Chapter 16 #2
Kenny was still flushed from embarrassment and now that her body was taking the shape of an inverted pyramid, with all the blood rushing to her head, she knew she’d be a deep shade of purple.
Peering through her legs, ass in the air, she found herself staring directly at Bike Boy and his dog.
Again. This was not a good look for her.
She wished she was one of those mole crabs that could burrow in the sand and disappear.
In contrast, Bike Boy and Cliff looked like the photo that came in a man’s best friend picture frame.
Bike Boy sat in the sand dunes with his long muscular legs stretched out in front of him.
The royal blue shirt he wore showed off his strong arms and paired well with the navy shorts that were just the right length.
He gazed out to the Atlantic Ocean from behind his polarized Ray-Ban aviators and Cliff sat human like next to him.
Sea oats waved back and forth behind them.
What are they doing? Kenny thought.
She had kicked off her flip-flops and left them with the pile of other footwear at the end of the beach walk when she arrived for yoga. Which meant that she’d be forced to walk right past Bike Boy and Cliff if she ever wanted to leave the beach.
“Lower to your knees, extend your legs and arms out in front of you and slowly recline to Savasana,” Bonnie directed.
After two minutes in final resting pose, the yoga leader invited the group to share their affirmation cards and present their chakra crystals.
Kenny’s face was blazing; she desperately needed to wash it.
She would have killed for one of Marah’s chilled lavender washcloths.
The build-up of lotion, chlorine, and sweat was on the verge of intolerable before the face-plant into her sandy beach towel, and now it was unbearable.
Her eyes were agitated and the whites of them had to be fire-engine red.
Embarrassing.
Kenny tried to stay Zen for the last few moments, but her focus waned.
Everything around her was distracting, and she needed class to be over.
She sensed the golfers, partiers, tennis players, and readers had lost interest, too.
They professed their affirmations at rapid speed and most of them even had the same white crystal, although Kenny missed the meaning of the snowy colored rock because she was too busy fumbling for her own.
She couldn’t find the chakra stone anywhere and discreetly reached under her towel and shoveled her hands through the sand in search of it.
Bonnie explained with a smile that Bailey’s pink quartz crystal signified love and happiness. Then she carried her enthusiastic gaze to Kenny.
How fitting, Kenny thought. The universe continues to bestow love and happiness on the blushing bride through stones of pink quartz while swallowing my stone for breakfast.
“Today I am grateful. Today my heart is filled with joy. I see positive in everything today,” Kenny read aloud from her affirmation card, trying to sound convincing, rather than sarcastic.
“This is one of my favorite affirmations in the deck,” Bonnie exclaimed. “How could we be anything but grateful, with hearts full of joy waking up among this beauty today? And let’s see your stone, Kennedy.”
“Well, this is embarrassing! I can’t find my stone,” Kenny tried to crack a smile and force a laugh. “It must’ve gotten buried in the sand when Cliff and I did our little beach dance. I’m sorry I lost your stone. But it was a beautiful shade of sea-foam green.”
“Oh, Miss Kennedy, a powerful gemstone chose you. Sea-foam green is the color of amazonite and is related to your throat and heart chakras. It encourages creative expression, confidence, and self-love. Inspiration abounds around you. And don’t worry about the stone.
Someone on these sands will eventually stumble across it and reap the benefits of the strong energy the crystal radiates. ”
“Thank you, Bonnie. I could use all that energy these days,” Kenny said with a genuine smile, feeling slightly recentered.
Maybe there’s something to this yoga voodoo, she thought.
“Thank you for practicing with me and sharing your energy with one another. The light within me honors and loves the light within you. Together, let’s bring our hands to our third eye space, bow our heads, and say ‘Namaste.’”
“Namaste,” the group replied in unison.
Kenny folded up her beach towel and was relieved that when she looked to the dunes, Bike Boy and Cliff were gone.
She walked toward the ocean and dipped her feet in the water.
The waves rolled gently over her toes, past her ankles, and then up her shins.
The water was calm and warm and almost drowned her with a sense of inner peace.
Her mind started to wander, thinking about what she should be doing on this Tuesday morning.
It was a little after 10:00 a.m. so she should be listening to the Network Editorial Call, the daily meeting of senior and executive producers who discuss story ideas, breaking news, reporter assignments, and predicted rundowns of what shows will broadcast that day.
The Tuesdays after long holiday weekends were notoriously busy in the news world.
But Kenny stopped herself. She didn’t want to think about anything other than being fully present at this moment, feeling her feet sink deeper and deeper in the sand with each current.
Her stomach growled and she took this as her cue to head back to Pelican Pointe.
She sauntered up the desolate beach to collect her shoes.
The flip-flops were the only pair left from what had been a large pile just a few moments earlier and when she bent over to pick them up, she saw Cliff charging back down the beach walk.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Kenny accidentally said out loud, her red, itchy eyes growing larger as the tall, dark, handsome vision in blue following the canine got closer.
She was trapped. There was nowhere to go, except into the Atlantic Ocean, to avoid contact with Bike Boy. No vacant beach chair to sit in. No umbrella to hide under. No stranger to strike up conversation with.
“Hey, I’m J.P. I wanted to apologize, again, for what happened earlier. I really don’t know what got into Cliff. And I think this is yours,” the vision said, extending his arm and opening his palm to show a sea-foam green stone.
“Yes! That’s my chakra crystal. I’ve been looking for that,” Kenny squealed out in a nervous giggle.
“I’m sorry, it’s your what?” J.P. questioned with a funny expression.
