Undercurrent

1. Unhappy

My arms full of shopping bags and groceries, I pushed through the front door of my one-bedroom apartment backwards, shutting the door with my foot as the keys dropped onto the entryway table. With the various corded and twisted plastic handles pinching painfully at the soft flesh of my fingers, I stumbled quickly past the kitchen and into the small living room, where I released my burden to its temporary home on the carpeted floor. I flexed my aching fingers, hoping to draw the blood back into circulation, and glanced at the clock: ten to five. Good, I thought. Fred wouldn’t be home for another hour.

Quickly, I put most of the groceries away, set up the dinner table with a few decorations, a candle and some wine glasses, then grabbed the shopping and dashed to the bedroom. I undressed with the speed and tidiness of an F4 tornado, laying out a few of the new items on the bed. Which to wear? I thought. The cute racer-back tank with lace detailing and jean booty shorts? Maybe the nighttime look of the shimmery teal blue maxi dress? Wait, I know…

I slid into my brand new teeny weeny white bathing suit, with green and blue polka dots. This was my first ever bikini, which was saying something for a thirty-year-old woman. I didn’t even have one as a teen. I was always a little chunky—or, honestly, more than chunky—and was never comfortable enough with my body to dare trying one. And to say teeny weeny meant compared to every other one-piece I had ever worn. I was happy to find one with enough support for my girls that didn’t look like some sort of homage to eighties Madonna, and a bottom that didn’t resemble butt floss. Because to be honest, that wasn’t happening. I needed something that covered the rear, not let it all hang out.

I checked the time once more: half-past.

Perfect. I’m right on schedule.

I jogged out to the kitchen, not used to the feel of so much bare skin, especially since it was mid-March in southern Connecticut, and everyone was still wearing heavy jackets and sweaters outside. I needed to get used to it if I was going to feel comfortable going out in public in it.

Just breathe.

I took out the salmon I’d bought special for that night. It was always Fred’s favorite, and I hated fish, so I wanted to show him just how special this surprise was by cooking something I could barely stand the smell of. It took about twenty minutes to cook and make it presentable on a plate, which I set on the small kitchen table for two, and left it under a cover to keep it warm. My dinner—chicken breast marinated in Italian dressing—I set before my chair with its own cover.

Note to self: Cook foodbefore putting on a bikini. The apron you have does not cover your back, and hot grease hurts.

This left me just enough time to set up my stage. I grabbed my new sunglasses, set a few pillows out against the front of the couch in the living room, and propped myself against them as if I was lounging in the sun on a beach somewhere. I fluffed my wavy red hair out, letting it fall over my shoulders naturally, and then I bent, twisted, and fidgeted into the appearance of a relaxed pose. I positioned my lemonade in a fancy glass, complete with bendy straw, sugar on the rim, and a little umbrella, just within reach to complete the scene.

I thought about how much we needed this—how much I needed this. I’d imagined his reaction to this moment for at least a week: how his gaze would drink in my sultry form, how he’d be so excited by the very idea of my surprise that he’d ravish me right here on the couch. The thought had pushed my libido to the brink, and since it had been a while since we’d given into our carnal desires, I was more than ready to be unleashed.

Keys jingled in the door.

Final checks: bikini top is still holding, bottom has stayed in place and not ridden up to where it shouldn’t be, sunglasses down. Perfect!

The door opened, and I heard Fred set his keys on the entry table.

“Hi, sweetie,” I called cheerily.

“Hey,” he sighed.

I heard his feet shuffling toward the small office on the other side of the apartment, and I got anxious. What if he stays in there for hours like he always does after work? I don’t want him to sit at his desk and forget to eat, only coming to bed hours after I’ve already fallen asleep. He couldn’t have forgotten, right? Not today. I should catch him before the door closes.

“Babe?” I called. “Hey, babe?”

“Hm?”

“Can you join me in the living room for a minute?”

There was a pause in foot shuffling, then it headed toward me. He entered the room, glasses in hand, habitually cleaning the lenses. He froze when he saw me, posed like a girl in a beer ad, drink in hand, nervously awaiting a response. He slipped his glasses back onto his face and stared, confusion painting his expression. “What the hell are you doing? Aren’t you freezing? You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I wanted to surprise you,” I said, trying on a flirtatious smirk. “We always say we’re going to travel someday, but something always comes up. I checked with my job and yours, and there’s nothing planned for the early part of next month. So I went ahead and booked us a vacation in Fiji! Surprise!”

I stayed there, seated on the floor with my glass raised in a salute, grinning like a madwoman, waiting for his response.

