Rebound (5 page)

* * * *

The water felt good
as it sprayed down on Susan’s skin. Not the standard shower--it was
large enough to fit a dining room suite in, with room to spare--the
shower nozzle was suspended so it poured like a waterfall straight
down on top of her. The shower head was big enough it drenched her
from head to toe immediately. She saw Kevin had unpacked her shower
supplies. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash. But Susan had no
interest in smelling like the woman she used to be. Not the woman
that got stood up on her wedding day. Instead she used the tiny
hotel bottles of soap and shampoo and conditioner, reveling in the
exotic scent of tropical fruits and flowers.

Luckily the
conditioner made her hair marvelously easy to comb, so she didn’t
have to suffer through the knots and tangles. When she was done she
looked at her reflection in the mirror, again. This time she just
looked tired and wet, except for around her eyes. She still looked
like someone had punched her in both eyes.

The bed had fresh
linens on it when she walked out of the bathroom. Maid service
there was great. She opened up her drawers to find all the clothes
she’d packed for her honeymoon. She grabbed some shorts, underwear,
and a tank top. She cringed when she reached for a bra.

They were all the
bras she’d bought for the honeymoon. All of them were lace or
satin, and pushed her breasts up in the most seductive manner. To
add insult to injury, right beside those was the extensive
collection of lingerie she’d purchased just for this trip.

She couldn’t handle
lace, so she picked up one of the satin bras. She didn’t realize
how much that bra accentuated her breasts until she had the tank
top on, and her eyes almost popped out of her skull.

“Cripes!”

She pulled off the
tank top and contemplated putting back on the three day soiled bra.
But the thought was too repugnant, so she searched through the
drawers until she found a very plain, not at all revealing, pink
t-shirt. The color was a little too cheery for her current
disposition, but it was that or walking around for the rest of the
day looking like a waitress at Hooters.

She walked out into
the living room of the hotel suite and crashed on the couch, lying
back into the soft cushions and staring heedlessly into the
tropical oasis right outside her window. In a way, she wanted to go
out there and feel the sun on her skin, to let the wind blow away
all her cares, to let the ocean waters lap at her feet, and
surrender to all the sensory delights this place had to offer.

But she was afraid
the tropical breeze would grab her up and whisk her off to
someplace where her memories would swirl around her like a
hurricane, that they would smother her if left to the movements of
the wind.

If she were honest
with herself, she realized, she was afraid to leave the goddamn
room. If she left the sanctuary it provided, or Kevin’s protective
presence, what would happen when the memories came flooding back to
her? She closed her eyes.

A moment later, she
felt Kevin flop down on the couch beside her. He smelled good, and
the feel of his strong arm as it encircled her shoulders, the solid
heat and comfort, it made her sigh just a little too wantonly.

“So, black-eyed girl,
what do you wanna do now?”

Susan shot him what
she hoped was a scathing look, and angled away from him on the
couch. “That’s not funny.”

Kevin leaned back
into the couch, his smile smug. “Kinda is. I mean, looks like you
took up boxing while you were in your post-wedding coma.”

Susan lunged for him,
but he was off the couch and jogging across the room before she
laid a finger on him.

“Not fair!” she
complained. “When did you get all agile?”

“Um...er...”

“Tough question?”
Susan straightened up and locked Kevin in her sights.

He stood there for
about thirty seconds looking absolutely miserable. He turned and
walked toward the kitchen. “About the time you met Mark.”

His voice was fading
as he walked away, so Susan stood and followed him to the kitchen
area. “So you got bitten by a radioactive spider, and now you’re
Spiderman?”

He smiled as he
turned back and gave her a quick glance. But the smile seemed to
take effort.

“You know I’m an
X-Men fan. If I was a superhero, I’d be Wolverine.”

“How could I forget?
You had that half-naked poster in your room until you graduated. I
thought...well, I thought...”

