“Look,” I say when I recap the bottle, “I don’t mean to be rude, but half the office thinks I sleep with Tucker, and after yesterday, the other half wonders if I sleep with you. Either fire me or treat me like everyone else.”
I rise to a standing position as his face blanks, but am spared further conversation by Yolanda calling for attention.
“Okay, listen up, people. We’re about to begin the first challenge.” Yolanda points to five picnic tables lined up parallel to the shore about twenty feet from the water. Each end contains a colored bin and a string bag filled with household sponges. “Gather around the bin which matches the color of your T-shirt. Then listen carefully to the instructions.”
When we have shuffled to the appropriate locations, she removes a recipe card from her clipboard and reads it aloud.
“Begin by filling your container in the sea. Take turns using your sponges, and only your sponges, to transfer water to your second container.” She points fifty feet in the direction of the hotel, where a second matching bin awaits us on another picnic table. “You will win the exercise if you are the first team to fill the second receptacle to its brim.”
“White team,” she says upon turning to us. “In case you think you’ve got an advantage with Finn on your team, I have to disillusion you. He’s just a warm body—”
“I’ll say,” Georgia whispers to me.
“—and is expressly forbidden from providing any leadership.”
Finn grins and salutes us. “Peon reporting for duty.”
“You have two minutes to prepare,” Yolanda continues. “At the one-minute mark, I will issue a verbal warning.” She holds a whistle aloft. “You may begin when you hear my signal. Any questions?”
When nobody raises their hand, she turns us loose.
Tucker grabs the bag of sponges and we form a circle to pass it around, taking one sponge each. When we are done, three remain in the bag.
“Must have planned for larger teams,” Roger says with a shrug. He copies the other teams by tossing the leftovers onto the table.
“Okay… Anyone have a strategy?” Princess asks.
In the silence that ensues, everyone looks expectantly at Finn, who merely smiles back.
Tucker has been squinting down the beach while repeatedly tossing and catching his sponge. “FYI, I figure on thirty to thirty-five runs each.”
Georgia gasps. “Thirty-five?”
Tucker shrugs. “Less, maybe, if we don’t lose much water in the transition.”
“Hear that, ladies?” Roger says. “Use a firm, steady grip. No crushing.”
“Screw off,” Kimberly says, with no real heat.
“Ladies and gentleman,” corrects Tad, with a wink.
“Sorry,” Roger says. “Didn’t want to make any assumptions.” The two men grin at one another.
Okay, I think. Maybe there is a point to these exercises after all. In a boardroom setting, how long would it have taken for that particular conversation to arise?
“Strategy?” Princess prompts.
For some reason when Finn mimes a zipper mouth, they turn to look at me.
“Okay,” I say slowly, thinking aloud. “Let’s start with how to fill the first container. It would be best if someone strong—or several someones—could handle that. And since they’ll be in and out of the water, they’ll need the right kind of footwear.”
Tucker and Finn look at one another and toe off their runners.
“Might be good to have backup in case Finn and Tucker are running relay when we get low,” Princess says.
Roger and Tad follow suit.
“One-minute warning,” Yolanda calls.
“What about running order?” I ask.
Tad shrugs. “Random’s good by me.”
Georgia has been looking very nervous since Tucker’s prediction about the number of laps. She clears her throat. “I’m no good at racing but I’m a damn good squeezer. I’ll go last. You folks best build me up a good margin.”
“Finn should go first, then,” Tucker says. “He’s excellent at running.”
“Whereas you excel at leading from behind,” Finn says.
Into the heavy silence that falls, Princess says, “‘An arrogant man stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper.’ Proverbs 28:25.”
It’s not clear who she’s addressing, but Finn is the one to speak. “I apologize. I know Tucker from another lifetime and we can get too competitive. I’ll rein it in.”
I doubt it escapes anybody’s notice that Tucker doesn’t issue a similar pledge.
With the deadline approaching, we hastily arrange ourselves. I end up in front of Georgia, who looks extremely stressed.
“It’ll be okay,” I say, giving her arm a squeeze. “It’s just a game.”
“A game that’s going to do in my heart with the running. That is, if my lungs don’t explode first.” She waves a hand when I stiffen. “Oh, don’t fret. I’m not being serious. I’m just mouthing off for sympathy.”
“Besides,” I say, “who cares if we win a bookmark or an off-brand calculator? The whole purpose of this exercise is that we ‘bond.’” I can’t resist using ironic quotation marks.
Her eyes go wide. “Honey, you insane? I don’t give a damn about no bonding. Last year’s winners got a free trip to Cancun with their one-plus. Year before that it was Fiji.”
“Okay, I care too,” I say, just as the whistle goes.
Finn and Tucker seize the white bin and dive for the water, wading in only far enough to submerge the container. For now, at least, they seem to have buried the hatchet.
I shout encouragement while keeping an eye on the other teams, hoping to spot hidden efficiencies so we can exploit them ourselves.
The red and green teams start by sending four people into the water—one person for each corner. Initially it means less slopping, but the red team has trouble coordinating all those bodies in such close proximity. By the time they’ve set their half-empty container on the table, Finn is almost at the far bin with his first loaded sponge.
