The Red Bikini (7 page)

T
he grave site gathering was as awkward as anything Giselle had ever experienced, with ex-aunts, ex-uncles, ex-cousins, and even an ex-grand-aunt who cast glances her way as they got out of cars and wandered over the low green hills.

Giselle’s stomach knotted. She worried about seeing Roy up close. Worried about what he’d say. Worried about Coco. Worried that she’d just kissed her fake funeral date—and about melted into the gravel—and he’d responded with a look of horror. . . .

A few of the relatives pointed toward Coco, probably wondering whether they remembered her from Indiana family picnics or trying to recognize her from Christmas photos Giselle had sent to Roy’s seventy-seven friends and relatives for ten long years. Giselle glanced down the paved road that bisected the rolling green of the cemetery, searching for Roy’s car. Certainly, he would say hello. But Giselle wished it were sooner rather than later. Coco was glancing from side to side.

Meanwhile, Giselle continued her list of things that needed to be banned from her thoughts: Coco’s probable abandonment by this family, and now Fin’s kiss.

She bit her lip and tried not to think of how soft his lips had felt. She hadn’t experienced a kiss like that since . . . well . . . she supposed since she met Roy. But Roy didn’t kiss like
that
.

A bead of sweat slipped behind her ear as she tried to keep up with Fin’s footsteps. He’d been frowning pretty much the entire drive. He frowned as they got out of the car. He fell silent as they balanced across the mounds of emerald grass. He refused to look at her as they found a place at the back of the grave site gathering. While she was obsessing over his lips, his arms, the way he’d gripped her elbows, he was frowning as if he’d just made the worst, most regrettable mistake of his life.

She touched Coco’s braids and managed to square her shoulders. She reminded herself of her goal: All she had to do was appear as if she’d moved on. She just had to get through one day at a time. After this week, she’d probably never see Fin or Ray-Lynn or Grand-Aunt Esther or Uncle Frank or that young nurse ever again.

“Where’s Daddy?” Coco whispered.

Except Roy. He was someone she’d unfortunately have to deal with forever.

“He’ll come.”

“Darling.”
Lovey reached for Giselle’s hand. She dipped her champagne-colored coiffure toward Coco and kissed both her cheeks with an exaggerated smack. Coco giggled and threw her arms around her grandmother.

“I’m so glad you came,” Lovey said. “Come join us.” She tugged at Giselle’s hands, but did a double take when she realized Fin was part of the entourage.

Shame and pride warred in Giselle’s chest, but Lovey simply held out her hand. “I’m Lovey, Giselle’s former mother-in-law.”

“Fin Hensen.”

“The surfer?”

Fin’s hesitation was noticeable only to Giselle. “Yes.”

Giselle took another long look at him. She thought his name might be recognizable to one or two of the younger people here, but she didn’t expect him to be recognized by her sixty-nine-year-old mother-in-law.

“Please.” Lovey motioned toward the row of seats that sat like little soldiers around the raised casket.

“I’d feel more comfortable back here,” Giselle whispered.

Lovey started to say something, but then acquiesced. She shot a glance toward her son, who had just arrived and was taking a seat in the front row, staring toward the casket, his young nurse at his side. The nurse studied the crowd through wide-rimmed sunglasses and a patterned head scarf that gave her a mysterious Jayne Mansfield look.

“It’s awful,” Lovey whispered. “I’m sorry he brought her here. Are you sure you won’t join us?”

Giselle nodded. She was having a hard time taking her eyes off Roy and his nurse. Roy seemed . . .
smaller
, somehow. Even from just four months ago.

“Can I take Coco?” Lovey asked tentatively.

Giselle had been gripping Coco’s shoulder with a certain protectiveness, but releasing her to Lovey was the right thing to do. Of course Lovey would want to spend time with her only grandchild. She’d always adored her, sending her cards and games in the mail, calling her on the phone on the first Wednesday of every month to share knock-knock jokes, and coming to visit Indiana when she could so she could take Coco to the lake.

“Can we take her to the house?” Lovey’s eyes begged.

