Chapter 3
Opening my eyes, I saw a makeshift table of mats. A firepit of cold ashes. A canvas folding chair. At first I thought I was just confused; then my pulse began to race. This wasn’t Kay’s terrace. Sitting up, I felt a stabbing pain in my temples.
“Well, get moving! I’ve got to bounce in ten minutes. And I can’t just leave her here.”
The strange man’s voice not only replaced the pounding in my head but made sure I was wide-awake at the same time.
Not ten feet away was a guy with a smartphone at his ear.
Mid-twenties. Barefoot, khaki-colored shorts, and a white T-shirt that made him look incredibly tanned.
His dark-blond hair was still wet and somewhat tousled, as if he’d run his hand through it right after showering.
“Oh, come on! She probably didn’t have enough to drink and ended up dehydrated.”
Not enough to drink. Then it all came back.
I’d gone for a jog. On the beach. Hadn’t had my water with me.
Then, as if on command, I became aware of my dry mouth and tried to clear my throat.
The man’s head spun in my direction and our eyes locked.
I stopped short. Not because of his good looks.
And not because his eyes were of an incredible blue.
But because he looked familiar. As if I’d seen him somewhere before. But where?
“Gotta go,” he whispered, not taking his eyes off me for a second. “She’s awake.”
He hung up and slipped the phone into one of his pockets.
“Hey!” he said with a smile that didn’t reveal whether he was thinking the same thing I was. That is, whether we’d met before or not.
“Hey.”
It came out scratchy, as my throat really was bone dry.
“Let me get you a glass of water.”
He disappeared inside and there was nothing for me to do but watch him go.
Who was he? And where was I? I swung my legs down off the cushioned mat I’d been lying on.
Sand rippled across the wooden floor beneath my feet.
It was old and weather-beaten the nails rusty.
I looked around, seeking out points of reference that might tell me where I was.
By the ocean, that much was clear. I could not only hear it but could smell it.
The view was almost the same as at Kay’s, just limited a bit by a tree, around whose trunk the terrace had been constructed.
A bodyboard was leaning against the wooden stairs and a few pieces of clothing whipped back and forth on an old wash line.
I was about to turn around again when something caught my eye.
Bright-red swim trunks. And suddenly I knew why the guy looked familiar.
Why I felt like I’d seen him before. It was the surfer I’d run into on the beach.
Mr. Beachwear, a voice in my head joked.
We’d looked at each other for a single second, tops, but I remembered him.
I remembered those trunks…and the body inside them.
I felt a funny tingling in my stomach. At the exact same moment, there he was with a glass of water in his hand.
“Here.”
As he handed it to me, I caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the underside of his wrist. At most, the size of two quarters and gone again before I could really make it out.
“Thanks.” I could feel him eyeing me as I took a drink and enjoyed the soothing effect. “What happened?” I asked in a voice that was slowly beginning to sound like my own again.
He cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t remember?”
“Sure, I was jogging, and then…everything went black somehow.”
He nodded. “You doubled over. I happened to see it.”
I dug around in my memory, but there was nothing to hold onto. “And then?”
“Well, the first thing I did was get you out of the sun.” Seeing my quizzical glance, he added, “You were right in front of my door.”
“Oh.” I cast my gaze across the terrace once more.
“How’re you feeling? You want me to call you a doctor?”
I waved my hand. “You were right. I simply didn’t drink enough.”
He frowned.
“I heard you on the phone,” I explained with a smile.
“Ah.” He smiled, and for a second time I noticed how inconceivably blue his eyes were. “That was my sister, Laurie. I asked her to come over because…”
“You’ve got an important appointment and can’t just leave me here.”
“Exactly.” He grinned and glanced at his watch. “She should be here any minute. So…maybe you could pretend to be asleep or something? Otherwise, I’ll get an earful about having screwed up her hairdresser’s appointment for nothing.”
Seeing my puzzled look, he laughed. “That was a joke.”
“Oh! Yeah. Of course.” I shook my head embarrassedly and emptied my glass.
“She’s probably thankful for it. She wasn’t all that convinced by the whole bangs thing.” He pointed to my glass. “Want some more?”
I shook my head. “I should get going.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Sorry for this.” I got up. More sand trickled off my clothes onto the ground. I looked at him sheepishly. “And for that.”
He laughed. “Not a thing. This place needs to be swept again anyway.”
I noticed that we were about the same height, which allowed us to look directly into each other’s eyes.
“My name’s Vince, by the way.”
His smile created perfect dimples in his cheeks. My heart skipped a beat. That had never happened to me before. Especially not with some guy I’d only known for three minutes.
“Louisa,” I whispered. “Or Lou. As you prefer.”
“Lou,” he repeated slowly, as if wanting to test out the sound.
“Oh, a round of introductions!” A voice cut through the silence. “I’m just in time.”
Grinning, a girl my age strolled toward us.
Unmistakably his sister. She had the exact same blue eyes.
Otherwise, the two couldn’t have been more different.
She was at least a head shorter than him and petite.
Her pastel-yellow, oversize T-shirt was knotted at the waist, her denim shorts frayed.
She wore her brown hair tied in a ponytail, from which a few strands had come loose, and her nose was sunburned.
To my surprise, she didn’t seem the least bit stressed or annoyed.
Instead, she greeted me with a good-humored “I’m Laurie,” and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d added, “and I like warm hugs!”
“Hi. I’m Louisa.” I knitted my brows, embarrassed. “I’m sorry about your appointment.”
She shrugged calmly. “You probably did me a favor. I wasn’t really sure it’d be my thing anyway.” She wrinkled her nose.
“In the end, she’s another one of those hairdressers where, after two hours of sitting in front of the mirror, you still look like you just got out of bed.
