Chapter 23
“Most people say the shrimp at Giovanni’s are the best, but I like the ones here more,” Vince said, dunking a fried shrimp into a bowl of spicy salsa.
We were sitting at a colorfully painted wooden table in front of a food truck in Kahuku.
Vince had given me Laurie’s helmet and we’d gotten onto a shabby old scooter.
We’d driven along the ocean for a while, my wet hair whipping in the wind, my T-shirt billowing, and my bikini drying.
I had wrapped my arms around Vince’s waist, feeling his tight muscles beneath my fingers.
“Lou?”
I met his stare. His hair had been flattened by his helmet and grown wavy on the sides thanks to the wind. He looked so cute.
“I was asking you if you wanted anything else.”
“Anything else?”
He stole a glance at my almost untouched portion of shrimp. “They got tacos and burritos over there.” I followed his index finger to a truck painted in the colors of the Mexican flag. “And the pink one over there has bowls if you…”
“No, no. The shrimp are super good. I was just lost in my thoughts.” I pointedly reached for my plate. “It’s been ages since I’ve eaten something like this.”
“Shrimp?”
“Fast food,” I answered, my mouth full. “I have to follow a pretty strict nutrition plan.”
“Have to or want to?”
“Both,” I replied after a brief moment of hesitation. “Sadly, the way to the top isn’t necessarily all that tasty.”
“And that’s where you want to go? To the top?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“Why do I want to be the best in the world?”
He gave an almost indiscernible shrug.
“Well, it’s just…my goal. The thing I’ve always been working toward.”
“Hmm.” He took a bite of his shrimp.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s normal to want to be the best in the world if you’re a competitive athlete. I mean, why else do it?”
“Simply because you love it?”
His tone and the way he looked at me made me defensive.
“I can love the sport and want to be successful.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He put up his hands placatingly. “I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“You didn’t,” I said a little too gruffly. I wanted to let it drop but couldn’t somehow. “I don’t think people who…live like you do get that.”
“How do I live?”
“In the moment.”
He didn’t say a word; he just looked at me.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, you do what you enjoy.”
“I thought you enjoyed playing tennis.”
“I do! Of course I do! But I want to be the best as well.”
“And when you are? What then?”
An irritated laugh burned my throat. “I’ll figure that out then.” It sounded like a question, and I was angry at my lack of confidence as much as at his comments.
“I’ll tell you what’ll happen.” His voice was cynical. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
I stiffened.
“You’ll be waiting for a curtain to fall, but it won’t. Your life will simply go on. It will not be impressed by your having reached your goal. On the contrary. There will be another one. And another one. And another one after that.”
Baffled, I just stared at him. For a few seconds, everything was silent.
“Well, now you know what I’m the best in the world at,” he mumbled.
“What’s that?”
“Buzzkill.”
“Yeah, you really are.”
He looked at me regretfully. “Can we rewind a bit?”
“How far? The point where you question my goals, or the point where you doubt my love of tennis?”
His expression said as much as I deserve that. After a short pause, he said, “To the point when I’m really happy that you’re here with me.”
He smiled so adorably that I lasted all of two seconds before breaking out in a smile myself. We finished up our shrimp in amicable silence.
“Let me throw this away,” Vince said, standing up.
While he was walking over to the trash cans, I stole a glance at my phone and realized with a start that it was going on seven.
I wrote Kay to tell her that I’d be coming home later.
After shoving my phone into my pocket, I looked around for Vince but didn’t see him anywhere.
Did he go to the bathroom? Was there even a bathroom around here?
I got up from the table and felt the beginnings of muscle aches throughout my arms and legs.
That was no good. No good at all. Training in the morning would be tough.
And I’d be subjected to Kay giving me a tongue-lashing when she found out why.
Surfing. Deviating from my nutrition plan.
And on top of it all, both thanks to Vince Greenfield who at that very moment was coming around the corner with two cups full of juice.
“Mango-papaya-pineapple or strawberry-kiwi-I-forget?” He held the cups up in turn. “I figured you might want to balance out your meal with something healthy.”
It was such a sweet gesture that my heart skipped a beat.
“I’ll take the first. Whenever I eat kiwi, my tongue starts to tingle.”
He handed me the cup, and our hands brushed. And suddenly it was like my fingers had eaten kiwi.
“Hmm.” I sighed ecstatically after taking a sip. The juice was simply heavenly. Fresh and fragrant.
“So…there’s something we need to talk about,” Vince said, his voice serious all of a sudden, and I was afraid he wanted to talk about our kiss.
Or kisses. I could feel myself turning red to the roots of my hair, so decided to take another sip of my juice.
“What all did we do in that dream of yours?”
I choked and began to laugh out loud.
* * *
By the time we were on our way back, it was already dark.
After enjoying the wind for a while, I pressed my cheek against Vince’s back and took in the smell of his T-shirt.
Suntan lotion, salt, and a light, not unpleasant hint of sweat.
There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but Vince drove at a leisurely pace, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because, like me, he didn’t want the trip to ever end.
But it did. Vince turned on his blinker and turned into his driveway.