Giselle nodded again. But she shuddered at the deep loneliness already creeping up her spine.

She bent to remind Coco to mind her manners, and Coco held out her palm. “Kissing hand?” the little girl whispered.

Giselle planted a kiss right in the center before Coco bounced away with Lovey.

“What’s a kissing hand?” Fin said from behind her.

Giselle wiped an errant tear from the corner of her eye. “It’s from a book. The mother raccoon kisses her baby’s hand and leaves the kiss in his palm. That way he can press it against his cheek whenever he needs it.”

Fin nodded solemnly and shoved his hands in his pockets. He took a few steps closer. “Are you okay?”

She was swept with gratitude that he was here. If he hadn’t been, she’d quite possibly be standing here, on the outskirts of this grave site, on the outskirts of this family, feeling more alone than she’d ever felt in her life.

“I will be,” she said.

And, for the first time, she had a tiny ray of hope that it might be true.

 • • • 

When the grave site ceremony ended, Fin turned, like a bodyguard, to scout for the good doctor. And spotted him, immediately. Heading their way. Alarm for Giselle ignited through him. He scanned the crowd to see whether the hot girlfriend was in tow.

“He’s coming to talk to you. Want me to stay?” he asked.

Her gaze slid over his shoulder, her nod barely perceptible.

“Giselle!” the doctor called.

“Roy.” Giselle gave him a tight, sort of keep-away-from-me hug; the doctor returned it with a little less keeping away, as far as Fin was concerned. But at least the girlfriend wasn’t around.

A silence fell. It occurred to Fin that the doctor was waiting for an introduction.

“Fin Hensen.” He thrust his hand forward. That was all he was going to say. Let the bastard wonder.

“You’re the surfer,” he said as the name registered. His handshake was fishy and wet.

“Yes.”

“Roy Underwood.”

Fin nodded curtly.

Roy stared at his ex-wife with curiosity.

That’s right, you idiot,
Fin thought.
You’re not the only one who can sleep around.

Although, of course, Giselle
wasn’t
sleeping around. Which was too bad for Fin. But the point was, she
could
if she wanted to. Fin went back to slandering Roy in his head.

“Are you coming to the house?” Roy asked, pointing his question to Giselle.

Fin shoved his hands in his pockets and sized Roy up. He’d expected Giselle’s ex to be tall for some reason, but he was just average, unremarkable, with a froglike shape. His suit was nice, though—he’d give him that.

“Coco looks great,” Roy said into the next silence.

Fin glanced at Giselle to see her reaction to that. It seemed like a weird thing to say about your kid. As if she were a pot of daisies, or the new siding on the house.

“She’s doing well,” she responded politely.

Fin spread his legs and dug his heels into the grass. He and Giselle had come up with two signs just moments before Roy had arrived—a touch to his forearm meant:
Do not leave under any circumstances
. And a mission—
Fin, could you go check on Coco
—meant she needed time alone. They weren’t clever signs, of course—pretty damned straightforward—but he wanted to be sure they had this all under control.

But now she did neither.

“My dad would’ve appreciated your coming,” Roy went on, polite as all get-out, as if he were speaking to the cleaning lady.

Fin allowed himself another glance toward Giselle. He expected her to seem a little strained. But, instead, she was the epitome of reserve. He wondered whether Roy thought of how beautiful she was when he ran into her—did he think he’d let her slip away? Or was he already so wrapped up in his own life that he didn’t see it anymore? Fin remembered the hot number in the high heels. She was gorgeous, too, in a very come-fuck-me way, but Giselle’s beauty was different. It began at her spine, or maybe at her soul, and radiated from there. He’d read once that a pretty woman was only pretty while she was young, but a beautiful woman was beautiful her whole life. The line finally made sense to him.

“Can I talk to you privately?” the good doctor whispered toward Giselle’s shoulder.

Ah, here we go
.

Fin waited for his cue.

“Actually, anything you need to say, you can say in front of Fin.” Her fingers curled at Fin’s biceps—a detail the ex didn’t seem to miss.

“I’d rather not,” the doctor said.

