Bea breathed in an extra-deep pull of cool morning air. “I’ll go your way with it.”
“Bea, I don’t want you driving all the way to Eureka and back again today. It’s too long a drive. About six hours round-trip, and then you have to turn around and go right back up there anyway, because that’s the way you’re headed. And think how much of the money you’ll put right back into gas.”
“But then how do we pay you?”
“I’ll just take that nice little notebook computer the girl offered me.”
“Is it worth enough?”
“It is to me. You’ll be trading it for more than a pawnshop would have given her for it. But I’ll be getting it for less than it would have cost to buy a new one. And it’s as good as new to me. So I say it’s fine. I’ll take you two back to my house, and you can just rest and relax while we mount the new tires and install the starter. We already did the belts and hoses and the alignment. Then you can move on.” A weighted pause. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about moving on.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
But just in that moment Bea was struck with an idea. It made her stomach jump, and come to attention. It made her feel alive suddenly. Unusually alive. And it wasn’t intended just for him, either. It wasn’t a consolation prize. It was Bea’s very own adventurous plan.
She looked to see if the girl was watching, but she had disappeared around the rocks to another cove entirely.
“I was just thinking, though,” Bea said. “Maybe in the spirit of adventure . . .” Then she stalled and didn’t say more for a few beats. She thought about bat rays, and how they had taught her not to leave spaces for doubt to settle. “Maybe just one . . . little . . . tiny . . . very tiny . . . kiss?”
Still she did not look at his face. She would not have dared.
“That would be an adventure,” he said, his voice hushed.
She turned to face him and quickly closed her eyes. She felt his face move closer, and felt her own heart pounding. His lips touched hers for just the count of two. Maybe one and a half. She barely had the chance to register the feel of them, dry and warm. Then they were gone.
“Well,” she said. “Maybe a little less tiny than that. But not . . . not like those disgusting things you see in the movies on TV with their mouths open, and all that slimy tongue stuff.”
“No,” he said, barely over a whisper. “Of course not.”
Then it was happening again, soft and yielding, but tender. Not disgusting at all. It lasted for a few seconds, and grew a bit more intense, while remaining civil and not terribly frightening as kisses go. Still, Bea’s heart pounded. And still she could hear the musical sound of the waves tinkling a million bits of glass.
She drew her head back and so did he.
“Well,” she said. “That was a proper adventure.”
“I’ll say.”
“And it’s probably the last adventure I’ll ever have. Because I’m going to break my neck going back up that bluff.”
He laughed, which felt good to Bea. It was a lifting of tension that she’d been needing. More than she had even known.
The young man from Casper’s shop came by the house at ten thirty a.m. to get them. He was driving Bea’s van.
“Well, look at that,” she said, stepping out into Casper’s front yard to greet it. As though the van were a long-lost relative who had changed for the better over the years. “Those tires are so new! They still have those little rubber hairlike things on them from their manufacturing. What do you call those?”
“Hairs,” the young man said. He seemed uninterested in the humor of the moment, or in bantering. He handed Bea the keys. “Johnny over there followed me from the shop.” He pointing to a compact car idling at the curb. “He’ll give me a lift back. So you folks can just take off from here.”
“Oh, but I have to at least go by the shop and say goodbye to Casper.”
“He’s not there. He took the day off.”
“Really? Why would he do that? He’s not sick, is he?”
“Nah, he’s fine. Sometimes when he has a lot on his mind he takes a day off and goes crabbing. Oh. I almost forgot. He told me to give you this.” He pulled a small, slightly rumpled envelope from his back pocket and handed it to Bea. “And I’m supposed to pick up a computer?”
“Right. Right. I’ll just get that.”
Bea stuck her head back into this near-stranger’s house. This near-stranger whom she had recently kissed. It made her head spin to think about it, literally. It made her a little dizzy. So unlike her. And yet in another way, maybe . . . not. Maybe not anymore.
“Allie?” she called. “Bring out that computer of yours so we can pay for this repair, okay? Then we’d better get back on the road.”
While she was waiting for that transaction to play out, Bea opened the envelope. In it was a small scrap of paper torn from a notepad, printed with the words “Casper’s Automotive,” along with a drawing of a tow hitch.
“Bea,” it said in a scratchy pen scrawl. “I’m no good at goodbyes. Never have been. You know where I am if you change your mind. Thanks for this morning. It meant the world to me.”
No signature. But then again, it wasn’t as though Bea needed to know who it was from.
“So, I have a question,” Allie said as they drove. “When we get to Eureka, do we sell the gold or don’t we?”
“I think we probably should,” Bea said. “We have a lot of coast in front of us, and the gas will go fast. Do you mind it?”
“I guess not.”
Allie was staring at the map while Bea drove.
The ocean had disappeared as the coast route bent east, away from the views Bea had come to love. The problem was, it just kept bending. And bending. And bending. They had been traveling through forest land for some time now, with hairpin turn after hairpin turn. Bea’s shoulders already ached, but she had vowed to make miles today. An unheard-of number of miles, at least for her.
Because you just never know what will happen between any given “here” and any given “there.”
Before the girl walked into the office of the man who bought gold, Bea couldn’t help noting that she stopped in the back of the van and dug around in one of her fabric bags. Bea was fairly certain Allie had been keeping the ounce of gold in her jeans pocket. And besides, when the girl pulled something out of the bag, it was far bulkier. Maybe the size of a small notebook, but with a leatherlike cover that wrapped around itself and snapped.
Allie stuck the mystery item under her arm and disappeared.
You’re still holding out on me, Bea thought. But she didn’t say it. She just sat and nursed a feeling in her belly that hurt. Unfortunately, it was not indignation, nor anything else clean and satisfying. Nothing in the anger category at all.
If compelled to tell the truth, Bea would have had to admit that it hurt her feelings. Somehow she’d thought her relationship with the girl had grown more trusting than all that.