by Megyn Ward
I can’t shake my head hard enough. “Absolutely not.”
Gram pushes her empty glass away. “Well.”
I hate the way she says that word with so much weight and disgust.
She lifts her chin at me. “I’ve been patient with you for four years because you have Ellie and I believed you needed some time to recover from the trauma of that Wretched Reality Show.”
“I appreciate it, Gram.” I do. Down to the soles of my barefoot feet that rarely need shoes since I don’t venture out.
“But you need to move on, dear.” The stern bits of her push away her softness.
“What is it you want me to do? I’ve been painting and raising Ellie.”
Gram pats the table, the only sign the conversation is difficult for her. “None of which is furthering your career or generating an income.”
“For fuck’s sake! I’ve earned a dozen lifetimes of income.”
Way to go, dumbshit. You couldn’t watch your mouth, just this once?
Gram scowls. I’d successfully whisked all the sympathy from her heart. “It may be the vernacular of the day. It might sound hip or give you a gangster feel, but we’ve discussed that in this house, we do not speak in vulgarities.”
“I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.” I hardly ever curse anymore, because of Ellie. But Gram has me rattled.
She jabs her forefinger into the white tablecloth. “This is what I’m talking about. You’ve isolated yourself so much in the last four years you’ve forgotten how to behave with any civility. I’m doing you no favors by allowing you to hide here.”
“I’m not hiding.”
Only from the world. And Blake. Or the memory of him, anyway.
“You’ve sabotaged every opportunity I’ve presented you.”
“Opportunity for what?”
“Your art, of course.”
“Really? Before Carlos, there was Remy.”
She sniffs in her regal manner. “Whom you spied at through the window and subsequently refused to enter the room.”
“And before that was Enrique.”
Gram smiles. “My mistake. I might have tossed my wine on him, too.”
Another time I might laugh at the memory of the red stain spreading across his shirt. “My point is, there are women gallery owners. Why haven’t you invited them?”
Gram’s mouth tightens and she stares at me. She sighs. “You’re a young, beautiful woman. You need male companionship. I simply will not allow you to waste away.”
Ellie wanders back to us, now stripped down to her Disney Princess panties. She carries a handful of squished petals, damp from her little hands. “These are for you, Gram. It’s porridge.”
Gram holds her gnarled hand out for Ellie’s offering. “I’ve never been one for porridge. Perhaps we can wave a wand.” Gram plucks the glass stirring rod from the margarita pitcher. “And voila! It is now caviar.”
Ellie jumps up and down and claps. “Gram is magic.”
Gram’s alert blue eyes twinkle with delight before she lasers them back on me. “The time has come, dear. You’ve accumulated enough inventory to get started.”
Panic clogs my throat. “I’ll be nice to the next gallery owner you bring in, I promise.”
Gram shakes her head. “I’m done setting it up for you. I’ve given you time and opportunity, which you’ve squandered. Now it’s up to you.”
I squeeze my fists to keep Gram from seeing them shake. “What are you saying?”
There is pain but no uncertainty in her eyes. She’s not going to back down. “You have two weeks to set up a gallery showing or get a job. You and Ellie can’t remain here without contributing.”
Chapter 2
Blake
Wow. I’d forgotten how thick the air is in Cayman. How could I not remember the salty ocean smell, the immediate sluggishness that makes “island time” so understandable? My new dive gear is stowed in the back of the rental Nissan, not much bigger or more powerful than a golf cart. It’s taken me two hours from landing to gather my bags, negotiate with the woman at the rental car office who insisted they had no cars despite my confirmation number. I only made two mistakes turning into the wrong lane before the whole concept of driving on the left came back to me.
It’s not the only memory bubbling to the surface. The wind blows into my windows and I think about the feel of the waves, the splash of cool water, the gurgle of bubbles escaping from my regulator as I descend from the surface to the serenity below. The world takes on that blue filter and the sergeant majors in their stripes hurry by, a large silver grouper stays with me, as if taking on the job of ocean surveillance. The aqua and pink parrot fish nibble on a coral head bursting with bright purple fans and neon green funnels.
