Chapter Thirty-Six
thirty-six
hope
Studying great white sharks in California has been fantastic. Being away from Adrian—emotionally, as well as physically—has not. He asked for time and trusted me enough to be honest about what he’s experiencing, and I care about him enough to wait. In the meantime, I’ve been doing my best to keep him out of my mind, but it’s impossible to loosen his hold on my heart.
The bulk of our time is spent in the lab, where it’s easier to push thoughts of Adrian aside while working to decipher data or running experiments. But today we’re out on the water in a dinghy that’s only a little longer than the juvenile sharks we’re hoping to tag, and I can’t help but picture him by my side, waiting with breathless anticipation to see a familiar shape in the shallows below.
But I blink away the desire, determined not to spoil today with fantasies that might not materialize.
Keith, one of the PhD candidates working on the study, has a hand on the outboard motor, piloting the boat through the glassy water. He’s wearing a neck gaiter as defense against the sun burning off the last of the morning fog. “Anyone know a good sea shanty?”
“I’ve got a classic,” Marty says. He’s sitting in the bow, holding a tagging stick used for placing a tag from the boat. One of the senior scientists on the research team, Dr. Martin Norris has a reputation for being a great mentor, always accessible for questions or advice. “Maybe you know it. It goes like this.” He clears his throat, then sings, “Here, fishy, fishy.”
Everyone else onboard groans, though I chuckle.
“Too early for that.” Gwen’s voice is a raspy grumble, but she’s grinning, tanned face coated with a chalky sheen of zinc. “You get used to their antics,” she assures me. She’s balancing a clipboard on her knees, gaze sharp as she scans the water.
“This your first trip out to study white sharks?” Marty asks when the laughter dies down. “I recognize the look. Awe and excitement.”
“I still feel that way, and I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years,” Gwen says. “It’s a privilege to get to study these animals.”
“It is,” I say. “Being out on the water always reminds me of the first shark documentary I watched as a kid. They had all these close-up shots of sharks underwater. Cruising. Then they did a scene cut to a group of scientists on a boat, chatting and consulting a chart.” I realize the chitchat on the boat has fallen silent, and I pause. I don’t know what compelled me to share this memory, but when it becomes clear they’re all waiting for me to continue, I find my voice.
“The camera panned away again, but I remember wanting to climb in that boat with them. To look over their shoulders and see what was on the paper. What sort of data? What were their research methods? Of course, I didn’t have that sort of language yet, I was eight.” There’s a murmur of laughter, and my discomfort at being the center of attention eases.
“But I wanted to know every detail. To toss out the buoys and sort through the tackle boxes and find out the purpose for everything. And what about the sharks? What did they do when they went where the camera couldn’t follow?”
I spent the summer flipping through books and sounding out the scientific names of all my favorite sharks, stumbling over the Latin words until I got it right. My mind goes instantly to the name on the bow of Adrian’s boat, taking heart in the knowledge that he’s held on, all this time.
“The more I learned, the more I realized what I had left to learn. And I don’t know...” I shrug, shy again. “I just love how I could do this my whole life and still have more to explore.”
Marty smiles at me. “And now you’re the one in the boat.”
“I am, yeah.”
“Dang,” Keith says. “Wish I would’ve had you as an undergrad. You make our job sound way cool.” Mingled snorts of laughter and mock-indignation rise up from the group, but Keith shakes his head. “I’m serious. Students must love you.”
I bark out a laugh louder than the sea lions lounging on the beach. “Not so much. I tend to accidentally bombard people with facts.”
“Really? Because we watched you on Shark Science Crew ,” Gwen says, lifting her eyes from the green-blue water around us. “Seemed like a natural in explaining things.”
“You watched us?”
They all nod. “Are you kidding me? Adrian and Marissa are legit,” Keith says.
“You too,” Gwen tells me, and I have to fight to keep my mouth from dropping open at a compliment from her. “I think you’re selling yourself short. My mother, who’s never once managed to sit through hearing about my research, shared one of your videos with me. Asked why I couldn’t have explained things so clearly years ago.”
