10. Ellie #2
Instead, I spent three weeks in my apartment eating cereal, ignoring recruiters, and discovering that daytime television contained an alarming number of people renovating barns they had no business owning.
My parents wanted me to come home.
I visited twice.
Each time, the house felt full of Molly-shaped spaces.
Her mug in the cabinet.
Her coat still hanging behind the kitchen door.
A photograph of the two of us at fifteen and eighteen, wearing matching bridesmaid dresses and expressions of mutual betrayal.
At my apartment, she existed mostly inside my phone.
The last message.
Tomorrow, then.
I could not stay in Chicago.
I also could not go home.
So when a recruiter sent me a listing for a marketing director at a boutique resort in the Florida Keys, I applied mostly because the photograph showed a palm tree and no conference rooms.
They hired me after two video calls.
The salary was terrible.
The title was impressive.
The resort claimed to value work-life balance, which I would later learn meant employees were expected to answer emails from the beach.
I sold half my furniture, packed the rest into a storage unit, and drove south in a car that developed a mysterious clicking sound somewhere in Georgia.
My mother cried when I left.
My father checked the tires three times.
“You don’t have to run,” Mom said.
“I’m not running.”
“You’re moving fourteen hundred miles.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It requires paperwork.”
She did not laugh.
Molly would have.
Pelican Key was smaller than it had looked online.
The resort was smaller too.
The “executive office” was a converted storage room beside the laundry facilities, and my apartment contained mold shaped vaguely like South America.
I stayed.
For two months.
Then the resort was sold to a development group from Miami, and half the staff were dismissed during a meeting where the new owner used the phrase strategic realignment nine times.
I walked out carrying a cardboard box, a desk plant named Gloria that had belonged to Molly, and a severance check that would cover approximately six weeks of rent if I stopped eating.
My car made the clicking sound all the way back to the apartment.
I parked near the marina because I did not feel ready to go home and look at South America growing on the bathroom ceiling.
That was how I found Reef Rascal.
The sign was faded.
The front door stuck halfway open.
A golden retriever slept across the entrance with his head resting on a coil of rope.
I stepped over him.
He opened one eye.
“Sorry.”
He went back to sleep.
Inside, an older man stood behind the counter arguing with a printer.
The printer made a grinding sound.
The man unplugged it.
“Problem solved,” he said.
I looked around.
Fins.
Masks.
Photographs of coral reefs.
A chalkboard advertising beginner lessons.
The man noticed the box in my arms.
“You selling plants?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He pointed at Gloria.
“Dog eats dirt.”
The dog sighed from the doorway.
“I just lost my job,” I said.
I had no idea why I told him.
Possibly because he had the emotional energy of a locked shed.
He nodded.
“Bad job?”
“It had potential.”
“Those are usually worse.”
I looked at the chalkboard.
“Do you teach scuba?”
“Yes.”
“Is it quiet?”
“Underwater?”
“Yes.”
“Usually.”
I had never wanted to scuba dive.
Molly had.
She had once sent me a video of a woman swimming beside a sea turtle.
We should do this.
I had replied:
Absolutely. After this campaign.
Tomorrow.
After this campaign.
When things calmed down.
All the small phrases people used to pretend time was a renewable resource.
“How much is a lesson?” I asked.
The man gave me a number.
I looked at my severance check.
“That seems financially irresponsible.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have an opening?”
He looked toward the dog.
The dog did not contribute.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“They sell them.”
“I’m unemployed.”
“They sell cheap ones.”
“You’re not very good at customer service.”
“I own the place.”
That explained a lot.
I returned the next morning in a black swimsuit that pinched at the shoulders and shorts I had bought from a pharmacy.
The man introduced himself as Hank Dawson.
The dog was Captain Pancake.
Captain Pancake sat on my foot while Hank explained the equipment.
“Does this mean he likes me?” I asked.
“No.”
“What does it mean?”
“You’re standing where he wants to sit.”
The first time I put my face underwater, I panicked.
The second time, I swallowed seawater and accused Hank of insufficient supervision.
The third time, something changed.
The world went quiet.
Not empty.
Quiet.
My breath became the only urgent thing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
No email.
No meetings.
No phones.
No tomorrow.
Just now.
When we surfaced, Hank looked at me.
“Well?”
I pushed my mask onto my forehead.
“I hated most of it.”
“Mm-hm.”
“When can I do it again?”
The corner of his mouth moved.
That was how Hank smiled.
I started helping at the shop in exchange for discounted lessons.
Then I took a weekend shift.
Then more.
Six months later, I had my instructor certification, a new apartment with less ambitious mold, and a job title that required no charts about blue.
On my first official morning, Hank handed me a Reef Rascal T-shirt and pointed toward a group of nervous tourists.
“Yours.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“What if they panic?”
“Don’t let them.”
“That’s your training advice?”
“Breathe helps.”
Captain Pancake crossed the shop and sat on my foot.
I looked down at him.
“Am I hired?”
Hank drank his coffee.
“Dog says yes.”
Captain Pancake leaned against my leg.
Outside, the ocean moved beneath the morning sun.
For the first time in months, I did not feel as though I was waiting for my life to start again.
It already had.