Forty-five minutes into this, I realized that the ocean was like a goddamn playground to him.
Originally, I’d intended to stay close to him, but the further we got from the shore, the more he swam. He was all over the place.
It was five minutes until the time that the instructor had told us to head back in when I realized that Tobias didn’t even have any freakin’ flippers on!
The moment we got back to shore, I pulled my goggles off, and nearly laughed when he gestured me over to look into his bulging pockets.
“Is there something in your pocket?” I teased.
He winked, and then I looked down to see that there were multiple sand dollars in them.
My brows rose and I looked up at him.
“Pretty sure it’s illegal as fuck to take those from here,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I take them from everywhere. If get in a body of water and see one, I take it. I have a collection at home.”
The fact that this big, badass man had a collection of freaking sand dollars was enough to make me grin wildly.
“You’ll have to show me that collection some time,” I teased.
“All right, everybody. Did you have fun?” the man who had guided us around asked, his voice raising to be heard over the pulsing ocean.
“Yes,” I said, answering him honestly. “We did.”
Tobias’ hand curled around my hip, and he pulled me into him as we started to walk back to the Tiki-hut that also was an equipment shed of sorts.
“Now we’re going to do the glass bottom kayaking portion of the excursion,” the guide called out. “Drop your things into the tub over there, and head down to the opposite side of the beach from where we were.”
Chapter 11
Surround yourself with people who have issues. People who have issues always have alcohol.
-Fact of life
Tobias
To say I wasn’t happy about driving back in that big heaping pile of shit they called a bus was an understatement. Why they switched buses on us was a mystery.
This one, at least, had a better front seat and working air.
The driver, though, was worse. That was revealed in the first few minutes of our return trip.
This one did the majority of his driving doing his own thing. He was driving on the left, then the right and sometimes choosing to be in the middle. This trip the translator/ tour guide was in the back of the bus. I couldn’t even ask why the fuck this guy couldn’t follow even the most basic of traffic laws.
He drove fast— I thought too fast, though I hadn’t seen a posted speed limit sign anywhere.
He was on the wrong side of the road more than he was on the right side, and I’d yet to figure out why the drivers here did that in the first place.
There were potholes, sure, but they weren’t any worse than what we had at home.
I’d avoid them if I had the room to maneuver around them— but I’d be avoiding them while staying on my side of the road.
But since there wasn’t any room on their side of the road, it was like they just decided that the other side was just as good a place as any, even if it was on a blind curve.
We’d just dropped off the tour guide—who’d told us she was being dropped off at her home since she now had to take care of her seven nieces and nephews. We were in unfamiliar territory now after that detour when I saw a white taxi on the wrong side of the road in front of us.
The problem with this was that, for once, another taxi was headed straight toward them, but on the right side of the road.
I saw it play out in my mind, clearly not liking where this was going.
Seconds later, I realized that neither car was going to move out of the other’s way.
The resulting impact sent the taxis flying. One spun sideways into the middle of the road, crumpled and smoking when it finally came to a stop. The second taxi, who’d been on the right side of the road, wound up on its side in a ditch less than five feet away from us.
Before I even realized what I was doing, I was up and out of my seat, heading for the door, as the bus came to a sudden, rocking halt.
I’d just pried the doors open when Audrey stopped me with a death grip on my arm. Her fingernails were digging into my skin, and they were actually on the verge of drawing blood.
“Audrey…” I said, worried that she was scared.
She wasn’t.
“Look.”
I did, and my stomach clenched at what I saw.
“What the fuck?”
There were men dressed in desert-print camo fatigues standing next to the two wrecked cars—all of which had AK-47s in their hands.
They were obviously there in some sort of official capacity, but with no identifying insignia on their uniforms, I could only guess as to who they were.
And not knowing for certain who they were or why they were there, I didn’t think it was prudent to get out and offer my assistance.
“Don’t you dare go out there,” Audrey hissed, reading the indecision on my face. “You will die.”
“By your hand, or theirs?” I teased, heading back to my seat.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just know that you shouldn’t go out there. They look like they have it well in hand.”
And it looked like, for the most part, they did.
We watched for the next twenty minutes as a three-year-old and two infants, who both appeared to be no more than six months old, were pulled out of the car.
Then came the three adults.
All of whom seemed to be okay, except for the man who I guessed was the driver who had a red, swollen lump on his forehead.
“Do you think they’ll let us through?” Audrey whispered as we watched the first of a line of cars start to move around the wreck.
The only problem was that to do that, they had to drive off the road.
The road itself looked to be like it was carved in between two rocked covered mountains. The road had about four feet of ditch before the rocky mountain jutted upwards in a steep incline.
Meaning when the cars drove off the road, they sank down into the ditch, and their windows came inches away from touching the rocks of the mountain. In between the mountain and the wrecked car, it made for a tight fit.
There were only about nine feet for the cars to squeeze into, and each car that passed was tilted so precariously to the side that one wrong move would cause them to tip over into the mountain.
“This is a fuckin’ nightmare,” I groaned, looking behind me. “Can’t even fucking back up due to the goddamn road carved into the side of this goddamned canyon. Not to mention there are so many cars that it’d take us the next hour to do it.”
“Only one road in, and one road out,” the driver muttered in heavily accented English.
Well, that answered that.
“Can you fit through that gap?”
Audrey asked that, and before I could immediately reply with ‘are you fucking crazy’ a passenger bus the same size as ours started to go through the small gap.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
That’s when I saw Amos sitting in the front seat with his hands covering his face.
If this situation wasn’t so fucked up, I would’ve laughed.