Chapter 5
As I approach the town car taking me to the marina, I discover that not all Fijian men are undiscovered GQ models.
But what my skinny driver, Toa, lacks in muscles and head hair, he makes up for in hospitality.
He spends the first ten minutes of our drive teaching me all the Fijian words I might need for my travels: bula for hi, lo for yes, vee naka for thank you.
But he also tells me Fijians are famous for their legends.
He gestures up to the hills on our left, and I roll down my heavily tinted window to get a better look.
In the glow of the morning, the lush, green hills are covered with an almost blue mist that makes them seem taller and wilder than they did yesterday. Or maybe I’m just less of a zombie.
“The Sleeping Giant,” he tells me, pointing to the mountain’s curve. “Can you see it?”
I follow his bony finger along the ridge as he drives, and instantly it becomes clear to me: the head, the shoulders, the roman nose. The ridgeline looks just like the silhouette of a man lying on his back.
The car turns left towards the water and slows as we reach the massive, guarded gate of the Denarau marina. A large tree shades the guard booth, and manicured bushes to either side burst with colorful hibiscus and plumeria.
“Bula!” A heavyset guard with a moon-white smile greets us as we roll down the window.
“Bula, brother,” Toa greets him back.
They chat in Fijian for a few minutes before the gate swings open to reveal dozens of immaculate plantation-style bungalows that make me feel like I’m stepping back to 1922.
The guard waves us through, and we pass two more gates of increasing security before we reach the entrance to the marina.
The perfectly manicured tropical streets of the compound are a far cry from the loose chickens and goats that run free through the busy towns outside.
We pull up to a roundabout by the marina’s edge where a petite man with a crisp green uniform stands stiff as a soldier. He waves at us, his friendly smile bookended by a distractingly large blonde mustache.
I take a deep breath before opening the car door and stepping into the morning heat.
“G’day, travelers!” the man calls out in a heavy Australian accent as he ambles over to the car. He holds out his arm and shakes my hand, firmly.
“You must be Stella! I’m Jim, First Mate.”
Jim’s voice has the quality of one of the island’s colorful songbirds: melodic and effortlessly cheerful.
I like him already. But I’d be lying if I said my heart doesn’t sink a little when he mentions his role.
No matter what I said to Will and Mer, some small, insignificant part of me was still holding out hope Caleb could be working for the Warrens.
I guess this is what I get for letting all Marianne’s talk about destiny and the universe get to my head.
“Great to meet you,” I smile.
“The family’s waiting for you down on the dock. Their plane landed a little early and Harry’s itching to cast off.”
Driving in, the masts that stuck out of the gated marina reminded me of the ones we used to walk past growing up in Seattle.
But up close, it doesn’t take me long to realize how very far I am from home.
The ships (and they are ships) of Denarau Marina are not the barnacle-crusted sailboats I remember from my childhood.
Their sparkling white bodies and dark, tinted windows whisper of elite families who are more likely to be caught on the Forbes 500 list than the salt-covered docks of the Puget Sound.
I suddenly have the urge to beg Toa to take me back to the hotel, the airport—even Will’s precious Hyatt.
I was a swimmer in high school. I wonder how long it will take me to swim back to the states.
Instead, I smile back at Toa as he lifts my duffel from the backseat.
“Thank you for the ride!” I tell him.
“You’re welcome. Be sure to catch some waves for me out at cloudbreak!”
I practically snort, remembering what he told me about one of the largest surf breaks in the world rolling just offshore. “Don’t count on it.”
“Allow me,” Jim says, but I snatch the bag away from him.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I don’t need you to carry my bags for me.”
“It’s no worries. I’m more than happy to—”
“Really,” I say, wrestling it back from his grasp. He’s quite strong for such a little guy. “I insist.”
Jim lets go, looking like a dog who’s just been put into the cone of shame.
He even hesitates before opening the gate to the dock as if I might try to do that for him, too.
The defeated expression on his face makes me feel just a little bit guilty, but I’m not like the Warrens, who are clearly unwilling to lift a finger when they could pay someone else to lift it for them.
And I’m certainly not going to let Jim do something for me that I’m perfectly capable of doing myself.
I hear a high-pitched squeal behind me, and I turn just in time to discover that it’s not, in fact, the sound of a dying sea lion, but of my sister. I can barely react before Jules tackles me into a hug that knocks me into the railing behind us.
