I should take the few minutes available before I head to the waterfalls to work on a get-it-done blend that’s giving me balancing trouble. Instead, I slump on my couch, hugging a decorative pillow.
My mother won’t partner with me. Neither will my neighbor or Nico, and I’m so desperate that I nearly asked Camila, because my cousin is a runner, but she’d be too busy posing for photos and touching up her makeup before the finish line to win.
Mom tells me that numbers have grown because some chose their significant others as their partner, and there are nine other people who haven’t picked. One of them is Apollo. At least as of ten minutes ago, he’s still available. I’m just being obstinate about choosing, and it could cost me the Moss Boss trophy. Is that what I want? No, it’s not.
I should call him, but I can’t make myself do it. Not yet. I grab my phone and dial Roxanne.
“Guess who’s just spent five hours in the car?” she says in lieu of hello.
“Day trip early on a Saturday?”
She snorts. “Potential client meeting. Five hours for a ten-minute conversation. I loathe them. But I’ve picked up Hadley and am now home, where the opening of the wine will commence in two-point-three hours.”
“I want wine. I have a problem.”
“Oh. Is it an Apollo problem?”
“How would you know that?”
“Oh, you’re the sweetest.” She gives a fake “Ha, ha, hahaha” laugh. “He’s on Simona Island. That alone is a problem. I was just hoping your perfect little world wouldn’t go all explody before I arrived for the Mossy.”
“You’re coming?” I’m on my feet in a flash. “Seriously?”
“Got my ticket. I can’t be there until the day of the event, but Hadley is staying with her dad, so let the antics abound.” When Roxanne has a moment to let her hair down, she doesn’t waste it. She is exactly what I need to distract me from Apollo.
“That is the best news.”
“Glad to know I hold a candle to the wonder that is your ex-soulmate. Explain.”
In stuttery, broken words, I tell her everything from my military crawl out of the lobby to him hugging me. After a long pause that makes me look at the phone to make sure we still have a connection, Roxanne breaks out in raucous laughter. “You’re so fu—” She clears her throat. “Fun. Yep. So fun.”
“Tell Hadley Aunty Xia says hi. How is this fun?”
“Because you’re going to ask him to be your partner.”
I sputter like a yard sprinkler. “What? Why?”
“It’s required for the Mossy, and you’re asking me what you should do about a man who beat you in a race—”
“Because I fell.”
“Pssh, details. He won, has massive shoulders for kayaking, and competes with you more often than he blinks. Please. You’ve decided, you just need to do it. I give you permission. Go forth, young warrior woman.”
I told her about his shoulders? I close my eyes and rub my forehead. “He does not make me feel like a warrior. I feel like I’m thirteen and have never spoken to a boy before.”
“Which is why this is such a good idea. You’ll settle down after working with him. Then when it’s over, you will have proven to Simona that when it comes to Apollo, you can handle your shi—elf.” She snorts. “That’s right. Handle yourself, you little wackadoodle. I believe in you.”
“I’m glad someone does. I don’t think I can handle myself at all around him.”
“You’re going to win. Even if you have a partner who can’t keep up with you, you’ll find a way. This means too much to you. But also, let’s talk about the important stuff.” She lowers her voice. “What happened in that hug, Xia? Did you wrap your arms around him? Climb him like a tree? Give a little hump action? Tell me you at least performed the patented boob press?”
I cover my eyes. “No. None of those.”
“Aw. You didn’t reciprocate, did you? I bet you hurt his feelings. Now go make up or make out. Both, preferably. Either way, ask him or someone else. Sounds like Mama Nivar is serious about this partnership thing, and you know how she gets.”
Ugh. I really do.
We say our goodbyes, and I stare at Apollo’s face in my contacts, then open a message to him. There’s nothing wrong with having a discussion. Could we make it work if we teamed up? This will be the first text I’ve ever sent to him. Feels more momentous than it should. After tapping and deleting twenty times, I push send. Do you have time to meet up today?
The writing bubbles start immediately, then his message pops up on the screen. I’m busy at the moment. Let me see where the day goes.
I drop my head against the couch and sigh. He’s probably asking someone to be his partner, and then they’ll be busy making training plans. I waited too long. Just like always.
