I say the first thing that pops into my head, which is the very mature answer of “You wish.”
“Now go away, please,” I whisper, wiggling farther behind the plant. “There’s nothing to see here.”
“On the contrary. I think there’s quite a lot to see.” Kai gives me an assessing look, and I can only imagine how I must appear to him, curled up behind a potted plant in my sweaty work clothes.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I lie. I cringe when Kai raises an eyebrow at me. “Well, I didn’t hear a lot. Just something about chips falling and people talking and wanting things to be different. You know, nothing memorable.”
Stop rambling, I order myself, but I can’t. “My theory is you’re either navigating a breakup or trying to extricate yourself from an international crime ring.” I bump my head on the ceramic pot and flinch. “I’m leaning toward the crime ring.”
I expect Kai to whip out his phone and speed-dial Phil, but he doesn’t. Instead, he laughs, and it catches me so off guard that I fall sideways and grab the pot to keep my balance. That only makes him laugh harder, and I duck lower when I peek through the leaves and spot Nick looking toward the sound.
“Be quiet! You’re gonna blow my cover,” I whisper-hiss at Kai, grabbing his sleeve and tugging him toward the floor.
But I pull too hard, and within an instant his face is mere inches from mine. We’re close enough that I can see the hint of dark circles beneath his glinting hazel eyes and the scar crossing his right eyebrow, and when I find myself taking an intentional whiff of his campfire-scented aftershave, I release my grip on his jacket.
Bad Lucy, bad. Back into your cage.
“Why are you still hiding?” he asks in a stage whisper, and I contemplate ripping a leaf off the plant and stuffing it into his mouth. “I already caught you.”
His arrogance knows no bounds, and I scoff at him. “It’s precious that you think I was crouched here to listen to your phone call. No offense, but you’re not that important. I’m hiding from my ex-boyfriend, and you’re about to blow it with your big fat mouth.”
Suddenly curious, Kai peers through the leaves. “That guy? Wow, I guess you’re into beards after all.”
Nick can barely grow a smattering of peach fuzz, let alone a beard. Confused, I peek past a leaf to see a white-haired man who looks like a cross between Santa and Father Time’s grandfather waving down the bartender.
“Not him,” I groan, wishing I could wipe the amusement off Kai’s face. “Him.” I point to where Nick stands with Margo, smiling as she shows him something on her phone. It’s probably a list of adorable names for their hordes of future children.
“Oh, Dr. North,” Kai says, scratching the stubble along his chin. “That makes more sense. He was on set yesterday for Brian the rhino’s blood draw. Seems like an okay guy.”
When he turns to find me scowling at him, Kai seems to realize he’s gone too far. Calling me glaringly incompetent is one thing, but speaking tolerably of my ex is another. “I mean, he sucks,” he says halfheartedly. “I bet he murders kittens in his basement.”
I roll my eyes at him but breathe a sigh of relief when the adoring couple leaves the bar to venture out to the patio. They should be outside long enough for me to wolf down my food and buy Sam another drink before making my escape. Leaving Kai in my dust, I scurry back to the bar and stuff a lobster roll in my mouth.
It’s a short-lived moment of bliss that ends when Kai slides into the seat next to mine and watches me eat like I’m a lion shredding an antelope carcass.
“No offense, but can you find someplace else to sit?” I ask. “It’s hard to eat when I can feel the judgment radiating off you.”
“Where else would you suggest I sit?” he asks, gesturing to the packed lounge.
I take a swig of my drink. “A nice toilet in the men’s room, perhaps?”
He signals for the bartender. “If anyone should move, it’s you. I gifted you a free hat and helped train you for the cameras. In return, you eavesdropped on my private conversation.”
“It’s not eavesdropping if I was trapped,” I counter. “And you can take your free hat and shove it up your pseudopenis.”
The dark cloud that crossed Kai’s features during his phone call dissipates, replaced by a satisfied smirk. “I see you didn’t appreciate the inside joke. I’m sorry you don’t have a sense of humor.”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty of senses of humor,” I say, so annoyed that I trip over my words. “And what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be holed up in your luxury hotel room, admiring your own reflection in your Nickelodeon Awards?”
“The Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards are tiny orange submarines, Lucy. They’re not reflective.” He orders an old-fashioned and a basket of spring rolls and turns to meet my gaze. “But if you must know, I came here with a friend in case she needed a wingman.”
