Kira’s eyes closed and the stream of memories and worries, of fears and doubts, resentment and anger, all flowed out of her, on the breeze, and into the ocean, miles away.
Kira’s eyes opened again when the chanting stopped and the drumming slowed. An easy rhythm took form, one that felt like sleep. The healer’s eyes remained closed and her expression of peace radiated into Kira, like a warm bath. Deep bliss enveloped her skin, then her muscles, right down to her bones, warming her core. Kira’s eyes closed once more, as she absorbed the feeling. Kira traced it in her memory. As she did so, the drumming went quiet. Kira blinked open her eyes.
The healer, wearing the ikat dress, was gone. In her place, a bunch of golden flowers tied together with a teal string rested lightly upon the earth.
As the group drifted indoors, the bright light seemed out of place and disruptive to the serene and introspective mood that had descended upon them. Jamie bounded into the room, greeting everyone boisterously, but it didn’t match the tranquility cultivated in the drum circle.
Up until that moment, every time Jamie walked into a room Kira became excited and single mindedly impetuous. However, this time she didn’t feel the intense longing to kiss and lay with him. She wanted a long walk and laughter. She wanted someone to talk with, to share everything about herself with, the good, the bad, and the funny. She wanted a tender touch, an embrace, and to make love.
Without offering Jamie her attention, Kira escaped to her room and sat by the window letting the breeze continue to comfort her. But his sudden lack of interest left her unsettled. She decided it was time they talked about where she stood. Although they hadn’t established whether they were boyfriend and girlfriend, their mutual attraction was undeniable. The invitation to South Africa and now the mixed messages, but hardly talking since they arrived had her confused, especially when Jamie suddenly orbited around Amanda.
When Kira knocked on his door, moaning escaped, and she quietly pushed it open. The scene of tanned legs intertwined with white sheets filled Kira with months’ worth of rage and all the pain Jeremy caused had her. But in the pause of a single breath, she let the sting of anger stream out to the faraway sea, just like in the drum circle. Kira slowly shook her head as Jamie startled.
“Kira, I’m sorry, I—” he stumbled over words of apology, his naked body flailing in the low light as he jumped out of bed. He tried to grab the sheet to cover up, while Amanda tugged on the other side to cover herself. He sputtered as he tripped and fell over the edge of a table.
Standing naked, he looked like the surfer version of a Greek God, but unfortunately, his sexual appetite matched the men of myths.
Amanda looked on wide-eyed. “What? I don’t underst—” she started to say.
“I should have known,” Kira said, interrupting. Part of her wanted to cry, another part scream, but then there was that backdrop of peace. “I came here to talk to you about us, but I suppose this,” Kira said pointing to the bed, “answers my question.”
“We’re just old friends, it doesn’t mean anything,” he began to say. Tugging forcefully on the sheet and taking it with her, Amanda looked for her clothing.
“Well in that case, Jamie—” Amanda hollered. “I will be leaving.”
“Wait, Amanda, we weren’t done,” he called after her as she brushed by Kira in the doorway.
“You seriously just said that? Wow. Nerve, Jamie. Nerve. It’s just about you, huh?” Kira said turning to leave. He’d made it clear enough where they stood.
“Wait, don’t go, can we talk?” Jamie took hold of Kira’s arm.
“You’re naked.”
“I am.”
“And right now I can see you and me for what it was. It was great, better than great. It was, and you can quote me on this, the best sex I’ve have ever had. But it was just sex. I don’t know what else I wanted it to be, but I’ve been in a relationship devoid of sex, where my husband sought it elsewhere, and then with you where it was just sex. I think someday I’d like a balance of both, to have my cake and eat it too. That’s not going to be with you, so in fact, thank you for helping me clear up that little mystery.” Kira huffed catching her breath, while Jamie looked on sheepishly.
“Right now, I feel a bit cheap for just being one of your tokens, a bit of a chump for not realizing this sooner, but ultimately really glad I’ve got this sorted out. I know what I want. I know what I deserve. It’s not you. So thank you,” Kira said, storming off, leaving him standing starkly in the doorway.
