“Snorkeling,” Tobias answered, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me into his body. “Were you on the same bus as us?”
He shook his head. “Fuck no. But it sounds like your experience was much the same as ours. Had I not been in the front, I’m fairly sure I’d have had the bus pull over so I could lose that shitty breakfast I ate this morning.”
I grinned. “What was wrong with your breakfast?”
“What wasn’t wrong with breakfast?”
Tobias grunted. “We didn’t think the buffet was all that bad. Did you eat in the dining room or the buffet?”
“Dining room,” he answered. “The pancakes tasted like they popped them from a frozen package and nuked them thirty seconds too long in the microwave. I’d have had more enjoyment out of eating thawed out Eggos than the shit that I had.”
Tobias’ eyes went somewhere behind where Amos was standing, and Amos, in an instinctual reaction, shifted his body so that he could see as well while continuing to keep eye contact with me and hold down a conversation.
“I thought that cruises were supposed to have superb food,” I mused. “What are y’all looking at?”
I’d now lost both men’s attention.
They were looking at something that I couldn’t see over the short, spiky little bush in front of me, and they were glaring.
“Tobias?”
I shook him for emphasis, and he didn’t look at me. Not for a full thirty seconds.
It was to the point where I was about to walk around both men to see what the problem was when Tobias finally grinned.
“Thought that was gonna go different,” he muttered.
“Thought what was gonna go different?”
I was getting impatient now, and both men realized it seconds after the question had left my mouth.
“That bus just parallel parked in between two other buses, but I didn’t think he had enough room to do it.”
“But he did,” Amos said. “Shit, that’s me,” he said when he heard a young woman with a thick accent call out for ‘group twenty-six.’ “Y’all have fun. Good luck getting back.”
Tobias flipped him off, and I just shook my head as Amos chuckled and returned the gesture.
I started forward, wanting to see the ocean, but came to a sudden halt when a woman with her long, decorated fingernails shook her finger at me. “No! Wait for your guide!”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Yes, ma’am.”
The woman started to say something more, but she was stopped by the man at my back when he put his arm back around me. Only this time, his strong, muscular forearm went around my waist and pulled me back against his chest.
“She didn’t mean to,” Tobias replied sweetly.
His thick, Southern accent was syrupy sweet, and I wanted to roll my eyes at the woman who started to melt into a puddle of goo right in front of him. “It okay. You go look.”
Tobias grinned. “That’s okay. We’ll wait. Thank you, though.”
Before I could argue, Tobias swept me sideways and started to pull me into a tangle of palm trees that was hiding the rest of the group from where we were now standing.
“What…”
He kissed me, laid a long, hot, wet one right on my lips, and then pulled away.
I followed him, my lips seeking his, and he chuckled before giving them to me once more.
When he finally came up for air long moments later, I was standing there, panting, with my knees weak.
“What was that?” I gasped.
“Thought I was going to fuckin’ die on the drive over here. The thought of never doing that again was enough to make me want to remind myself how good it was…just in case he literally kills us on the way back.”
I grinned.
“Group seventeen!”
“That’s us,” I said, grabbing hold of his hand. “Let’s go.”
He came willingly, but when I would’ve let go of his hand, he held strong, refusing to allow me to take my hand back.
And I couldn’t say that it upset me.
Exactly eighteen minutes later, I was standing in my one-piece black bathing suit with my mask on, my snorkel in my mouth and my flippers on my feet.
“Who here has never snorkeled before?” the large man called out.
I didn’t raise my hand. I’d snorkeled a lot, but mostly in the swimming pool and the local lakes that surrounded our old home in Louisiana.
Tobias, however, did raise his hand.
“Do you know how to swim?”
Tobias’ mouth twitched. “I do. But I wasn’t raising my hand because I haven’t snorkeled before. I was raising my hand to ask you if it’d be possible to get another mask. This one is a piece of junk.”
My brows rose.
His mask looked exactly like mine and everyone else’s who was going on this adventure with us.
The man, Santiago, shook his head. “No, sir. That’s all we have.”
His thick accent held amusement as he said this, and Tobias sighed.
“I had a feeling you would say that,” Tobias grumbled. “Please, don’t let me interrupt your instructions.”
Santiago started to expound on what to do when you got water in your snorkel when Tobias reached for me and grabbed something that was lying flat against my leg.
“This needs to go through your legs,” he said, indicating a black strap that was dangling from the back of my life vest all the way to the ground.
I picked it up and threaded it through my legs as I looked pointedly at the one he was wearing.
“What about yours?” I countered, wiggling slightly when his hand skimmed the outside of my hip.
“Mine doesn’t have one,” he showed me. “You’re smaller, and apparently, they feel that bigger guys like me can keep our own life vest on without any additional help.”
I snorted. “We’ll just see about that.”
He did, however, fasten the buckle between my legs, copping a feel as he did it.
***
There are things in this life that I will remember forever.
One was the look on Mina’s face the moment she married my brother.
The second was the days that both of my nieces were born.
The third was the day that I saw my father go down for life.
But the newest memory permanently seared into my soul was the look of happiness on Tobias’ face as he snorkeled around in the ocean, pointing out things to me.
And he really did swim like a damn fish.
In fact, he was so good at it, that I would go to him if I was having an emergency instead of the instructor.
Though the instructor looked competent, Tobias was just magnetizing.
When I’d first backed my way into the ocean with Tobias at my side, I hadn’t thought anything about it.
But the further we sank into the ocean, the more excited Tobias seemed to get. As if this place allowed him the freedom to swim and play.
“Ready, Freddy?” I asked him when the water came up to my cheek.
He nodded and started to drop down, but before I could say anything, he was gone.
Moving my mask into place, I pressed them tightly to my face to create a seal, and followed the man down.
When I was immersed in the water, I looked around for Tobias only to find him over a dozen yards away—nowhere near where I’d seen him disappear.
How had he gotten over there so fast?