Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
TRISTAN
“Oh, this is so wonderful,” Anita says as she pulls me into a side hug. Her other arm is around her daughter, so we’re basically making an Anita O’Reilly sandwich.
Lexi and Evan’s mom arrived from Alaska late last night, just in time for Christmas.
She’s been teaching in a small town an hour’s drive from Anchorage for the past two years.
Once her kids were out of the house and on their own career paths, Anita tackled her bucket list. Over the past six years she’s taught in three different states, exploring the country on her own terms.
“To think I don’t need to go to New York to see Lexi for the holidays. It makes for a nice change.” Anita gives me a last squeeze before she lets go. “Are you going to New York to see your dad, Tris?”
I reach for a beer as I gear up for the annual Anita O’Reilly Christmas update.
“No, he’s spending the holidays in Europe.
” With wife number three who is younger than me.
I raise my beer in a mock toast. I didn’t ask what ex-wife number one and my two half-brothers are doing this holiday season.
I’m Dad’s third child, from ex-wife number two. “Can I top off your wine, Anita?”
“Thank you.” She picks up her glass from the table and holds it out for me. “And your mom?”
“I went to see Mom over the weekend. They’re taking the girls skiing as usual,” I say as I pour pinot grigio. “The triplets are seventeen now, and my mom’s eager for them to all be together one last time. Next year it will be a different story.”
“Oh, nice. Funny that as much as things change, they stay the same.” Anita sips her wine and studies me over the rim of her glass.
Yep. I haven’t been included in either my dad’s or mom’s respective holiday plans and have no family to go to for Christmas.
It doesn’t matter. I’ve spent less and less time with my blood relations over the years as navigating composite family holidays only left a sour taste in my mouth.
When the triplets were born, Mom had zero time for me.
I was hardly ten when she divorced my dad, remarried, and we moved to Miami.
Soon I was only an inconvenience and a reminder of Mom’s first marriage’s bitter ending.
The number of weekends I spent in New York—flying up so Dad could have his fair share of custody—earned me enough air miles to fly around the world first class.
Anita’s comment echoes in my mind. Funny how things don’t change that much.
Lexi is by her mom’s side, looking nervous.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten accustomed to all her little signals again.
She’s shifting from one foot to the other and forever trying to find a stray hair to sweep from her temple and tuck behind her ear.
She isn’t used to keeping secrets from her mom, and right now she has a bag full of them.
We aren’t telling Anita about our communal job and fake engagement.
The fewer people who know about it, the better.
And then there’s the Mia Reed mess. To my knowledge, it’s only me, Evan, and her friend Tessa who know why she was released by St Chalamet.
Anita is under the impression that Lexi left St Chalamet of her own accord for a promotion with Beaumont.
“Things do change, Mom,” Evan says as he points his barbecue tongs at his sister. “Lexi has finally moved on from St Chalamet.”
“Yes! How exciting! A private island in the Indian Ocean sounds totally dreamy.” Anita raises her glass and clinks it with Lexi’s. “I wonder if I’d be able to sneak in a visit.”
“It’s only for three months, Mom. Plus, it’s my probation period,” Lexi croaks. “And surely you don’t want to travel all that way for your spring break?”
“Maybe. Do you think they’ll give you a family discount?”
“Pfft.” Evan chuckles as he directs his attention to the grill. Vegetable skewers and strip loin are sizzling away, and the scent of a summer barbecue hangs heavy in the air. “That place is more than three thousand dollars per person per night, Mom. What level of discount do you have in mind?”
Anita’s eyes go wide. “What? That’s ridiculous. It certainly sounds like a step up from St Chalamet. Maybe I can share your staff room?”
Lexi’s gaze catches mine as a blush colors her cheeks. Yep, we’ve gone through all the mandatory training and that’s one mystery we haven’t solved yet: where exactly will we be staying?
“I don’t want to rock the boat, Mom. Once I’m a permanent employee, I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out how to let family stay on the cheap at Beaumont hotels.”
Time to rescue Lexi before her mom digs deeper and finds treasure.
