm to help him up. “I was a little worried about those peccaries getting so near your pecker.”
“I can’t believe you went there,” he said, further impressed.
“Oh, I went there,” she said. But then her thoughts shifted. It was getting late. Lulu looked up at the heavy clouds. “I hope that holds off.”