Of course. He came with Freya. I glance across the lounge, where I see that Sam has successfully scared off the pasty-looking dude in the Zelda T-shirt and is deep in conversation with Kai’s co-producer.
“Fine. If you’re going to sit here, can you at least tell me if your phone call was about a drug deal gone bad?” I ask. “I want to be prepared in case a SWAT team shows up at Ape House.”
I’m trying to get under his skin, but I’m also curious. Kai’s usually full of bravado, but he sounded apprehensive toward the end of the phone call. Who was on the other end of the line? Was it the same person who called him outside the Ape House nursery?
I’m no gossipmonger, but a girl can’t help but wonder.
“Frankly,” Kai says, “that’s none of your business.”
He’s right, so I shrug and concentrate on my food. But my peace and quiet last all of three seconds before he pipes up again.
“What happened between you and the good doctor?” he asks, sipping his old-fashioned. “I mean, if you went so far as to hide behind a houseplant, it must be a good story.”
I give him a sideways look. “Would you want to run into your ex in this outfit? Besides, the breakup is none of your business.”
“Was it because he wears those white New Balances?” Kai asks. “Or was it something more dramatic?”
I spin my glass in a circle, trying not to remember the heartbroken look in Nick’s eyes the day I moved my stuff out of his town house, the look that said, Why can’t you just be a normal woman who wants normal woman things? with its teary, slack-jawed disappointment.
“Chill out, Gossip Girl. I’m not gonna tell you about the breakup.”
I brush my lips with my napkin and push away the memory of the anger I felt the day Nick came home with a zoo-themed baby onesie, somehow thinking that a tiny piece of cotton fabric could convince me to abandon my life plan.
“Do you want to know why my last relationship ended?” Kai asks, examining a spring roll.
“Not particularly,” I say, but he’s already talking over me.
“She pronounced wolf with a silent l,” he explains. “It was unbearable. Like, what does a dog say? Woof. What animal runs in a pack and howls at the moon? A woof. One day I just couldn’t take it any longer.”
“The horror,” I say flatly. “And joke’s on you, because wolves don’t actually howl at the moon.”
He peers at me over his drink. “I was being facetious. I dismantled that very myth in Season 2, Episode 6, of Wild Side.”
“And here I thought your ex dumped you because you stole all her conditioner,” I tell him. “Or because she had more Instagram followers and you couldn’t handle your jealousy.”
Kai laughs, and it’s a deep-throated rumble that sends a tingle down my spine. As punishment for finding his laugh attractive, I force myself to watch Father Time’s grandfather wolf down chicken wings and wipe sriracha from his beard.
“I have five million followers, Lucy. I’d have to date Justin Bieber to have that problem.” He winks at me, and from the corner of my eye, I notice the bartender observing him so raptly that she doesn’t notice when the glass she’s holding under the tap overflows.
“Congratulations,” I say dryly.
He smirks. “Hey, can I ask you a serious question?”
“Will you leave me alone if I answer?”
“I make no promises.”
I wait, expecting him to ask me about my terrible stage fright.
“Do you know who the Malibu Fish Hook Killer was?” Kai asks. “On Guilty Pleasures?”
I’d rather narrate a play-by-play of the time I said shart in front of a bunch of grad students than discuss Karina’s show, and I bite into a lobster roll instead of answering.
“I spent most of my summers at my aunt Susan’s when I was a kid,” he explains. “She lives on a farm in Montana, and there wasn’t much to do at night except play Battleship and watch TV. We got very, very into Guilty Pleasures, and it kills me to this day that I don’t know who murdered all those poor surfers.” He raises an eyebrow like I’ve got insider information. “Just tell me: was it Detective Wiles? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
I’m shocked that Kai spent time hanging out with his aunt and watching soapy dramas. “You spent summers in Montana? I thought you pretty much grew up at your mom’s research station.”
I remember my childhood fantasies of traipsing through the Rwandan jungle with Kai and Dr. Kimber, a bandanna tied over my forehead and thorns pricking my ankles as we tracked Taji’s gorilla troop. I certainly never pictured a tiny Kai bent over a board game while the TV droned on in the background.