“Well, it’s not technically mine. It’s Bonnie the yoga instructor’s crystal. She brought a bag of these stones that are supposed to effuse different energies. This one makes you confident and creative,” she babbled, taking the stone out of his hand.
J.P. let out a laugh, took the Ray-Ban’s off his face, and nodded, trying to pretend he was interested in the talk about the rock.
“Anyway, I’m Kennedy. Or Kenny. A lot of people call me Kenny,” she said putting her hands on her hips and shrugging her shoulders.
She could feel J.P.’s ocean blue eyes scanning her up and down. Her empty stomach was doing somersaults, and she timidly cast her gaze to the sand waiting for him to say something. She caught a glimpse of her still unpolished toes and quickly buried them underneath the surface.
Of all things to not cross off my to-do list before I stopped making them! she thought.
“Very nice to meet you, Kenny. Gosh, it was bad enough that Cliff knocked you over. Now you tell me he ran off with your confidence stone in his mouth.” J.P. laughed at how ridiculous the statement sounded.
“Don’t mention it.” She giggled, slowly picking up her gaze again to meet his. She was hoping where her eyes went, her confidence would follow.
“I have to ask you, are you staying at Pelican Pointe?”
He remembers me, Kenny thought. He remembers that awkward moment at Fraser’s Circle. He must’ve followed me to see where the new island idiot was living so he could caution the rest of the bikers on the plantation.
“I am staying at Pelican Pointe. I’m going to be there for the next five weeks,” she answered.
TMI, Kenny. He doesn’t care how long you are there. He’s worried about the safety of himself and fellow bikers.
“Wow, good for you. I thought I saw you doing laps in the pool this morning. I recognized that blue thing in your hair.” He motioned to the silk scrunchie.
Kenny wanted to die. Freezing at the intersection was embarrassing but she could blame that on exhaustion.
Losing balance in yoga was humiliating, but she could blame it on Cliff.
But Bike Boy watching her swim in a dry-rotted Speedo with a blue scrunchie in her hair was catastrophic.
And she only had herself to blame. That was a situation she would never be able to recover from.
“Guilty, that was me. I haven’t done laps in years, but the water looked incredibly inviting this morning. Are you staying at Pelican Pointe?”
It was a loaded question, but Kenny pulled the trigger. She wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be. Part of her wanted to see J.P. every day for the rest of her life. The other half wanted to never, ever see him again following three unflattering, chance encounters.
“No, no I’m not staying there. I live down at South Beach. By the Salty Dog? I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Sea Pines? But my boss owns Pelican Pointe and sometimes I help him out with odds and ends around the complex.”
“Oh, you must work for Mr. Cunningham,” Kenny interjected like she knew Mr. Cunningham.
“I do. How do you know Mr. C?” J.P. looked surprised.
“I don’t know Mr. Cunningham. Derek, the guard at the Greenwood Gate, was telling me what a wonderful gentleman he is,” Kenny backtracked.
“How do you know Derek?” J.P. shot back, equally surprised that she knew the plantation security guard.
“Well, I don’t really know him either. Just from driving onto the plantation yesterday.
People seem to talk to me and tell me things, I guess,” she admitted, hoping the conversation would end soon.
The butterflies were fluttering, and she was terrified about what other ridiculous comments might fly out of her mouth or what rumbles would erupt from her hungry stomach.
“I could see why people would want to talk to you, Kenny. And I am happy that I ran into you. Or rather, that Cliff ran over you.” J.P.
smirked. “I was at Pelican Pointe this morning dropping off new beach chairs and bikes for the villa guests. You won’t miss them.
They’re bright orange and will be stored under the pavilion.
First come, first served, but feel free to use them when they’re available. ”
“Great, thanks. I’ll check them out. I better be on my way. Still have some unpacking to do. Nice to meet you, J.P. And you, too, Cliff.” She crouched down and rubbed the shaggy mutt behind the ears.
“See you around, Kenny. Let’s go, Cliff.” J.P. waved and started to walk down the beach.
She pulled her feet out from the hole in the sand she buried them into, relieved that the daddy-dog duo wasn’t headed in her direction.
She thought she survived a speaking encounter with Bike Boy, relatively unscathed, when he turned back and yelled, “I’m going to send someone over to check out the chlorine levels.
Your eyes are very red and agitated and I hope it’s not from the pool.
I wouldn’t want anything to keep you from your morning laps. ”
Sliding her unkempt feet into her flip-flops, Kenny nodded, threw J.P. a double thumbs up and a wink with one very itchy, bloodshot eye. She wondered how many bad impressions she would have to make before possibly giving off a good one.
She topped off her Swell bottle from the dispenser filled with ice water and oranges that was on the bar at the Beach Club and pulled out her phone to plug Pelican Pointe back into GPS.
Text to Hailey: Hi Hailey, I just finished beach yoga at the Sea Pines Beach Club. Is there a place within walking distance I can get a mani/pedi?
Kenny wasn’t sure the message had enough time to be transported all the way to West Virginia and the little bubbles were already populating at the bottom of the phone.
Text from Hailey: Sea Pines Center! (Emoji: hand with pink fingers). Dnt kno name, but take (Emoji: person walking) ins
Kenny flagged the message with a heart and interpreted it to mean there was a salon in Sea Pines Center that didn’t require appointments.
She was grateful to be learning Hailey-bonics, but even more grateful that she passed Sea Pines Center on her walk back to Pelican Pointe.
The situation on her toes surpassed vanity.
Her feet looked like they would pose alarm to any podiatrist.