* * *
The weather is turning summer-sticky. It doesn’t last long, but this begins the time of year that locals thrive at night and stay in water during daylight when they’re not working this little island. But the Mossy takes place in the afternoon, so a sweaty run it is. Diving into the waterfall will be amazing after three miles.
I get going, slow at first to find my pace. Heart pounds and blood pumps. I turn the music up since I no longer have earbuds and find the perfect rhythm, occasionally glancing back to see if Apollo is behind me. I don’t want to be caught off guard again, but I expect it now that he’s returned. As if he’d be where I am like in the past. But that was when we were kids.
His father probably loves that he followed in his footsteps and became a pilot. I bet Apollo does really well in New York too. That’s clear from his social media photos. It didn’t occur to me that some of those people hanging on his arm could be famous clients.
The sharp screech of a monkey has me stepping off the jungle’s hiking trail and into a web of vines and roots. They grow thick along the ground in places. It makes the tourist-finding event even more treacherous when in a hurry. I slip my foot out from between two sprawling ankle-twisters and step back on the path.
The monkey either departed or is staying still and silent so it doesn’t attract my attention. Little bastards are snide like that. Another quarter mile and I’m singing—more like panting—along with the pop blaring from my phone speaker while hitting my stride. I pass a group of tourists and Monique. She scrunches her nose and makes a hissing sound as she rakes her fingers through the air.
The rivalry is ratcheting up. I snap my teeth, fighting a grin. “See you at the starting line.”
“You bet your speedy patooty, you will,” she calls after me. “Hey!” Her yell turns me back around where I jog in place. “Who are you partnering with?”
I stop moving and put my hands on my hips. “Don’t know yet.”
Her eyes widen, and her mouth tightens into an O. She turns to her group but pitches over her shoulder, “You may want to get on that.”
I fill my lungs to capacity and blow all the air out in a slow stressful stream.
The trek isn’t as busy on the weekends with the typical honeymooners’ departures and arrivals, but I hope the waterfall isn’t crowded. I slow to a walk when I get to the bridge spanning the lake’s main output river, stretching my arms above my head and breathing deep.
It’s fairly quiet. A few couples swim in the crystalline water that winks like a polished gem when the sun peeks through the trees. Two men bask on the large, rounded stones surrounding the edge. A woman climbs the path to the upper overlook where you can jump beside the first cascade. They’re not big waterfalls. One drops twenty-five feet from the pinnacle, the other spills a short thirteen, smashing over boulders to make a perfect roaring soundscape. It smells of moss and hibiscus. Clean water and mineral rock. I’ve tried to bottle it, but it’s not possible. There are too many factors that alter the air from sunup to sundown through the year of tropical seasons. I’d have to harness millennia of life, and as much as I’ve studied, as skilled as I’ve become, I’m not that level. One day I’ll get it right.
I pull the water-pouch backpack from my shoulders as I walk toward the path that wraps up the curve of rock. After gathering a handful of assorted rings and my goggles, I strip to my sports bikini and shove everything in my bag. It fits with plenty of room in the natural cutout cubby between two car-sized rocks. There’s someone’s phone in there wrapped in an arm holster and a gray t-shirt beside that. Another local. Maybe a guide with tourists in the narrow indent behind the shorter falls. I climb, hearing cheers, then a scream and a splash from the brave woman who climbed up and jumped. I grin to myself and set my goggles over my eyes, looking forward to my own impending adrenaline rush, and crest the top of the hill, rumbling rapids loud in my ears. It’s a drastic temperature change in the mist. The woman has cleared away from the jump path and is in a man’s arms as they swim, talking close and bobbing in a circle.
The rings sparkle in the air when I scatter them to the water below. One long exhale and I follow with a swan dive. Other Simona kids could do a few flips and add a twist, but I usually land wrong. You only need to belly flop from twenty-five feet once to deter future experimentation.
Some days, when the tourist season wasn’t in full swing, we’d stay here for hours, kids from seven to eighteen, trekking up the path, diving again and again. Older ones sneaking off behind the falls, youngers leaping from the stones at the sides while watching their idols twirl and cannonball from what seemed to be a hundred million terrifying feet. Apollo, Ziggy, and I acting as judges, calling numbers when we weren’t jumping.
