The Red Bikini

by Lauren Christopher

  “Why not?” The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. Belated, she brushed her fingertips over her lips.

  Fin laughed and gave her an embarrassed glance from under his bangs. “I’m flattered, Ms. Underwood.”

  An automated voice floated toward them—with words Giselle couldn’t quite understand through the pounding of her heart—and Fin turned toward the restaurant.

  “That’s us. Think we can make it through this dinner?” He gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m going to have to stop picturing you out of that dress, and you’re going to have to try not to blush to death.”

  Giselle gave a weak nod and followed Fin inside.

  • • •

  The sun fell into the water just as they were being seated, throwing its last burst of orange through the tiny dining room. The room was designed like a ship’s hull, with small dark-wood tables and brass handrails. Outside the tinted windows, a wraparound balcony hosted white tables and chairs underneath bright blue umbrellas that almost touched one another. As the sky shifted from orange to lavender, waiters in shorts and sweatshirts hustled to take down the umbrellas, and heat lamps began their low burn.

  The waiter sat Giselle and Fin at an impossibly small table right next to the window. Giselle was able to face the sunset and see the silhouettes of couples who’d taken places along the pier rail, huddling close in romantic poses. She watched one couple kiss, then dropped her gaze and pulled in her chair.

  Fin studied the menu in silence. She forced herself to focus on her own, and tried to tamp down her nervousness. Had Fin just said he was picturing her naked? She couldn’t quite connect the pounding of her heart with how much air she needed, or connect the words she’d just heard with her own reality. She tried to keep her menu from shaking.

  “. . . drink?” she heard.

  She snapped her head up.

  “Um . . . iced tea,” she stammered to the waitress.

  “Water for me,” Fin said.

  When the sweatshirt-clad waitress left, Giselle wanted to go back to taking surreptitious glances at Fin, but he’d set his menu down. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking as she tried to comprehend the menu selections.

  “I don’t know what to get . . .” she said.

  “Take your time.”

  How can I read with you staring at me like that? And after you just told me you’re picturing me out of my dress? She squirmed a bit in her chair, and had to rest her menu on the edge of the table to keep it from vibrating.

  “What are you getting?” she finally asked.

  “Fish tacos.”

  “I’ll get that.” She set the menu down and searched desperately for her iced tea. . . . Or water . . . Water would do. . . .

  “So have I made this unbearably uncomfortable for you?” Fin asked.

  A waiter came by and thrust his arm between them to light the tiny candle on the table. They waited an excruciatingly long time until the young man moved out of the way; then Fin leaned closer, the flickering candle illuminating his jaw. “You said to blurt out what I was thinking, but I’m not sure you were really ready for that.”

  “It’s okay. I thought . . . something different. So I’m glad you . . .” Her cheeks were on fire. “I’m glad you said those . . . nice things.”

  “Did they sound nice?” He raised an eyebrow. “I must not have expressed myself correctly.”

  “I just mean—”

  “I know, Giselle.”

  The candle illuminated the sharp planes of his cheekbones, the darkening edges of the bandage on his nose, and then a strange sadness in his eyes. . . .

  The waitress brought their drinks on small cocktail napkins, and Giselle went about the business of sweetening her iced tea with exactly two tiny shakes of Splenda. She wasn’t used to Fin’s direct compliments, wasn’t used to the sultry stares he was shooting her way, and certainly wasn’t used to being within touching distance of a man who had just admitted he was picturing her naked. Especially a man who could make her heart pound like this. She folded her yellow packet into neat rows and tucked it under her bread plate.

  “I’m not clear on why you haven’t mentioned any of these things, if they’re true,” she said.

  “If they’re true? You still don’t believe me?” He shifted in his seat and seemed to be thinking over how to phrase the next thing he wanted to say. He gave up when the waitress came to take their order.

  After she left, he leaned forward again. “The reason I keep my thoughts in check around you is because of Lia.”

  Lia? Giselle had to throw her train of thought into a U-turn. She couldn’t imagine how Lia had entered this scenario—this stunning scenario that had Giselle fast-forwarding to how she could get herself wrapped, naked, into those arms of his.

  When her voice came back, she shook her head. “What does Lia have . . . ?” But then a thought hit her. “Oh Fin, you said you and Lia weren’t—”

  “No.” He held up his hand. “No, no, no. We are not seeing each other and never have. I’m just saying she wouldn’t approve of . . . of me, probably. And my thoughts. And what I want to do with you.”

  Giselle took a long gulp of water. It took her a minute and a long, deep breath to ask the next question. “And what would that be?” she squeaked.

  Fin shook his head. “Let’s keep those thoughts in check, okay?”

  Giselle’s heart began pounding again in her chest. “Maybe Lia doesn’t know what I want,” she said in a voice that came out as a whisper.

  Fin cocked an eyebrow.

  She was on the verge of doing something she’d never done before: stating what she wanted and going after it. She wanted Fin on her summer vacation. That was what she wanted.