When my turn comes, I have my sponge deep in the water, ready to go as soon as Kimberly returns. But when I raise the sponge, half its contents drip on me. And there’s a trick to carrying it while running. Move too slowly, you lose water into the sand. Hold the sponge against you, it leaks into your shirt. Hold it cupped in your hands, and it’s a challenge to achieve any real speed.
“Dang, this is going to take forever,” I say, when I’ve returned from my fourth run and Georgia is off, safely out of hearing.
I pluck at my shirt, which is now plastered to my body. “Just what I needed,” I say to Princess with an eye roll. “A corporate wet T-shirt contest.”
Princess’s smile is strained as a voice floats over my shoulder.
“Have an observation you’d care to share, Olivia?”
I know who it is before I turn. Yolanda. “Um, yes, ma’am.” So much for staying in the background. “I’m already a bit uncomfortable having to wear a swimsuit in front of coworkers, but this fabric is nearly transparent when it’s wet.”
“So no white T-shirts in the future. Got it,” she says quite seriously, and jots something down on her clipboard. “Anything else?”
I blink. “Not at the moment.”
Yolanda nods and strides off.
I expel a breath when she’s safely out of range. “Is she always like this?”
“Hell, yeah,” Georgia says between panted breaths. “At least Finn’s close to normal. Yolanda? We’re all scared to death of her.”
Until this point, as best I can tell, we’ve been keeping up with the other teams. On her sixth trip back, though, Kimberly trips and loses a fair bit of time.
“Sorry, guys,” she says sheepishly when she arrives.
“See?” I say to Georgia. “We’re all going to have our struggles today.”
She doesn’t look mollified. Her curls are already damp. Rivulets of sweat pour down her face before disappear
ing into the collar of her shirt.
“Promise you’ll say if you’re not up to this,” I tell her, and she nods as she tries to catch her breath.
“We need to do something to help her,” I say to the others during Georgia’s next turn. It’s torture watching her struggle.
“So devise a solution, dummy,” Finn says.
I look at him, suddenly alert, and decide to ignore his overly familiar tone. “Meaning that there’s a hack?”
He puts his hands up. “Warm body here. Remember?”
How can I not? My nostrils are registering the scent of clean, healthy Finn and it’s lighting up everything within me. Stupid pheromones.
With an effort, I return to the problem at hand. There has to be a hack. That’s the whole point of these things. Beyond the team-building crap, they want us to gain competence in problem-solving skills.
What were Yolanda’s instructions again? I repeat them to myself under my breath, twice, before it comes to me.
“Guys!” I say excitedly, drawing my team’s attention. “She didn’t specify we had to form a relay. She just said we had to take turns using our sponges to transfer water to the second container. We can start running before the other person is back.”
“Good job, Kibble.” Tucker gives me a gentle punch to the shoulder.
“Kibble?” Finn says with quiet lethality. “As in dog kibble?”
“It’s fine,” I say hastily. “It’s just a childhood nickname. And with all due respect, sir—”
“Finn,” he says, his eyes still lingering on Tucker, and still narrowed.
“Okay, Finn, maybe you should stick to being the warm body.”
“When called for, my body includes my mouth.”
It certainly does. I feel my face burn and drop my gaze.
“Is that cheating?” Kimberly says tentatively.
It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about game strategy.
“Who cares?” Tucker says.
“Come to think of it,” Georgia says slowly, “she didn’t say we had to leave the basin on the picnic table, either. We all assumed that was the rule because of the initial setup.”
“You’re right,” Tad says. “Why can’t we carry the first bin all the way to the end and set it up right beside the other one?”
“More work for us if we’re to carry it that far,” Tucker says to Finn. “You up for it?”
Finn looks insulted. “Please. You’ll be done in before me.”
Tucker’s eyes flare, but for once he channels his anger into action. Five minutes later, while the other teams are still working on half-full bins, we are done and euphoric.
“OH-HO,” Yolanda says when she comes by. “After you stopped wasting energy on complaints, looks like you found yourselves a solution.” Her face splits into a grin. “Well done, white team. Help yourselves to a cold beverage while the others catch up.”
A few minutes later, she gathers us for a debriefing.
“So what have we learned with this exercise?” Yolanda says, after pronouncing us the winners.
“The white team is full of rule-breakers,” someone shouts.
Yolanda laughs and arches an eyebrow. “Tempting to believe that, but let’s see if it’s true. Does anyone recall the exact wording of the challenge?” When there’s silence, she turns to me. “Olivia?”
“No, sorry,” I say, managing to catch myself in time. But I feel my face flame when Finn looks at me and shakes his head. So he remembers I have a near-photographic memory. I have the uneasy feeling I haven’t fooled Yolanda, either.
“Anyone?” Yolanda asks. When no one volunteers, Yolanda rereads her recipe card aloud. “Right. You’ll notice I said nothing about needing to form a relay and nothing about keeping the bins stationary. Nor did I say you had to restrict yourself to using one sponge per person per run.”
She turns her head to the right. “Red team, if you’d figured that out sooner, you would have given the white team a run for their money.”