My eyes go wide. “I’m...sorry?”
She smiles. “Don’t be. I was thrilled to actually have a two-sided conversation with her about sharks for once.” Her expression turns thoughtful. “Is outreach where your interests lie? Because there are some great programs I could recommend getting involved with.”
My knee-jerk reaction is to say no, but Marissa mentioned something along the same lines a few weeks ago. I turned her down, certain without her extroversion, it wouldn’t be a good fit. But maybe it’s time to be open to new paths again.
The boat radio crackles and Brittney, the researcher on shore using the drone says, “We’ve got a shark about three meters off the bow. Starboard side.”
The news has us all swiveling in our seats. No telltale dorsal cutting through the waves, but when I unbend my knees and half stand, I see it—a dark shape cruising just below the surface.
Gwen lets out a whoop and Marty hoists the tagging stick. “Hope, ready to take photos?”
This time my hands are steady. “Born ready.”
She grins at me. “I know the feeling.”
We come up alongside the shark, swimming in a sinuous motion, deep gray against blue. As we draw alongside, the animal angles away and Keith turns the boat to follow.
My pulse builds, heart thudding in a crescendo as I peer down into the water at the shark’s streamlined body. I could do this every day and be happy. But every night, I wish I could go home to Adrian.
The room lights flicker to full brightness as Marissa’s talk concludes, and she steps to the side of the podium to answer questions from the cluster of people who’ve gathered up front. I stay seated, searching the crowd making their way to the exits for the same person whose name I scanned the program for: Dr. Adrian Hollis-Parker.
I haven’t heard from him since I left, and as the weeks went by, I stopped checking my phone every moment and settled into life here. The palm trees are taller than the palmettos I’d grown used to, the water colder. But there are sharks, and new friends, and today I drove to Los Angeles to hear Marissa speak at a conference. She didn’t mention Adrian, and I didn’t ask, scared to hear the answer.
Now I know how he must’ve felt when I asked for space. Zuri thought maybe he was trying to turn the tables out of spite, but that’s not Adrian. He doesn’t want to get back at me for how I hurt him, he wants to figure out how not to hurt me. But every day he stays away, he’s doing just that.
At any rate, he’s not here. Not listed in the program. Not appearing from backstage at the end of Marissa’s presentation to profess his love with a podium mic. He didn’t fly in to surprise me, and I’ll have to accept that he might never come.
Unable to handle the claustrophobic confines of the auditorium any longer, I send Marissa a text.
Hope: I’ll be out in the lobby.
Grabbing my purse, I slide past the few people remaining in my aisle, then head out the heavy double doors into the bright atrium. Pockets of people are gathered at tall tables, chatting in a network-y sort of way that reminds me I should make use of this time. But first I could use a drink in my hand to make me feel more at ease.
I glance around and spot a beverage station set up on a long table. Weaving my way through the knots of people, I reach the table and see a carafe of hot water. Perfect. I fill a cup and set it down while I sort through the selection of tea bags in search of something decaf. But when I turn back around, my cup isn’t there.
“Who steals a cup of hot water?” I ask aloud, venting my frustration over missing Adrian, and certain no one will hear me above the din.
But a voice responds from over my shoulder, close enough to tickle the hairs on the back of my neck. “Are you calling me a water bandit?”
I whirl around and there he is. In dark gray slacks and a pullover that does indecent things to his pecs. He’s cradling my teacup in his big hands and while this isn’t technically a café, nor have I just presented a groundbreaking paper, the situation is so close to my old fantasies of a chance meeting with him that I blurt out a frazzled version of my well-rehearsed speech. “The water’s all yours.”
He blinks. “Uh, I don’t want it. That guy—” he lifts his chin toward a balding man walking away from the table “—was going to toss it, so I saved it for you.” The water sloshes slightly; his hands are trembling. “I probably should’ve called first. But I wanted to talk to you in person. I know it’s been a long time, and last time we talked, I was a mess.” He bites his lip, and it takes everything in me not to close the distance between us. “What I’m trying to ask is—” he takes a deep breath, vulnerability tugging his brows inward “—can we talk?”
