by Edie Claire
More pressing on her mind, as she took him out on a driving tour of the city this morning, was how they were going to be together after Fred was born. She had no conscious strategy cooking in her brain… at least not a coherent one. But she had a strong sense that it was terribly, vitally important he get a good impression of her beloved hometown.
“I have a confession to make,” he said lightly.
“Oh?”
“I’ve brought you here under false pretenses. We might not see a whale today.”
Haley threw him a mock glare. “Don’t toy with me, man. You know how much I’m counting on getting waved at again.”
She felt a prickle of remorse when he actually looked guilty. “I know,” he said. “But this is pretty much the worst time of year to take this kind of cruise. The blue whales have left and the grays haven’t come in yet. We might see a stray humpback, or even a minke or a fin if we’re lucky. But for this short a trip, odds are, we won’t.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” Haley said evenly. “Because if we don’t see a whale, I can’t think of a single other reason why I would want to spend two and half hours out on the ocean on such a beautiful day,” she teased. “With you.”
“We’ll probably see dolphins,” he countered, still sounding a tad bit guilty.
Haley groaned and pulled off his sunglasses. “It’s hard enough to tell when you’re serious without these!” she complained, resolving to buy him a more transparent pair as soon as they returned to the pier. It would be fun to spend some money on him. On them. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather spend it on.
It took a full twenty minutes for the boat to chug out of the harbor, dodging myriad other boats and the occasional swimming sea lion. When at last they reached the open ocean, the captain announced that they would be heading toward Catalina Island, and as the boat picked up speed, Haley thrilled again to the movement of the ocean beneath her.
They walked to the rail, and Haley watched Ben’s face intently as a sweeping view of the California coastline developed before them. “Look there,” she said, pointing toward Mount Baldy, which had just the tiniest dusting of white on its tip. “It must have snowed already! Just to remind us of Alaska, I’m sure.”
Ben wrapped his arm loosely around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, but there was a hint of indulgence in the gesture that troubled her. He was enjoying himself, clearly. He just wasn’t enjoying himself quite as much as she wanted him to. She looked out over the stretch of Southern California she had called home for her entire life, and her mind filled with happy memories of days at the beach: both the rare ones when her father had taken time off to spend with his daughters and the more frequent ones when her mother had gone sunbathing while the twins ran around unsupervised. There had been elaborate birthday parties and expensive dresses, dance recitals and dinners on friends’ yachts, dates on Catalina Island and wedding receptions in the Grand Ballroom at the Harborside. She had always counted herself lucky to live here. A place of endless opportunity for both fun and profit, complete with never-ending sunshine and sparkling blue water.
A place which, she refrained from pointing out, hosted whale-watching tours year round.
But as she stood beside Ben now, watching him take in the vista with the wind whipping his ginger hair around the brim of his cap, she couldn’t help but wonder if he saw it differently. She tried to imagine the same view through his eyes, and her smile dampened. There were mountains here, true, but compared to the endless, towering peaks of Alaska, these seemed dry and practically stubby. The entire visible coastline stretching in either direction was jam-packed with buildings clear to the sand. Almost everything in sight besides ocean and sky was manmade and artificial, and the little that wasn’t was uniformly brown.
“Something wrong?” Ben asked, rubbing his hand gently across her back.
Haley shook her head vehemently, then nestled it against his shoulder. They were together now. What else mattered?
The captain picked up his microphone and began a long and somewhat rambling explanation of how unusual it was to find whales this time of year and how fortunate they would all be if he spotted one today. As the boat skipped off at a good pace toward Catalina, he regaled them with stories of other successful hunts, and as Haley watched the little muscles in Ben’s jaw repeatedly pop she finally had to laugh out loud. “You really can’t stand it, can you?” she chuckled. “What exactly is he saying wrong?”
