Chapter 17 #2
“Hell, you could go straight to the director. Wildlife trafficking’s such a serious charge that she’d have to investigate your claim, even without hard proof like a recording or incriminating pictures, or—no, wait.
” His fork clattered down. He snapped his fingers.
“Isabel. What if I got the proof for you? What if I caught Brianne in the act? I could photograph her abducting BioPulse’s next octopus from the hatching tank—”
“—if we knew how and when she planned to make the extraction tomorrow. Which we don’t,” she reminded him. “If she takes the two-spot after-hours, you might get your photographs. You could also be arrested for trespassing.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“I do.”
“But—”
“I care, Wes.” He had to understand this.
Please.
Maybe—eventually—he did. After a long moment, he sighed and shook his head. A strand of gold-bleached hair escaped his bun, tickling his earring. He forked up a lump of spinach. “Fine. Then what? What’s the plan?”
The plan.
She shouldn’t have eaten her last three bites of lasagna. Thinking about what she’d have to do and say tomorrow—the subjective testimony she’d have to give, the personal proof she’d have to trust—made nausea bubble in her stomach. These were only thoughts! Not even actions.
Wes believed her, though.
And the intelligent, remarkable, voiceless octopuses? They needed her.
She’d speak for them because she had to. That was the plan.
Her resolve didn’t stop her voice from shaking when she explained her intentions to him.
Wes just nodded again. “But that’s tomorrow’s prob—plan. For now, how about a beach walk? We can get our feet wet, maybe catch the sunset from Old Fisherman’s Wharf.”
They left the two-spot dozing in her coral cove, retrieved their sweatshirts, and crossed Tide Avenue onto the beach.
Kicking away their sandals, they shuffled through the firm sand just below a high-tide line of kelp.
Chilly evening air feathered Isabel’s cheeks as they passed a group of wakeboarders returning from the bay with goosebumps and salty grins, a dog racing through a flock of gulls, and—as they closed their distance toward the wharf—a few fishermen with lines and beers set up on the shore.
She breathed brine and exhaled. She’d be all right.
Yes, I will.
A passenger bicycle ambled by on the road above them now, music playing from a boombox, flashing glowsticks twisted through the spokes of its wheels.
Crystal chimes hanging in a kiosk caught the falling sun, sprinkling kaleidoscopic colors over the sand.
. . and over a nearby rack of bright, familiar clothes, too.
The tie-dye surf shack.
Then somehow—somehow, she was standing barefoot before the festival spirals and saturated explosions of pigment. Somehow she was reaching for her wallet, blinking against the gems and the speed of her own impulsive rush to the tent—searching.
Because the vibrant, confident dress she’d seen here last time? The one that demanded notice?
It demanded courage, too. Maybe it would make her brave.
She swept aside a row of flounces, wire hangers clacking, rails shuddering.
Swish, swish.
“Buttercup?” Wes parted the tribal curtain behind her, then joined her at the rack. He scanned shirts and sarongs. The elbow of his sweatshirt brushed hers. No static, but her skin sparked. “Looking for something special?”
“Yes.”
She flipped with mounting eagerness through the final few tie-dyed choices, and anticipation flowered in her stomach as his breath stirred strands of her ponytail against her nape—
But it wasn’t there.
Her dress wasn’t there. Not on the rack. Not hanging on the wall or swaying from the tented ceiling, either.
It was gone.
“Excuse me.” She crossed to a man with a septum piercing and a bored expression behind the register.
“There was a dress for sale here just under two weeks ago. It had a coral and lavender base, with blue sunbursts and tangerine trim. The neckline was high but the back was open, with eight straps radiating out from a wooden ring. Where is it?”
“Yeah? Someone bought it, my dude.” He nodded past her shoulder. “That guy.”
Wes.
She spun to meet a shrug and a smile. “Guilty.”
No.
As abruptly as she’d found herself by the tie-dyed dresses, her body now braced itself.
Her knees locked. She breathed once, frozen where she stood in this stupid tent with her stupid hopes.
Then she forced her legs to bend, her feet to move.
She left the kiosk. She dropped her sandals on the ground and stepped into them again. Her eyelids prickled.
No—
“Isabel? What’s. . .”
“Is that true?” She knew it was; and maybe it wasn’t a rational response, but it was also true that her ragged nails dug into her palms beneath his smile, that she couldn’t unclench her fists.
