“I’m sorry for springing the baby thing on you. I know it’s a lot, especially since we just barely re-met. I’m still not sure what I want to do myself. It’s only been two weeks. We hardly know each other.”
She turns away again, that spine I want to stroke relaxing. She’s said what she’s going to say. “Don’t feel like you have to respond, either. That’s all I wanted to say.”
“All right,” is all I can think to say.
My response would be something between ‘I really care about you’, ‘this is moving way too fast and I don’t know why I like it’, and ‘I’m going to figure out how to make this work’. But I don’t say it.
I won’t until I know the how and that the when will be soon.
I’ve already disappointed Wynona once.
The last thing I want is to do it again.
We recline there on the rock-chair while several infinity-sign-shaped clouds with dappled edges float past on their sea of desktop-blue sky. By the sea and somewhere unseen, gulls cry. Some swing song plays from afar.
Suddenly, her eyes light up again. “Look!”
I follow her pointing finger to see something moving. A brown-patterned big shell. Four brown and tan speckled legs. A turtle.
“Ooh, look at him go,” Wynona exclaims as he makes his way for the sea faster than I’d think a turtle could.
“Wonder where he came from,” I say, my gaze already scanning beyond the rocks we’re reclining on.
Further down a mostly abandoned beach, twenty or so yards away, I make it out.
Several brown specks on the move, followed by colorful specks.
A few seconds of watching confirms it. It’s more turtles making their way to the sea. Only some of these seem to be babies, herded by a group of people.
“Look,” I say, nudging Wynona, who watches with a growing smile.
“Maybe volunteers?” she asks. “Let’s check it out.”
I rise, offering her a hand.
A few minutes later, we find out that yes, those are babies, and yes, those are volunteers helping them to sea. It turns out that they’re from the beach on the opposite shore of the island, the one we didn’t even know about. The babies, the sunburnt kindly older female volunteer tells us, get confused by the road beside it and the traffic lights and often end up wandering there and getting crushed. It doesn’t help that the other beach is so polluted that some of the babies who reach it still don’t make it.
“Oh, God, that’s horrible,” Wynona breathes.
The woman nods her white-bunned head. “That’s what we’re here for.”
Which is how we end up spending the next three hours helping the volunteers transport the turtles from the far beach to this one.
By the end, we’re hot, sweaty, exhausted, but wildly happy.
We leave the volunteers with a wave and a smile.
“That was amazing,” Wynona says.
“You were amazing,” I correct her. “One turtle under each arm.”
She chuckles. “Well, they weren’t going anywhere, so...”
We head back to the hotel without a word about it. The moon is high in the sky, it’s late, and we’re tired. There’s no need to say what’s coming next.
Back in my bed, we make love with a slowness and ease that’s fucking amazing.
Everything is until I get the call the next morning.
Chapter 21
Wynona
“I should take this,” he says, leaving the room.
I don’t let the worry worm its way in. I don’t let it even form.
No, what we’ve shared these past few days is bigger than that. It has to be.
I won’t live in fear anymore.
In any case, the shaft of sunlight streaming in between the blackout curtains and warming my toes indicates it’s another sunny day ahead of us. There’s even a tropical bird singing near our window, by the sounds of it.
I let my feet fall on the cool floor and head for the bathroom. By the time I come back out, he’s back.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Nothing important,” he says.
Something very, very important, his clenched jaw and crossed arms say.
“Emerson,” I say softly.
He won’t look at me. “It doesn’t make any difference to anything.”
“Then why not tell me?”
“It’s better this way.”
His profile, his stance, is a study in indifference. A chosen indifference.
He turns to me and his whole face relaxes. His eyes smile.
His hair is still slick from the shower he just took. I can almost smell his hair from here. Like a beacon back into his arms where everything is safe.
But I can’t go there. Not just yet.
“Emerson,” I say softly.
“Wynona,” he says.
“So, you won’t tell me.”
“It’s not worth telling.”
“Then why not?”
His eyes close. He exhales. “Fine. It’s just Yolan. He doubled the amount they’re going to pay me, shortened the amount of time I’d have to be away. $100,000 for four months. And he’d make me the headliner act.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“It’s fine, I told him I’m not interested. I’ve made up my mind, Wyn, and I don’t intend to change it.”