Chapter 11
Catalina
On instinct, Catalina turned away, covering her face protectively from the sudden rain of sand, small rocks, and shells spraying them. All thoughts about her bag were forgotten as she blindly reached for Trey, grasping onto his arm and wanting to escape to someplace safe.
“What is happening?” she shouted into the chaos.
“It’s one of the maintenance guys. They rake up the beach.”
“What?” She couldn’t have heard that right. Why did the beach need raking?
He pulled her into the stinky mass of yellowish-brown plants where they were more protected, and it felt safe enough to open her eyes.
“My brother said Cancun was in the midst of a bad seaweed season, so they sometimes send guys out to rake up some of the sarga-whatever seaweed. To keep it under control.”
“Sargassum?”
“Yeah, that stuff.”
Catalina took stock of the area around her.
Okay, so this wasn’t a weird beach jungle after all, the plant becoming more recognizable in this gargantuan form.
While she was thankful for the stuff providing a soft landing earlier, it wasn’t a complete sanctuary, as the smell was closer to sea farts.
“So, if he’s here to rake up the sargassum and we’re inside of the sargassum…
Doesn’t that mean he might rake us up too? ”
“Uh…yes?”
“And when he rakes us up, then what?”
“We’ll go into the trash.”
Catalina wasn’t sure coming into the sargassum in search of her bag was the best priority, not when there was a chance they’d be raked up and tossed into a dumpster, which would put them in a worse position.
She was about to tell Trey to forget about the bag and they’d figure something else out when he said, “We have time,” before dashing further into the seaweed.
She raced after him without thinking again, even though they had just had a conversation about his reckless decisions only ten minutes prior to this. Catalina was going to catch him, drag him out of the sargassum, and then she’d kill him herself. Who’d ever find him? No body, no crime.
Perhaps they had some time, but certainly not enough of it.
There was a clear disturbance in the sargassum, the sounds of squishy leaves slapping together and bugs the size of Great Danes scampering past her.
She could barely make out their spindly legs and antennas.
They were squattier than ants. Their lightly tanned, shell-like bodies were almost translucent.
Catalina wanted to throw up at the sight of them, screaming when one appeared beside her before bouncing away.
One then scampered in front of Trey. He stopped short, yelling in surprise. “What the hell is that? Spiders?” His sweaty face paled.
She squeaked out another scream before considering climbing the sargassum like a monkey simply to move from ground level and away from the critters. “I think they’re a type of sand flea!” Their bodies certainly sprang around like fleas.
As scary as the fleas were, it was nothing compared to when the seaweed to their right was stabbed through by large prongs.
Her heart jumped into her throat, watching it scrape through the plant, rolling the dense seaweed jungle away with ease, leaving a barren sandscape behind.
Their safe canopy cover was about to disappear along with them, destined for the trash.
“There it is!” Trey pointed to the bright orange canvas bag, tucked into the mossy jungle, its broken strap tangled in seaweed vines.
They were so close, but the rake’s prongs plunged not far in the distance in front of them.
There was no way to outrun it, especially when fear rooted her to the spot.
She didn’t expect Trey to tackle her, knocking the wind from her lungs as his heavy body pressed her to the ground.
She had a thought about suffocation when he rolled them, giving her a brief gasp of air before pinning her down again.
The sound of leaves and vines scraping together was muffled through Trey’s body.
As quickly as he had tackled her, the pressure disappeared as he jumped up and started to run again. “The bag!”
She blinked, trying to get small pebbles out of her mouth.
Orienting herself, she found herself in open sand and sunlight, their canopy mainly gone at this point, except for a few remnant sargassum pieces left behind.
Turning, she spotted Trey racing after the rake, the bag sticking on the outside of the prongs, its strap barely clutching the vines.
Her husband had always been a very active guy, regularly jogging or playing beach volleyball with friends, but he’d always been casual about it.
She’d never experienced this amount of intense prowess as he ran full speed, leaped like a panther, grabbing the bag like prey and ripping it from the captive plant.