“I’d
rather
.” Giselle raised her chin. Fin couldn’t help but feel a flash of pride in her.

Roy crossed his arms and dropped his gaze to his shoes. The gesture was so one of a surgeon, coming to tell the family that the patient had died—that Fin had the irresistible urge to put his arm around Giselle, before she heard the bad news. But he refrained. Aside from the “don’t go away” sign, they’d decided on only necessary touching, which was Giselle’s request, but he hadn’t argued. He figured having rules about touching was good. Although her fingers wrapped around his biceps right now weren’t escaping his notice. But
he
was the one who needed the rules. After that kiss, he wasn’t sure he could trust himself.

“I just wanted you to know . . .” Roy angled his shoulder to block Fin out. “. . . Kimber is pregnant.”

Fin glanced at Giselle.
Kimber?
Was that the hot blonde? Roy’s delivery seemed so overdramatic, with that lowered voice and exotic name, that Fin half expected Giselle to rail in some over-the-top soap-opera way. But instead she held her neck up as if Roy hadn’t spoken at all. As if she were still waiting for the interesting part.

Roy blinked a few times and glanced at Fin, as if they were just two men now, both confused by a woman’s behavior.

“I haven’t told Coco,” Roy went on. “I’d rather not say anything until later.”

Giselle stood completely still, the epitome of poise.

“We’ll see you, Roy,” was all she said, and she started stepping toward the car.

As they walked away, Fin couldn’t help it. He reached up and put his arm around her. He figured this time, of all times, was one of the necessary touches.

 • • • 

“Of all the cockamamie, for-crying-out-loud things,” Giselle said out the car window, as Fin pulled through the cemetery.

He let her curse in her beauty-queen way while he maneuvered from what looked like a luxury-car sales lot.

“He never even wanted
Coco
,” she said, exasperated, flinging her hand toward the window.

That got his attention.

Damn
. The more he was learning about this bastard, the more he wanted to beat the crap out of him.

“What do you mean, he didn’t want Coco?”

Giselle blinked at him, as if she suddenly realized she’d been saying all these things out loud. Her attention drifted to the hills rolling by.

“When I told him, he said he wanted me to get an abortion.” Her voice cracked over the last word. “He was barely out of medical school, and still doing his residency, and he thought it would be too hard for us. He even came to me with a business card of one of his associates—someone he trusted. I doubt he’s handing
her
that card.”

The sadness that hung over Giselle was so palpable, Fin felt like pulling over and doing whatever was necessary to stop it. But he had no idea what that would be. He felt helpless—a feeling he hated more than anything in the world. Instead he just sat there, at a stop sign, ready to pull out of the cemetery site. He kept his hands on top of the steering wheel.

“Can you roll the window down?” she said, touching her throat.

He quickly hit the button.

She leaned her head back and took in big gulps of air.

“Look, Giselle, how about if I take you somewhere? Get something to eat, get your thoughts together? You can pay your respects in your own way, later.”

He didn’t really know how to handle a situation like this, but he did know that she’d rip herself apart by showing up at that house. She’d have to watch that Kimber babe from across the room and know that Coco was going to have a new little sister or brother someday soon.

“No,” she said, with surprising conviction. “I need to go.”

“Of course you do, but you don’t need to go for four
hours
. How about if we go somewhere for an hour or so, let you take a few deep breaths, and then we’ll arrive at the house in the middle of the reception, make an appearance, gather Coco, and leave? Will she be okay for an hour?”

Giselle thought about that for a minute. “She’s fine with Lovey.”

Fin switched his blinker to the opposite direction and squealed into the street before she could change her mind.

“Have you ever had a fish taco?” he asked as the wind whipped through their hair.

She shook her head. She was still looking out the window as if her world had just caved in. Which, he supposed, it had.

“Well, welcome to Southern California, home of the best fish tacos in the States.”

A polite, beauty-queen smile forced its way across her face. “And
outside
the States?”

“That would be Mexico. That’s where we learned it. But let me take you to my favorite place. It’s not far from here.”

