The Red Bikini (20 page)

“Do the waves ever come up to the windows?” Giselle asked, stroking Tamara’s hair.

“During storms,” Fin said, stepping back in. “This is high tide—that’s as high as it’ll get. But during a storm, yeah, the waves hit the glass. It’s kind of awe-inspiring.”

“It doesn’t scare you?”

He shook his head. “I respect it.”

“It scares me.”

He gave her a gentle nod, then searched for some long matches, which he carried back out onto the balcony to light four tiki torches that stood taller than he did. As the flames sputtered to life, Giselle watched him from behind. He stood with his hands low on his hips, watching the water. The torches cast golden flickers across his profile, lending ritualistic tones. His jaw set like some sort of Polynesian god, thinking back through the way the evening had played out, perhaps.

Giselle didn’t want to, but she turned away, to attend to Tamara, who—surprisingly—was crashed against Fin’s uncomfortable leather pillow.

 • • • 

“You know you can’t leave tonight.” Fin handed Giselle a Beatles’
Abbey Road
mug, then set down his own, one with Darth Vader on the side, and climbed to join her on the brick-lined concrete ledge, where their legs dangled over the waves below.

He had changed clothes. He was now barefoot, wearing a simple pair of cargo shorts, with a navy T-shirt that had the logo of one of his sponsors splashed across the back. They watched the surf for a second. The rooster tails created an awesome show, the floodlights giving the white foam and black water a movie-reel intensity. Every third wave threw off just enough sea spray to send a sticky sheen across her legs, just below the hem of her yellow skirt. She clutched her sweater closer and sipped her coffee.

“You’re not letting me leave?” she asked playfully.

Fin glanced back at Tamara asleep on the couch. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to be caught alone with my boss’s wife passed out in my living room. So, no.”

“You need a chaperone?”

“Well.” He took a sip from his mug and thought about that. “Not with her.” He avoided Giselle’s eyes.

A breeze blew up off the navy water, and she pulled her sweater tighter.

“I’m not sure how Fox is going to react to all this,” he said. “I have the sense he’s either going to beat the crap out of me or fire me.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “I’m sure when he asked me to take her to Javier’s, he didn’t mean for me to get her plastered and running through downtown Laguna.”

“She’s a grown woman, Fin. It’s not your fault,” she repeated.

He took a sip of his drink and eyed the water as if he weren’t entirely certain.

“Is Fox really cheating on her?”

Fin gave a snort of disgust. “There’s no way that’s true. She just had too much to drink. I never met a man more crazy about a woman.”

A hum slipped from Giselle’s lips, but she realized it sounded wistful. She cut it short and quickly took a sip of coffee.

Fin glanced at her. “Maybe all marriages start out that way.” His voice sounded conversational, but the comment was laden with a question.

“I only have experience with one,” Giselle said.

“So did yours?”

She winced. Fin may not speak all that much, but when he did, he zeroed right in on what he wanted to know. She took another sip so she could compose herself before answering.

“I don’t recall that stage, actually.” She kept her voice prim and emotionless.

“Tell me about it,” Fin prompted.

“You don’t want to know about my marriage.” Giselle couldn’t decide whether Fin was flirting in some odd way or teasing her. All she knew was that talking about her marriage made her feel like a terrible failure.

“Maybe I do.” His eyes met hers. But, instead of pressing, he turned back toward the ocean. They watched the navy water wash in below. “You fascinate me,” he finally said.

Giselle gave a little laugh. “I’m so far from fascinating, you can’t even imagine.”

“Try me.”

She shook her head. What did he want to know? Anything she told him would only make the distance between them elongate—dull stories of her laundry days and carpool runs to contrast nicely with his life of international travel. But, on the other hand, maybe it would be good. It would force her into reality, reminding her that all those glances from him, all those lingering stares and brushes against her thigh, were only temporary. Deliciously temporary, of course, but only temporary. She would be out of his thoughts as soon as Veronica showed up with her belly-button ring.

