And so she did, for a few minutes. But the restlessness persisted. Her eyelids twitched impatiently.
As if of their own volition, her eyes snapped open suddenly. She was about to force them back shut when she froze cold. It took her a moment to fully register what she was seeing, a precious moment that might have been put to better use. The shoreline was rapidly receding, and beyond it, not too far back, a massive swell was moving toward the beach rapidly, gathering height and mass as it drew nearer. Whitecaps began to ripple its surface, and she could see the start of a curl. It was huge. It was close.
Her eyes enormous, she looked around frantically, and felt her horror increase as she beheld the scene. Her entire class sat arranged on the beach, everyone’s eyes closed, still attempting to find peace as the rogue wave closed in on them.
“Everyone run!” She bellowed, breaking the silence that had shrouded the island for the last nine hours. Eyes snapped open and turned toward Adele in confusion, but in milliseconds everyone had seen the reason for the alarm and was scrambling up, sprinting away from the ocean, stumbling up the slope of the dunes, slipping in the loose sand, screaming.
Adele leaped up onto the lawn, reaching the proverbial higher ground before anyone else did, and quickly turned, extending a hand to Val to help her make the two foot jump. As she turned again to see if anyone else needed help, she looked out at the ocean once more, the wave now beginning to crash violently on the beach and rushing up toward them at a terrifying rate, and her stomach clenched in dread as she saw what seemed to be a person out there, in the water, being tossed around by the ocean like a piece of seaweed.
Felicia fell flat on her face as she ambled up the ridge and onto the lawn, and Adele swiftly helped her up. When she looked back at the ocean, there was no sign of a person ever having been there.
She felt a tug on her arm, and turned to see Felicia pulling her away. The wave looked like it was about to breach the edge of the lawn.
After a moment’s hesitation, Adele fell into step beside Felicia, first running for cover, then sprinting.
Chapter 20
A fat raindrop burst on her nose, waking her. She glanced up with fuzzy eyes, and saw more heavy, shining droplets descending. They seemed to be moving slowly, but that was impossible.
Becoming aware of herself, she whipped her head around, taking in her strange surroundings. It took her a full thirty seconds to realize where she was, and how she’d gotten there.
She sat curled into a ball on the wicker chair of her front porch, wrapped in a woven blanket that she now realized had been dampened by rain. The black night spread in front of her, the only visible markers the ephemeral, glistening ripples of waves in the moonlight, vaguely marking where the earth ended and the ocean began.
After the violent wave had erupted over the group meditation session, and subsequently receded back into the ocean in a slow, anticlimactic seep that seemed almost embarrassed, she and her peers found each other on the lawn in front of the yoga hut. Some people were soaking wet, some had scraped and bloody knees or elbows from grappling up rocky surfaces or falling as they tried to escape. Others, Adele included, were bone-dry and scratch-free. Still others appeared to have more serious injuries, all people who had been sitting in the front row, closest to the ocean. (Adele thought of her late arrival to the meditation, and a pang of guilt stabbed her in the belly as she remembered the ungrateful thoughts she’d been entertaining earlier about the world having it out for her.)
Nick, a slender and sweet young man from Los Angeles, had twisted his knee badly while running away; Meghan’s hip had been pummeled hard by a rock the wave had carried in; Sue, an older woman from Oregon, had been held underwater for so long that she’d almost gone unconscious, and was now in a sort of catatonic state of shock, being soothed and talked down by Val; Ajuni himself appeared to have gotten a horrible case of whiplash. He sat silently away from the group, though this time his silence seemed sullen and sulky, rather than serenely powerful.
They milled about, hugging each other, not knowing quite what to say. Eventually they settled into silence, nobody feeling much up to small talk. Adele was shaking, and she couldn’t tell if it was from shock or from cold. Everything felt surreal.
Budi, the chef, sauntered toward them, and the crowd parted as he approached. The relief at his arrival was palpable, and the shared thought seemed to be Finally, a native to explain what the heck just happened.
“Quite a wave,” he said, standing in the middle of the crowd and resting his hands on his belly. “Is good, though. The nature was…not right today. It needed to do this. It happens. The tide, y’know, in and out in and out, but not always so regular. Doesn’t always need to be regular. Sometimes, time for a big wave.”
He looked around, offering a reserved smile. He seemed to sense that this group of non-Balinese people weren’t as quick to accept the “nature being nature” concept as his neighbors, especially when it inconvenienced them.
“Is okay,” he said, nodding firmly, removing his smile. Adele fixed her eyes on his face and felt comfort in its sureness, in his words. Yes, everything was horrible right now, but maybe, just maybe, it was also okay. It’s okay.
Budi then let them know that Yande had the van ready to take any injured people to the nearby clinic. Before walking stiffly away, Ajuni stood slowly from his place on the ground and said only, “I knew there was something coming, but I did not see this. It perhaps was a challenge to our meditation, to stay clear and peaceful as chaos approaches,” he paused, rubbed his neck, looked around. Nobody seemed quite convinced. “Come to practice as usual tomorrow. Valerie will take care of things.”
