Chapter Four
four
adrian
“Think you’ve might’ve gone overboard with all that data?” Gabe is lounging next to me, his feet kicked up on an overturned bucket, chin tucked to his chest as he taps on his phone. Without looking up, he says, “I thought you wanted your sister’s opinion, not a full-on consult.”
Though we’re sitting on the boat— my boat, though it still feels weird to call it that, even though the monthly slip rental fee just left my bank account—the spreadsheet doesn’t contain tag records or shark profiles. It’s an amalgamation of digital data. Views, subscribe rates, watch time. A tally of how effective our channel is at reaching our audience.
I never expected to be dealing with this sort of data. When it became clear to my parents—both professors—that my interest in sharks was more than just a phase, my career path became just as clear: study, research, publish, teach. And the clarity of those parameters fit the stability I craved.
We moved around more often than I was comfortable with during my childhood. Just when I’d settle into a new place, our life would get uprooted by my dad’s department losing funding or my mom accepting an offer at a college out of state. Vital for their careers, good for supporting our family, but tough for a kid who thrived on routine. When my sister left for college just as I started junior high in a new city, I felt adrift. By the time we moved again halfway through high school, I’d put all my focus into a planned-out, predictable future. Bachelor’s degree, master’s, doctorate, postdoc, tenure.
But my tidy career path took an unconventional turn, one I would’ve been too scared to embrace before Hope, a purpose for all the pieces of my personality that never quite found a home in the work I was doing before. My ability to connect with people, a skill I learned from many first days at new schools in new towns, makes social media surprisingly intuitive.
But peer review is important in life as well as science, and my big sister has always been a person I could count on to give me, if not impartial, then honest feedback. Bringing someone else onto the team for an entire summer is a big step, so today I’m hoping for my sister’s long-overdue feedback on the channel and how we’re using our platform. She’s been surprisingly quiet on the subject, and honestly, I crave her opinion, even if she tells me I’m making a mistake.
I want confirmation that we’re not setting ourselves up for disaster, that this is a worthwhile pursuit, and Iris won’t hold back when it comes to data analysis. She’s a mathematics professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and despite living less than an hour away, still hasn’t come to see the boat I’ve owned for the better part of a year. I should’ve realized sooner that the promise of a morning spent poring over numbers would be the best enticement to finally get her aboard.
“You haven’t met my sister. She’s going to want to download a copy to examine in her spare time so she can point out the fallacies in my projections.” And that’s if she approves. If she doesn’t, she won’t waste time digging into the data.
Hope would be all-in for a big career shift like this, no questions asked. She would’ve listened to all my worst-case scenarios, and then found a way to minimize them. She never let doubt hold her back, not in her career, at least.
“Ever considered bringing her along on a tagging trip?” Gabe’s question scatters my thoughts like windblown sand.
“Hope?” I realize my mistake in an instant, but it’s too late.
He looks up from his phone, thick brows drawn together over the top of his wraparound sunglasses. “I was thinking of your sister. But clearly, you weren’t.” He smirks. “I would ask who Hope is—”
“No one.” But the keyboard is slick with sweat under my fingertips. She’ll never be no one to me. She’ll always be my first true love, the woman I could never be around without wanting, the woman I can’t bear to see again, and yet can’t help wishing for our paths to cross, just once more.
“Except—” he draws out the word, and my shoulders knot with tension “—it’s obvious from your awkwardness that she’s the ex-girlfriend Marissa told me about.”
“Why was Marissa talking to you about Hope?” We broke up long before I met Gabe, and it’s my story to tell.
“She’s a shark researcher, right?” He turns the question on me instead of answering, unusually evasive.
“Was,” I say, without thinking. Though the truth is, I don’t know. Marissa keeps in touch with her, but I’ve made a point not to ask her anything that would make her feel in the middle of things, and Hope’s life isn’t my business. She made that clear when she cut me out of it.
None of which I intend to get into with Gabe. “I mean, yes. She’s a marine biologist.”
Last time we talked, she was working in Michigan on an invasive zebra mussel study. But for all I know she could’ve taken a job overseas or enrolled in a PhD program. Though I likely would’ve heard about it, and the fact that I haven’t makes me ache for her. As much as I hate the idea of our paths crossing through work, the possibility she’s abandoned the career she was so passionate about is far worse.
