Wanderlove

by Kirsten Hubbard

Instead, I ride my bike to the airstrip and watch a plane land. It looks like an aerial chicken bus. I weave a handful of bougainvillea into a bracelet, which breaks when I try to slip it on.

  For the trillionth time, I visit the island’s two art galleries. There’s folk art, watercolor portraits of locals, island scenes constructed from torn tissue paper and shells. I wonder if they sell art by visitors, or just the islanders. I wonder how many drawings you’d have to sell to make a living, at these prices, in this place. Maybe if you supplemented your income with another kind of job, like working the desk at a hotel, or administration at one of the dive shops. Rent has to be cheap here. It wouldn’t be that hard.

  When I hop off my bike to watch uniformed schoolchildren cavorting in a playground, a little girl runs at me and hugs me around my knees. For no reason.

  I buy a bag of roasted peanuts and a plastic bag of green mango slices coated in chili and lime. I sit at the channel and eat, scanning the horizon for Rowan’s boat, my feet in the water, the dive book in my lap.

  I wonder if he and Jack have had the chance to talk.

  I wonder how Rowan’s feeling. If he’s feeling regret.

  Because I know I am. Regret that I let myself trust a guy, yet again, when the first time failed so miserably. Trust that he was “reformed.” That he’d do the right thing around me, like Starling said. That he’d eventually explain everything to me, like he promised under the lighthouse in Belize City, and again when we sat on the overturned boats a few days ago, and other times too. He only told me under duress, and that’s not the same.

  How could I trust him when all I had was what he’d given me?

  If Rowan hadn’t remained so closed off, I wouldn’t have had to run to Starling. But he’s made it almost impossible for me to confront him. Now he’s about to wreck everything we’ve built traveling together. And there’s no time to recover.

  Because there’s barely any time left.

  In the late afternoon, when the palm shadows are turning purple and the dive boats are almost due to arrive, I park my bike beside a wide stretch of sand. With my arms crossed, I watch a group of laborers unfurl a chain-link fence.

  The divers call tonight Lobsterfest Eve, like Christmas Eve. Apparently, it’s tradition to abstain from drinking, to save up for the next day’s epic liver-pickling session. But the dive students want to celebrate their spanking new Open Water certifications. So Jack concocts several pitchers of mocktails, which taste like watermelon smoothie mixed with cough syrup and agony.

  We sit at the picnic table while Jack, Clement, and Devon enthusiastically exchange stories of Lobsterfests past. As usual, I have nothing to contribute to their talk of vomiting up lobster-flavored ice cream in the vacant lot behind Gilligan’s Grill. Emily and Ariel keep trying to change the subject to the exploits of the past few days: equalizing, regulators, wet suits with saggy asses, surprise barracudas.

  “Do you remember what happened to Ariel?” Emily shouts across the table. “When she lost her mask at sixty feet?”

  “During a skill set,” Ariel explains to me. “You have to take your mask all the way off for an entire minute. I dropped it when Ethan kicked me with his flipper by accident.”

  Ethan, I gather, is one of the dreadlock twins.

  “Thank God Rowan found it,” Emily says.

  “It was hooked on a piece of coral at eighty feet.”

  “Jack and I had to hold her in place so she wouldn’t freak out and swim to the surface.”

  “Bria, you would have been so scared. I thought I was going to drown!”

  While Ariel continues her story, Emily turns to Rowan. She’s dominated his attention all through dinner—not too hard, since he obviously doesn’t want to talk about Lobsterfest. I’m bothered. Shouldn’t be, but I am. Because here’s the thing: if I think about it, I have to admit that Emily’s more Rowan’s type than Ariel is. She’s edgier, opinionated. Definitely the boss man. And she loves to dive.

  A bee lands in my mocktail. I try to use my straw to rescue it, but it’s not working. Finally, I pour the drink into a bush.

  “Hey!” Jack says. “I saw that. I put lots of love into these beverages.”

  “And a whole lot of rotten fruit,” I mutter.

