The Red Bikini

by Lauren Christopher

  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 mi
nutes 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.

  She looked away first, and a comfortable silence swelled. Giselle enjoyed the sound of the water, roaring up and hissing back. A strip of light shimmered against the ripples.

  “Moon is full,” she said.

  He murmured an agreement. “Strawberry Moon.”

  Her eyes widened. “How did you know that?”

  “I study moon and tide charts every day, Giselle. They’re the homepage of my laptop.”

  “But how did you know it was the Strawberry Moon?”

  He frowned. “That, I’m not sure. I learned that at some point—probably one of the Zen surfers.”

  “My dad taught me.”

  “Why does your dad study moons?”

  “He teaches Native American literature. He always said the full moon is the best time for change.”

  He stared at her for a long time; then they listened to four or five good waves. Suddenly, she felt his fingers touch hers on the concrete.

  She jumped, and gasped.

  “That’s the sound I was talking about. The one I’m not supposed to think about anymore.” His body unfolded. “Come with me.”

  He moved through the glass doors, his heels thudding against the hardwood floor, but turned abruptly when he realized she wasn’t following. After hesitating a few seconds, he walked back and held out his hand.

  “I’m not going to jump you, Ms. Underwood. As tempting as that sounds. I just want to show you something.”

  She took his hand uncertainly. He lifted her from the concrete ledge, and she followed him down the hall, past the passed-out Tamara, and into his bedroom.

  CHAPTER

  Seventeen

  Giselle hesitated in the bedroom doorway.

  The room had the same feel as the front of the house—sort of a retro Polynesian look, with dark woods set off by white walls and linens. A bamboo fan hung over the bed, moving ocean air through the room. A desk and dark cabinetry ran the entire length of one wall, and a row of photos ran along the connecting wall—all framed in dark bamboo against the stucco. The photos were black-and-white, of surfers from other eras with their boards, sometimes with vintage cars.

  “Who decorated your house?”

  He found whatever he’d been searching for in a walk-in closet, and emerged with six or seven loose eight-by-tens in his hand. “You can tell I didn’t?”

  “It just seems awfully detailed for a man to do.”

  “Well, you’re right about that. I had a designer do it.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s when the money was rolling in, and my agent suggested it. What do you think?” He surveyed the room himself. “Would it impress someone like you?”

  “What do you mean ‘someone like me’?”

  Fin just smiled. “Here are some photos I wanted to show you. Remember I was talking about the perfect moments? These are some.”

  Giselle remained near the door while they studied the photos. He was the sole surfer in each one and looked spectacular. He pointed out the “corner” of the wave, or where the “wall” was. A few of the photos were close-up, his face fierce and focused. In some, he was crouched so low it was hard to imagine him balanced, coming through a tube of water, right at the camera.

  “That was on the cover of Surfer magazine.” He handed her the next photo, in which he was hanging in the air over a wave, sideways, the board seeming glued to his feet, his tan arm flexed as he gripped the side. The sun glinted off the ocean in diamonds all around him.

  In another, he was doing one of the “soul arches” she’d seen Kino do. His board shorts hung low on his hips, and his body arched back in a work of art.

  “That was in Levanto, Italy, for Longboarder magazine. This one was in Sri Lanka.” He handed her the last one of him doing the soul arch, the water crystalline and blue behind him, the sky a saffron yellow.

  “These are gorgeous,” she said. “I thought you didn’t like to have your photo taken?”

  “I don’t mind having my photo taken doing something real.”

  The whirling of the ceiling fan and the gentle ticking of a clock were the only sounds in the room as she took her time gazing at each of the photos, taking in his handsome face, the sexy flex of his forearms, the muscles in his thighs, the ridges of muscle across his stomach—then marveling that it was all within touching distance right now. Her breath quickened.

  Fin leaned against the desk that ran along the one side of the room, his heavy arms crossed, watching her.

  Giselle didn’t know what to do with his perusal. She shuffled the photos, then glanced around the room. A wall of framed shots caught her eye. “Who are these?”

  Fin’s gaze dragged away from her. “My parents.” He pushed up from the desk. “That’s my mom in a competition she won in the seventies, and that’s my dad, accepting a trophy for the Honolulu competition. This is both of them, in Tahiti.”

  The photos were all black-and-white—perhaps orchestrated by the designer—but Fin’s parents appeared timeless anyway. They looked like teenagers, with a tiny Fin between them—a towheaded, wide-eyed boy sitting in the
crook of his mother’s legs, with her chin on his hair. Giselle couldn’t imagine how a mother could ever leave her child in another country, but in this picture she almost looked like a child herself—nineteen at best.

  “Do you miss them?”

  Fin dropped his gaze. The sound of the clock ticked clearly again into the silence.

  “Coco’s lucky to have you,” he finally said. “You’re a good mother.”

  Tears pricked her eyes at the compliment. It was one she always longed to hear, and coming from the least likely source she could imagine. She searched for something to focus on so he wouldn’t see her tearing up again. She shuffled through the photos and selected the two she liked best. One was the soul arch.

  “Can you scan these for me?”

  Fin frowned. “Why?”

  “So I can remember my week here, with you.”

  He stared at her a long time, not seeming to know how to react to that. He pushed them back toward her. “You can have them.”

  “But these are your perfect moments.”

  “There’ll be more.”

  “Because you’re always looking for the next one.”

  He smirked. “I am.”

  “I’ll scan them and send them back,” she whispered.

  A wild rush of despair swept through her, similar to the art show only more intense, causing her heart to accelerate in an out-of-control way. She hadn’t had an anxiety attack in a long time. She brought her hand to her chest. Usually they came on when she was terrified, like the first week she’d been alone with the newly born Coco. Or the week Roy had left.

  “What’s wrong?” He was trying to duck his head down to see her face.

  “Fin, I—I’m having a great time with you.” Giselle could hear the apology in her voice.

  He laughed with discomfort. “I’m having a great time with you, too, Giselle.” He said it in a polite way, the way you speak to a child.

  She was anxious about missing him. He made her feel accepted in a way she hadn’t felt in years—so unlikely, yet there it was. A twenty-eight-year-old pro surfer in California, making her feel she was good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, and even a good enough mother—when it was all she’d been looking for from everyone she knew all her adult life. When she glanced up, he was frowning in confusion.