The memory takes on a life of its own, as it always does, when Liesa kicks into view. Clad in her wetsuit, despite the water temperatures that hover around 82 degrees. She’s always cold. Behind the mask covering her face, her blue eyes sparkle and she grins around the regulator stuffed into her mouth. God, she’s beautiful.
Yeah, the whole world thinks she’s beautiful, or they did four years ago before Liesa’s Life went off the air and she dropped from the face of the Earth. But I saw her in a way they never did.
I saw her conquer her fear of water with determination and discover the joy of diving. I saw her laugh with abandon at a silly joke when the cameras couldn’t catch her. She sang off-key and loud to oldies, wore my holey T-shirts without concern for fashion, strode around with no make-up and bed head. And she was beautiful.
The world didn’t see her the first time we made love, her eyes wide and trusting. Slow and unsure. And the last time, when she’d gained confidence.
It all happened so quickly. We fell hard, and in a few months it was over. The first time she’d gone on a night dive she’d had a scare. I had been nearly as rattled as she was when I realized how much losing her would mean to me. Shit, I had just met her. But when I thought she might be hurt, it had nearly killed me. We were recovering on the beach and Kylie and Zach were taking care of the equipment. Liesa was supposed to be on vacation. They’d told her to take a few weeks and rest so she could come back for the next season fresh. They hadn’t told her they’d hired Zach to seduce her and sent a camera to capture it all.
So when Zach and Kylie got caught fucking in the shower, it had thrown Liesa into a tailspin. It had rocked my canoe, too, since I’d convinced myself I was in love with Kylie. At Liesa’s invitation, I’d moved out of the bungalow I shared with Kylie and Diana and into Liesa’s opulent home on the exclusive canals on the northern coast of the island.
But I hadn’t felt betrayed by Kylie so much as I wanted to be close to Liesa. I was already over Kylie by the time I unpacked my duffle in the guest room at Liesa’s house.
We’d immediately fallen for each other. I took her diving and we developed a way to communicate underwater with hand signals and whiteboards. In a matter of days I took her diving to an isolated plot of land, hardly more than a handprint on the ocean. It wasn’t big enough for boats to dock on and was too far away for swimmers.
That’s where we spent the best moments of my life. Where my memories returned almost daily, even in the middle of law school exams. Liesa’s body, naked on the sand, wetsuit and dive gear scattered. Her legs open, her smile of invitation showing no reservations.
My cock hardens and I shift, but I still see Liesa that last time.
I didn’t wear the full wetsuit she did, so I was ready and waiting, standing in the shade of a canary palm, watching her struggle out of the soggy suit. She pulled her arms out, the string bikini sliding to the side and her full breasts escaping. She stopped a moment and grinned at me. While I watched, she cupped both breasts and kneaded them together.
My mouth went dry and I wanted to lean over and put my lips on her nipples and suck until she cried out. But I loved the tease as she pinched her nipples with her forefinger and her thumb and rolled her shoulders slowly, leaning her h
ead back and exposing her neck, the tip of her tongue running along her lips.
She was driving me crazy and I thought I might explode before I even touched her.
She glanced down at my cock that stood straight and hard. “Is that for me?”
I reached down and stroked it, feeling its heat against my palm. “It’s all for you. I’m going to make you come all over it.”
Her eyes narrowed at that, like a cat having its neck rubbed. She laughed low in her throat. “I do love it when you talk dirty.” She kept rubbing her tits, making me jealous of her fingers teasing her nipples.
I ran my hand over my cock, spreading my own juice along the shaft. “And I love it when you show me.”
Her smile was slow and sly. “What is it you want to see?”
I swallowed. “All of it.”
She released her breasts and shoved the wetsuit to her hips, then turned her back to me. Flexing first one knee, then the other, she worked the wetsuit over her ass.