  All evening, Jack’s hand has been knocking into mine under the table. By the fourth time, I suspect it’s not an accident. Part of me is compelled to get up and leave. Ambush flirtation is sort of shady. Plus, Jack had that thing with Starling. Doesn’t that make his attention inappropriate?

  Sounds like I’m the ethics police.

  Not really, though. Even though any attraction to Jack would make me a hypocrite, if I’m completely honest with myself, another part of me feels flattered. Because if Jack is interested in me, and he had a “thing” with Starling—she of the coconut rings and indigent villages and Mayan head scarves and phone book–sized travel journals—then it almost makes us equals. Which might be silly, but it feels really good. Like I’ve reached my potential after all.

  Jack clutches a fist to his chest, as if my insulting his mocktail savaged his heart. “Just wait until tomorrow. Add a bit of booze, and you won’t even notice the taste.”

  Just wait until tomorrow.

  My eyes drift back to Emily and Rowan. He and I haven’t spoken since last night, other than mumbled good mornings at breakfast and how are you, I’m fines. I wonder if he’s suspicious of me. I wonder if he knows about Jack’s overeager hands.

  I realize I don’t see Rowan’s hands. Or Emily’s.

  “You know what? I think it’s time for bed.” I untangle my legs from the picnic bench. Then, on impulse, I add, “I hope the geckos don’t keep me up tonight.”

  Rowan squints at me. I stare back.

  “Geckos?” Ariel looks around. “Where?”

  Finally, lightbulbs appear in Rowan’s eyes. “I guess—”

  Before he can finish, Jack claps a mammoth hand on my shoulder. “Do you want me to walk you to your hostel?”

  Shit. I shrug at Rowan, who shrugs back. “No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  I’m only a few steps away when Emily calls, “Hey! You forgot your sketchbook.”

  I whirl around. “Thanks, I—”

  And then I stop. Because she’s flipping through it.

  “You’re pretty good,” she says.

  I can’t move. My feet are adhered to the dock.

  “Hey,” says Rowan. “Seriously, that’s not cool.”

  He reaches for my sketchbook, but Emily holds it away. “Holy shit, Ariel, she drew us! Aw, come on. My legs aren’t that fat.”

  Ariel bounces out of her seat and leans over Emily’s shoulder. “I think they look about right.” She turns a page, and then another. “I like the dog. He’s cute. He looks like Yoda.”

  “How come you never drew Rowan? Oh, wait—there’s his foot. With all the bracelets.”

  “You drew Rowan’s foot?” Jack asks.

  “Who’s this backpacker girl you keep drawing?”

  My tongue has turned to wadded cotton. They’ve jammed a periscope inside my brain. Rowan reaches for the book a second time, but again, Emily dodges him, skipping a few feet down the dock. Ariel scampers after her.

  “Dude! You’ve got to see these lists. They’re hilarious. Rowan, you’ve got travel rules?”

  “What the hell’s Wanderlove?”

  And with that, I turn and run.

  I admit it. I cry.

  Okay, fine. I do more than cry. I dead-bolt the door of our dorm and squeeze onto our tiny balcony, fold myself into a weather-stained rattan chair, and bawl.

  The tears come for the obvious reason: that these girls I barely know took something good and made it something to mock. But that alone wouldn’t be enough to make me cry this hard. I’m sobbing because it hits all too close to home. The places I swore I wouldn’t bring to this island, which is turning out to be the exact opposite of the idyllic paradise I thought it was. And I cry harder, because my overreactio
n embarrasses me. I cry because I’m crying. Which means I will probably cry forever, in a Möbius strip of endless tears.

  Someone’s knocking on the door.

  “Go away,” I shout. Emily and Ariel can sleep on the beach tonight for all I care.

  “Please, Bria. Let me in.”

  It’s Rowan. I freeze mid-sob. Before I can chicken out, I pull up my tank top and use it to wipe my face, then march inside and throw open the door.

  He’s holding my sketchbook.

  My traitorous arms rise to hug him, but I restrain them just in time. I grab my sketchbook and fling it onto my bed before heading back to the balcony. Only then do I remember all my underwear lying out to dry. “Shit,” I say, scooping it into my arms. A pair of pink bikinis flutters to the ground right as Rowan steps outside.