Words I’ve waited weeks to hear. “You came a long way for the answer to be no.”
“The distance doesn’t matter. The choice is yours.”
As if I would refuse. “Okay.” I pluck the cup from his hands, the warmth of his fingers seeping into my chilled skin. “But you’ll have to get your own drink.” I grin up at him, unable to resist teasing, though my heart is in my throat. “No running off with mine.”
We’re ensconced in a pair of plush chairs near an escalator, and fronds from the nearby plant keep tickling my arm with blasts from the vents, but I barely notice the irritation, because Adrian is here.
He waits for me to take a sip of tea, then says, “You were right.”
I swallow carefully, uncertain how to respond. Does he mean I was right to leave three years ago?
“I wasn’t just trying to protect you. I was also trying to protect myself.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Uncertainty scares me. Having things out of my control affect people I care about is an awful feeling. I didn’t want you to be in harm’s way because of me, but I also didn’t want to give you a chance to hurt me. I wanted to know what our life together would look like every step of the way.”
He glances out the floor-to-ceiling windows, the lines of his profile tight and full of apprehension, his beard not quite as neatly trimmed as when I left. But when he looks back at me, his gaze is soft. “If I couldn’t see it all laid out, I didn’t know how to believe in it. I was so caught up envisioning the many ways it could go wrong that I failed to see how right things already were between us.”
“But I did, and you shut me out.”
“Which is exactly why it took me so long to figure this out,” he says. “I tried to work through things on my own, but that’s not how relationships work. I should’ve been fully open with you, the way you were with me two months ago.”
“Has it really only been that long?” It feels like a lifetime.
“I haven’t counted exactly, but yes.” He gives me a half smile. “So it’s been bad for you too?”
I nod. “Not all bad. I mean, there are sharks—”
He laughs, mouth wide, head tipped back, so loudly that a few people nearby turn their heads, but I don’t care. I join in, heart full of joy at the way this man makes me feel.
But there’s feeling, and there’s knowing, and I need to make sure we’re on the same page. “What made you ready to trust me with this now?”
“I realized I wasn’t sheltering you from risk, I was hiding. It scared me to be in that vulnerable place again with you, after what happened last time.”
My hands go cold and clammy at his words, and I set the cup on the table next to me to avoid spilling it. “Adrian—”
“The risks still scare me,” he says. “Sharing videos is a risk, no matter how careful I am. But I do it anyway because I believe we’re making a difference.” They are. I see it every day in the people who respond to the videos I haven’t been able to stop watching, even though it’s been painful.
“And if I’m honest, staying with you, when you have a hold on my heart I can’t seem to break, that’s a risk. Because losing you the first time shattered me. But the things I want take courage. You’re worth risking my heart, Hope.”
I take a moment to digest his words. None of this is easy, for either of us. But he broke the silence. He came all this way to try.
But he also had a right to hesitate, and I want to know if he’s sure. “It’s a big thing, to start over. And we’re so different; I thrive with uncertainty, but you love a life that’s mapped out. I don’t want you to feel like you have to change in order to be with me. And I know I can’t, or won’t, and it’s really the same thing.”
“We don’t have to change in order to be together,” he says. “That’s partly why I was so scared of committing to this again. I didn’t want you to be with me at the expense of your dreams.” He scoots to the edge of his seat, so close, I could touch him, but I don’t. Waiting.
“But my career has taken a drastic turn, and I’ve seen the value in pivoting. There’s a whole world of possibilities. We just have to be patient with each other. And creative. Because make no mistake, I do want to be with you.” He never looks away, his gaze unwavering, voice steady and sure—about me. “Wherever you are. Whatever you’re doing, I want us to be together.”
Together. My heart latches onto the word and holds tight. “I want that too.”
A smile streaks across his face like the sun’s rays filtered through a cloud. “I know you need time to decide your next steps, and I want you to have the space you need, but I want you to know my heart is yours, and I’m ready to keep figuring this out, with you, for as long as you’ll have me.”
With that, he stands up and makes his way through the crowd until he’s out of sight.
