Since then—since the floor had fallen out from underneath her—she had never managed to put all the pieces back together. He had run away. Their accounts had closed. He hadn’t explained. He never returned her calls, only texted her from time to time so they could set up a visit with Coco, which they handled by switching pickups after school. She was served divorce papers in front of the grocery store about four weeks later.
Giselle turned her head on the pillow and studied Coco. She was so bold, so carefree. Giselle wanted, more than anything, for Coco to regain her life. She had been such a trouper with all the Roy hoopla: Her little life was turning upside down, and she rarely cried or complained. She asked for her dad from time to time, but when Giselle said he wouldn’t be returning for a while, Coco simply shrugged. She’d been without him enough evenings in her five years to not have it make much difference. In the meantime, Giselle tried to do normal things as often as possible—serve fish sticks on Fridays, get ice cream after kindergarten on the last day of every month, and play at the park on Saturday mornings.
And this getaway, by token of being a getaway, was Giselle’s chance to welcome new traditions. It was time to start their new life together, just them.
But now—with this funeral invite—Roy was going to send her two steps back again.
Coco’s eyes fluttered open, and her lips curled into a sleepy smile. “Hi, Mommy.”
“Hi, baby.”
“Why are you looking at me?”
“I’m looking at how wonderful you are.”
“You can see that?”
“Mommies can always see that.”
Coco unfurled her body into a long cat’s stretch. She kicked off the covers and stretched as far as she could, then snapped back into a coil on her side and faced Giselle over her pillow.
“What’s a fish with no eyes?”
Giselle frowned. “Is this a joke, or do you mean seriously?”
“It’s a joke.”
“Hmmm . . . a fish with no eyes . . . I give up.”
“A fsh.” Coco laughed and threw her legs over the side of the bed. “Can we go down to the water this morning?”
Giselle smiled. “Let’s eat breakfast first.”
They ate plain Eggo waffles from Lia’s freezer while Giselle made a list of groceries they’d need, with a little help from Coco, who quietly suggested hot dogs and fruit roll-ups. Giselle crinkled her nose. But then, at Coco’s hopeful eyes, she stopped. A new life. New traditions. She wrote “fruit roll-ups” next to the apples and grapes, and Coco touched her lips and giggled.
They wandered through the corner beach market in sun hats and flip-flops, dropping obnoxiously colored prepackaged items in the basket along with Giselle’s fresh fruit. As Giselle stood in front of a display of apples, she thought about how similar and different the experience was at the same time: This was Lia’s market, next to the ocean, so different from hers, and yet the Lean Cuisines were still next to the Smart Ones; the Jif still next to the Skippy. Same. But different. It brought her an odd comfort.
“You girls visiting?” asked the elderly lady at the checkout line. She smiled at Coco, whose white-blond waves were barely contained in the narrow braids that bobbed just below her shoulders. Giselle had plaited them while Coco sat in the middle of the surfboard this morning.
Giselle nodded as a rack across the aisle caught her eye.
Hair color. Every color imaginable. She darted across the line and grabbed the first that called to her. Although she’d always been a blonde, the color she held was an intriguing reddish tone. Strawberry, it said.
“And this.”
The woman added it to the bag. “You girls have a wonderful time,” she said, throwing the color into a bag. “Do you need help to your car?”
“No, thanks,” said Giselle.
They were, she decided, fine on their own.
• • •
The surf grew louder as Giselle and Coco trekked the few blocks to the ocean. She’d left half the groceries on the kitchen counter—she wanted to mimic Coco’s spontaneity, rushing back through the door with only a clear mind and a beach towel—but now she couldn’t stop making a mental list of what had been left on the countertop. She didn’t leave the frozen strawberries out, did she?
“Mommy, look!” Coco pointed to a caged iguana on a tortilla-colored patio. The home had a Spanish-tile red roof. Hot-pink bougainvillea exploded along one side.