Part 3: The Sea
"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."
- Maya Angelou
Chapter Twenty-Two
The ride back to the coast was quiet, everyone still under the enchantment of the Karoo. The return stay at the resort involved surfing in the morning, with optional afternoon activities including a trip to another surf break, a tour of several nearby towns and beaches, and a daytrip to Cape Town to ascend Table Mountain by cable car. Although Kira truly wanted to see the nearby sites, she was ambivalent about spending a day in Jamie’s presence.
Getting back in the water on her board felt like taking a shower after one of the weeklong camping trips of her youth. The refreshing combination of the drum circle and the ocean washed away the residue of feelings for Jamie. He displayed a certain caution around Kira as if she were one of the mysterious, yet dangerous leopards they glimpsed at the reserve.
The group visited a new surf break, and Kira caught more waves than she missed. Far across the Atlantic, Ian’s voice echoed instruction as she popped up, her rented board coasting through the water. Kira felt independent, yet very much part of something far bigger than her microscopic speck that dotted the vast water’s surface. Ocean size.
That night, Kira, Baker, Emanuela, and the newlyweds met up to go to a club the girls heard about. They hired a couple cabs that brought them along the wind-brushed coast to Jeffreys Bay where the backpacking crowd and young surfers made for a livelier atmosphere than the sleepy resort area.
The group entered a dimly lit bar with a cover band playing on a small stage in the back. The room was half-full, but after Kira had downed her first mojito, the revelers doubled. Groups and pairs made their way toward the stage to dance.
The three girls broke off with a few young men and dirty danced with drinks in hand, gyrating in the crowd. Emanuela, ready to get her groove on, asked Baker onto the dance floor. Meanwhile, the honeymooners disappeared to the bathroom. Kira sat, alone, working on her second drink, when a guy with white-blond hair, held back by black sunglasses, approached her.
“What’s a pretty girl like you sitting here all alone with a nearly empty drink?” he asked boldly.
“I’m in mourning,” she said dismissively. The setting brought her mood down, feeling alien amidst the loud music, flashing lights, and drunken laughter. Melancholy was more familiar and the alcohol tricked her into thinking it was preferred. Despite the peace of the drum circle and the clarity after her confrontation with Jamie, she couldn’t find her footing.
Shortly after, the honeymooners, rosy cheeked, swept past her, and into the crowd. A surfer dude, small, wiry, with a shaved head approached Kira, and asked if she wanted to dance, but yet again, she declined. She ordered another drink and made her way to the dance floor, turning down several more offers.
“Right now, I’d rather dance with myself and trust, me, you’re better off that way,” she said to an eager guy who looked like he’d just graduated high school. Finishing her third mojito, Kira popped a groove, like she hadn’t done since her sorority days. She let loose, forgetting sadness, loss, and everything else as she sang along to songs she didn’t realize she knew. All the while, her arms and legs, hips and head, moved in time to the music.
Beyond buzzed, Baker and Emanuela corralled her into a cab after midnight. Once back at the resort, Emanuela offered to walk her to her room.
“I’m going to go listen to the waves,” Kira said angli
ng toward the beach.
“Promise not to go in,” Emanuela called after her, amiably linking her arm in Baker’s.
Kira shuffled down to the water’s edge and plopped into the sand, the waves eventually drowning the pumping music from the club that still played in her ears. She leaned back, the sand’s cool texture bringing her relief from tension and sweat. She lay there nodding off, thoughts of Jeremy, Jamie, and Ian swirling nonsensically in her mind until water tickled her toes as the tide came in. Reluctantly, she returned to her room and passed out.
Despite Jamie and a hangover, on the second day she signed up for the trip to Cape Town, unsure when in her life she’d ever make it to Africa again. First, they stopped at a marine park, where boardwalk paths brought the group through a coastal forest that opened to beautiful corduroy dunes speckled with succulent plant life. In the bay, the group spotted seals, leatherback turtles, and penguins.