And then he left, along with the other injured folk. Those remaining watched them descend, then dispersed, without saying a word, as if their silent afternoon had never had this very noisy interruption.
Afterward, Adele had made her way shakily back to her cabin and settled onto the front porch. She knew she was too wired to sleep, and would need some time outside to process what had happened: Danny, the wave, the strange prophetic signs from nature—it was all insane. Or maybe she was just going insane.
But then, somehow, she had fallen asleep, and now she found herself sitting outside at God-knows-what-hour, being gently pelted by a gathering rainstorm. Not wanting to wake up enough for her mind to dive back into torturous analysis and thought for the rest of the night, she hopped up from the chair, grabbed her blanket, and headed inside, straight to bed. The light of day would bring some clarity.
Maybe.
Chapter 21
Blessedly, she slept through the night. And she managed to make it through most of class—taught by Val, as Ajuni had apparently gone to his healer in the inland mountains to “realign his body and spirit”—with a still and empty mind. It was as if her brain had gone on strike in protest of all the volatility she’d subjected it to in the past few weeks.
Toward the end of class, however, her mind continued to turn to one persistent thought. Well, an image really. She kept picturing that person she thought she’d seen, being tossed like a rag doll out in the ocean as the rogue wave broke on the beach. The more she recalled the vision, the surer she’d become that she’d really seen it, and that it really had been a human.
And that the human had been Danny.
This last notion came to her toward the end of class, but once she’d alit upon it, those last twenty minutes seemed endlessly painful. Danny was out there when the wave hit. More than that, he hadn’t been there when she’d looked back, which meant he’d been either held deep underwater, or tossed who knows how many feet in another direction. If four people sitting on the beach had been injured enough to merit medical treatment, she didn’t want to begin to imagine what could’ve happened to somebody out in the ocean when the wave hit.
Finally, class ended, and she rolled up her mat in a frenzy and ran out of the yoga hut. Jogging across the lawn, she let her cloth bag and mat drop to the ground, freeing her to
run faster. Her breasts bounced weightily as she ran—in her distracted state, she’d forgotten to put on a sports bra under her tight black tank top—and she cupped them with her hands, not caring in the slightest how ridiculous she looked. Her rain-sea-sweat-infused hair flew wildly behind her, and her bare feet, calloused from weeks of walking barefoot, felt no pain as they flew over prickly grass and pebbles. She felt different, and renewed, and full, and—
—and utterly lost. She’d arrived at Danny’s hut, and had abruptly stuttered to a halt below the porch steps. What had she thought she was going to do when she arrived?
Standing stupidly at the foot of the steps, she glanced around her, and was relieved to see that nobody was in sight to witness her awkwardness. Her lack of a bra suddenly seemed absurdly conspicuous, and she crossed her arms across her chest.
She would go inside. She would go in, and wouldn’t try to apologize or explain or even touch him (though she felt a pang deep in her stomach at the thought of restraining that urge); she would only see if he was alright, she just wanted—needed—to know if he was alright. Then she would leave. He couldn’t fault her for that.
She mounted the first step, tentative in spite of her internal firmness.
Or could he?
Yes, on second thought, he could fault her greatly for coming by. She’d hurt him, been careless and sloppy and selfish, and he’d asked her, told her really, to leave him alone. And now he was quite possibly injured, and the least she could do was respect his wishes. Right?
She was about to step back down onto the grass when she heard voices. Coming from inside Danny’s cabin. Involuntarily, she leaned forward, then quietly crept up the remaining two steps. They were distinctly male voices, two of them at least, and though she couldn’t hear what they were saying she thought she heard the sound of chuckling. That’s good! He couldn’t be too injured if he was laughing.
Giving in completely to her insanity, she pressed herself against the side of the cabin, straining to hear the words coming from inside. The front door was slightly open, and snatches of phrases drifted through.
“…just feel pretty stupid…didn’t think that…y’know?”
“Aye, but ya can’t think of it like that.”
The second voice was louder, more clear. She could tell from the Aussie drawl and volume that it was J.T.. The first, though soft and muffled, was unmistakably Danny. He sounded sad, despite the chuckle she thought she’d heard. Adele felt her entire body pulled downward by a heavy cloud of regret.
His voice again: “….bullshit…so I think…doesn’t matter anyway, so…”
“Got your head on right, mate.” J.T. was clearly trying his best to be a sympathetic ear, but it didn’t seem like feelings were his strong suit. She could just see him shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.
As if he was having the exact same thought, Danny spoke again, his voice noticeably cheerful, putting J.T. out of his misery. “…behind me….drink?”