The water splashes more than I’d like, but the speed is fantastic. I don’t need to kick to reach the bottom and spot my first glimmery circle. Scooping it up, I slip it on my finger before I come up for air, then dive again. How would partnering work for this? It’s meticulous. I can’t be paying attention to someone else because I’ll lose where I think the rings fell. And Apollo would pull all my attention. How is he at diving?
My task is a rhythm of breath holding, kicking, and seeking shiny metals among sandy silt, mossy rocks, and long threads of paper-thin green leaves of the underwater plants. Small, silver fish dart along the bottom away from me as I travel in a pattern on the hunt for rings. Except I can’t find the last one. I have nine on my fingers, and I threw ten. Six more dives, and I pop up and pull my goggles off my head.
“You are focused,” Apollo’s voice says behind me.
I squeak and spin, treading water. He’s lounging on a flat rock, basking in the sun in light blue swim trunks with a pattern of pink hibiscus. Droplets glitter against golden-brown skin, slide down mounded, tattooed pectorals in an alluring haphazard roadmap, then bump over gentle dips of abdominal muscles. Jesus. I dunk under the surface. It was an accident because my limbs forgot to function. I come up choking.
Apollo raises an eyebrow. “Do I need to come save you?”
“Please don’t,” I say, making honking seal sounds to dislodge the lake in my lungs. If he touched me, pulled me to him with those defined arms until I was against the tattoo on his chest, I’d drown us both.
“You sure?” His lips twitch, and he rolls the tenth ring between his thumb and forefinger.
“Hey. I was looking for that.”
“I noticed. You missed it on the first pass. Didn’t go far enough right in your pattern.”
My mouth drops open in a huff. “Are you spying on my training?”
“Absolutely.” His grin is too charming. I kick water at him. He turns his head as the splash hits, and when he glances back, there’s warning fire in his eyes that makes my stomach do three flips from the cliff. “Was that a challenge?”
“No,” I answer as he straightens, hands on the edge of the rock, bent forward and ready to dive. Those shoulders are round pauldrons that probably feel like steel under skin. He’s not huge, but he is firm and fitness-built. A body made for underwear modeling. I ball my fists to keep from making a “turn around” signal so I can see his back muscles and sink again in the water up to my lips. His grip tightens on the stone, but I shake my head. “Throw the ring. I won’t look.”
“Nope.” He slides it on his pinky. It rests above his knuckle. “Toss the others. I want a go.”
“But I should have gotten the tenth.”
He flicks his eyebrows, tilting his head while he smiles in that way that requests me to play with him—his nonverbal request to chase him through the jungle or a challenge to jump from the cliffs. It’s how he tells me I better try harder, because otherwise he’s going to win. “Yep,” he says. “But instead, I did.”
This man’s charm needs its own city to run. For a moment, I was worried he’d lost it. That muscles and diplomatic speech had replaced it along with a serious, curious stare that now overpowers his boyish grin. That’s the give and take of adulthood; you make sacrifices for things deemed better. Homes replace toys, focus shifts to a specific interest instead of playing in many, and hours with friends fall away to hone personal career development. And sometimes the path warns us that some wants aren’t worth the fall and inevitable end of precious things, which end anyway, because there’s only so much a friendship can take. As everything beyond the vortex of Apollo is fuzzy white noise, I curse my stupid fluttering organs and the persistent thought that we could be friends again if he plays like this. Would it be so bad?
“Where do you go, Xia?” His lips twist, boyishness gone, curious adult gaze in full scrutiny. “When you look at me like that?”
Biting my lip, I pull the rings from my fingers. “Nowhere.” I toss them behind me and drift forward the slightest bit, extending my hand for the tenth. “Gimme or throw it.”
He rubs his thumb against the metal. “Nope. I could throw it and then tell you how to find it. That’s a task in the race now.”
It is. Has he already partnered with someone else because I was such a disaster last night? Is his comment a reminder that I’m partnerless? “Are you mad at me because of yesterday?”
He tilts his head. “Why would I be?”
“Because, um.” I crinkle my nose. “You were...aggravated before you left.”
He copies my wince. “I’m not mad.” He seems sincere enough about it.
Dunking back under the water puts my hair in order. When I resurface, Apollo hasn’t moved. The same penetrating stare bores through me, seeking my thoughts. It asks what I’m going to do.
