Chapter 13
“You did it again, bruh.” It’s Captain Shaq, congratulating Keston on his win.
“Nice going, Speed Racer,” says an older gentleman in a dashiki.
“When are you going to give the youngsters a break?” asks a guy who’s about twenty. “You have enough of those prized bottles of rum.”
Keston promises to share his rum.
“We’re dipping out. You need a ride, man?” one of his friends asks.
Keston looks at me. “Not faster than driving the boat back, but drier.”
The harbor is full of boats tied up, some to the jetty, some on buoys, and others are pulled onto the sand. It seems everyone is driving home tonight and leaving their boats here.
I waded in to get to shore, and I don’t want to wade back out now that I’m nice and dry. And slightly dizzy with rum punch.
“Oh, absolutely,” I smile. “We’ll take a ride.”
We follow Keston’s friend, Alex, to a car that looks like it should be in the Fast Furious franchise.
In the back seat of the heavily tinted car, I push all thoughts of Tabitha St. Clair from my mind and collapse next to Keston. It’s been a long day and night.
He pulls me gently into the circle of his arms. I feel myself nodding off as the men discuss a celebrity golf tournament. It will be held at Cocoa Reef Resort at Christmas in a few months.
“How much is the prize?” Keston asks excitedly. “I want in.”
My eyes are closing, but they pop open again, “You play golf?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I’m insulted.”
“Kes is the top golfer for The Rasta Blasters,” chirps Alex. “That’s his four-person team.”
“Wait a minute, how come I didn’t know you played golf?”
“It’s been difficult to play since the accident.” He stretches out his leg in the back seat of the car. “But if I’m going to win that tournament. I need to step up my game.”
“Prize is 10 Gs I heard,” Alex says. “And you’re always on your game, pal.”
Keston whistles through his teeth. “Ten thousand American dollars?”
“Yup.”
Kes stares out the window.
What’s he thinking about?
“Let me know if I can help,” I murmur.
His lips graze my forehead. “Of course, baby.”
Alex looks at us through the rear-view mirror. “You gotta come back for the tournament, CJ.”
They’re innocent words. But they trigger a feeling of sadness.
Everyone must think I’m leaving soon. As if what Keston and I have is just a vacation fling. Tabitha hopes so.
Keston must understand how I’m feeling because he says loudly, “She’s not leaving. So, she doesn’t have to come back.”
Alex smacks his steering wheel. “You don’t have to convince me, man. I hope you guys work out.”
“We will,” says Keston. “We survived No Man’s Land together.”
Alex taps the steering wheel. In a voice that is not at all sarcastic, he says to me, “Keston accomplishes whatever he goes after. It’s his superpower.”
“What is?” I ask.
At the same time, Keston groans. “Please, I don’t have a superpower.”
“No, let me tell her,” Alex interjects.
“I’m all ears,” I tell Alex.
To Keston, I whisper, “My baby has superpowers?”
Alex starts talking as we travel down the dark, empty roads.
“Back in school, Keston would surprise everyone by signing up for stuff nobody wanted to do. Like when our school was putting on King Lear, he played King Lear. Nobody wanted to memorize all that old English language. But he did it. Easily. The play went on to win in a Caribbean-wide contest.
“Then, our football captain got sick. Soccer, you call it. Anyway, Kes stepped in, and they won! Went on to play in the whole damn Caribbean league. Our school has a case full of Keston Kip’s trophies. In golf, tennis, soccer, drama, and even art. You name it. He can do it. People say it’s because of what’s in his jeans.”
“Man, stop talking your nonsense,” Keston barks.
“In his jeans?” I ask, confused.
How does everyone know about his masterpiece of a cock?
“Not his jean pants,” Alex chuckles. “His genes like his chromosomes.”
“Oh,” I laugh weakly, still a little tipsy.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Keston whispers. “We’re almost home.”
I smack his wrist. “Says the man with no restraint on a beach full of people.”
“I didn’t hear any complaints,” he snickers.
Alex turns off the main road and heads down the dirt track to Keston’s house.
“Kes, I have to tell her the best part.”
“Yes. You do. Please enlighten me.” I smirk at Keston. “I want to know what’s in this man’s genes.”
My hand pats the lump of steel in his pants. He grabs my hand and presses it down harder. I gulp. Who’s winning this battle here?
“It’s got nothing to do with my genes,” Keston says exasperatedly. “I just practice a lot. Which none of your lazy high school asses wanted to do.”
The car hits a big pothole.
Alex curses and focuses on the rough terrain.
“Dude, get your road fixed.”
“I like it this way. Nobody bothers me.”
“Are you going to tell me the best part?” I interrupt their banter. “About Keston’s genes?”
Alex snorts. “He can tell you. It’s no secret.”
I look pointedly at Keston. “Tell me.”
When he doesn’t say a word, Alex blurts, “He’s the great-great-great — I’m not sure how many greats — grandson of an African prince turned pirate king and a Scottish princess from Great Britain.”
“Wait, what?”
I don’t think my eyes can open any wider as I turn them on the man by my side.
“You are African and European royalty?”
“Technically, Scottish,” he says. “And no, it’s a myth. Stop telling stories, dude.”
“It isn’t a myth, and you know it. You are the descendant of their sole child. It wasn’t exactly a celebrated union. Black pirate, white princess.” Alex laughs. “And the Internet thinks it has scandals today. Just imagine back then.”
“Wow! This is almost too incredible to believe.”
“Which is why it isn’t true,” Keston says. “There’s never been any DNA proof. It’s all speculation.”
“Yet, it’s a story the entire island knows.” Alex circles his lowrider, dark-tinted car in the yard and pulls up next to Keston’s beach house. He turns toward me. “Ask anyone.”
“Is that why you own all this beachfront property?” I gesture out the window at the immense stretch of land and beach, trees, and river.
Alex laughs. “Yup. All part of the mystery of Keston Kips’ heritage.”
I clamber out of the back of the car like I’m climbing out of a cave. Keston takes my hand to help me out.
“Don’t ever get a lowrider,” I mutter under my breath.
“Thanks for the ride, my man,” Keston slaps the car’s hood.
“And the history lesson,” I call out.
A loud hee-hawing comes from the woods near the clothesline. But the donkey is not what’s on my mind right now.
“How come you never told me all this?”
“Maybe I want you to love me for who I am. A plain old bartender.”
“Ha!” I scoff. “Mixing drinks is what you love doing. It’s not who you are.”
“Who am I, CJ.?”
I stare at the sky glittering with stars. “You are the man who sees more than most, feels more than most, and I love more than most.”
A soft silence fills the air. I don’t talk like this. Will he think I’m being sarcastic?
He sits on the bottom step and stretches out his injured leg.
It’s healed now, but I cannot forget how it looked that night in the hurricane, broken and twisted when I thought we would both die. That image is on a loop playing in the back of my mind.
“That’s why I love you so much,” he says. “You make me feel as if I’m your hero.”
I put one hand on a hip and tap my foot. “Keston Kips, you are my hero.”
His eyes are stark and probing, his carefree happiness clouded by something I don’t understand.
“I hope I will always be,” he whispers.