Giselle stepped closer to the waist-high wrought-iron gate and peered over it with Coco, smiling at the funny pet. They decided his name should be Iggy.
Giselle had walked these same sidewalks in Sandy Cove about six years ago, visiting when Lia had first moved in. They had strolled next to these same stucco homes—each a paler shade of sand than the last, with low-walled patios lined with potted succulents. Iron lounge chairs, padded with striped-green cushions fading from the sun and salt, still lay in wait for their owners. Giselle had been about eight months pregnant with Coco then. Rabbit and the boys were probably still living with their parents. Roy was still kind. And the world seemed like it was a flower waiting to unfurl.
She took a deep breath and fought back the heavy pang in her chest. Her sisters had been right about Roy. It was terrible that she’d let him isolate her. Roy had never “approved” of them, and she’d let herself become more and more pulled away, wanting to please this man she’d so admired. He rolled his eyes when Giselle mentioned Lia—saying her independent ways were never going to win her a husband—and spoke with disdain whenever Noelle’s name came up—a “girl with her head in the clouds.” Then he’d grab Giselle and tell her that he would never be able to stand the idea of “those girls” rubbing off on her. Soon, Giselle began to see the pattern of conversations about her sisters being followed by Roy being particularly paranoid, then demanding, in bed—ordering her clothes off, with a resentful, irritated bark, and throwing a certain aggression into sex that made Giselle’s teeth grind. Over the years, she found it simply easier not to talk about them. And certainly not to visit them. It was just one more thing she’d grown to resent.
Coco sank her bare toes in the sand, and they weaved their way past a quilt of colorful beach towels to find a spot near the water. Giselle tilted her head back to the late-day sun, letting it warm her until it reached all the way down to a calming spot in her chest. She sprayed sunblock all over Coco, plus on the few patches of skin she herself revealed—her wrists and ankles—then let Coco make elaborate sand castles near the water.
“You know who lives here?” Coco asked Giselle, pointing at her largest castle. She had just trudged back up from the water’s edge for the millionth time with another pail full of sandy, murky water. The sun was sitting low on the horizon.
“Who?” said Giselle.
“Me.” She readied her pail with both hands to pour into the moat she’d created around the sand mansion. “And you. And Iggy. And a prince.”
“A prince?”
She nodded solemnly. “For you.”
Coco poured the water into the moat and sat back on her haunches, the sand granules sticking to her legs in circular patterns, while the water swirled briefly, then disappeared into the sand.
“Oh.” The wind swept the tendrils of yellow hair around her ears while she put together what just happened. “I guess we need soldiers.” She scrambled to her feet and ran back to the foamy surf to look for pebbles and shells, which she collected the rest of the afternoon. She spent the good part of the next few hours making sure they all had a specific place to stand guard.
• • •
A knock sounded on the front door as Giselle lined the fish sticks along the cookie sheet. The sun cast a golden glow through the curtains.
She padded across the floor in her bare feet, pulling her cover-up tighter, and flung open the door.
“Heeeeey,” Rabbit drawled.
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Giselle smiled. She liked Rabbit.
Coco ran up from behind and peeked her head around the door.
“I came to ask you two about a party tonight,” he said.
“Oh, no, thanks, Rabbit.”
“It’ll be fun.”
“No, thanks.”
“You have something against having fun?”
“Of course not. It’s just . . . not my thing. . . .”
He smirked. “Fun is not your thing?”
“Parties are not my thing.”
A flash of honesty went through her mind, though, of the multitude of charity balls and hospital events she’d attended over the years for Roy, and she felt a pang of guilt for lying. She’d been attending parties for Roy’s medical colleagues for years, signing up for committees, standing around in floor-length gowns, doing him proud. “Beach parties are not my thing,” she amended.
“You have a lot of beach parties in Indiana?” Rabbit said, smiling.
“I just don’t—” She began to explain, but then stopped. She was tired of defending herself. She motioned toward the kitchen. “I’m putting fish sticks on.”