The light over the door went on as we got off the scooter and took off our helmets.
A light breeze came off the water to tousle his hair, and I was gripped by the thought of how others have to stand in front of the mirror for hours to pull off that kind of look.
“Thanks. For the surf lesson. And the food.”
He nodded and mumbled, “Anytime.”
Was he talking about surfing or food? Or…something else entirely? Something that we had successfully avoided until now. I stretched and took a deep breath. “Well…”
“Louisa?”
Our heads spun toward the door where Laurie was standing, staring at us like we were ghosts. “I heard voices and…” She didn’t finish and simply blinked. “Is that mine?”
It took me a second to figure out she was referring to her helmet, which was dangling off my wrist. Vince beat me to it.
“The one I bought you, yeah.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she snapped, and I believed her. Even in the dim light I could tell she wasn’t at all angry, just a bit confused. And I couldn’t blame her. She still thought her brother and I merely tolerated each other.
“We drove to a food truck,” I said clumsily, which explained the scooter and the helmet. But what it couldn’t explain was…
“Together?”
Bingo.
“We’d gone surfing and we were hungry,” Vince explained, completely at ease.
“You all went surfing.” Laurie let her index finger wander back and forth between the two of us. “Didn’t you say you didn’t know how to surf?”
“And I can’t.”
It came out far too quickly and far too hoarsely.
“I showed her,” Vince said in a still remarkably calm tone.
Laurie looked utterly perplexed, and I was sorry.
The whole situation must have appeared absolutely gaga to her.
But I had no idea how to change that. I couldn’t really say, Listen, while you were in bed with a headache, your brother and I were making out.
And because it was surprisingly good, we decided to do it again today.
“Does that mean you’ve already eaten?” Laurie asked, her query sounding more like an observation than a question.
Vince nodded, and I could only hope that there wasn’t a dinner waiting for him inside.
“Yeah, well, so…see you.”
I wanted to give Vince Laurie’s helmet but decided against it at the last minute and ran up to her.
“I’ll give you a call once I’m home,” I said softly, handing it to her.
With the same look of confusion as before, she took it and nodded.
“I’ll walk you over,” Vince said, but I shook my head and shot him a glance that unequivocally said it wouldn’t be necessary. Not today.
For a moment he looked like he was going to object, but to my surprise he accepted my decision.
I said goodbye to the two of them and left.
The short way didn’t give me enough time to make heads or tails of Laurie’s behavior.
I could get how seeing Vince and me behaving so familiarly could be confusing, but there seemed to have been something else in her eyes.
Something like being on alert. As if the idea of there being something between Vince and me unsettled her.
But why? Lost in thought I typed in the door code and slipped inside.
I found Kay sitting on the terrace with her laptop. A citronella candle was burning on the table next to her along with the dregs of a glass of red wine.
Seeing me, her eyes grew wide. “My God, what have you been up to?”
I looked at my reflection in the glass of the sliding door. Oops. My hair was flat against my head and, below my ears, sticking out every which way. As if I hadn’t brushed it in days. Why hadn’t Vince said anything? Why hadn’t Laurie?
“I was on a scooter.” I quickly tried to establish some order to it with my fingers.
“I can see that. But where’d you get one of those?”
I hesitated. “Vince drove.”
Her eyebrows shot upward. “Vince Greenfield?”
I knew that she wasn’t really expecting an answer to her question.
“We just went to a food truck.”
The information changed nothing in her expression, which jumped back and forth between confusion and disbelief. “Together?”
I nodded.
“So, you weren’t on the beach at all,” she said, with a tinge of rebuke. An implication of my not having been honest.
“No, I was. Vince and I ran into each other there and then…” Something told me it would probably be better not to mention the surfing. “Then we drove to a food truck.”
Her eyes fixed on me, she asked, “Was that his suggestion?”
“Yeah,” I replied, happy for a nanosecond to have deflected responsibility onto Vince. But then I remembered what Kay had suggested at our last talk. That Vince was using me to gain an advantage. Which I believed as little now as then. “Don’t worry, we didn’t talk about you.”
“I’m not at all worried about me, Lou.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I can see how your eyes light up whenever you talk about him.”
“What?”
“It’s good to see them do that again.” She sighed. “But I would prefer it not to be in connection to a guy who is so adversarial to me.”
“He’s only that way because you’ve got something against his hostel.”
“For good reason.”
I sighed because we just kept going in circles. And I was beginning to get dizzy.
“Maybe you should finally come to terms with the hostel existing,” I said more sharply than intended. “And figure out a way to deal with that.”
Kay looked at me as if I’d slapped her, and I immediately regretted what I’d said. A sinking feeling began to grow in my stomach.
“I… That wasn’t…” I broke off and grimaced, as, suddenly, my stomach began to cramp like when I had my period.
“Lou?” Kay had jumped up and was looking at me concernedly.
“I simply…ow!” I cried and bent forward, now feeling dizzy for real.
“Lou! What on earth’s wrong?”
I felt Kay’s hand on my upper arm. And then…I vomited right onto her feet.