“What do you want for it?”
He pulls his goggles over his eyes, purses his lips in thought, and slides into the lagoon with flawless ease. When he pops back up, he’s close and drifting closer. He studies my face, and I predict his movements like the next series of mancala moves. He’ll move in, I’ll move away, he’ll laugh and pout with disappointment. I’ll splash him, he’ll dunk me, and lord help me if I touch his chest.
We do the first and second move, but he doesn’t laugh. “Do I scare you?”
“No.” It’s my feelings that scare me.
He changes course, turning to float on his back, face to the sky. “Good. Then how can I make you laugh with me like we used to? It’s gotta still be in there.”
Erase a confession, the most awkward night of my life, and years of ignoring each other. “You’ve been gone. It’s…”
“Mmhmm. Different. I know. Remember Ziggy?”
He wants to change the subject to the son of Orchid River Lodge’s owner? I’m in. “Of course. You two were close until he moved away with his ma.”
His eyes are closed, and he smiles. “We’re still close. He’s always had this method of getting to the bottom of things. A time-out from keeping everything inside that he calls a truth bomb.”
“I remember that, though he used it mainly as an excuse to insult people.”
Apollo turns in the water to tread in front of me. “You mean, when he would say, Truth bomb, you’re an asshole? Oh, yes. But sometimes it helps because air needs to be cleared. And sometimes it goes awry because you can’t undo some words.”
His face says it all. He regrets telling me he wanted more all those years ago. Especially with what happened after that. We should bury those moments. It’s what I want, except for the squirm inside and a voice yelling that it wants to be doused in dark, sparkling honey and tasted by pillow-soft lips over every inch forever. I tell that voice to shush.
“Are you with me?” he whispers.
I scan the area for people, but everyone here is unfamiliar and absorbed in each other. “Yeah.”
“So…” He licks his bottom lip and drags it under his teeth as he watches me. “Truth bomb. I am painfully jealous of your silent speak with Jose. That was our thing. When you two were working through whatever it was you were mentally conversing about in the lobby, and then at Uncle Artie’s, I thought my heart was caving in.” He takes a deep breath, making a tiny wave of water lap over my shoulders.
I nod, chewing the inside of my cheek, because I don’t have words for that. Good? That seems mean, even if it’s true. There’s relief that I’m not the only one with inner turmoil. I’ve always been jealous when he laughed with others without me. People joked about my role as the sassy girlfriend claiming my territory at ten years old. I just didn’t understand what that meant back then. And by the time I did, I’d ruined the opportunity and he was gone. “I recall a silent conversation between us when Justin was talking.”
He drifts closer, locks his fingers with mine, heating the contact to a boil, and tows me toward the rock.
He pulls himself up, then offers a hand. I take it, then I’m out of the water with a warm stone under my butt. I pull my legs up and hug them, and he gives another weary sigh.
“How’s that truth bomb treating you?” he asks.
I give a silent laugh. “Okay.” Is this my opening to ask? Truth bomb. I want you as my partner.
“Good, but one more. When we kissed—”
Oh no. I hold up a hand, batting his next words back down his throat where they belong. “Please don’t.”
“It’s not that—”
“Please.” I give him my most serious, threatening eyes. “Don’t.”
He wants to say it. His lips firm with it, probably aching to open and tell me that he didn’t mean to promise to return for me. Or worse, that he did. I’m still not over the multiple doses of disappointment when it comes to Apollo.
I’m one small scoot from escaping into the water and swimming very quickly away. I cannot talk about this now or I’ll break. The memories already bombard me, the dismay so thick I still haven’t gotten over it. “Partner with me.” My racing heart pounds in my ears. That escaped right out, didn’t it? Can’t take it back. “If you haven’t yet. Have you? You’re fast, as am I. I don’t like this new rule, at all, but I think us partnering is needed. Don’t you? Or do you?”
Apollo bites his lips together, then lets them pop out from between his teeth. “Really selling it.”
“Sorry. I—”
“Okay.”
“Okay like, it’s fine, or like you want to partner? For an event that shouldn’t have partners.”
“And you just keep going.” He laughs. “I will partner with you.” His delight would be contagious if I wasn’t playing through the risk this will entail: gossip, touching, sweating together...often. “We’ll be great together.”