Ben’s eyes rolled. “The man can handle a boat well enough,” he said begrudgingly. “But he doesn’t know jack about the rest of it. Minkes are baleen whales, for God’s sake. They don’t have teeth. And if he’s really gotten this boat to ‘within inches’ of a blue then he should be reported to NOAA and flogged with a swim noodle besides.”
Maybe you should replace him.
Haley stifled the thought. It was too much to hope for. She needed to cut it out.
“Now, here’s what we’ve been waiting for!” Ben said brightly, looking out over the horizon ahead at… nothing. He took her hand and led her down the stairs toward the bow.
“What?” Haley begged. “What do you see?”
“Dolphins,” he said reverently as they settled in along the front rail. “I’m betting quite a few of them. Most likely ‘common dolphins,’ although that name doesn’t do them justice in my opinion.”
Haley still saw nothing, but after a few more moments the captain announced the same thing, and the other passengers settled along the rails around them. “I hope they feel like bow riding,” Haley said hopefully, at last catching sight of a suspicious splash and glint of fin. The water surface ahead was teeming with seabirds, which, she prided herself on knowing, meant they were following a school of fish. “I’ve always loved watching the dolphins,” she called over the wind to Ben’s ear. “Once when I was in high school, a group of us had dinner on somebody’s boat before a formal dance. The others stayed inside, but when the dolphins started jumping I just had to step out. My corsage blew off and I totally ruined my hair, but it was the best part of that date, as I recall.”
Ben’s laughter rumbled in his chest; Haley could feel its pleasant vibration as she leaned into his side. So nice. The luxury of having him physically close, being free to touch and hold him, made her practically euphoric. There were limits, of course. There was a point beyond which they would only be torturing themselves. But compared to when they were just friends, that point had shifted in a very gratifying direction.
The boat drew closer to the pod of dolphins, and just as Haley had hoped, the animals were more than happy to bow ride. The passengers all laughed with delight as the large gray and white mammals not only streaked through the current alongside the front of the boat, but also leapt up into the air behind it from the waves created by its wake. Ben enjoyed the spectacle every bit as much as everyone else, explaining to Haley that only rarely did he get to watch the animals from the bow railing. There were so many dolphins in the area — literally hundreds — that as soon as one group tired of the game another would appear, and time passed swiftly as the boat encountered new pods again and again.
As their allotted cruise time dwindled, the captain headed closer into shore, and Ben and Haley returned to the upper deck. From their new position they could see across the water all the way to the Los Angeles basin, and once again Haley found herself studying Ben’s expression with a combination of hopefulness and apprehension. When she caught sight of the telltale clench in his jaw again, her heart fell. She followed his gaze to see a red-brown cloud of haze adhering to the LA shoreline. Smog.
She cursed internally. Why did it have to look so bad today?
“What kind of dolphins do you see in Maui?” she asked. She knew the question would distract him, and it did. In the next five minutes she learned more about dolphin species in the Hawaiian Islands than most people learned in a lifetime — and, as always, enjoyed herself in the process.
“I want to go to Hawaii again so badly,
” she said wistfully, noting once more how incredibly manmade and built up this part of the coast appeared from the water. She had always thought of Southern California as beautiful, and she still did. But until she spent time in Alaska it had never occurred to her how much differently a place could feel when its landscape was unaltered by development. Alaska had felt wonderfully, fantastically wild. Was that part of what drew Ben back every year, despite the toll on his bank account — and his love life?
“When we went to Honolulu before, we were only ten,” Haley recounted. “And if we went anywhere besides the beach and the hotel, I can’t remember it. All I remember is being babysat by some hotel sitter nearly every evening, and my parents fighting when my dad had to fly back early. My mother had been looking forward to that trip for a long time.”
Unpleasant memories stirred. She and Micah had been angry with their father, too. He frequently promised family vacations that never happened. The few that did all too often ended up like Hawaii. In retrospect, she understood exactly what kind of pressure he had been under. But that didn’t completely take away the sting of his neglect, even now.