“Anita, come see what I’ve been working on.
” I take her by the elbow and nudge her in the direction of the house.
If I can keep her busy until lunchtime, we can then get her talking about her fourth-grade class and plans for the summer.
That should keep her going until the pinot grigio demands she takes a nap.
Lexi and her mom are sharing the bigger guest room for Anita’s four-night stay. After Miami, Anita is going to visit her sister who still lives in New Orleans, and we’ll be off the hook.
I’ve squeezed a desk into my small room, and my two monitors take over most of the space. We’ve packed all my diving and photographic equipment in the garage, except for my most expensive cameras and lenses, which are in crates stacked against the wall. It’s cramped.
“Heavens, Tristan, a man your size needs more space,” Anita says as I hold the door for her.
“I’m used to it. Here,” I say as I pull out the chair for her.
“If this is anything like your first two episodes, it’s going to be epic!” She sits with a grin, and I shake the mouse to bring the screen back to life.
“I present to you, episode three. I’ve been wrapping this up with the postproduction team over the past few weeks. Episodes three and four are almost done.” I lean over to close the blackout blinds and raise the volume. With the room pitch black, the only light comes from the screen.
Atmospheric sounds of the deep ocean fill the room with the opening credits.
Whale songs. They’re eerie until you realize what you’re listening to.
The song morphs into dolphin sounds and a lighter whisper of waves rolling out on the sand, and the opening scene…
It stills everything in me. I’m in awe that we were able to catch this with both the drone and in the waves.
A school of dolphins slice through the water, cresting and jumping, their bodies etched against the sun-filtered electric blue of the water.
“Oh wow,” Anita murmurs. “It’s giving me chills.”
I smile. This. This is what I need to hear.
“These two episodes are about dolphins and sharks and their prey. For episodes five and six, we’re going smaller.
By seven and eight we’re down to the tiniest of sea creatures.
We’ll wrap up with plankton, bringing it full circle with the whales from episode one.
” There’s movement behind me, and I glance at the door.
Lexi is leaning against the jamb, quiet so she doesn’t distract her mom.
“I’ll be focusing on filming that for the first quarter of next year. ”
“This is still all your own footage?” Anita asks, not looking away from the screen.
“Yep. I’ve been at it for years. Lots of hours, but it’s tricky to get enough footage to make an engaging forty-minute episode.”
She nods as the narrator adds the commentary I’ve pored over late at night. My fantastic sound team brings the patchwork of clips together and makes it whole. This is definitely a case of teamwork making the dream work, as I have no expertise in these other areas.
Lexi inches closer. “I haven’t seen any of this.”
“No?” Anita shoots her a glance. “Tristan showed me his first episodes over Easter. They’re amazing.”
“The footage is breathtaking.” Lexi steps up, and now she’s inches from my back, looking past my shoulder at the screen.
I step aside to make space for her, and she brushes against me. It’s a tight fit in the room, and my arm touches hers all the way from shoulder to wrist, making my skin tingle.
“You set out to do this and then actually did it.” Anita shakes her head as she looks up and gives me a smile that looks just like Lexi’s.
“Technically I’m still doing it,” I say with a dry chuckle.
“Yes, but getting this done between your other research work and the teaching you do—you’ve made me so proud, you know.
” Anita turns to the screen again. “When you came in that first afternoon with Evan from school to hang out and told me with such passion how you’d gone diving that weekend, I knew you were going to do great things, Tris.
Bigger things than all of us put together. ”
I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to ignore Lexi’s body heat and manage my joy at the praise from the woman I’ve secretly adopted as a substitute mom.
That Anita’s home was a welcome haven for me in my teens was probably what saved me.
As a kid, I tried to ignore the bickering at my house, but if you’re the only kid and your parents are at it like adolescent siblings, it’s hard to hear anything else.
I look over to where Lexi is staring at the screen.
I can recite the narrator’s script word for word; I know the clip that’s showing with each new scene.
So it’s more fascinating to watch Lexi as she takes it all in.
She blinks, and I realize there are tears in her eyes.
