So here I am, poolside on Friday afternoon, playing hooky from my job before the day’s even done. That earned me a standing ovation from Trevor as he watched me leave my office, armloads of scripts clutched in both hands. When I explained that Michael was dropping Andrea over to spend time with me by Mona’s pool late this afternoon, his smile faded.
“Stepmother already,” he observed coolly, then lowered his voice. “How convenient for Heavenly Homo.”
“Shut up,” I snapped, feeling unusually irritable with him.
“Just be careful, all right?” he cautioned. “Michael’s a nice lad, I’ll grant you that, but there’s a reason his type’s dangerous.”
He was standing inside my office, so I plopped my skyscraper of scripts onto the chair and closed my office door. I really do need to get a Kindle. “Trevor, I appreciate you looking after me, really I do, but he’s a good, decent guy.”
He folded his arms over his chest, the muscles flexing beneath his cotton T-shirt. “Always the most dangerous type, aren’t they?” he said. “Those decent-seeming ones.”
“More dangerous than the naughty celebrity types?” I was referring to both our romantic histories, but he clearly mistook my remark as a personal jab.
“Touché, my dear,” he said in a soft voice, and opened my door without another word.
“Trevor?” I called out, following him to his desk. “I was talking about both of us, silly. I’m the one who’s spent the past two weeks avoiding Jake calls.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said, grabbing the phone as it rang from Ed Bardock’s office. “Go. Have fun.” Making a shooing motion with his hand, he urged me reluctantly out the door, and that’s when I noticed his latest screensaver brilliance: Don’t mind me, I just flirt here.
Maybe that’s a sign he’s ready to move on past Julian, I thought fleetingly, leaving the bungalow. Or maybe it’s a sign that he’s ready to move on from this job as my creative sidekick.
***
Andrea sits on the edge of the pool by the steps, dangling her feet in the chilly water. It’s still cool this early in the summer, with the ancient palms that line the backyard shading the water year-round, and Mona doesn’t like to spend the money to heat her pool, either, especially since she never uses it herself.
So Andrea doesn’t look entirely out of place wearing her spring suit, a short-sleeved, short-legged version of a wetsuit, which Michael whispered to me was the only way he’d gotten her to agree to come swimming today. Otherwise, she was too self-conscious about her scar—ironically enough. Sitting beside me now, splashing her toes around in the water, she looks the part of a true surfer girl in her sleek black suit, auburn hair pulled into a loose ponytail.
Noticing the O’Neill logo on her sleeve, I remark, “How long have you been surfing?” It’s important to her, I know, as much because she loves the sport as because she loved surfing with her dead father. Michael’s clued me in to that much.
At first I think she might not answer me as she stares at her feet, bobbing them up and down in the water like a pair of buoys. Then she says, “My daddy was a great surfer.”
“I know, I heard.”
“He won contests and stuff. His whole life.” She looks up at me, intent. “Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, and he taught me how. He even let me ride on his long board with him sometimes. Except that always scared Michael a lot, when we did that.” She pauses, revisiting some private memory, then adds with a dimpled smile, “But Daddy just told him not to worry so much.”
“Was it dangerous?” It perplexes me that Alex would have done anything to intentionally place Andrea in harm’s way.
“No, just fun,” she says, serious again. “We only did it in the shallow waves.”
“Then why did it scare Michael?”
She shrugs matter-of-factly. “’Cause Daddy’s always worrying about stuff like that.” I thought she’d just said Alex was the one who took her out on his board—not Michael—and am about to remark on that, but before I do, she catches her misstep. “Michael,” she amends firmly. “Michael’s always worrying about all kinds of stuff.”
“About you,” I add, and after a moment she nods, staring at the lapping waves of pool water.
“Yeah, especially since…” She wraps her pale arms around herself in a hug, shivering, not finishing her thought.
“Especially since the accident,” I supply, knowing I may be pushing too hard. She doesn’t answer, but leans forward, trailing her fingers through the water in a raking motion, leaving my question unanswered.
“Daddy liked to touch the waves when he rode. He’d just reach out and touch. Kinda like this.” She combs her fingertips across the chlorinated surface, looking back over her shoulder to make sure I see, adding, “I always thought that’d be really cool. To touch my wave.”
“You haven’t?”
She chews on a fingernail. “I can’t ride the really big ones yet.”