I’m going to be a lawyer, just like you, Daddy!
Haley frowned.
“If you never left Waikiki,” Ben said lightly, looking away from her and back out to sea, “You never saw Hawaii. The rest of Oahu is different; most of it’s still country. The other islands are, too. Not that I’ve seen them all yet.”
Haley was surprised. She assumed he would have explored every inch of the Aloha State by now. “You haven’t? Why not?”
He shrugged. “Island hopping is expensive. My flights connect through Oahu, so I’ve nosed around there a bit, but I’ve never made it to the Big Island, or to Kauai. Someday I’ll work it out, but for now, it’s hard to manage the time off.”
Haley stared at him quizzically, a new fear creeping into her heart. “How much time off do you get?”
His gaze remained at sea. “The tours run every day of the week in season, and the outfit I work for only has the two captains. I don’t have the flexibility I’d have working for a bigger company, but I like their boats and their attitude and they pay decently, with benefits. I have plenty of free time, just not many whole days off, and never more than two in a row, with the exception of Christmas.”
Haley’s fear ratcheted up a notch. “Christmas?” she repeated dumbly.
He nodded. “I can only afford the two flights a year, but my parents usually give me a ticket home as their gift.” His eyes left the horizon and turned to Haley, and his voice grew more intent. “You think you might be able to come to Maui sometime?”
Her heart thudded in her chest. If it wasn’t one impediment, it was another. The day was proving an endless parade of them. “I don’t get a lot of time off either, as you know. I’d love to visit you there, but I don’t think… I mean, I wasn’t planning on traveling again until after the baby’s born.”
His eyes darted quickly out to sea again. “No,” he said evenly. “I didn’t think you would.”
Haley’s euphoria dwindled rapidly. She had thought about flying out to see him, maybe around Thanksgiving. But she knew now that wasn’t realistic. Even if she did feel good enough for the journey, it wouldn’t be medically responsible for her to go. Micah was hauling her into the OB’s office every week now over fears she was headed toward preeclampsia, and if Haley ever failed her labs on that score she would be looking at bed rest for the duration. She hadn’t told Bob that fun fact and she didn’t plan to worry Ben with it either, but the upshot was, she couldn’t travel.
She had been hoping, instead, that she could convince Ben to fly back and see her. She realized the plane ticket might be too expensive for him, but money was no obstacle to her. His work schedule was another matter.
“Ben,” she cried out suddenly, her tone drawing his gaze back to her immediately. “What the hell are we going to do? How are we going to see each other? I was thinking I could fly you back here for long weekends or something.” To her horror, her voice nearly cracked. “I never thought you might not be able to come.”
His eyes swam with a melancholy equal to hers, but his voice remained upbeat. “I’m sorry. I should have explained. But I’ll be back at Christmas, and I’m sure my family won’t mind donating a day of my Seattle time to the cause.”
A day? Haley’s face felt hot. Her lower jaw began to tremble. She snapped her mouth shut furiously. Hormones! Once this endless pregnancy was over with, she swore she would never cry again.
“I’ll look awful at Christmas,” she murmured, regretting the childish words the second they left her mouth. Like that was all that mattered!
Ben hugged her shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “It won’t be that long, Haley,” he said gently, choosing — and wisely so — to address the real issue rather than her idiotic words. “We’ll figure something out.”
And what exactly would that be? Haley asked herself.
Ben suddenly jerked and straightened. Haley looked up to see his gaze darting between the horizon of the open ocean and the captain in the bridge. “What is it?” she asked.
“Humpback spout,” he explained. Then he looked at his watch, sighed, and relaxed against the railing again.
“The captain didn’t see it?” she asked.
“No, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. We’re out of time and headed into port.”
“Oh,” Haley said dumbly. The time had flown by, indeed. It was afternoon already. “Do they have full-day tours?” she asked suddenly, remembering how the longer trips had been his favorite in Alaska.