And I waited.

And waited.

I put my glass down and changed my grin into a hopeful smile. “Well?”

“When?” he asked, his dark brown eyes still showing confusion, mixed with a little deep thought.

“I booked it for ten days, from the fourth to the thirteenth—”

“No, when did you check with my job?”

My heart stopped. “About a week ago? I had to plan it all and needed time to set it up before I told you.”

He took his glasses off again and ran the fingers of his other hand through his thick dark curls. My heart fell.

“What? What happened?”

“They just booked me for this big job in Chicago. I’m there all of April. It’s a lot of money; I can’t say no.”

The air whizzed out of my little balloon of hope and anticipation. “Can you postpone it? Or just ask for a little time off in the middle? It’s our first real vacation.” And I meant that. This would have been our first vacation ever in the five years we’d been together. The best I had ever gotten were day trips to the city for a show, or occasionally a nice dinner. Or visiting his family in Ridgefield in their McMansion, which was always a joy. By which, of course, I meant I hated every minute.

I’d been hoping this trip would bring back a little spark to our relationship. We’d been in a fairly quiet routine for years, and it felt like he was drifting away from me. He spent more and more time in his office, playing some war game or other, and he didn’t like it when I interrupted him. While we shared a bed and slept in it together, he hadn’t touched me in months. I wanted nothing more than to break down the barriers that seemed to grow larger between us more and more each day. And what better way to do that than a tropical vacation with beautiful beaches, private villas, and a scantily clad girlfriend? If this didn’t work, would I lose him?

“I already told them yes. It’s too much money to ask them to work around me. They’d just find someone else. Can’t you just cancel it?”

Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

“Nonrefundable. All of it, the flights, the accommodations, it’s all nonrefundable,” I mumbled.

“Then just invite one of your friends along instead. You can have loads of fun with Nikki. I’m sure she’s just dying to go somewhere like that.”

I jumped up as he turned away, spilling a lot of the lemonade on myself. Can’t return the bikini now. “Wait, I made you dinner. Salmon.” I hoped the gesture would clue him in to how special I wanted this night to be.

“Oh, that’s nice. Where is it?”

I sighed, defeated. “Kitchen table.”

“Great. Smells good. Thanks, hon.” He picked up the plate and silverware and retreated to his office.

“Happy Anniversary, Fred,” I whimpered.

I slumped into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, grabbed my cell phone from the pile of clothing and punched in Nikki’s number. By the time she picked up, the tears were already streaming, but I tried to keep it together as much as possible. “So, was he floored by your tropical treat?” asked Nikki, already aware of my secret plan. I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t find the right words. “Gems? Is everything okay?”

“No,” I squeaked. “He has to work.”

“Work? What do you mean, he has to work? I thought you cleared it with his boss and everything?”

I couldn’t hold it back anymore and let the tears take me. “He can’t go!” I sobbed.

* * *

Fred left for Chicago on the twenty-ninth, leaving me to rearrange my anniversary-turned-spring-break-trip alone in our expensive and tiny apartment. We didn’t even have a pet—he was allergic to practically all fur—and the silence was really getting to me; so much so, that sometimes I had to leave a TV or radio on in the background to keep from going crazy. Nikki occasionally stopped by for dinner after work to help me, and to keep me from going off the deep end, though she’d never say it to my face. But she was genuinely excited about this trip. She’d gotten her passport seven years ago when she got engaged to Joseph. He promised to take her to beautiful exotic places on their honeymoon.

They went to Atlantic City.

Joseph’s ideas of exotic locales aside, about a year into their marriage, Nikki discovered that it wouldn’t last when his affair with a fifteen-year-old boy came to light. His sentencing was swift, but it still took over a year to finalize their divorce. After, Nikki concluded that she and marriage were not meant for each other.

Less than two days before we left for Fiji, I sat on the couch, my revised itinerary and other important papers laid out in neat piles before me on the coffee table. It had all become a bit blurry from my exaggerated scrutiny of each detail. Everything had gone wrong already with Fred not going. I needed everything else to be perfect.

“Hey girl,” Nikki said, dropping her purse and jacket on the floor and plopping down next to me. “Still obsessing?”

“The flight out of JFK is just before five pm on Friday. We arrive in LA a bit after eight, which gives us plenty of time to collect our bags and check in with our next flight. We leave LA that night at 11:30, arriving in sunny Fiji around six in the morning on Sunday.”

“It’s a thirty hour flight?!” Nikki shouted.

“Do I really have to go over this again?”