“Weeeell . . .” Rabbit followed her into the kitchen and glanced over her shoulder at her baking tray. “I’m pretty sure there’ll be something better than fish sticks there.”
“I have Coco.”
“There’ll be lots of kids.” He took a frozen fish stick off the tray and tried to bite into it.
She glanced at Coco. Rabbit had already found her weak spot.
Lia, too, had mentioned in her phone message earlier that Giselle should go out and have fun. Giselle had been so happy to hear from her—when she’d called back and gotten voice mail, she’d almost asked about Fin—Have you seen this guy? Do you know who he is?—but then she chickened out, embarrassed to ask such a thing of her younger sister, who was trying to set her up with a stable real estate investor. Instead, she left a message about Rabbit and how nice he’d been.
Rabbit waved a fish stick. “This is terrible. C’mon.”
Giselle felt something inside her give up. Maybe this was the reason Roy left her—maybe she was too cautious, too closed off. Maybe she was going to end up being some old lady, with just Coco and Iggy and some cats. Until Coco left her, too. And then it would just be Giselle. And the iguana. The crazy lady on the hill.
She turned off the oven and put the fish sticks back in the freezer like some sort of wild woman.
“Let’s go.”
CHAPTER
Three
Leaning forward to peer out the windshield of her rental car, Giselle followed Rabbit’s beat-up Volkswagen through the weathered streets of Sandy Cove.
The isolated town bore little resemblance to the flashier beach towns farther north, which she’d visited often when she stayed with her mom. Her mom and younger sisters had eventually made their home in Los Angeles shortly after her parents’ divorce, but Giselle had started college that year and fled back to Indiana, happy to be near her father. She hadn’t liked L.A. much: It was too pretentious, too much of a show-off. But Sandy Cove, farther south, was different. Weatherworn, with cliffs and hillsides setting it apart and an “Old California” vibe that was ceaselessly forgiving, the little town seemed made for people who wanted to hide.
Coco pointed to a bulletlike train that glinted in the sun, passing through. Giselle crossed the tracks and parked behind a community of narrow, aluminum-sided homes, laid along the sand like piano keys. The bases of the homes were permanent—some with Polynesian-style lava rocks, some with stacked stone. The entire community had a 1950s ambiance—the rental office was flanked by retro tiki torches and miniature palm trees, and many of the homes still had green-turf balconies and Plexiglas-panel windbreaks standing at attention against the ocean. It looked like a community that time forgot.
The party house boasted the same retro feel, but with an updated, million-dollar face-lift. A slate walkway led to a bright white door, and a vintage Sputnik-styled lantern hung in the doorway.
Giselle, Rabbit, and Coco stepped into a small, open living area. Dark wooden floors and wainscoting showed off sleek, masculine furniture. Eight-foot walls of glass showcased a long stretch of ocean and horizon, all the way north and south. The house perched right above the sand, only about twenty feet from the water, but elevated by a wall of rocks. A set of nautical-roped stairs zigzagged to the sand, where several children played. A second patio held a cluster of adults, who sipped colorful stemmed drinks and complimented one another’s bright tropical dresses and shirts over the steel-drum tunes that came from a live four-piece band.
Coco spotted a girl about her age sitting in the sand, playing with a bright pink sand bucket off the main-level patio. The girl looked up and asked Coco whether she would like to play.
Giselle wished it were that easy for her. She smoothed her spring sweater and cotton skirt and studied the clusters of absurdly beautiful people.
Rabbit had, as Giselle had feared, slipped away. She took a glass of champagne from a passing tray and wandered toward the patio rail, where she could keep an eye on Coco and her new little friend. The foamy waves of the Pacific rolled up behind the girls, the water glistening like gemstones. Giselle had told Rabbit she’d stay only an hour, but as soon as she saw the view, she decided she might wait until the sun went down. Watching it from here would be magical.