“Jules!”
“Stelly Bean!” she shouts, and I squeal too as I hug her back. I’m instantly enveloped in her familiar smell of honeysuckle and coconut oil, but there’s something else there, too. Something that smells like an overpriced resort candle.
She holds me at arm’s length, looking me over.
Jules may be my baby sister, but the older she gets, the more she’s starting to look like the photos I’ve seen of our mom: olive-skinned and enviably curvy with a heart-shaped face that doesn’t show a single wrinkle no matter how often she smiles.
But while I share her wavy dark hair, the only sign of my mom’s Chilean heritage, I’m lanky and paler than I probably should be: the stretched and bleached version of Jules’s Selena Gomez.
Since I saw her last, she’s cut her waist-length hair into a fashionably short bob, and I’m willing to bet the Chanel sunglasses and color-block mini dress she’s wearing cost more than my flight here.
“Oh babe,” she says, lifting up my pocked arm. “Didn’t you bring any bug spray?”
“Good to see you, too, Jules!” I joke.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “They’ve got gallons on board. All reef-safe—I made sure of it!”
Jules hooks her arm in mine and leads me down the dock, her staggeringly high wedges clicking against the wood as we walk.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” she squeezes me even tighter. “Isn’t this place a dream?”
“It’s so beautiful Jules. I didn’t realize they made water this color. How was your flight?”
“Ah-mazing. Flying private is crazy. The seats in there are practically beds. And the flight attendant made us Bavarian pancakes for breakfast. With a STOVE!”
I scan the boats, wondering which of these is the Vela Bianca.
Maybe I should have read the twenty-page welcome document Harry forwarded me the moment I agreed to come.
I count twenty boats here, not including the monstrosity at the end of the dock: a vessel the size of a small cruise ship that stretches out so long I can’t see where it ends.
It looks like something seized from a Russian oligarch.
“Ok,” I say quietly enough that Jim won’t hear. “The craziest thing happened yesterday.”
Jules gasps.
“One day in Fiji and already there’s tea! Spill!”
I lean in close and tell her, in no shortage of ab-tastic detail, the story of the hot runner who dragged me out of the ocean. When I’m finished, her jaw practically hits the dock.
“Are you serious?” she asks. “That’s straight out of a rom com! Did you get his number?”
I shake my head.
“Why not!”
“Because we’re on your family vacation, remember?”
Jules waves her hand dismissively.
“True love waits for no one, Stella. Besides, we’re literally in the marina. What if he’s here right now?”
I roll my eyes. There’s only room for one hopeless romantic in the family, and that spot’s been taken since Jules discovered Pride and Prejudice at seven years old.
“Well, the crew knows practically everyone here,” she assures me. “Once we get settled, I’ll do a little sleuthing and see what I can dig up.”
I hesitate. Hot runner didn’t give me his number. He obviously doesn’t want to be found.
“Please don’t,” I beg her. “I already feel like the seventh wheel here. I don’t need to draw any more attention to myself.”
“Stella,” she says, smoothing out her bright coral mini-dress. “Relax. I am nothing if not the picture of subtlety.”
“Ahoy, ladies!” a male voice interrupts us, and look up to see a familiar face standing at the end of the dock in front of an absolute wall of boat, his arms waving like a grounded albatross.
I pull my scratched sunglasses down to my nose.
“Harry?”
Holy ship. I scan the boat again, my stomach sinking as I realize what Harry’s presence at the end of the dock must mean.
That white monstrosity isn’t blocking the Warren’s boat. It is their boat.
“Um, Jules,” I whisper coolly as soon as my shocked vocal chords regain function. “You told me the Vela Bianca was a normal-sized boat.”
“Did I?”
“I believe your exact words were, ‘nothing crazy.’”
I look up at the yards and vertical yards of bonafide superyacht. This is not what I signed up for.
“Stelly, relax. It looks much bigger from the dock.”
Above Harry’s flailing form, I see a group of people hovering on the back deck in green uniforms just like Jim.
Suddenly the “nice outfit” I picked out for our arrival feels like something I fished out of an alley dumpster.
I make a useless attempt to smooth the wrinkles out of my faded sundress as the crew looks on.
They’re probably all thinking the same thing: who is this slob who washed up on their dock?