“I have a pot of basil on my windowsill that I’ve thought about more this week than would be considered normal by most human beings.” She drew a resigned breath. “I spend hours in the grocery store every week, comparing the sugar content of yogurt for Coco. I have a cupboard full of sippy cups but I don’t own a single shot glass with the name of a Vegas showroom on it. And I’ve never been to South Africa. Or Brazil. Or China.”

Fin nodded slowly and stared at the ocean. She was sure she’d lost him now. He probably couldn’t even think of a response to such a boring life.

“How do you spend Thanksgiving?” he asked.

She blinked back her surprise at the random question and shrugged. “The normal way, I guess. We have people over—friends, or family if they’re in town.”

He nodded. “How many people?”

“Six? Eight sometimes?”

“Do you ever spend it with Lia or your mom?”

“I have, though not in many years.”

Fin nodded again. “She’s invited me a couple of times—to your mom’s. I always wanted to go. I picture a big table, with a lot of people. Turkey in the center. Napkins, candles.” He smiled, embarrassed. “I never did that. Even at Ronny’s. It’s always been around the O’Neill Classic, or the Reef Hawaiian Pro, so ever since I was a kid, I’ve been on a plane on Thanksgiving—lately playing Scrabble on my phone.”

Giselle noted the sadness in Fin’s face and wondered again whether that was what she’d been glimpsing this whole time—a longing for family? For normalcy?

“So when did you know you were in love with your ex?” he asked.

Telling him all this seemed embarrassing. She had loved the furtive peeks Fin was taking at her body; she loved the way he looked at her with half-lidded eyes. Revealing how unsexy and unromantic her marriage was would certainly make all that go away.

“I can’t imagine why you want to know any of this,” she said.

He nodded and wrapped his arms around his widespread knees. “I shouldn’t.”

A few black waves rolled in, misting them with residual spray. He waited until the sound retreated and then went on as if the conversation had never broken:

“I’m just asking because when I kissed you, that one time, you let out this little sound that made me think you’re the kind of woman who likes some passion in her men. And I’ve been trying not to think about that sound, or what I can do to hear it again, but I was just wondering.”

Giselle tried to swallow.
Passion?
In
men
? She didn’t have “men.” She had “a man.” And passion seemed like something that belonged in Humphrey Bogart movies.

“That’s”—she sputtered for an answer—“really . . .
none
of your business.”

He smiled into the ocean and gave her an acquiescing nod. “You’re right.”

They watched the water in silence for a moment, and Giselle tugged her sweater around her shoulders. “So you’ve been putting me on the spot for the last ten minutes. I think it’s my turn.”

He regarded her warily.

“You said you’d never been married, but have you ever had a serious relationship? Been in love?”

The water demanded his attention again. “No.”

“You’ve
never
been in love?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Tell me the closest you came.”

He shook his head.

“C’mon, Fin.”

He laughed. He was clearly uncomfortable, but he didn’t look like he wanted to shut down. He simply looked like he wasn’t used to talking this way.

“There was a surf instructor, once, I met in Hawaii,” he finally said. “She was Oregonian. Amazing surfers come from Oregon. Anyway, I liked her a lot.”

Giselle waited for more, but he took another sip from his mug and redirected his attention back to the surf.

“That’s
it
?”

He glanced at her and shrugged.

“That’s your big ‘love story’? That’s not even going to get you a Hallmark card. What made you think you were in love with her?”

He thought about that for a while, as if the question had never occurred to him. “She was . . . smart. Confident. Older than me.” He winked. “Made me want to be around her a lot. She was teaching some students, and I was at a meet. She cheered me on. That was strange, and different. Nice.”

“So what happened? Did you stay together?”

He smirked. “I didn’t say we were ‘together,’ Giselle. It was just a surf meet. It ended on a Sunday, and she went her way and I went mine.”

“You never stayed in touch?”

“Nah.”

A wave of sadness swept through Giselle, imagining Fin on the plane on Thanksgiving, imagining him coming home to an empty house every time he traveled. It seemed as if he went out of his way to stay cut off from everyone—even this Oregonian woman he felt came the closest to representing love.

“Were you ever in love with Jennifer?” she asked.

“No.”