She leaned into the rail, letting the rhythmic roar of the sea envelop her, allowing her shoulders to relax for what felt like the first time in days. She let the seaside serenade lull her.
“You came,” said a man’s voice over her shoulder.
She whirled, then tripped backward to see Fin.
He had clothes on today—a loose-fitting button-down shirt that draped off his shoulders, narrowing at his hips and falling over a pair of dressy shorts. He didn’t have the air of a surfer about him today. He looked like a yachter, perhaps. Or some wealthy woman’s boy toy, with his blond tips and expensive clothes. He was remarkably handsome up close—his face lean at the sides, with lines around his mouth—and he offered her the kind of grin that must stop many a surfer girl’s heart. But the thing that stopped Giselle’s was his eyes. She’d noticed them before, in Rabbit’s apartment, but up this close they were stunning: bright blue, with an outline of navy.
Giselle glanced over his shoulder, almost expecting the wealthy woman he must belong to to materialize behind him.
“Rabbit invited me,” she blurted out.
Fin seemed to find that amusing. He nodded and looked into the tumbler he held with an amber drink. “I’m glad.”
“He said there’d be lots of kids,” she babbled, “and that I could invite my daughter, even though we weren’t going to come. I wasn’t really sure. . . .” She lamely indicated Coco playing in the sand. “I don’t even know whose party this is.”
She was embarrassed she was talking so fast. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had left her so flustered. And this one was so . . . young. Wasn’t he? It was hard to tell. She stole a quick glance at his mouth, at his square jawline. He could’ve been twenty-two or thirty-two, really—he had one of those faces that made it hard to tell. But either way, he was clearly younger than she was. She took a deep breath and decided it was safer to simply not look at him.
Taking a sip of champagne, she kept her eyes on Coco. The flute stem provided a thankful distraction for her hands, and she grasped it tighter, as if she could harness some of the recklessness of her pounding heart—perhaps wrap it neatly around the stem.
The music lulled into a Caribbean-sounding number, and several guests began rolling their hips.
Fin leaned closer. “Can we go somewhere?” he said over the music. He reached toward her lower back, not touching her, but indicating he’d like her to move with him.
Her heart thumped again—flipped, really, righ
t there in her chest—at his ocean eyes and coconut scent. She almost snapped her champagne flute.
“My daughter,” she choked out, indicating Coco. “I need to keep my eye on her.”
“Of course.”
The music grew louder and a young couple in matching red bathing suits did a rumba toward them. Fin smiled to the woman and stepped aside, then directed Giselle’s attention to a spot in the sand just behind Coco.
“How about there?” he said toward her ear.
A cluster of bright white beach chairs occupied the spot he indicated, just out of reach of the lapping foam.
Giselle nodded, her gaze skimming over his forearms—much too thick, too roped, to belong to a boy.
As she surreptitiously extended her inspection to his hands, he reached back to steer her across the patio to the steel-drum beat, turning sideways through several clusters of people. He nodded to several of them.
When they got to the chairs, she positioned herself to make sure she could see Coco, smoothing her skirt with one hand and balancing her champagne in the other. He studied her carefully. The sun was setting behind him, shining through the blond strands of his hair.
“I noticed you at Rabbit’s apartment yesterday,” he said.
The waves cracked, and Fin’s voice drifted on a current of wind. She pulled the comment back, letting it flutter about her, forcing it into her consciousness while she tried to filter it, process it, put it somewhere inside her normal view of herself. She couldn’t, exactly. She nodded, deciding to avoid mentioning that she’d noticed him, too, particularly his bare chest. She was pretty sure gorgeous surfer dudes didn’t care about being noticed by scrapbook moms.
She took another sip of champagne.
“I have this event to go to,” he went on. “It would be a favor.” He took a nervous sip. “I need someone to go with, and when I saw you, I thought you’d be perfect.”
The Red Bikini Page 3