  “Need help with those?”

  I glare at him with the intensity of a thousand hellfires. Then I squeeze past him into the room and dump the pile into my backpack. They’re not completely dry, but that’s the least of my concerns. I return to the balcony, my rattan chair, and my scowl.

  “I want you to know,” Rowan says, “I didn’t look.”

  “What, at my underwear?”

  “At your sketchbook. It was really screwed up of Emily to grab it like that, and I told her. Repeatedly. So did Jack and the others. I want you to know.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I shrug. “So what? I’m the neurotic one. They’re a bunch of stupid drawings. Why should I care if people look at my art? Isn’t that the point of it?”

  “I don’t think there has to be a point.”

  I shrug again. “It’s my fault. I’m the one who made it into a big deal. I’m the one who gave up art in the first place. I didn’t have to. No one made me.”

  “But you draw all the time.”

  “Not in the same way. I used to be serious about it. It was my whole life. I mean it—I’ve never cared about anything as much as I cared about art. And then …” I wave my hands through the air like a melodramatic orchestra conductor. “I stopped. I let it go.”

  Rowan’s still leaning against the door, and it’s making me feel self-conscious. I pound the seat of the adjacent chair. He sits, careful not to touch me.

  “Can’t you just … take it seriously again?”

  “You don’t get it, Rowan. With art, it’s different. You have to work your ass off nonstop to get good. The competition out there’s staggering. And I’m not even going to art school. I’m not …”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m crying again.

  “Don’t,” I say, even though he hasn’t said anything. “It’s stupid. It’s my fault. I believed Toby when he said we’d go to art school together, no matter what.”

  “Toby … your boyfriend.”

  “Yep. Surprise! He was real—just past tense, not present.” I wipe my eyes. “He was an artist too. And he was really good. Like prodigy good. You’ll have to take my word for it. His father was a professional artist, and it made him obsessively disciplined. Before I met him, all I did was doodle.”

  That’s what Toby called it, at least. Wistfully, I recall my fairies, my woodland creatures, my cherubs looped with ivy. My sea monsters.

  “I hate to admit it, but Toby made me good. Made me serious. He’s the reason I started to study art. And maybe I never cracked the whip like he did, but I saw my drawings get better. Until I could hardly believe what came out of my pencil.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He was jealous. I know that now. I got into Southern California Art Academy’s fast-track program, and he didn’t. The plan was who cares who makes the program: we’ll both go to SCAA anyway. I was naïve enough to believe him. But after months of doing this stupid secretive dance, where we both kept avoiding the subject, he informed me he was going to the Art Institute of Chicago. He’d known for ages, but didn’t tell me until it was too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “For me to apply to other art schools.”

  “But what about the art academy? Can’t you still go?”

  “Nope! I never sent in my acceptance.” I shake my head, laughing through my tears. Rowan probably thinks I’ve gone mental. “I told my parents that they were right, it was too expensive, and that I wanted the flexibility of one of my state school fallbacks. And they barely even questioned it! I swear, they didn’t even notice when I stopped drawing. Like they thought it was a passing phase the whole time. I didn’t want to think about art until I decided to take this trip. At the time … well, it sounds really, really screwed up, but it was easier to let it go.”

  “I get it,” Rowan says after a pause.

  “What do you get?”

  “How it’s possible to give up something you love.”

  I can’t speak, so I tear off a strip of rattan and crumple it in my palm.

  “Because I know what it’s like,” he says. “To throw away all the good things you’ve got going for you. Nothing makes you hate yourself more than that.” He reaches over and takes the crumpled strip of rattan from my hands. “I’ve come to realize that sometimes, what you love the most is what you have to fight the hardest to keep.”

  “Isn’t it the opposite? If you love something, set it free, or whatever.”

  “I don’t think it’s the opposite, necessarily. If you really, truly love it, it’ll find you again, no matter what.” He shakes his head. “I mean, look at you! I’ve never seen anyone draw so much. Isn’t that your second sketchbook, the one Emily stole?”