“Yeah, well, you thought wrong.” He sips his drink and then smiles at me, as if trying to soften his response. “I spent a lot of time on Mount Karisimbi, sure, but that can be a dangerous place for a kid.” His expression darkens, and I wonder if he’s remembering the fateful day he caught his leg in a snare and they got overrun by poachers. “Plus, we didn’t have cable there.” If he’s having a flashback to the fateful day of Taji’s murder, he conceals it by biting into a spring roll. “So come on, Lucy. It was Wiles, wasn’t it?”
“I have no idea.” The discussion of Karina’s show makes me sweat, and I wrap my hands around my cool glass. “I didn’t watch Guilty Pleasures. Trust me, I know less about the Malibu Fish Hook Killer than you do.”
Kai’s jaw drops like I’ve admitted the Fish Hook Killer is me. “How is it that you’ve watched forty-two seasons of 90 Day Fiancé but not the show your mum starred in? I mean, everybody’s seen Guilty Pleasures. It’s something you put on in the background while you fold laundry, like Friends.”
“My mother co-starred,” I correct him. “And what can I say? I guess I’m not one for overdramatic, underbaked plotlines or nonsensical love triangles.”
I’m lying through my teeth; when I was a kid, I’d sneak out of bed just before ten on Sunday nights so I could tiptoe downstairs to the basement and catch the newest episode without waking Nona. I kept a stash of Cosmic Brownies hidden behind a bookshelf, and I’d curl up in the La-Z-Boy and eat them while I followed Kitty Conway into the seedy underbelly of Malibu Beach. It was bizarre, watching the show; there was my mother, right there on the screen, and yet she wasn’t my mother at all. Karina looked like my mom and sounded like her—apart from Kitty’s folksy southern twang—but she was someone I didn’t know anymore.
She was right in front of me, and yet she was two thousand miles away.
“Sorry to disappoint your aunt Susan,” I tell Kai, taking a final swig of my drink.
“No worries. I have complete confidence that I’ll convince you to give up your secrets by the end of the summer.” The knowing look he gives me is playful, almost mischievous, and I can’t help but think that a girl would give all her secrets to a guy who looked at her like that.
Hell, she’d give him more than her secrets.
As if she can smell the testosterone in the air, the bartender slides another old-fashioned toward Kai and leans over the counter, her boobs so close to his spring rolls that she’s circling health code violation territory.
“On the house,” she purrs, tucking a lock of red hair behind her ear. “Hey, you’re Kai Bridges, right? From Animal Planet?”
He smiles at her with the smooth congeniality of someone accustomed to getting hit on a lot. “If the answer’s no, do I get to keep the drink?”
She giggles when he extends his hand toward her, and she shakes it with all the enthusiasm of Elle at Picnic for Paws. “Hi, I’m Kai.”
“Courtney,” she says, clutching his fingers for at least three seconds longer than necessary. “I knew it was you. And I just have to say, your episode on that capybara rescue near the Andes changed my life.”
It’s a good thing I’m done with my food, because the starry-eyed look in Courtney’s eyes would have ruined my appetite.
“And don’t even get me started on that interview you and your mom did with Oprah way back in the day,” she continues, completely ignoring Father Time’s grandfather’s attempts to flag her down for another order of wings. “When your mom told the story of how she saved you from that snare, and the poachers were able to take down that big gorilla—what was his name? Tiko? Tony?”
“Taji,” Kai says, his smile shrinking.
“Taji,” Courtney repeats. “That was, like, the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Your mom was so brave. And you were just so adorable.”
I remember the interview she’s talking about: a gap-toothed, baby-faced Kai sitting next to Dr. Kimber on a tan couch as she told the story of Taji’s death to a teary-eyed, transfixed Oprah. Dr. Kimber’s voice was solemn, steady, and at the end of the episode, Oprah pledged a ten-thousand-dollar donation to the Charlotte Kimber Research Center in Taji’s memory.
Kai, shifting in his seat like he’d prefer to go back to talking about capybaras, gives Courtney a somber nod. “He was an incredible gorilla.”
“I read that the poachers, like, chopped up his body and sold the parts for thousands of dollars. Apparently his hands were the size of basketballs.”
Courtney, who rattles this information off like she’s discussing the weather, doesn’t seem to notice the hollow, sucked-in look taking over Kai’s face.
“What was it like meeting Oprah?” she asks, her enviable boobs now one with the bartop. “Was Gayle King there?”
Kai blinks at her and pushes a spring roll around his plate. “It was, um, a long time ago. I don’t remember.”