Holy god. I had to take my hand from my cock. It was getting all the stimulation it could handle with that view. She shoved her bikini down along with the black neoprene, leaving that amazing backdoor shot of her pussy.
She was swollen in her desire. Pink and wet and so ready for me. Was it only a couple of months before this when she’d trembled and tentatively sucked my cock in her mouth for the first time? Like diving, Liesa had taken to fucking with a burning passion.
It took all my resistance to keep from throwing her down on the sand and pumping into her. But I held back because what she was doing to me with this show was so damned good. I never wanted her to stop.
She finally worked the suit off and stood facing me, the shadows of the palm playing across her smooth skin. Without hesitation, she lay on the sand as if it wasn’t going to work its way into all her crevices. There was a sacrifice to be made for us scuba diving to an island. We couldn’t really bring a blanket or a bottle of wine.
I started to move toward her, anticipating finally sliding my cock into that wet, hot pussy. But she held her hand up to stop me.
Again, that sly smile crossed her lips. She lay on her back and spread her legs in front of me and began a slow spiral with her fingers around her pussy lips. She tipped her head back and teased herself, writhing under her long fingers.
Oh my god. My cock had his own mind and it bounced and flexed. It had no complicated debate about now or later. For him it was all about now and later. Which sounded like a good idea to me.
Liesa brought her eyes up to mine. They sparkled with a deep sea blue and her tongue kept working the corner of her mouth as her fingers stroked her clit and she bucked her hips.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. She was damned sexy. Nothing I could have imagined prepared me for the way I felt watching her.
She blinked slow and languid, enjoying what she did to herself and to me. “Come for me, Blake. I want to see you.”
With that, she slid three of her slender fingers into her pussy.
I wasn’t one to disobey. With my right hand, I clamped onto my cock and pumped, slowly at first, matching her rhythm with her fingers. But she pulled them out and raised them to her lips. She ran her tongue slowly up her index finger, then slipped all three into her mouth and sucked, pulling in her cheeks.
Damn. I’d never seen anything like it. I pumped harder, my skin slapping. She focused on me. “That’s right, baby,” she whispered, “I want to see you come for me.”
I couldn’t make it last any longer. With a buckling of my knees and a call of “Ahhhggg,” I shot my load, spurting from my cock and landing in the sand.
Her mouth slackened and her eyes shimmered with her own growing climax.
I stood over her, still petting my cock as the last drops fell onto the sand. “Fuck yourself for me.”
She fell back on the sand, working her clit until she writhed and called out, finally letting her hand come to rest.
I did get to fuck her that day. More than once.
When we finally swam out and descended under the waves, I found a perfect sand dollar. They aren’t all that uncommon, but they’re fragile so most of the time they’re chipped or broken. If you do find one underwater, it’s tough to take care of it through the dive and boarding the boat or even walking up on shore.
When I found it, I handed it to Liesa. She held it to her heart, showing me she loved it and even through a rough surf, she kept hold of it, bringing it safely to shore. She joked that our love was like that sand dollar. Hidden, fragile, and beautiful.
Shut that shit down.
Like the rest of the world, I have no idea what happened to Liesa Temple. But unlike the rest of the world, I don’t give a fuck. She’d made her choice four years ago. I’d fallen so hard for her and honestly believed she’d fallen for me, too.
We talked about being together. She’d leave the show, I’d take her with me to law school and together we’d forge a new life for ourselves. Her eyes had sparkled when she talked about shaving her head and changing her name to something common. Her plan was to enroll in a city college while I attended Columbia and hopefully, find a career that interested her.
What a dumbshit I was. I don’t know what game she was playing. On air, she and Zach were heading toward marriage and her losing her virginity. It was broadcast in every living room in America and streaming everywhere. She promised me the whole story was manufactured for TV and she was going to find her way out. How many times had she kissed me and said, “Trust me.”