Kevin had pulled a
bottle of water from the fridge and was chugging a few gulps,
giving her a weird look as Susan lost use of all her words. How
could she tell him she’d actually thought he was gay? She couldn’t.
Not in a million years could she say that to him. She wasn’t Liz,
she didn’t go around hurting people’s feelings--especially people
she loved--for the hell of it. If she told him what she’d believed
about him all those years ago, she might lose him. She couldn’t
bear the thought of it. She couldn’t imagine life without him.

Susan’s face burned
with embarrassment. The pit of her stomach felt like it was ready
to fall out. She gasped at the pain she caused herself as she bit
her bottom lip. Now if she could just look into his eyes and lie
well enough to keep him from leaving her.

“You thought
what?”

She shrugged her
shoulders lamely. Her face may be hot, but the rest of her was
stone cold and stiff as a board. She felt like she was ready to
crack apart into a million pieces.

“You thought I was
gay, didn’t you?” He smiled.

“Well...yeah.” Relief
flooded through her just seeing him smiling about it. She sighed.
“Until you started asking me out every day for a week
straight.”

Kevin cringed, his
eyes going all puppy-dog cute. “I asked for a whole… I…” He shook
his head. “I only remember asking once.”

“Liz would say you
repressed it. Or maybe you’ve just got a selective memory. I’d say
repressed.” Susan laid her hand on his face. “You okay? I didn’t
mean to...” She had to stop. She suddenly felt very warm. Just
touching his cheek, the unshaven scruff, the firm line of his jaw,
the feel of him--he felt quite alarmingly like a man. She shuddered
as her body responded to that new realization.

Immediately
Kevin flashed his million-watt smile and shook his head, abruptly
ending that brief moment of physical contact. “Thought I was
supposed to cheer
you
up, not the other way
around.” Suddenly Kevin grasped Susan’s wrist and started pulling
her to the front door. “I just thought of something that will cheer
both of us up.”

“What?”

“It’s a
surprise.”

“Yeah, but what is
it?” Susan hated the whininess in her voice.

Kevin stopped pulling
and shot her a wickedly arched eyebrow. “You do know the meaning of
the word, don’t you?”

“Funny.” Susan
growled, but Kevin continued, sliding the French glass door open
and pulling her through. “But where are we going?”

“To risk our lives!”
Kevin crooned as he slammed the door shut behind them.

* * * *

Susan had to jog to
keep pace with Kevin’s gait. She would’ve let him go off alone, but
he had a death grip on her wrist. Keeping up with him, barefoot,
wasn’t that hard on the smooth granite walkway leading from the
hotel down to the beach. But once on that soft, hot sand, her feet
started to slip and slide, digging too deep and causing her to
momentarily get stuck in the sand. Kevin jerked her free, dragging
her along, tripping, until she got her feet back under her
again.

She tried
yanking back, but it didn’t even slow him down. She considered
biting him, but she’d have to catch up to him first. Susan thought
of a movie,
The
Quiet Man,
where John Wayne
hauls Maureen O’Hara across the beautiful Irish countryside,
against her will, dragging her behind him like a caveman whenever
she lost her footing.

That’s it.
She wasn’t
Maureen O’Hara, and no matter how unexpectedly macho Kevin seemed,
he was no John Wayne. She put on the brakes. Or tried to, digging
both feet into the sand and pulling back against Kevin’s forward
march.

It didn’t even slow
Kevin’s progress. So she tried yelling. “Kevin! Stop! Now!”

He turned to look at
her, bewildered. “What?”

“You’re dragging me
like I’m a dog...or a two-year-old!”

“So?” His face was
sober, not a hint of a smile.

“So stop it!”

“Can’t,” he said
turning to start walking again. Susan could feel her bare feet
plowing through the hot sand. “If I leave you to your own devices,
we’ll be cooped up in the room the entire two weeks, and you’ll
just lie in that damn bed all day.” He stopped and turned to face
her. “Now what kinda friend would that make me if I let that
happen?”

“The kind of friend I
ever call back again,” Susan said, waving that off. “The kind who
understands sometimes that’s exactly what a woman needs. To just
lie around and mope for a while.”