She’s unaware that I’m studying her, and this, seeing her so open and unchecked—it twists my throat into a pretzel.
I brush my thumb along the top of her hand, and when she hooks a finger with mine, I don’t draw back.
She looks into my eyes for a moment, bites her lip, and then tugs at my hand, indicating with her head that I should follow.
I turn, but she stops, and we stand toe to toe, my body screening her from Anita’s view.
Lexi drops her head to my chest, and the gesture catches me so off guard that I let go of her hand to squeeze her shoulders. “What’s wrong?” I whisper.
Behind us on the computer screen, urgent and frenzied music plays, accompanying the footage of a school of fish that swarmed into a ball during a dolphin hunt. It’s loud.
She leans up to my ear and whispers, her breath warm, her body soft against mine, “I didn’t realize the stakes were so high for you. What you’re doing is amazing, and you must finish it.”
Her cheek brushes mine as she pulls back, and for a moment our faces are inches apart in the darkened room, lit only by blue flashes from the computer screen.
I rest my hands on her hips, burning to pull her into my arms, and she doesn’t move away.
“Thank you.” I smile. I’ve been so busy, so into this production with my heart and soul that I’ve never stepped back to look at it with fresh eyes.
I lean closer to make sure Anita doesn’t hear. “Thanks to you, I’ll get to finish it.”
“Tristan,” she mouths as she shakes her head. “You don’t understand. I… I just have a job, a totally insignificant job a million people can do. This—this—” She breaks off and swallows. “Only you can do this.”
“Lexi—”
“No. For the first time, I’m bending the rules with someone, and if this goes belly up, you stand to lose so much more than me.”
She steps away and wipes at tears. Frustration, in every possible form, balloons in me.
She’s always talking herself down, and now Anita’s presence here has unearthed every doubt in her.
Anita O’Reilly is probably one of the nicest, kindest women to ever walk this Earth, and Lexi has always wanted to be Little Miss Perfect in her mom’s eyes—a side-effect of having a fourth-grade teacher for a mom—except Lexi has grown into a woman who likes to test boundaries, question rules and bend them.
Since Anita’s arrived, she’s been staving off a mini-meltdown and trying her best to hide it.
No, we aren’t telling the full story, but Lexi is an adult, and her mom doesn’t need to know everything that’s happening in her life.
Hiding our fake, temporary engagement from her mom is the most logical thing to do.
Plus, we’re leaving in a week, and there’s no turning back.
Pulling out now would be worse than faking our relationship.
“Nothing’s going belly up.” I widen the gap to have her at arm’s length, tamping down on the desire to touch her more than I already am.
“What’s that?” Anita asks.
I close my eyes for a second, trying to get a grip. “I forgot about the pork belly I bought yesterday,” I say, glad such a logical response is at hand. “We still wanted to grill some.”
“I’ll go see to the rest of the food,” Lexi says as she steps out of the room, her eyes no longer meeting mine. “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
“Sure, thanks.” Behind me, Anita is hopefully transfixed by the sardine hunt on the screen, clinging to her glass of wine, oblivious to our interaction.
I turn back to the screen, but I’m staring blindly. What the hell was that? Not that I object but…
Over the past few weeks, busy as I’ve been, Lexi and I have spent a lot of time together as we got through the training and prepared for our trip. We’ve grown closer. So close that we both know neither of us has gonorrhea.
Despite the time doing the training, paperwork, and medicals with all its high-five moments, I’ve not let my guard down around her at all. In fact, I’ve done my best to build a virtual Fort Knox around Lexi to contain her and keep her where she belongs. Far away from me.
If she’s going to open herself up, touch me even innocently like she just did… I can’t even go there in my head. Not with her.
When I arrived that day in early December, I knew Lexi and I had baggage.
We haven’t examined it yet, opting instead for a temporary truce.
And now a temporary fake engagement. I don’t know what we were thinking, but it’s too late now.
We just need to get through these three months and walk away from Ne’emba Island and each other with our goals met—nothing else.
Nothing else.
Fuck.