Tucker nudges me with his knee. Winning has gone a long way toward banishing his bad mood. “Missed an angle, slacker.”
“Notice how your brain filled those procedural gaps with rules that didn’t exist,” Yolanda says. “So why would that be the case? Where did those rules come from?”
People are noticeably more engaged now, raising their hands, and I have to admire Yolanda’s skill as a facilitator. Within a few minutes she has us concluding that we drew upon behaviors of the other teams, what we’d seen on reality TV, even what we’d done on high school sports teams—in some cases, more than thirty years ago.
“So here are the lessons we want you to take from this afternoon,” Yolanda says. “Number one: your environment will shape your default behaviors. Watch for them and choose them consciously. And number two: always challenge assumptions. For those of you who are wondering about the relevance of these exercises—” her gaze lands briefly on me before moving on “—this is a message we want used in your everyday work-life.” Yolanda produces a different card. “Now, keeping all that in mind, here is your next set of instructions…”
Georgia turns to me when we stand. “What did you do to be teacher’s pet,” she says in an undertone. “I want whatever you have.”
“Trust me, you don’t,” I say, because the only assumption I can draw is that Finn told her about our past. For the rest of the afternoon, though our team continues to win, I work extra hard at projecting boring competence.
CHAPTER 9
FINN
By the end of the afternoon, when Yolanda dismisses the crew, the white team is leading by a considerable margin. In good part that’s due to Liv. She’s smart, capable, and a natural leader, not to mention compassionate. It hasn’t escaped me how often she’s spurred to creativity out of a desire to take care of her team.
As the others disperse, I linger behind to help with the equipment. I’ve promised myself I won’t influence Yolanda’s opinion, but that doesn’t mean I can’t solicit hers.
“Preliminary thoughts?” I say, as I place a stack of bins on a banquet table.
Yolanda looks up from the traffic cones she is sorting into net bags. “On anyone in particular?”
I close my eyes briefly. “Really? You’re gonna make me say it?”
“What do you think?” She laughs openly at me and then takes pity. “She’s a pistol. A pistol with a suppressor.”
“You noticed that, too.”
“Of course,” she says. “Any idea why she’s self-censoring?”
I shake my head. Everything about Liv feels like a mystery right now, from why she’s comparatively quiet, to why she lets Tucker call her by that horrible name, to whether I’ve been wrong for a decade about—
“Oh, hell,” I say. “You have a blank consent form lying around?”
“In the blue tote under that table. Why?”
“Because I’m an idiot.”
I’d started off watching Liv to resolve the southpaw issue but it had been surprisingly difficult to establish her preference. She’d push her hair back with her left hand, then pull her T-shirt down with the right. She’d carry a sponge in her left hand, then squeeze it with both. Then her T-shirt got wet, and I’d been so busy watching the warm, round shape of her bouncing down the beach, that I forgot all about establishing her innocence.
But I shouldn’t have. Darcy is expecting a phone call, and I need answers. Wakefield deserves answers.
I find Liv by the closest pool, rinsing her feet off with the low tap. As I approach and my shadow looms over her, she looks up.
There’s a moment when she recognizes me and her expression betrays her—one instant of longing and lust before she shutters her gaze. I’m not the only one, then, feeling this burst of nostalgia and attraction. A hearkening back to better times.
All the more reason, then, to settle the issue of her handedness.
“Some of your paperwork went missing,” I say. “Mind signing this for me again?”
>
“Sure.” She dries her hands on her towel and takes the clipboard and pen. “Shouldn’t I have done this before?”
“Pardon?” I’ve been too busy watching her sign with her right hand to be listening attentively.
“Shouldn’t I have signed this before you had me running in the hot sun?”
“Right. Yolanda asked me to do it earlier but I forgot.”
“You seem to be having a problem with that,” she says.
I blink. “Problem with what?”
“Forgetting.” When I look at her blankly she holds up the clipboard and pen meaningfully.
“Right.” I take them from her, feeling like three kinds of idiot, willing my feet to move and take me away from her and back to the land of dignity.
I have everything I need for now, Darcy’s expecting a call, but…I’m actually considering doing the very thing I told Darcy he couldn’t. Except whereas he’d potentially offend or frighten Liv, I could invite her out for coffee and slip in some gentle questioning.
Ten years ago, on or about the fifth of March, did you spray paint the words “Fin Wakefield” in fluorescent orange on my driveway? (“Fin,” as in the French word for “end,” when you damn well know how to spell my name.) Or if it wasn’t you, did you employ a body-double to commit the dirty deed on your behalf?
Right. The addition of Jamaican caffeine would make that go over exceptionally well.
It’s a stupid idea. Incredibly dumb. Plus, if she’s a stalker after attention, I’d only be setting myself up for trouble.
On the other hand, I’m having a hard time believing that the woman in front of me means me harm.
I take a deep breath. “Liv—” I say, at the exact time she says, “Finn, I’d like you to stop needling Tucker.”
Aw, hell.
“I know he’s being antagonistic—”
“I’m glad you can see that much,” I say.
“—but you know what my mama says—”
“Not really, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“—it’s harder to be held under a thumb when the thumbnail is carefully manicured.”
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