Fin threw the car into fourth and took Giselle away from everything.

Even if only for an hour.

T
he smell of grills and salsa mingled through the small room as Giselle followed Fin all the way to the back, toward a turquoise Formica table under a makeshift thatched palapa. Surf pictures and boards hung from the ceiling and walls; tiki lights draped from corner to corner; and surfing and skateboarding stickers covered every conceivable surface: booths, chairs, tables, walls, floor, doors, and even the windows. It struck Giselle as a decidedly mixed atmosphere of rope hammock, crashing wave, and daring athleticism.

She scooted in her chair as Fin slid out of his jacket and nodded hello to one of the workers.

“Do I even want to know what ‘sex wax’ is?” she said, squinting at the bright red letters of one of the stickers slapped to the table.

Fin took his seat and rubbed the side of his nose, as if he weren’t sure he wanted to answer. “Not as interesting as it sounds.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a wax you rub on your board. Keeps your feet from sliding.”

“Why is it called ‘sex wax’?”

Fin glanced at her from under his bangs, then looked away. “‘Wax your stick,’ that kind of thing.” He suddenly seemed to find his receipt very interesting.

She felt her face go hot and tried to think of something else to say.

She tried to imagine how she must appear to him—in her low-heeled proper shoes, someone you couldn’t say “sex wax” to without lowering your eyes—and wondered what this whole marital drama must look like to a young, single guy. Especially the part with the ex-husband strutting around with a D-cup mistress, then dropping the news at a funeral that he’d gotten the girl pregnant. She wondered whether Roy seemed ridiculous to Fin—as if it weren’t occurring to him that if he kept turning his mistresses into mothers, they’d lose their appeal. Didn’t a doctor know better? And she wondered whether she seemed pathetic for sticking around while it happened.

Especially a second time.

Jillian had happened two years ago, when Coco was only three. Giselle had been devastated that there would be another child in this world who would be related to Roy and Coco, whom they’d all be bringing into their lives. Who would involve weekend visits and birthday gifts. Who would represent Roy’s disrespect. It was almost more than she could bear, but she took Roy back anyway. She didn’t want to deprive Coco of a two-parent home, and her love for Roy had turned into a sort of desperation. Plus she had nowhere to go—she hadn’t planned a career, had no real life of her own. She figured she could suck up a little disrespect so that Coco could have as close to a normal life as possible. But then Jillian lost the baby. And Roy said he was coming back to Giselle and Coco “for real.” No more infidelities. He’d learned his lesson, he’d said. He’d given Giselle his pager and cell phone, asked her to check it every night. He’d made his life an open book—all in an effort to prove to Giselle that he was devoted to them, that he’d never make such a foolish mistake again.

But then D-cups had come a-calling again. A different set. And Giselle and Coco were left in the wake again.

That was when Giselle found the note underneath the cantaloupe:
“I’ve met someone else, G. I’m so very sorry.”

Giselle had sat for four days in a darkened house, telling Coco that she had a tummy ache. She’d made brief sojourns to Coco’s preschool in her slippers and pajamas and then gone home and cried for hours.

Roy didn’t call. He didn’t return her messages. She had no idea what had happened.

But then, about a week later, she’d snapped herself back together.

She’d gotten up, gotten a haircut at the most expensive salon she could find, charged it to Roy, gone shopping for the most expensive clothes she could find, charged those to Roy, and then packed up and found a place at a swanky hotel in Indianapolis, where she could still take Coco to school every day but where they could dine in style, on Roy’s dime, and she could think.

She’d called a lawyer. Collected the divorce papers. And then she’d called Lia to ask if they could stay in Sandy Cove for a little while, just to clear her head. Her hands had shaken through every one of these activities, but she did them.

Calling her sisters and her mom had been the hardest part. She knew there’d be an element of “I told you so.” And she didn’t even have a good explanation for why he’d left. She’d always been the responsible oldest sister, the one to do the right thing, the smart thing, to take care of everyone. And admitting that she’d made the most enormous mistake of all—but wasn’t sure what it was—was almost more than she could bear. She had no bank account, no job, no work experience, no skills, not even her own friends. Her Audi wasn’t even in her own name.

