Adam introduces our group to the two other guides, both older versions of him, then gathers us on a corner of the dock and gives us a quick overview of what our boating adventure will entail. He promises it will include secret coves filled with exotic marine life and majestic sea turtles! I suppress an eye roll and half listen as he goes through a few safety instructions, including my personal favorite: not to get out of the boat unless he says so. I size up the other tourists as he yammers on. They include the woman in the yellow bikini and sarong (sarong, really?) and an older gay couple wearing matching Bermuda shorts and zinc strips across their noses. Finally Adam gives us permission to get into the boat, where we are instructed to squat and hold on to a rope.
“Squat?” I glare at Nick, who is clearly amused as he watches me try and fail several times to twist the thick yellow rope around my right hand.
He leans over and wraps his arm around my back, causing me to stiffen even more. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I wriggle out of his grip. “You have no business making promises like that,” I say, harsher than I intend.
“Jacks . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I say, holding up my rope-free hand. “I thought being here was going to help. But now I’m sitting on a boat I don’t want to be on, with, no offense, a guy I barely know, and it just feels wrong. Like this was the stupidest decision I’ve ever made. Maybe Beth was right.” The rope slips from my grip just as the boat jolts from the dock. I slide backward with the motion, my hands searching for traction and finding none.
Nick’s reaction is instantaneous. His arm shoots to the left and pulls me upright so swiftly that the members of our group don’t even notice. He guides my hand back to the rope, holding it until my grasp is steady.
“Remember, safety rule number one was don’t let go.”
“Maybe I should’ve paid more attention,” I say loudly over the sound of the engine, hating that I’ve been so vulnerable in front of him. Hating that I’m showing him the reasons I fear James had wanted Dylan over me: I can be cranky, irrational, and clumsy as hell.
We speed out to the ocean, finally stopping near a cove. I pull my hand from the rope; I’ve been gripping it so tightly that there is a bright-red burn mark on my palm. I begrudgingly admit to myself that the ride to the caverns was almost pleasant. It wasn’t quite exhilarating, but when two silver dolphins sprang from the water, I felt a pinprick of happiness—the first I’d experienced since James’s death—but it was so quick I could almost tell myself I’d imagined it.
Adam drives the boat into a cave and ties it up to two steel posts he’s clearly used many times before. I swallow my urge to make a sarcastic remark about his use of the word secret to describe the things we’ll see today as he and the two other guides start handing out snorkel gear. I shake my head when Adam comes to me.
“What? Don’t want to get your hair wet?” Nick says so only I can hear as he takes two sets of gear.
I start to tell him I’m scared of the water, but James’s cutting words about using my fear as a crutch comes to mind.
“I guess I don’t get why we have to snorkel with Adam to get info from him. Can’t we just talk to him on the boat while everyone else goes to look at the”—I stop to make air quotes—“exotic fish?”
“Because we have to blend in. We can’t just come right out and say what we’re really doing here.”
“Why not?”
Nick gives me a hard look. “Come on, Jacks. No one is going to tell us anything if we come at them like that. We need to caress the information out of them. Just like last night with the bartender; we need to pretend we’re nothing more than James and Dylan’s friends who are taking the same sightseeing trip they did. So that means we need to snorkel.”
“Is that what you did with the concierge and the front desk girl? Caress upgrades and details out of them?”
Nick smiles. “Something like that.”
“You sure we can’t caress him in the boat? With our life jackets on?” I try.
“No. Today we are tourists, and we came on this tour because we are really interested in the secret sea life in these caves.”
“You caught that too, huh?” I smile, my nerves starting to calm. Well, until I look down at the face masks he’s holding; then my heart starts pounding. I have to tell him the truth. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Why not?”
“Never mind,” I say, playing with the strap on my life jacket.
“Tell me,” Nick says kindly, keeping his eyes focused on me.
“Okay,” I say, his gaze settling me. “I have a slight fear of that.” I motion toward the dark water.
Nick doesn’t skip a beat. “I think I can help. Close your eyes.”
“What? Why? So you can throw me in there?” I picture my mom standing over me in the pool.
“Why the hell would I do that?” He shakes his head, then places his hands on my shoulders. “Just trust me.”
I don’t want to shut my eyes, be in total darkness. I want to keep them open—look around, get the answers I need. But trust him? No thanks. Been there, done that. Didn’t work out so well.
But.
His eyes.
They are steely gray with a few flecks of gold, and when they fixate on you, they are so comforting. When I look into them, I almost feel like I can see right into his soul.
“Will you just close them?”
“Fine,” I finally say, leaning in slightly to let the Bermuda-shorts couple move past, both of them jumping into the water with abandon.
Show-offs.
Nick starts to speak, and his voice is calm and steady. He asks me to imagine white light encapsulating me and reminds me to breathe deeply. It feels awkward standing here with my eyes squeezed closed, but my shoulders give way to the tone of his voice, relaxing as he whispers. His breath tickles my ear, telling me a story—one in which I am brave, living in a world where I conquer my fear of the water and finally learn to enjoy what has terrified me for so long. My initial instinct is to laugh—imagining myself in a Hunger Games–like competition, clad in a scuba suit with fire painted across it, as I thrash through the water like it’s an enemy I’m overtaking—but I don’t, because his words are working. I am listening. Until I hear only the sounds of the waves lapping against the rocks and distant voices.
“How do you feel?” he asks when I look at him.
“Much better—how did you do that?”
“In my job I come across a lot of people who are experiencing trauma. Meditation and visualization calms them. A lot of guys on the force who are more old school, they don’t do it. But I’ve noticed a huge difference in how it helps victims—and me.”
He says the last part so quietly I almost don’t hear him. I think about the terrible things he must see when he’s working—nothing compared to my silly fear of water. I say as much to him.
“We all have our demons,” he says as he places the mask over my nose, straightening the snorkel until it’s just right. I notice Adam watching us.
“You can go ahead and get in, guys,” he says, offering me a thumbs-up.
I give him a halfhearted thumbs-up in return and look over the side of the boat into the water, hating that the bottom of the ocean is so far down, the hugeness of it making my heartbeat quicken. But I push the thought away.
“I’m really going to do this? Go in there?”
“Yep.” Nick jumps in, making a large splash, then holds his arms outstretched to welcome me.
I lower myself down the ladder slowly, the cold water calling every nerve in my legs to attention as I sit on the side of the boat and awkwardly put on my fins. I widen my eyes at Nick.
“It takes a minute to get used to it, but you will,” he says.
“The temperature or putting my entire body in the ocean for the first time—ever?” I say, finally jumping into the water.
Adam drops in behind me and lets out a “Woo!”
He tells us we can join the rest of the tour about a hundred feet away, who he says are watching a pair of sea turtles.
I decide being out in the open water sounds slightly less nerve-racking, so I point toward the group. I arch my arm into the water and hear Adam remind me to use my fins to help propel me forward. It’s awkward at first, but finally I’m moving. And I’m not sure if it’s the meditation or adrenaline, but I dip my head under the surface, my mask going under but my tube still able to get air. A school of turquoise-and-yellow fish surrounds me, and I feel a surge of panic, yanking my head up and searching for Nick, whom I find just a few feet away, watching me. He points. “The turtles. All you have to do is get to the turtles.”