Jamie’s booming voice, though well meaning, distracted Kira from enjoying the surroundings. By now, the college threesome hung on his every word. He didn’t hold back enjoying their attention, having discarded the guise that he was “working.”
“What you see here is the Jackass Penguin,” he said meaning to conjure a chuckle, but Kira doubled over and nearly rolled on the ground she laughed so hard. Perhaps out of context her laughter was inappropriate, but Jamie was the jackass. It struck her as hilarious. She calmed down after Nigel looked at her with concern.
Once Kira reached the top of Table Mountain, she took in a 360-degree view of mountains, the ocean, and the city. Her attitude shifted at the sight of the expanse. Jamie blustered on about points of interest, but in that grandeur, where ocean met sky and sandstone, she viewed him differently. He was no longer a hot body she wanted to sleep with, not a handsome face whose attention she wanted, not a man with an alluring accent, and not a jackass either, well, maybe just a little. He was just a person trying to make it in the world the best way he knew how. He and Kira were a flash of passion, but no substance, and she was okay with that. That kind of untroubled and wild energy brought her back to life. He wasn’t a bad person; his judgment was off, but he wasn’t the second coming of Jeremy either, as she’d feared. She’d made her own error in judgment as her stories overlapped and scrambled. If it were not for Jamie, she wouldn’t be in Africa, and she couldn’t think of a place she’d rather be.
Emanuela sidled up to her. “I can see what you’re looking at, but what are you thinking?” Kira let out a little laugh.
“Was it that obvious that I was deep in thought?”
“You’ve been deep in thought for a week now.” Emanuela smiled knowingly. “Maybe not last night, but we all need time off now and then.”
Kira paused before answering as she measured how much she wanted to share with Emanuela.
“This trip for me was a spur of the moment decision, but one of the best I’ve ever made. Maybe the only one I’ve ever made, I am after all, or at least I thought I was, a ‘planner.’ You know the date book, the PDA, the iPad. In fact, I was supposed to go to France, a trip I’d been prepping for nearly a year. I had the hotels selected, restaurants reviewed, every moment of the stay accounted for, but instead I flew by the seat of my pants and ended up here.”
“And—” she said, encouraging Kira to go on.
“And I feel like the unexpected has helped me remember parts of myself that I’d forgotten, and I’ve learned new things about who I am. The girl I was last year wouldn’t recognize me.”
Emanuela smiled widely at Kira, her chandelier earrings tinkling like tiny bells. Emanuela placed her arm around Kira’s shoulders, as the two women looked out across the vista.
“Sometimes we find our selves in the most unexpected places,” she said meaningfully.
After that, Kira toured some of the paths all those meters above sea level. Her mind quiet to thoughts and revelation, she simply observed the way the wind licked a sturdy protea plant, the golden glory of fynbos growing in clusters, and a dassie sunbathing on a rock.
Although Kira captured her amazing surroundings with her camera, and thrilled at the idea of looking at the world through her own lens once again, she was ready to get back in the water. The ocean below called up to her with its deep, blue sheet of rolling movement, of potential, and promise of independence.
Kira spent the last day of the tour almost entirely in the water. She took a morning lesson with an instructor who’d surfed the coast for over twenty years. Then Emanuela, a few of the other guests, and Kira all surfed together—party wave style. They laughed and splashed, and Kira recalled the last time she’d had that much fun was out with Ian. She pictured his warm smiling face, his rarely shaved scruff with dimples hidden beneath, and the ease with which he moved from land to sea.
When the time came to go in and change for the tour of some of the local villages, Kira opted to stay, one foot in the water and one in the sand. She lounged on a chaise, had lunch brought out to her, surfed, sunned, and then surfed some more. The beach was hers with the exception of a few passersby walking their dogs along with the scavenging seagulls. She didn’t feel in danger of crumbling and falling to pieces, she didn’t feel lonely or lost. Kira wasn’t weepy. This was a major accomplishment. She felt like herself: whole, strong, and solid.