“May to October, there’s a full-day to Catalina,” he answered. “That would be fun. Might see an eagle or some harbor seals around the island.”
He smiled at her, and Haley’s spirits crept up a notch. He had answered that question terribly quickly. And precisely. Had he researched the topic purely to plan their outing today, or had he been checking into it for another reason?
All too soon, the boat returned to the mouth of the harbor, and Ben frowned as the captain pulled the boat so close to the sea lions sunning themselves on the buoy that the people on the lower deck could practically reach out and touch them. Haley felt a strange desire to defend the captain’s actions, pointing out that the sea lions themselves had no qualms about jumping up onto boats docked at the marina, whether humans were nearby or not. But she knew that such an argument wouldn’t fly with Ben. He would only remind her that the sea lions wouldn’t be jumping up on manmade structures in the first place if more of their natural habitat remained.
As the boat made its way back to the slip Haley stuck close to his side, feeling a sudden, intense need to relish every second they were together. Once he left again her mind would want to replay them all, and she was determined to make the rest of the day as perfect as possible.
They spent the afternoon in a heavenly spree of unstructured light-hearted fun, eating ice cream, strolling on the Balboa Pier, window-shopping the tourist traps, critiquing the surfers, taking their shoes off and wading in the Pacific, and — her favorite part — drawing their initials in the sand with their toes. Their joy simply to be in each other’s company was mutual and profound, and only when the weak November sun began sliding from the sky did Haley’s soaring spirits begin to drop along with it.
She took Ben to the Newport Pier, where they sat by the window in one of her favorite diners eating vegetarian chili and cornbread while watching the sun set over the water. Darkness came all too soon, and as they finished their meal and began a lamplit stroll down the paved boardwalk, Haley’s unexpressed worries began to surface.
Ben had not let her buy him a new pair of sunglasses. He had insisted that he didn’t need them and that he had several other pairs already. It was a small thing, of course, but it had started her thinking. Whenever they went out together, even in Alaska, they had always paid separately. The only exception she could think of was when he allowed her to buy him dinner
on his birthday and when he bought her a barbecue, ostensibly as compensation for not seeing a grizzly. The fact that he didn’t automatically pick up her checks didn’t bother her in the slightest — not because she was wealthier, but because she viewed the expectation that it was the man’s responsibility as sexist in the first place. But now that she was essentially his hostess for the day, his not allowing her to buy him anything was disconcerting.
A gust of warm wind blew by, rustling the palm trees along the boardwalk. To the couple’s right lay a stretch of sand sloping gently downhill to the ocean. To their left, the concrete patios of beach houses came to within inches of the pavement.
They strolled silently for a while, hand in hand. They walked by a house with unscreened windows where a man sat in a recliner a few feet away, watching a football game. Haley tensed as Ben frowned and turned his gaze back toward the ocean.
She debated with herself another moment, then decided she would say something. It would bother her too much otherwise.
“Is it just my imagination,” she began, “or do you have a thing about not letting a woman spend money on you?”
His eyes were half hidden in the darkness, but she could see well enough to catch the wary flicker that accompanied his smile. “I like to pay my own way, that’s all,” he explained. “I didn’t think you’d mind. Most women complain if I don’t offer to pick up their checks.”
“So do you?” she asked, wondering suddenly if he acted differently with her. “Pay their checks, I mean?”
“Not usually, no,” he answered. “I’m a believer in dating Dutch. You can blame my sisters for that, too. They used to say they didn’t want to feel like they owed the guy anything, which made sense to me. Plus, it’s a terribly convenient philosophy to have when you’re broke.”
They stepped on the sand a moment to make room for an oncoming surrey bike.
“So when does dating become something else?” Haley pressed, her pulse rate kicking up a notch. She had a niggling suspicion that he was hiding something — something she needed to know. “Hypothetically speaking, of course,” she couched. “Let’s say your girlfriend has an apartment and wants you to move in with her. Would you have a problem with that?”