But she’d swallowed her pride, made the calls, listened to Noelle’s sighs of pity, listened to Lia’s list of things she would have done to be more financially independent, listened to her mom’s litany of all the reasons she never liked Roy in the first place, and then started packing for Sandy Cove.

Roy stayed oddly away. He tried to contact her only a few times, to see Coco, and always through texts. They arranged for him to pick Coco up after school on a couple of Fridays; then Giselle would pick her up after school on Mondays, so they still didn’t talk. When she caught him answering his phone in real time once, she jumped at the chance to ask him what she most wanted to know: “Why?”

“I can’t explain it,” was all he said. His voice was robotic. He listened to her sobbing and then said they’d talk later, and hung up.

Giselle eventually talked herself into starting over. She didn’t have any answers about what went wrong in her marriage, but she couldn’t stay stagnant forever. Her own mother had divorced twice, and Giselle had always promised herself her life would be different. Her daughter would
never
suffer through a broken home—separate Christmases, competitive birthday gifts, shuffling of weekends. She’d
never
fail her daughter.

But then she did.

And now she had to live with the fact that she’d failed in the only thing she ever wanted to be: a good mother, with a strong family.

“That wasn’t what he wanted to tell you,” Fin said, leaning across the aqua Formica and running the receipt through his fingers.

“What?” Giselle cleared her throat and forced herself out of her reverie.

“I know it was devastating enough, but it wasn’t what he wanted to tell you. He wanted to tell you something else, but he didn’t want me there to hear it.”

His eyes darted toward the counter, waiting for their food. As if on cue, the T-shirt-clad server appeared with two porcelain plates piled high with white rice, black beans, and fish tacos, all covered in bright red salsa.

“Can you autograph this?” she asked shyly, handing him her cap. “To Tilly?”

“I thought I autographed everything in this place already,” Fin said, smiling up at her.

“I’m new.” She handed him a pen.

He scrawled his name across the brim.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, flinging her ponytail over her shoulder and sliding away.

Giselle gaped at him as he loosened his tie and began moving the salsa bowls closer to each of their plates. “Do you always get asked for autographs like that?”

“Oh.” He waved his hand back. “Not here. They’ve known me for years. The new girl threw me.”

Giselle nodded. She thought
her
life was held up to scrutiny and judgment, but this put things into perspective. The snowboards and surfboards that hung at odd angles around the room did, indeed, have autographs all over them. She let her gaze roam over them until she gasped to see a huge graphic on a wall with Fin’s image, along with two other men, in colorful, Andy Warhol–style negative.

He followed her eyes. “I was trying to position you so you didn’t see that. Crazy, huh? Those others are Kelly Slater and Taj Burrow. Kelly Slater is a modern legend. Taj Burrow beats me every year. And that’s Laird Hamilton.” He nodded with his head in another direction. “He’s a big-wave surfer.”

“Kelly, Taj, Laird, and Fin? Do all surfers have to have ultracool names to compete?”

“Yeah, Coco will fit right in. You need to get her on the Women’s Tour ASAP.”

She smiled and tried to ignore the fact that she was sitting with a guy whose picture was a designer graphic on a restaurant wall and had girls named Tilly following him for an autograph. And that she happened to know he was the most amazing kisser.

She watched him divest himself of his tie and fling it on the back of his chair, unbuttoning his shirt at the collar. His thick, tan knuckles undid the buttons deftly as she wondered what else his hands could do, what his fingers could trigger, who else’s zipper or dress he could unravel. . . . Embarrassed, she redirected her attention toward her meal.

“This looks delicious,” she said.

“It is—the three brothers who started this place have a Chinese-Brazilian heritage, so you have the white rice and black beans, but they learned the fish taco thing from their surf days in Mexico. I come here all the time.” Fin spooned extra salsa across his rice and held the bowl out to her.

That was about as many words as he’d strung together the whole day. She felt a slight sense of accomplishment.

“So how do you know?” she asked.

“Know what?”