“Well, did you get to meet Diane Lane?” Courtney asks. “When she made that movie about your mom?”
Courtney’s questions have grabbed the attention of the people clustered around the bar, and Father Time’s grandfather and a couple of guys in basketball jerseys pause their conversations to glance over.
I wait for Kai to wink at Courtney and say something like, Yes, I did, and Diane Lane said I was the most magnificent boy she’d ever met. But he doesn’t. Instead, he swallows once, twice, three times, and rubs a hand to his throat like his answer is stuck there. One of the guys in basketball jerseys pulls out his phone to snap a picture, and I watch as the color drains from Kai’s face.
He’s no longer the happy-go-lucky, “Wowza!”-shouting adventurer he plays on TV, or the scowling guy I sparred with at Picnic for Paws, or even the smirk-wearing jerk who signed my hat with a cocky flourish.
He’s just a regular person, one who’s probably flashing back to the worst day of his life and trying not to picture dismembered basketball hands. I remember the actor version of Kai screaming as the snare tightened around his leg, begging for his mother to help him. I remember the terror in Diane Lane’s eyes as she turns back for him, knowing she’s leaving her beloved gorillas to a tragic fate.
“Um,” Kai says, staring into his old-fashioned. I notice his fingers trembling just like mine did when I looked at Skippy’s camera, and I know I have to help. I have to say something to put him out of his misery.
I scramble for something—anything—to say before he passes out, and I utter the first thing that pops into my head. “Scorpions die of constipation after they sting.”
Kai turns to look at me with wide eyes.
“What?” Courtney asks, wrinkling her nose.
“Um, scorpions,” I repeat, feeling a warm blush creep over me. “When their stinger gets lodged in something, they can, um, tear it off to get away. But the anus is inside the stinger, so when it’s gone, they have no way of, you know. Relieving themselves.”
Disgust crosses the bartender’s features, but like a roller coaster going down a steep hill, I can’t stop. I only pick up speed. “And eventually, after, like, eight months, they explode.”
The only response to my comment is a silence so heavy, you could hear a pin drop, and considering there’s a jukebox only twenty feet away, that’s a pretty impressive feat. I die a little inside at the realization that I just informed Kai Bridges and a half-dozen others that scorpions can die of poop explosions.
“So yeah, just a fun little fact about the animal kingdom,” I finish, rapping my knuckles on the bar. “Isn’t nature grand?”
“Gross,” the bartender says.
“Awesome,” Father Time’s grandfather declares.
Kai blinks at me for a long moment, then pushes his spring roll basket away and stands up. “Excuse me.” He nods at Courtney and strides off, and I realize I’ve finally done it: I’ve managed to make a situation so uncomfortable that even Kai Bridges, who hiked seven miles through the arid Mojave Desert to track the elusive bighorn sheep, couldn’t handle it.
I’m either a walking disaster or a wizard, depending on how you look at it, but I was only trying to help.
I don’t know if Kai’s coming back, but every second I linger here increases my odds of running into Nick and Margo, and I’d rather be an anus-less scorpion than deal with that. Dropping a couple of bills on the counter, I make my way toward Sam and Freya.
“Lucy, this is Freya. Freya, Lucy,” Sam says, and if Freya remembers my disastrous turn in front of the camera outside the bonobo exhibit, she doesn’t let on. Instead, she shakes my hand and greets me warmly.
“We’re headed to Local Roots for dinner,” Sam says. “Want to join?”
I’m not the most socially adept person in the world, but even I can see the sparks flying between Freya and Sam. The last thing I want to do is crash their date, and I have an early day tomorrow.
“Thanks, but I’m going to head out. Unless I can buy another drink for the HuffPost star?”
Sam smiles and shakes her head. “One Shipwreck Shirley was enough. Thank you, Luce.”
After hugging her good-bye, I wave to Freya and head for the parking lot. I glance toward the bar to see if Kai ever returned, but his seat is still empty. For a moment, I think of his tense phone call and trembling hands and wonder if he’s okay, but then I chide myself for caring. Of course he’s okay; he’s Kai Bridges, son of a real-life Wonder Woman and subject of a thousand fan fictions.
He doesn’t need some zookeeper in Ohio worrying about him. I have plenty in my own life to stress about, a fact that becomes especially obvious when I get into my car and slide the key into the ignition. Because no matter how many times I grit my teeth and wrench the key again, the engine refuses to start.