Where I’m going, I have no idea, but I know it’s not to do any of the things I should be doing. I have to get away. I need to clear my head. Or jump into the ocean and let a wave sweep me out into oblivion, never to be found again. I should be tougher than this! Working in this kind of hectic environment and feeding off the stress instead of letting it feed on me, I’m usually good at. Maybe two years of running my butt off nonstop and trying to prevent disasters has finally caught up with me.
I drift farther away from the building, my feet going smoothly over concrete until the concrete becomes sand and it’s harder to trek through in my favorite blue-mint heeled sandals. Shoes I never would’ve worn to do a setup, but felt obligated because of Mrs. Dennings’s excessive expectations of others.
Steady footing becomes wobbly and uneven as my heels sink into the sand step after step. But I keep on walking, letting the sounds of voices and vehicles and other manmade things fade into the background, replaced by the crashing of the waves against the shore. The light wind brushing through the trees and the nearby bushes are becoming more numerous the farther I drift. The birds. The sand crunching beneath my shoes. I want to shut myself off from the world just long enough to breathe, but the voices and images swirling tumultuously inside my head are too loud and only drown out the peaceful things that nature has to offer.
As unexpected as having the wind knocked out of me, my fuse finally burns to the end and I fall against the sand on my bottom and bury my face in my hands, sweat and all. My eyes begin to burn as I smear mascara into them, but I don’t care. I don’t care if I look like a raccoon when I go back into that building—sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air.
“Are you all right?” I hear a voice say.
Raising my eyes from the confines of my hands, I look up to see a tall, gorgeous guy in red swim trunks standing over me—the same guy who was looking at me across the beach in the red and black wetsuit yesterday. The same guy whose brief glance made my stomach flutter.
FOUR
Sienna
Although I only saw him from afar, he has the kind of face that would be hard to forget: defined cheekbones brushed by a five-o’clock shadow. Deep hazel eyes that seem to contain everything between devotion and mischief, framed by tousled golden-brown hair, short in the back but a little longer on top. It looks like he woke up this morning, shuffled his hand through it a few times, and, voilà, perfection.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say with no distinguishable emotion, wiping underneath my eyes with the edges of my thumbs.
I quickly pull the ends of my skirt farther down near my ankles to make sure I’m not on display.
“I see,” he says, crossing his arms loosely over his plain white T-shirt. “You must not be from around here then.”
I look up at his tall, tanned form looming over me and brace for the same tourist treatment that Veronica received.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My nose wrinkles around the edges.
The guy smiles, close-lipped, and though it’s charming enough that it borderlines infectious, I’m not sure what to make of it.
“Well, people from Hawaii,” he says matter-of-factly, “when they cry like that, it usually means something’s wrong.” He shrugs.
I blink confusedly and just stare up at him for a moment.
I’m not crying.
“Is that so?” I say out loud, my voice faintly laced with sarcasm. “I’m curious to know where you think I could be from then, based on that observation.” I’m usually not this impolite, but he caught me at a really bad time.
His lips turn up faintly, matching the charming look in his eyes.
“I dunno,” he says. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
I look away and down at my phone crushed in one hand. A stream of unread text messages from Paige await me. Sighing heavily, I drop the phone on the sand beside my shoes, not wanting to think about any of that right now.
The silence grows between us.
I wonder why he’s even still standing there.