I laugh in the empty car and the moist wind whisks it out the window. Trust. That word lost its meaning for me the day a car pulled up in front of an arbor on the beach. The decorations and ribbon made it clear Liesa and Zach were getting hitched in a romantic ceremony at sunset.
Kylie, a sucker for punishment, I guess, let them coerce her into attending. Maybe they’d sucked her in with their promises of TV riches. I grabbed my bags and walked away. I left my old life behind with a cut clean as if I’d used a scalpel.
There. The sign ahead says Paradise Found Diving. I try to turn on my blinker twice before I remember it’s on the right side of the steering column. The car eases into a spot and putters to silence. My heart is booming in my chest.
Why did I come here?
That damned pre-marriage counselor told Erika and me that we needed to have closure on our previous lives if we had any hope of going forward together. I’d laughed. You can’t get more closed than putting an ocean between you and your old life.
I never intended to come back to Cayman. But Erika is such a rule-follower.
You are, too, you dimwit.
Once the counselor mentioned reconciling our pasts, I couldn’t get Cayman out of my head.
You couldn’t get Liesa out of your head.
Not only her, but Kylie and Diana, too. I’d walked away and when they’d tried to contact me, I wouldn’t answer. Eventually, addresses, social media, phones, everything changed and if they’d wanted to get in touch with me, it would have been difficult.
I’m the kind of guy who makes friends easily. Senior class president, dates, party invitations, whatever. And even though there are plenty of people who think we’re close, Kylie and Diana are the best friends I’ve ever had.
What about Liesa?
She shit on me. That’s not what friends do.
But you did that to Kylie and Diana.
And I’m here to fix that.
Enough debating. I’d gone back and forth for the last few months. Even Erika wondered what was eating me. I told her it was my upcoming graduation from law school and trying to decide on the various job offers that piled up on the desk.
Yeah. Those, too. The main reason I can’t sleep, even with cute Erika cuddled beside me, is because I can’t get married without my best friends being there. And my best friends can’t be there if they don’t know I’m getting married because we haven’t spoken in four years. And we haven’t spoken in four years because I’m an asshole who pushe
d them away.
Because they remind you of Liesa.
Liesa is not my problem. She rejected me.
I found someone else. Erika wants me. She’s proud to be with me. She doesn’t want me to be anyone except Blake—Columbia School of Law graduate, highly recruited third-ranked in his class, getting ready to tackle the world of corporate law—Taylor.
I’d stripped off my tennis shoes as soon as I entered the customs line at the airport and slipped on flip-flops. But I still wear my jeans and they feel like chainmail. I haven’t checked into a hotel yet, can’t bring myself to be any ol’ tourist on a Seven Mile Beach resort.
Paradise Found. The place looks exactly right for Kylie. She hadn’t been hard to find since promoting her business to tourists meant she had a big profile. The signs with a smiling cartoon parrot fish look friendly and professionally done, giving the impression of a reliable but fun experience.
She’ll be glad to see me, right? Or will she be pissed because I blew her off four years ago? I have to be honest, if she’d done the same to me, I might not be forgiving.
Standing in the hot parking lot in front of the weathered wood dive shop, melting in my Levi’s isn’t going to give me the answer to those questions.
It all seems in order. The dive shop, tank shed, locker room, rinse tanks, drying hooks, and shower. Clean, well-kept, orderly. This time of the afternoon the dive boats should be returning for the day. Her website said they had two boats, so not a big operation. Big enough, though, to earn her a living and keep her diving, which was her dream.
I’d love to dash back to my golf cart of a car and grab my gear. God, it’s been so long since I’ve been under the waves. I almost taste the salt water on my lips, feel the swells. How have I gone so long without diving?
The door of the dive shop opens and a girl in a Paradise Found golf shirt, wearing cutoffs and flip-flops steps out. She raises a latte-colored hand to her beautiful face and brushes curly black hair back before searching the ocean. Relief and a surge of happiness propels me forward.