  Despite what Lia wanted for her, or what her Indiana mom friends might think of her, or what her mother or Noelle might expect of her, or what Roy thought she should do—she wanted to go out, for the short time she was here, with this sexy twenty-eight-year-old. She wanted him to kiss her like he did in that parking lot, and have his gaze hang up at her breasts like it did earlier this evening, and wanted him to take her in with his dilated navy eyes, the way he was doing right now. Even if it was only for two weeks. Or maybe just a few days, since that was when Coco would be back.

  And she wanted to have sex with him.

  That last thought almost caused her to knock the sugar holder over. She’d never admitted anything like that to herself—having been the perfect girlfriend, then the perfect wife and perfect mother for so long, she’d never allowed herself to think about sex with anyone but Roy. But yes—she wanted to have sex with an almost-stranger.

  She glanced at his tanned hands, which lay languidly on the dark-wood table, and thought about how they would feel running down her naked hip. . . . She took a gulp of air and hoped Fin couldn’t tell that her heart was nearly pounding out of her chest.

  “This sounds dangerous, Giselle,” he said, low.

  She moved her silverware around while she garnered the nerve to tell him what she wanted. Now that she knew, the next step was saying it.

  “Lia thinks she knows what I want. She—and everyone, really; my mom and Noelle and my friends—they all seem to know what I ‘need’ these days. They tell me I need to rekindle a career; I need to move back out here to California; I need to meet a nice new man; I need a more involved father for Coco. . . .” Her mouth went dry, and she took a long sip of iced tea. “But I’m so tired of everyone else telling me what I need, or what I should do. They don’t know what I need.” She let out a long breath. It felt good to say that part out loud. She hadn’t been able to share that with anyone. It felt like a yoke had been lifted off her shoulders.

  Fin was nodding, turning his water glass between his palms. “Are they wrong?”

  It wasn’t a challenge. It wasn’t a criticism. It was pure, unadulterated int
erest. It had been so long since anyone had asked her such a question, asked what she really needed, or what she wanted—maybe even dating back to high school, or college, when she was first mapping out her adult life—that she didn’t even know how to answer. She met the ocean blue of his eyes, filled with actual concern, and felt a flutter deep in her stomach.

  “There are differences between needs and wants,” she said.

  Fin gave her a sad smile. “And I’ll bet you go after the needs, but ignore the wants.”

  She shrugged. She supposed that was true. But that was the responsible way to live, right?

  He moved the candle to the side. “I think I’m interested in hearing your wants right now,” he said in a voice that went suddenly husky.

  Giselle took a deep breath and thought about this for a second. She wanted Fin. Right now. But she also wanted, maybe, someday, to get married again. And those two things weren’t on the same brass ring.

  “Long-term or short-term?” she asked.

  He gave her a long, slow smile. “Long-term. But I might be interested in your short-term answer, too.”

  “You might be involved in the short-term answer.” As soon as the words left her lips, she marveled at them. She couldn’t remember ever saying anything so direct, so flirtatious, and here she was, saying them to this man who made her hands shake. And her hand didn’t even flutter to cover her mouth. And the world didn’t fall apart. In fact, the world seemed to open up. He moved back a fraction of an inch and eyed her with what looked like playfulness. She felt a huge surge of . . . relief, strangely. Relief that this blunt directness felt so good. Emboldened, she sat up in her chair.

  But the playfulness she’d seen flash in Fin’s eyes turned to sadness. He twisted his water glass. “Unfortunately, I might need the long-term answer first,” he said.

  The waitress arrived with their dinners, and he leaned back to let her place their plates in front of them. They each had two enormous fish tacos, wrapped in paper cones, with cabbage and tomatoes spilling out onto the plate. Red, white, and blue tortilla chips covered the other side, presumably as part of the upcoming Independence Day celebration.

  “Are you Fin Hensen?” the waitress asked, as she let go of his plate.

  He gave a brief nod.

  “Oh, wow. Could you sign something for me?” She searched her waist apron.

  “No problem, but I’m on . . .” He glanced at Giselle. “I’m on a date right now. How about if we do this after?”

  “Oh, yeah, absolutely.” She looked at Giselle. “Absolutely. When I bring the check.” She flashed a huge set of teeth at Fin.

  Once she left, Giselle smiled. “So we’re on a date now?”

  Fin was already scanning his plate for the best place to dig in to his meal. “It sometimes keeps another ten people from funneling past our table.”

  “Ah.”

  Although she knew he threw the word in there as a ploy, she still felt a vague comfort in the fact that he wasn’t embarrassed to call her a date. Especially to a pretty young waitress he could’ve snagged instead. Her confidence went up another notch, and she tucked her hair behind her ear.

  “Do you date much?” she asked.

  “Probably not your definition of ‘date.’”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t date one person with the idea they’ll be in my future. Sharing my life with someone isn’t in the cards for me. I ask women out to have sex.”

  Giselle blinked against the assault of honesty and reached for her tea.

  “Sorry,” he said, low. “Sad but true.”

  “Why do you assume sharing your life with someone isn’t in the cards for you?”