  “It’s my third,” I admit. Then, inexplicably, I find myself laughing again. “You know what’s crazy? My dad bought me the anatomy coloring book in the first place—”

  “Stop right there,” Rowan says. “Did you say ‘anatomy coloring book’?”

  “I did,” I say.

  “For coloring? Like, with crayons? When you were a kid?”

  “A little more recently than that.”

  “Why in the world?”

  “Well, it was really a medical reference, for med students … not as exciting as it sounds. I went on this field trip to visit art schools sophomore year, and it’s what I saw lots of students using. For memorizing anatomy. For art. Like kind of a hands-on approach …” Aware I am only embarrassing myself further, I shut my mouth.

  “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “You would.”

  “So do you know your anatomy?”

  I pull off my bandana and run my hands through my wild hair. My face feels tight with dried tears. “I’m not sure if I like where this is going.”

  “Innocent speculation, I swear. I almost took an anatomy class this summer. Online, of course. It’s always fascinated me.”

  “I know it okay. Not as well as a doctor, or one of those Marvel Comics artists, but I’m decent. For someone my age. For a girl artist.”

  “A girl artist?”

  “Well, guy artists who are into, like, superheroes tend to know it better. I just memorized enough to get by. It helps me draw from my head. Or finish a drawing when my reference is gone, so they don’t look like Muppets.”

  “What’s this called?” He points to some indiscriminate place on his arm.

  “That’s between the bicep and the tricep. You probably know those. But then there’s the deltoid.…” I reach out and touch his shoulder. “One of my favorite muscles. You’ve got to study not just the shape of it, but also the way it moves. It pulls up and out. Try it.”

  He lifts his arm. I feel his muscle flex beneath my hand.

  “The deltoid runs up against the trapezius. Stand up and I’ll show you.” When he stands, I slide my hand to the top of his back, behind his shoulder. “The trapezius runs down your spine, where your latissimus dorsi comes around.…”

  “Latissi …” He stumbles over the word.

  I laugh. “Latissimus dorsi. That one’s a mouthful.”

  “Here?” He touches my upper back.

  “Lower.” I arch my bac
k as his hand slides to my waist, the heat of his touch making me suck air through my teeth. We stay that way for a moment, our hands on each other’s backs. If there was music, we’d be dancing. But instead, we’re just standing here awkwardly, in an anatomical half hug.

  “Did I mention I love it when you talk about art?”

  “You might have.” I pull away, clearing my throat. “Well … big day tomorrow. And I’d like to be at least feigning sleep by the time Emily gets here, so I don’t punch her in the face.”

  I follow Rowan to the door. He opens it, then hesitates.

  “Bria … Damn it. I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?”

  “That I’ve been so stupidly secretive with you. I didn’t know what you went through with that ex of yours, but that’s no excuse.”

  “Come on. That was way different.”

  “Close enough. And being embarrassed is no excuse either. I told you to trust me, but why would you? How could you, if you didn’t know the whole story?”

  “Rowan, I—”

  “But I need you to know that I’m not getting into anything with Jack. No drug deals. No deals of any sort, and not any kind of real friendship, either. I never planned to. I realize it might have come off like I was considering it, but I wasn’t. I swear to you. I wouldn’t do that to you, or to myself.”

  Shit. Shit.

  “And I’m pretty sure I talked him out of it too. From now on, you can ask me anything you want, and I’ll answer. Truthfully. In the name of overcoming the past. Sound good, Bria?”

  I smile weakly.

  “If you’re lucky,” he adds, “I’ll even tell you my whale shark story.”

  Now I grin. Because despite the plummeting sensation in my stomach, Rowan is irresistible when he’s like this. “I would love to hear your whale shark story.”

  “Tomorrow.” He salutes me.

  As soon as I close the door, I press my forehead against it, counting to one hundred just to be safe. Then I hurry back outside and back downstairs to the lobby, desperately hoping it’s not too late to call off my whole misguided espionage attempt before it blows up in my face.

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