She smiled, mischief gleaming in her eyes. “I enjoy hearing you explain how the Date Line works to me over and over. And your frazzled annoyance amuses me. But I know. East to west adds twenty-four hours; west to east loses twenty-four hours. Still, I feel like I’m getting screwed out of a full day in paradise.”

“You know you’re not. The way we’re traveling, it’ll seem like only three hours between the time we leave Fiji to the time we get home.”

“Or it will seem like the actual twenty hours between takeoff and landing.”

“You know what I mean! Now can I continue with the itinerary?”

Nikki stared at me with wide eyes and that pinched, crooked smile she got when mocking me. I took it as a yes.

“So, once we land in Fiji, we need to take a bus or taxi for a few hours to the south side of the island, where we’ll board a boat to a smaller, more private island here,” I said, pointing to the spot on the map. “And then, around eleven, we finally check into our room.”

“And collapse.”

I glared at her.

“I mean it!” she growled. “You see it as a carefully thought out plan to get us to paradise—which it is, don’t get me wrong. But holy shit, Gems! You realize we’ll be traveling for a full twenty-six hours straight, don’t you? By the time we reach our room, all I’m going to want to do is pass out in a proper bed.”

“Oh, you can get plenty of sleep on the plane. That’s why I bought us little sleep masks and noise-canceling headphones. All you have to do is tuck yourself in, put them on, and you’ll wake up in Fiji in a blink!”

Nikki nodded and leaned back on the couch, lifting her feet.

“Don’t you dare put your feet on my coffee table,” I warned.

Nikki stopped, kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up under herself on the sofa. “Please relax a little. The whole point of this trip is to de-stress after your dick of a boyfriend chose work over you. Again. Tell me you don’t have every single second of our vacation planned out with activities and wake-up calls.”

I bit my lip and stood up to get myself a drink from the kitchen.

“Gemma,” she called after me, the long low note of caution and fear resounding in her voice. I poured some pink lemonade slowly into a tall glass, debating whether or not I wanted ice. I concluded that I did, so I opened the freezer and began scooping tiny handfuls of ice cubes into my glass. “Christ, woman. If you think I am spending ten days in paradise running myself mad snorkeling and hiking and kayaking until I drop, you’ve got another thing coming!” I rounded the corner into the living room and saw she’d gotten to her feet, hunched over the coffee table. “Where is it? Where’s the schedule?”

“There isn’t one,” I said. Nikki rifled through my papers and travel brochures, completely messing up my system. “No, really, there isn’t one,” I said again. “There’s no schedule.”

“So, what? It’s all in your head? You’re just going to surprise me and keep dragging me all over the island whenever your watch tells you?”

“No,” I murmured. “I didn’t plan anything for while we’re there. I left it completely open.”

“Are you serious?” she asked, cautious. I nodded. “Really really? Like, no joke?”

“You know how I get tense with the act of getting there. I hate being late. But once we’re there…”

Her death gaze melted away, leaving her looking more ashamed than anything. “Oh. They’re all couples’ activities, aren’t they?”

I prevented my lip from quivering by taking a long sip from my drink, pressing my lower lip to the frosty glass. The lemonade desperately needed sugar, the tart bite of it making my eyes water and my lips pucker, but I was already invested, so I swallowed.

She rushed me, wrapping me up in a bear hug that made me choke a little. “I’m sorry,” she said into my shoulder. “I know this was supposed to be your big anniversary thing. Fred’s a dick.”

“Would you stop calling him that? He didn’t leave me; he’s just away on business.”

“Again.”

“Yes, again. But I knew he was going to be away a lot when we moved in together. I mean, he swears he loves being a field service tech, traveling all over the country. And though it may not be a glamorous job, he makes some serious cash.”

Her face told me she was holding back a few more choice words about him, most likely all negative. But she knew I wasn’t in the right mood to bitch about my boyfriend, so she remained silent.

“Okay. So. What do you plan on doing when we get there?” she asked, sitting back on the couch.

“Ocean,” I breathed.

“You plan to ocean?” she laughed. “I didn’t know ‘oceaning’ was a thing.”

“I hear the ocean is bluer than we’ve ever seen up here, and warm. And it just goes and goes forever in every direction. I plan on being in it as much as possible.”

“Ah, so communing and becoming one with the ocean. I believe you’ve coined a new term there, Gems.”

“What about you?” I asked.

She flashed a devilish smile. “Well, I’m not seeing anyone at the moment.” She winked.

“It’s a couples’ resort! Everyone there will be with someone.”

“You won’t.”

“Yeah, but I’m… I’m the exception.”

“And I’m betting on you not being the only one.”