Not for the first time, I wish I could go back and be more understanding of her decision to take time away to help Zuri. More supportive. More optimistic that her months away wouldn’t turn into years. More confident that her uncertainty about her next step wasn’t uncertainty about me. Then again, given the way our relationship fizzled out, I was right to doubt.
I venture a glance at Gabe and discover he’s put down his phone and treated me to a rare moment of his full attention. He’s obviously not buying my line about Hope. Time to steer the conversation back to neutral waters. “As for my sister, no tagging trips for her. She’ll never set foot on this boat unless we stay at the dock. Iris gets seasick on causeways.”
“Don’t hyperbolize.” An unmistakable voice forceful enough to awaken the back row of a lecture hall carries through the muggy air, and I cringe with thirty years of younger-brother reflex.
Iris is making her way toward us, dressed for a day in the classroom, not a research boat. Her block-heeled boots are a slip hazard and the cream linen blazer draped over her shoulders is an invitation for stains. My sister is tall and broad-shouldered like me, with deep brown skin, though her face is round like Dad’s, while I inherited our mom’s angular cheekbones and high forehead. Her curls are shorter than last time I saw her, a contrast to my shoulder-length locs.
“Water has nothing to do with my queasiness on bridges. That’s car sickness.” She continues to lecture me with no apparent irony despite sidestepping cautiously with both arms outstretched, like the dock is a swaying rope bridge and not solid wood. Her nose is wrinkled; probably caught a whiff of the pervasive fishy odor I barely register anymore.
No point questioning how she overheard our conversation. Iris honed her eavesdropping skills by listening in on my calls back when our dad still clung to the notion of a cordless phone and landline.
“Motion-sick, then,” I say, the habit of arguing with her superseding my goal to seek her advice. “Call it what you will, it’s the same thing.”
She ignores me, though. Having reached the point where she ought to board the boat, she plants her feet wide instead, hands on her hips, and assesses Gabe through octagonal wire-framed glasses. “You look familiar.”
“Gabriel Ortiz.” He sits up straighter as if summoned by roll call. “Do you watch our channel?” His tone is so eager that I cringe for what’s coming next.
“No,” she replies. Feigning interest is against her principles, though sometimes I wish she’d mastered the art of an encouraging half-truth.
She glances toward me, and her face softens. I resent how she can read me so easily—a holdover from our childhood, when she used to talk me through the anxieties I was scared to say aloud. “Heard great things, though. Our parents brag about it enough that Adrian ought to pay them for their marketing work.”
There’s an edge to her tone, one I’ve always detected toward the channel, and exactly what I want to address today. Does she not think starting the channel was a wise move, or am I just projecting my own doubts?
Gabe leans over the side of the boat, hand extended. “That must make you the other Dr. Hollis-Parker I’ve heard so much about.”
“The original.” Iris stretches to shake his fingertips, not budging from the center of the dock. I’m beginning to wonder whether she’ll actually make it aboard. “You work with my brother and cousin?”
He nods. “I’m the photographer and social media manager. Occasional mediator when family drama ensues.” When he drops her hand, she bobbles, knees bending to compensate. “Not a fan of boats?”
She shakes her head, the rest of her body stiff. “That’s my brother’s wheelhouse.”
“Pun intended?”
“Never,” she says with a visible shudder. The distraction worked, though. At Gabe’s prompting, she takes off her high heels and climbs onto the boat with only a brief hesitation.
Desperate to get the morning back on track, I turn toward where I left my laptop. “I want to show you around, but first, let’s go over some num—”
That’s when I hear the splash.
I spin around, horrified. My sister will never speak to me again if she’s gone overboard. But Iris is safe on deck, Gabe at her side. They’re gaping at the water with matching looks of dismay. I spring into action, setting down my laptop and grabbing a personal flotation device from under the seat.
More splashing, then someone surfaces near the dock. I hurl the throwable cushion in their direction and leap overboard. Chilly water envelops me, bubbles brushing my chin as I breathe out to keep my nose clear. I kick my way to the surface.
“I can swim!” the person yells, and swivels toward me, arms churning the water into a brownish-green froth.
I recognized her voice in an instant, but that doesn’t lessen the shock when I swipe the brackish water out of my face and my gaze collides with indignant, copper-brown eyes.
“Hope?” The second time I’ve said her name today, twice more than the past two years combined, and for a fleeting moment I wonder if I’ve conjured her out of saltwater and memories.