The pain was hot, radiating over—under—her skin, despite the cold sea air racing off the breakers.
She couldn’t stop, though. She couldn’t help turning back to him, either—his grin faltering under her frown—when she asked, “Did you buy the dress?”
“Yes. The last time we came to Old Fisherman’s Wharf.” A frown contracted the notch in Wes’s eyebrow as he scanned her white knuckles and the tight tremble in her mouth. “It’s in Baby’s back seat. I thought. . . I’d noticed you admiring it. I figured I’d surprise you, that you’d like—”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. We have an octopus to feed. Fresh seafood is expensive. We have legal fees, too. The payment for your boat. So no, you shouldn’t have.
. . you shouldn’t—” She set off along the coastal trail, away from the kiosks and the wharves.
Every slap of her sandals should have been a smack against the hard-packed dirt.
The sand drifting across her path irritated her with its softness.
She forged on faster, chin down against the wind and the sunset, past the fishermen with their lines and beers, past the wakeboarders and the gulls.
She broke off the thoroughfare, down to the beach.
“You shouldn’t, because I. . . I wanted to buy it. ”
“Buttercup—”
“No.” She swung around, stopping so fast that he collided with her.
And that impact, the roughness of her pulse slamming into his? It knocked something loose inside her. It broke something.
Through the deep-sea fissures of herself came a sudden surge of volcanic heat.
Heat, and anger.
She was so angry.
She was angry with Wes Monaghan.
“I wanted to buy it myself. I wanted to buy it for myself!” She thrust a palm against his chest. He lurched back, his mouth slackening with shock.
Again, she didn’t stop. She followed after him.
She gripped his idiotic otter fleece with both fists, anchoring him on the sand to take her fury—and it felt good; it felt so, so good to finally surrender to this rage, to stop fighting the riptide inside her, to batter it and herself against him instead, his solidity unbreaking under her knuckles: thud, thud. “I wanted—w-wanted—”
Damn it!
Still he didn’t break. And it did feel good, it really did.
But the ricochet of her hands was infuriating too, her eyes burning, because he was safety and warmth and everything she’d ever wanted, but she couldn’t have any of it, not really, not to keep, not when he was here tonight but he’d be gone soon, sailing off into the sunset to somewhere wonderful like Crete or Komodo Island with his boat and his laughter and his smiles and his sunshine, so she couldn’t really have him—
Wes was staring down at her, not in shock now, but in confusion, in concern.
Thud, thud, thud.
“Isabel.” He caught one of her wrists, then the other. “Why didn’t you just buy it?”
“I—”
“If you’d told me? If you’d said something? I wouldn’t have. Not if I’d known that you wanted to.”
“I didn’t—” She struggled.
He released her.
She stumbled, choking, fighting tears and holding tight to her sweet, awful anger instead of him, because damn you—
“No, that’s right. You didn’t tell me.” Wes raised his hands. He shook his head. He sidestepped her, striding back toward Tide Avenue. “How was I supposed to know you wanted to buy the damn thing, when you never say what you want?”
“Because that’s what everyone else wants!
For me to be quiet! To never want anything myself, to just be—grateful.
” She tracked him walking over the dunes and the horizon, tracked the flush on his neck.
Tracked him leaving her, like he’d left his guitar in the Socorro Islands, maybe regretful, but always easy.
Leaving, like he always left. “When I was—am—quiet, people didn’t—don’t—touch me.
But just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean I have nothing to say! ”
“Fine.” He stopped. They collided again, sand and shadows kicking up around them. His shoulders were rigid. “What do you want to say?”
“I—”
“Tell me why you’re always denying yourself what you want, Isabel.”
“I—it’s not—”
“No. Don’t blame this on whatever attachment issues you clearly think you have.
” The dying sunset lit his frown, his gaze blazing with darkness and gold.
Hot patches of irritation rode high on his cheekbones through his freckles and his tan when he said, “Tell me: is it that you can’t get attached, or that you’re afraid to?
Hell, you won’t even name our octopus! Are you that scared of getting close to something, or someone?
Scared of wanting something. . . anything? ”
He was angry. With her. That felt even better.
A brilliant fever flashed through Isabel.
She volleyed back, loud and righteous, heedless of any staring beachgoers, “What do you know about it? How would you even know about self-denial? You? What would you know about not letting yourself want, because if you do—if you want something—then it matters if you can’t have it?
If it’s taken away? What would you know about any of—”