” She quickly glanced at Vince and narrowed her eyes.
“What are you still doing here? Shouldn’t you already have been long gone for that super important appointment of yours? The one I had to drop mine for?”
“Uh…well”—he pointed his thumb at me—“you just thanked her for exactly that.”
“What I said was that I wasn’t all that sure about the bangs.”
For the first time I noticed the small gap between her upper incisors. It made her face look sweet.
“Which you would have by now if I hadn’t begged you to come over as quickly as possible.”
“You mean, if you hadn’t gone all English duke on us.”
He frowned.
“You could have simply called a doctor, but you just had to carry the poor damsel in distress up to your house.”
It took me a moment, but then my eyes grew wide, and I stared at him thunderstruck. “You carried me?”
He lowered his head. “How else do you think I got you here?”
My face turned red. “Well, I don’t know. I thought you’d…helped me walk up here or something.”
“Helped you?” He cocked a brow. “You were unconscious.”
And sweaty. And sandy. And heavy. God, how embarrassing!
Laurie tapped at an imaginary watch.
“Yeah, I really got to go,” he mumbled, and I thought I actually caught a hint of regret in his voice. “You’ll show her how to get back to the beach?” he asked his sister, who nodded and shooed him off.
“Okay. Well.” He raised a hand. “Bye.”
Once again I noticed his tiny tattoo but once again was too slow to make out what it was.
“Bye.” Vince, I said to myself silently. The name fit. His hair, his eyes, his smile.
He turned away and made for the terrace door.
“Have fun, Simon,” Laurie warbled.
He stopped and looked back at us over his shoulder. “Who’s Simon?”
“The English duke,” we responded in unison.
He looked so confused that we burst out laughing. Shaking his head, he disappeared into the house.
“That was kinda mean,” I said.
“You don’t have a brother, do you?” she asked with a knowing smile.
I shook my head. “Only child.”
I used to be kind of sad when I’d say that—I’d always wanted a sister.
Someone to swap clothes and develop secret languages with, to play tennis with during the day and read with under the blankets at night.
In the meantime, I no longer had a problem with the fact that we were a family of three.
Well, by now I also knew that my mother’s pregnancy had been a minor miracle.
After more than twenty years in high-performance sports, her cycle had been irregular, and her period had often been absent for several months.
A fate many professional athletes shared.
And one that I might not be spared either.
“He’ll be okay.” Laurie tore me from my thoughts.
I cast a glance at my watch. I’d have to be getting on my way, too, if I didn’t want Kay to start getting worried.
“Tell me. Do you think it’d look good on me?”
I looked at her quizzically.
“Bangs.” She grabbed her hair with both hands and made a fringe against her forehead.
The way she was standing there in front of me was cute.
“I think it’d look great on you.”
She beamed. “Really?”
I nodded.
“Then I’ll make a new appointment. When do you go jogging like this?”
It took me a moment to realize she was messing with me. I grimaced. “It’s not exactly how I imagined my first day to turn out, believe me.”
“Today’s your first day?”
I nodded.
“You on vacation here?”
“I’m visiting someone,” I answered evasively. Neither Vince nor Laurie had recognized me, and I wanted it to stay that way. I could do without headlines like “Comeback in danger? Herzog-Riggs collapses on the beach.”
“I’m visiting someone here too. Where you from?”
“Munich.” For good measure I quickly added, “Germany.”
Surprise flashed in her eyes. “You don’t have an accent at all.”
“My father’s American. I grew up bilingual.”
“Wow.” Her response didn’t sound fake. She just sounded nice and as if she were really interested. “That mean you have family here on Oahu?”
“No, no. Dad’s from Minnesota. I…I’m visiting my godmother. But we’re not related.”
“Ah. You want to give her a call? So she can pick you up?” She squinted at my skintight shorts. “You don’t have a phone on you, huh?”
“That’s not necessary. I’m staying just a few houses down.” In my head I added, I think. My memories were a bit blurry, but I could still remember having seen the yellow umbrella before getting dizzy.
“Then we’re more or less neighbors.” Her face brightened. “What’s your godmother’s name? Maybe my brother even knows her.”
“Umm…Kay.”
If she noticed my hesitation, she didn’t let it show. “And how long will you be staying on Oahu?”
“A little over six weeks.”
“Oh, cool. I’m the one around here who’s on semester break right now. I’m helping my brother out with renovations. Maybe you’d be up for helping out too?” She looked at me hopefully. “Aside from Vince, I hardly know a soul around here.”
“Umm…yeah, sure,” I replied, more out of necessity than anything else, as I just didn’t have the heart to tell her that over the next few weeks I’d have absolutely zero free time. That I’d be training up to eight hours a day and would probably be in bed by nine every night.
“If you give me your number, I’ll send you a message.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out her phone. “Then you’ll have mine too.”
“O-Okay,” I stammered, feeling overwhelmed and toying with the idea of giving her a fake number. But that could be embarrassing if we ran into each other again. And there really wasn’t anything to it. I gave her my number.
“Cool,” she said, more to herself, and dropped her phone back into her bag.
Then she showed me the way to the beach.
Just like at Kay’s there was a series of stairs, but they were considerably steeper and, here and there, caved in.
I didn’t want to imagine how much effort it had cost Vince to carry me up here.
I winced in embarrassment before turning around one more time and looking at the house.
It was about as big as Kay’s and had the same kind of flat roof.
But that was about it. The ravages of time had gnawed away the partly yellow, partly dark-green color of the facade, and the doors and window frames needed a new coat of paint too.
All the same, it had charm. And I was overcome by the strange feeling that, if it could speak, it would have a lot of stories to tell.