Kevin stared into
Susan’s eyes for a still, thoughtful moment, then smiled. “Nah,
nobody’d wanna do that!” And he turned again to charge across the
beach, dragging her once more.

“At least tell me
where you’re taking me.” Susan gave up with putting on the
brakes--it wasn’t doing a bit of good. And between the jogging and
trying to pull back on Kevin’s procession, she was getting
winded.

Kevin stopped, and
Susan fell against his shoulder, staggering to gain her balance
after the abrupt stop.

“We’re here.”

Susan leaned over,
gasping for breath, looking around her and not registering the
significance of where they were. All she saw was more beach. It was
nice, but nothing special, certainly not surprising. . “So...where
is ‘here’?”

He didn’t answer her,
so she looked up to him from her stooped position and saw he was
staring at the sky. She stood up straight and followed his gaze,
searching for what Kevin was looking at, and with a jolt, she found
it. High in the flawless tropical sky floated a bright red
paraglider, a cable running from it down to a gleaming white
speedboat cutting through the ocean froth.

It looked pretty,
like a kite--but then it hit Susan what Kevin was planning.

“No way!” she
bellowed as she turned and tried to bolt back up the beach to the
safety of the hotel.

But Kevin still had
hold of her wrist, and even though he wasn’t squeezing very hard,
it was enough to keep her right where he stood.

“This isn’t fair!”
she whined, pulling hard, crouching down and pulling to get herself
free with every ounce of her strength. “You outweigh me by a
hundred pounds!”

“Ninety pounds,
maybe...you’ve gained some the last five years.”

What an asshole!
Didn’t he know how paranoid she’d been the whole last year about
her weight? Some best friend he was, not even listening to her as
she groused about all the dieting she’d had to do just to fit into
her wedding dress. Just the thought of that dress made her see red,
a volcano of molten anger surged up through her veins. She flopped
on the sand and shoved her feet against the side of Kevin’s leg,
pulling wildly to get free.

“Let go of me, you
muscle-bound troglodyte!”

The look on Kevin’s
face as he looked down on Susan was bemused, which made her all the
more enraged. He shrugged and released her wrist, sending her
crashing back into the soft, hot, white sand with a sudden huff of
expelled air.

Susan lay there,
looking at the big blue sky, the blissful looking paraglider
sailing through the silky air currents with such ease. Kevin
dropped down beside her, stretching out and gazing up with her.

“I’m afraid of
heights,” Susan said in a flat, trembling voice.

“I remember.”

Susan turned her
head. “Then, what the hell?”

Kevin’s face was
serene, still, and he started smiling that irritating smile again.
“What better way to take your mind off your troubles than to face
your greatest fear?”

It sounded like it
should be a line in a movie. One of those life-affirming movies,
starring Jack Nicholson or Meryl Streep. It was so outrageous, yet
made such instant, inscrutable sense. Susan turned back to the sky
and watched as the paraglider dipped for an instant, and then rose
back up, even higher than it had been before.

“It’s beautiful,” she
murmured, more to herself than to Kevin. She wanted to know what it
was like up there, flying through the air, the entire world
stretching out below her.

“And so dangerous,”
he said. “I mentioned the risking our lives part, right?”

Susan groaned and
shook her head. “Yeah, you mentioned that.”

Chapter 4

Susan felt peaceful,
if not a little amused, as the guys running the paragliding outfit
strapped her into a harness and lashed her to Kevin so her
shoulders were firm against his chest. She marveled at how the
thick pull line seemed to make sounds like it was made out of
metal, which comforted her quite a bit.

But she flashed back
to the first thing the two paragliding guys had her and Kevin do:
read and sign a release form. She hadn’t done more than glance at
it before she signed. Mark would’ve had a fit, but he didn’t have a
say anymore. In truth, she was sure that if she’d read the release,
she would’ve balked and not signed.

That alone would’ve
ended Kevin’s crazy up-up-in-the-air idea. But right then, it felt
like her idea too. That was until the speedboat started to pick up
velocity, and the guy not steering gave the metal links that
connected them to the lead line, and the line to the boat, one last
check. That’s when panic struck.