“About Roy and that he wanted to say something else.”

He attended his plate for a few seconds. “He just had that look about him.”

Back to the short, choppy sentences.

Giselle nodded. She’d noticed much the same thing—it did seem like Roy had begun with one agenda and switched to another. She was just surprised that Fin could read it.

“So what did you think of him?” she asked.

He gave her a wary look and didn’t answer.

She watched him dig into his meal, then studied her own plate for a moment. The sex wax sticker poked out from under her plate and now said “ex ax.”

“I’d like your opinion,” she prompted.

“It’s none of my business, Giselle.”

“I’d like it anyway.”

He raised his eyebrow as if he didn’t quite believe her, then shrugged. “He has a kind of shiftiness, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I said I wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t want to insult you.”

“Why would I be insulted?”

“You married him.”

Giselle’s spine stiffened as she pretended to move her rice around.

Fin bit into his taco and watched her for a minute. “See? This is none of my business. I’m sorry. Go ahead and eat—you look like you’re going to fall over.”

“Are you wondering
why
I married him?”

He glanced at her between bites of his taco. “Doctor, good living, secure, probably smart. I can figure that out.”

Giselle tried not to react. She did
not
marry Roy because he was a doctor. Or because he had money. That had been the furthest thing from her mind. In fact, when they were first married, he was a med
student. They barely made ends meet. “Are you saying I married for materialistic reasons?”

His mouth quirked up at the corner. “Giselle—I didn’t say that. You’re beautiful. And smart. And sophisticated as hell. So I figure he must have some redeeming qualities. But right now, he just seems like an asshole. That’s all I’m saying.” He took another bite.

Giselle started to respond, but then closed her mouth. Fin was right. Roy did seem like a jerk. But he
did
have some redeeming qualities when she met him. And what did a twenty-eight-year-old who played in the ocean for a living know about what you searched for in a good marriage, anyway? She wanted a good father, of course. Someone who was solid . . . secure . . . certain of his future . . . Of course, Roy had turned out not to be
any
of those things. . . .

And did Fin just say she was beautiful?

She dragged her napkin back across her lap.

“So tell me why he didn’t like Lia,” Fin said.

Giselle shook her head.

Fin finished one of his tacos and took another long sip of his drink. He pushed his plate back. “I want to know,” he said.

Giselle paused, but then shook her head again. “It’ll only make him seem like more of a jerk.”

“Try me,” he said tightly.

“It’s not wise.”

He busied himself with the salsa on his plate. “So was I right about why you married him?”

“For money?”

He smirked. “I didn’t say that, Giselle. I said he was probably smart. Secure.”

Giselle sat straighter in her chair. She didn’t know, now, whether she’d made the right decisions. Maybe she had married Roy for the wrong reasons. Maybe she should have waited for those goose bumps, not pinned her sights on what seemed like security. Or fatherly material.

“Maybe these questions are too personal, after all,” she said.

“Well, I figure—being the new lover and all—I should know some of these things.”

Giselle’s face flushed. She rearranged her napkin again. She didn’t want Fin to make fun of her. She didn’t want his pity, or anyone else’s.

“Giselle,” he said, putting his taco down. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to lighten the mood here, but—”

“I married him because I thought he’d be a good father,” she blurted.

His expression registered surprise—clearly, he’d thought that line of questioning was over. But now he searched her face. “And
is
he?”

Giselle managed to maintain eye contact for five full seconds before the tears stung her eyes. She shook her head. She’d been wrong on so many levels. She’d never been able to admit it to her mother, or her sisters, or her friends, or even herself:
She’d made a terrible decision
. Roy was a terrible husband. And a terrible father. And rather than facing that truth, or even admitting it, she’d kept living in denial. As the ugly honesty of the situation hit her, she tried to avert her eyes as a couple of tears escaped.

“Wait,” Fin said. “No, don’t cry. . . . I’m sorry.” His hand moved across the table, but before he touched her, he seemed to think better of it. “Please.” He found a napkin to hand her. “I brought you here so you could get your thoughts together and . . . Damn, don’t cry.”