At her look of skepticism, he shook his head. “She was always seeing someone off and on. She wouldn’t tell me who he was. She was embarrassed because he was married—some high-powered hotshot—and he’d told her he was leaving his wife, but of course he wasn’t, and she didn’t want her brother or her parents to know. I was always just a friend. Kind of a mentor. I taught her how to surf.”

“What happened to her?” Giselle asked hesitantly.

Fin didn’t answer right away but brushed some stray sand off his bare ankle and then went back to watching the ocean. “We were filming for some sponsors,” he finally said. “It was a foreign company—Kimiko, which makes wet suits—and Jennifer and I rode for them once or twice, along with a couple guys from the Men’s Tour. They wanted us to do a little surfing for a commercial in Tahiti, and we—the guys—were in Teahupoo for the Billabong Pro, so Jennifer flew in to meet us there. I told her it would be a good idea.”

He watched another wave turn to foam as it rolled under them, slapping against the rocks.

“She was acting strange—almost as if she were off balance on certain sets. I mean, she’s Pro–All American, Grand Am Hawaii; she won the Australian Open twice—she’s not an off-balance surfer. I taught her. And I’ve traveled with her for years. And that’s the thing that pisses me off: I
saw
her looking off. And I didn’t think it through, or say anything.

“So a big set came in, and I looked back, kind of challenging her. I wanted her to take it. So she paddled out, and I saw it again. It was this odd hesitation she had, and this leaning to the left. And then . . . that’s the last I saw of her.”

Giselle’s heart began pounding. . . . To lose someone, right in front of you . . .

Fin shrugged. “I was so wrapped up, you know—I was scrambling for the next set, and I wasn’t watching out for her, and I was just 100 percent focused on getting the next wave. By the time I took another few waves, and watched the other two guys—no one noticed she was gone. We assumed she’d called it a day.

“But when I came back onshore, an Aussie kid named Booker was running down the sand and said he’d found her board, broken apart, against the rocks. We found her about twenty minutes later. In a pile of boulders.”

“Oh, Fin.”

He shifted his position and stared at the Pacific’s unending blackness. It resembled the edge of a cliff, dropping to an abyss.

“I haven’t told anyone this in a long time,” he said.

She touched his shoulder. He leaned away casually.

Giselle’s stomach clenched to see Fin’s pain. For someone who had so few people in his life, losing someone—especially someone he felt protective of, and responsible for, and losing her in such a senseless, violent way—must have been devastating. She rubbed his shoulder, but he reached for his mug so he could get out from under her touch.

“I’m not trying to get your sympathy, Giselle.”

“I know.”

He stared at the rooster tails shooting out from the rocks. “It was called as a coroner’s case. They found drugs in her system. Xanax.”

How awful for Jennifer Andre. Giselle pulled her sweater tighter.

“But it was complicated, being in a foreign country, to open an investigation. Her parents just wanted her flown home. Everyone was left with a lot of questions.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I’m not sure. Some people take it recreationally, but she didn’t do drugs that I knew of. Although I wouldn’t necessarily know. She’d been with her married asshole boyfriend a long time, and she and I didn’t see each other much anymore. But why she would take anything right before that set?” He stared out at the ocean, as if the answer might be there, always elusive.

“The fact that she wanted to talk is what bothers me—if I’d just talked to her, or just listened . . .”

“Fin, you can’t blame yourself for that.”

He pressed his fingers against his eyelids. “I should have been watching her. I should have trusted my instincts.”

“It’s not fair to put all that responsibility on yourself.”

He shook his head.

“Who was the man she was seeing?”

“He never stepped forward. Bastard. I never knew who it was. She knew I didn’t approve, so we didn’t talk about it much.”

A wave hit the rocks right then and they leaned back. The mist settled around them, and Fin wiped his forearms. He watched her hands run down her legs and then cleared his throat and averted his gaze. “Giselle, how the hell do you get me to talk so much?”

She met his vague smile with a gentle one of her own. “Doesn’t it feel good? To just let it out sometimes?”

He stared at her for a beat too long—one that moved from comfort, to trust, into a point of intimacy. He seemed to be searching for something in her eyes—some kind of answer, or maybe asking some kind of question. “Yeah,” he finally said.