“He just walked away?” Zuri’s incredulity has me picturing a trio of exclamation marks punctuating her words, and I smile in spite of my own bewilderment.
“Right?” My free arm is hooked around my knees as I gaze out over the Pacific surf, phone to my ear. “I was still trying to absorb everything he told me, and by the time I decided to follow, he’d left.”
Unsure to what extent Marissa was involved in helping Adrian find me, I wound up texting what was probably an incoherent excuse and drove straight from the conference to the nearest beach.
I spent the next hour dodging beachgoers as I paced the shore, not caring when the hem of my only pair of dress pants got ruined with sand and salt. Too wound up to sit still, I stayed in motion. Walked until the sun was low over the horizon and the sunset reminded me of home. And then I called Zuri.
I told her his whole speech, what I remember of it. The details are fading fast; my senses were so heightened in the moment, and now all I remember is the essence of his words. The care in his eyes. The way his hands knit together when he spoke, the only giveaway of his nervousness. The way he told me he was certain of me.
“All that, and he didn’t even give me a chance to answer.”
“Sounds like he wanted to give you the same space you offered him,” Zuri says. “He let you know how he feels, but maybe he thought you might need time to think things over with the pressure off.”
“But all I felt was relief at hearing how much he wants a life with me. The worry I used to feel that falling in love might steal my dreams is gone, because I know it’s the opposite with Adrian.” I used to only be certain of one thing: I wanted to spend my life studying sharks.
Relationships matter—I don’t know where I’d be without Zuri to clown around with and Marissa to debrief with. I love my parents and their support has been a constant in my life. But a romantic relationship never seemed worth the hassle. Before I met Adrian, I didn’t see how a boyfriend would fit in my life. Didn’t feel a lack that needed to be filled.
But things with him were always different. We were a match, and it wasn’t about filling a gap, but about adding joy to my already full life.
Zuri’s asking me something, but I miss it. “What did you say?”
“I said, then why are you talking to me and not him?”
Restless again, I get to my feet and walk closer to the foamy waves. The sand is damp from the tide’s retreat, but I’m not bothered. I feel grounded near the water’s edge, able to focus.
“Because the problem I keep coming back to is logistics. How do we mesh our lives?”
“Logistics?” She lets out a snort of disbelief. “You’ve been in love with this man for years, and he loves you back, and you’re talking to me about logistics?”
My mouth twists at her humbling assessment. I can hear noise in the background. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“Laundry.” I picture her sitting on the couch, a show on in the background, working her way through heaps of clean clothes. The same way we used to spend many evenings before I left, rehashing the day’s events. “Don’t try to change the subject.”
She knows me too well. “I just worry we’re going to keep having this same struggle. I’m never going to want my next steps set in stone.” I curl my toes against the cool sand.
There’s a moment of not-quite silence, where the only sound is the rustle of clothing being folded, then she says, “I think you’re bound to disappoint one another. Go through struggles. Misunderstand one another. But you can choose to love one another through the difficulties. Apologize and forgive and work to do better, to understand one another better.”
“So you’re saying it will all work out in the end if we go on loving each other?” Sounds like something my heart would say, except this time my head is in full agreement.
“All you have to ask yourself is if it’s worth figuring things out together, one step at a time. Is a life with Adrian better than living without him?”
Yes. Unequivocally yes. I lived without Adrian’s love for three years and missed him every moment. I’ve missed him every moment of these weeks of silence. “If anything, I’ve always felt like my love for him was overwhelming.”
“No such thing as too much love,” she says simply.
Her words are permission to meet Adrian where he’s at, and trust him to do the same for me.
My hand goes to my heart, aching. He’s made mistakes. I have too. But he came looking for me this time. Not pushing, or forcing my hand. He came for me, and now he’s giving me the space to come to him.
Sharks and Adrian. Adrian and sharks. Career and love. The solution is to try. The answer is keep on loving him.
No such thing as too much love. How I feel for Adrian, the enormity of it? That’s not something to fear, but to revel in. To run toward, not away from. I don’t want to turn my back on love. I want to face it head-on, like a sunrise.