After catching great waves, Kira sat on her board, just before her last ride in. The setting sun sparkled like glittering diamonds on the water’s surface. She let out a deep breath.Then something moved underwater, a distance away, something big. A fin emerged. Kira stopped breathing. She started to paddle, smoothly, toward the shore, hoping a wave would hurry her progress. She looked over her shoulder in a panic. Then to her relief, a pod of dolphins surfaced. In bursts, they leapt through the waves with arched and glistening beauty. Breathing again, Kira stopped and watched, feeling safe and protected.
That evening, all the guests gathered for a final celebration dinner. One of the college girls also had a birthday and Kira imagined Jamie offering to give the cute girl a special present. Maybe a kiss, maybe more, she thought darkly. When everyone settled, he stood to give a toast.
“Thank you all for joining me on this adventure. It’s been quite the experience, and I gather you have all enjoyed yourselves. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you all.” His eyes lingered on Kira for a moment.
She would not let him lure her to the suite.
“I hope we cross paths again. I lead several tours a year, next stop, my home, Australia, and then Hawaii. I’ll be back in the states for a while after that.” He paused and raised his glass. “In Zulu the word for both cheers and thanks is Akybekuhle. So Akybekuhle to all of you.”
Glasses clinked and chatter resumed as the resort kitchen served another amazing, yet healthy meal. Surprisingly reserved, Jamie remained relatively quiet, maybe coming down from the high of being the guide, always being on, or maybe one of the girls, perhaps all three of them, tired him out. Kira tasted bitterness and it wasn’t the arugula in the salad. She tried to recall the peace she’d periodically felt during the trip, but seated just a few places down from Jamie blistered her with agitation. She reasoned that she needed closure. Nicole had been right, even though meeting all those women Jeremy had courted was brutal, in many ways it provided her with a sense of finality. Then again, she probably wouldn’t see Jamie after the trip.
Nonetheless, Kira went to the lobby desk and arranged for a taxi to bring her to the airport first thing the next morning. Originally, she and Jamie planned to ride back together in a rental, but several hours in a car together would be as pleasant as the mosquitos that feasted on her during the hike the week before. She and Jamie also had adjacent seats on the plane ride back and she hoped to spare them both the discomfort of the long return trip by arriving early at the airport to get their seating arrangements changed.
After a lingering farewell to all the guests, Kira retired to her deluxe room and sank back on the bed. To minimize the jet lag on the return home, she starte
d to get ready for an early night, but the crashing waves outside the French doors called to her with the invitation to wash away any lingering doubt.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kira padded out to the deck adjacent to her room. She watched the white crests of the waves, bright in the moonlight, crashing against invisible rocks hidden in the darkness on the shore. Shortly after, someone knocked on the door. Kira went to check in case it had to do with her departure.
Jamie filled the doorway, his head resting heavily on the frame. Despite logic, Kira’s stomach flitted with a vision of him shirtless and pulling Kira to him. But her frustration and disappointment with him quickly squashed the fantasy.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hi,” Kira replied, not letting him in the suite.
“I want to talk. Really. Just talk.”
Taken aback, Kira relented and let him enter, but led him through to the deck—a neutral playing field, if they were just going to talk. No bedroom temptations or suggestions; knowing him that was what he’d come for. They sat on the polished teak chairs with Jamie breaking the awkward silence.
“Listen, I’d like to brush off the thing—back in the Karoo—and say I didn’t mean to hurt you. Or that it hadn’t occurred to me that if I slept with Amanda you’d get upset. But it did cross my mind, and I’m sorry to say that the decision to do what was right didn’t win against my desires.”
Kira silently commended him for having at least a little depth in the shallows of his male libido. But she still simmered.
“I’m the guy that doesn’t stay in one place for more than a few weeks. Who blows in on a wave, has a good time, and then I'm gone. No consequences, no messes to clean up, no commitments. That’s what works for me. Or in this case doesn’t work,” he said ruefully.
To the Sea (Follow your Bliss) Page 16