  “I travel forty weeks out of the year, Giselle. I can’t even own a turtle, let alone have a girlfriend. It’s easier to just live a week at a time, with no responsibilities. That’s sad but true also.” He threw her a smile to try to make the comment ironic, but somehow too much sadness remained in his eyes.

  “Do you like surfing, then, because it’s so independent? You like living life alone, on your own terms?”

  He thought that over. “No. I love surfing because it’s . . . surfing.” The word held a sort of breathless wonder the way he said it.

  She couldn’t imagine loving something that much, except Coco. She followed his gaze toward the ocean and wondered what it felt like, what could be the pull for so many people like Fin and Rabbit and Kino and the others. “What’s it like?”

  He shifted and picked up his water glass. “Maybe you can try it while you’re here.”

  “No.”

  “Rabbit’s a pretty good teacher, and so am I. We’ve got several boards between us—he can even let you try on one of the kids’ foam boards.”

  “No!”

  He stared at her over the rim of his glass. “That was emphatic.”

  “Yes, I’m very emphatic about that. But tell me: What’s it like? Is it like sex?”

  She didn’t know what made her blurt that out—it was either his openness earlier, or his sexy eyes half-lidded over this flickering candle, or something, but she let it escape her lips before she could recapture it.

  His face registered surprise before dissolving into an I-was-just-discovered kind of grin. “There is an element of that, yes.”

  “Ah, so did I just stumble upon the massive surfer secret? The thing that makes legions of twenty-year-olds go out and chase the surf?”

  He laughed. “You might have. There are some comparisons.”

  “So tell me.”

  He sighed and looked around the room, but then shook his head. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  He took another bite of his taco while he thought that over—maybe deciding how much he wanted to say.

  “There is a kind of high to it. A ‘stoke.’ If all the conditions are exactly right—the wind is right, the wave is right, you’re the right one in the lineup to catch it, you chose the right board that day—if all that is ideal, sometimes you’re rewarded with an incredible ride. You have to be subservient to Mother Nature, though, which is unlike other sports. But when Mother Nature delivers you that perfect rise, you know it. You see the rise, and you know it’s got some face, and you get in there, and you hear that whoosh of wind right up the wall of the wave, and your board catches, and you find that hollow and start to fly. And the rest of the world falls away. It’s just you, and the ride, and the massive ocean, and nothing else.”

  Giselle’s face went hot. It did sound a little like sex. Although not the kind of sex she’d had in a long time.

  She cleared her throat. “So that’s what surfers chase? The perfect wave?”

  “Well, the perfect moments. There’s not just one. You can have lots of them. Surfers will give up careers, relationships, homes, jobs, just to spend their days chasing those moments. One good stoke can last you a long time. You can mind-surf it for days.”

  “Mind-surf it?”

  “Relive it in your mind.”

  “But then you’ll chase the next one,” she said.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, almost sad. “Yeah, there’s always a next one.”

  They both ate in silence for a moment.

  “I don’t know how the hell you get me to talk so much, Giselle.” He laughed and dipped his chips in the salsa. “But now we’re going to talk about you—spill it. Long-term wants and short-term. Long-term first.”

  “Why do you want long-term first?”

  His eyes lifted up toward her without moving his head. “Depending on your answer there, I might not be able to hear the short-term.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As enjoyable as I think your short-term wants might be—and as much as I’d like to help you out there—I’m guessing your long-term answer involves some of those things your s
ister wants for you—a nice, stable guy; maybe marriage again; maybe a father for Coco; at the very least, maybe a guy who can take you out for dinner without wanting to get you into bed before dessert. And I can’t give you any of those things. Which is why Lia would be pissed that you were spending time with me instead of going on your date with Dan Manfield.”

  Giselle caught her breath at his brutal directness and took another sip of tea to cool herself. “Maybe Lia’s not paying attention to what I want short-term.”

  “I’m sure it’s because she cares about you, and doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

  Giselle eyed her plate. Despite the fact that Fin was turning her down for things she wasn’t even admitting to him, maybe he was right. Maybe Lia wasn’t trying to be pitying, or overbearing. Maybe her mom and Noelle weren’t trying to direct her life or save her from “ruin.” Maybe they all just cared about her, and their advice was meant to help, not to take over because they thought she was incompetent.

  She picked up a red chip and nibbled on it. “I don’t think you would hurt me.”

  Fin froze. Without taking his eyes off hers, his throat worked a few times. It felt like an eternity before he spoke. “I’m trying not to,” he said, his voice a rasp.

  “Everything okay here?” the waitress interrupted in a much-too-chirpy tone.

  Fin cleared his throat and nodded without looking up at her.

  Giselle nodded her own agreement until the waitress went away, and then moved some food around on her plate. She wanted to spend more time with him—and would love to go to his event the next night instead of going out with Dan Manfield—but he was clearly not going to go there. The fact that he was citing Lia as the main obstacle seemed a little silly but, at the same time, his love and respect for Lia filled her with warmth. It was such a contrast to what she’d been dealing with for the last ten years with Roy, who couldn’t stand her sisters. And she couldn’t begrudge Fin the attempt to act with what he thought of as honor.