Trey landed on the beach with a thud, smaller flakes scattering about in his wake.
If they hadn’t been in such an awful situation, she would have been impressed, finding the whole thing attractive to witness. It was too bad she had to remember she was mad at him. Just because an annoyance was attractive didn’t make him any less annoying.
Catalina pushed herself to her feet and stomped to where he was crouched over his prize, face-first into the ground, ass back in the air, his body panting heavily. “You jackass.”
He rolled to his back, lifting her bag in the air as though it was a victory prize. “I got your bag.”
She bent, snatching it from him, but gasped when he grabbed her by the waist, throwing her off balance, bringing her down to his level. She fell against his chest with an oomph.
“I think I’ve earned a kiss for that.” The confident grin was back in place.
There was a part of her wanting to kiss him, especially after experiencing several moments where she thought he or she or both of them were about to die.
Except most of these moments were the result of Trey doing something reckless, and, as a result, he hadn’t earned any kisses.
She could be happy he rescued her bag, while hating he had to put himself in danger in order to do so.
Her body and mind wanted to run—to get away from it all.
She pushed against his chest, untangling herself from his arms.
“Oh, come on, babe. Just one kiss for all that.” His grin hadn’t budged.
“Don’t babe me. Forget the kiss. After that stunt, you’re lucky I’m even talking to you.”
His brows knitted together in confusion. “Now what did I do?”
“You want to know why I hate this. It’s because you don’t listen, even though we just had a conversation about this.
” She yanked her purse from him, striding away with no idea of where she was going, only that it took her away from him.
The strap on her bag was broken, so she held it to her chest like a pampered pet.
“Where are you going?” he asked, having the gall to sound exasperated.
“Anywhere away from you! It’s a big beach world now, babe.
It shouldn’t be hard to lose you. Goodbye.
” Her temper was driving her body and she was tired of going through so many extreme emotions in a short period of time.
All she wanted was a breather, a moment of peace, and was convinced she’d only find it away from him.
“Wait. What?” He scrambled after her. “Cat, stop. I don’t understand. I did listen. You said we needed to stick together, to use both our brains to come up with a plan.”
She shook her head, continuing to walk while rooting through her purse for a hair tie. Her clips had been lost at some point, and she was in no mood for any hair to be in her face. “Yeah? Well, I changed my mind. You can go off and do whatever you want. Go get eaten by a sand flea.”
“You said we needed your bag. So I got your bag. I’m just doing what you wanted.”
“Except that was before there was a chance a giant rake would scoop us up and throw us in a dumpster!” She felt her throat choking with tears again, doing her best to stamp the emotion away. “Thereby turning your little hero bag retrieval mission into something more dangerous than it was worth.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” he shouted at her back.
“I don’t know! All I know is that I can’t take this anymore, so you go ahead and do your thing, and I’ll do mine.
” She’d already experienced seeing Trey’s body still and unconscious, and she could barely handle it.
Catalina wasn’t strong enough to witness him going through something worse.
She’d rather avoid the chance of seeing it at all.
Trey huffed out a bitter laugh. “Isn’t that the problem? You want me to listen while at the same time you don’t want to talk to me. So now what? You’re going to go out there, find a tiny divorce lawyer, and then go have a happily ever after with Buddy the chimp?”
Balancing her bag on an arm, she put the hair tie on while rolling her eyes at his imagined scenario.
“Why in the hell would I go with Buddy when I can have my happily ever after with the tiny divorce lawyer?” The nice thing about being minuscule in height was the ability to shout at him at the top of her lungs and no one being the wiser.
It was strangely cathartic to hold nothing back.
Not that she had much of a choice when it came to shouting, due to the constant noise of waves crashing onto the beach.
“Fine. Then maybe I’ll go with Buddy. We can flip people off together.”
She whipped around to bellow at him. “Fine! Do that! I hope you and Buddy are very happy living together in an electrical outlet!”
“And I hope…” He clearly struggled to come up with a snappy comeback as his brow wrinkled. “…You and your tiny lawyer are happy together.”