“Brilliant idea!” J.T. responded almost before Danny had finished. The next moment, she could hear his heavy footsteps approaching the door, and then he was right next to her, half his body out, calling back in to Danny. Adele’s heart threatened to bust through her chest.
“The usual, mate?”
“Sure.”
She flattened herself against the wall, squinting her eyes shut tight as if that would prevent her from being seen. J.T. stepped out of the hut and trotted down the steps, jogging across the lawn toward the resort bar. He hadn’t seen her. Dear Lord how had he not seen her?
As he disappeared from view, she inched closer to the now-slightly-more-ajar door and peered in. Her heart fluttered violently as she realized she could see him.
He lay on the couch, shirtless, one leg propped up on a mountain of pillows, deep purple bruises around his knee. He bore an expression of seriousness that she’d never seen before on his playful face. Looking up at the ceiling, he abruptly let out a deep sigh, almost causing Adele to gasp audibly. She caught herself, and forced her breathing to slow down.
As if pulling them through thick mud, he drew his hands up from where they lay by his sides and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing them. After some time, he released them back down, sighed again, and mumbled something that sounded that sounded to Adele like “Just like Nikki.”
Then he fell to stillness, staring straight up, eyes glazed. Adele suddenly felt as if she was looking in on something deeply private, and was overcome with guilt. Glancing across the lawn to make sure J.T. wasn’t back in sight, she crept quietly away from the door and toward the edge of the porch, then clambered over the side railing, regained her balance, and fell into a trot toward her cabin. One thought reverberated in her mind: I really damaged him.
Chapter 22
He’d been looking forward to his confrontation with Adele with a zealousness that, in retrospect, made no sense. The deep pain he’d felt at the Ajuni revelation had all been channeled into anticipation of really letting her have it, of getting it all off his chest; he hadn’t mentally articulated what he was expecting from the confrontation—catharsis? Suddenly being over her? Maybe, possibly, discovering that it was actually untrue?—but whatever it was, he hadn’t gotten it. And once he’d said all he could say, he still felt filled with a hot bubble of emotion. It was some mix of anger and frustration and despair and disappointment, and he could no longer channel it toward her—he’d already said as much as he could. Too much, maybe—and so he’d opted to channel it toward something productive. Toward surfing.
Great idea. Brilliant, as J.T. would have said.
He’d spent most of the afternoon out there, yet never achieved that state of empty-minded, fully-focused immersion that he normally did when surfing. He’d been too in his head, too edgy, and couldn’t seem to strike his rhythm. So he’d stayed out there, stayed out until sunset, hoping to get just a few minutes of good surf, a snatch of mental clarity among the chaos. But the waves weren’t cooperating, nor was his mind. Everything was unsettled.
And then the wave had hit.
It had pummeled him down with the force of a fire hose, a massive fire hose whose pressure covered his whole body. Lying there on his couch now, he couldn’t remember much from the incident. Just snatches here and there—when he initially went under, when his head slammed back against his board, when he’d been hurled upward and had briefly gotten to take frenzied inhales of oxygen, when his knee had crashed directly into the board, exploding in splintering pain—and he was glad for it. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed a miracle that he’d survived. People who had been on the shore had sustained injuries, and he’d been right in the heart of it.
A miracle. He tossed that phrase around in his head, trying to squeeze some meaning from it, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
He was alone in his hut. J.T. had left an hour or so ago, wanting to “give ya some space to rest,” though Danny knew that J.T. just desperately needed a break from the seriousness of it all. It was for the best—Danny was growing exhausted of putting on a good face to keep J.T. from feeling awkward. J.T. was a great guy, but there was only so much he could handle talking about.
Not that Danny really wanted to talk.
His knee throbbed dully. He and J.T. had shared a few drinks, which had numbed the physical pain, but now it was starting to wear off. His mind, on the other hand, still felt completely numb.
There was a knock at the door.
Adrenaline flooded his system, his heart beating fast. The numbness must not have been very deep. Was it her? Had she come? She’d come. Of course she’d come. How dare she come? But maybe it’s—no it can’t be her. Yes it must be.
A thousand thoughts flooded his head, coming in almost as fast as the pulses of his heart. He forced a deep inhale, trying to quiet his body down with minimal success. Steeling himself for whoever—Adele? Was it Adele? Do I want it to be?—stood on the other side of the door, he spoke.
“Come on in.” He�
��d tried to affect a nonchalance in his voice, but it had come out as comically jovial, which was way off-tone given the context. But all self-judgment flushed from his system as he saw his visitor revealed behind the opening door.
“Hey there,” Val said.
“Oh,” Danny blurted back, and a punch of dull discontent landed in his stomach, surprising him. “Hey there.”
Val stepped out of the doorframe and into the room. She wore a patterned sarong, wrapped and knotted just above her cleavage line—the type of cover-up women normally wore over bathing suits, though it didn’t look to Danny like she had on much of anything underneath.
“How you doing?” She asked, and her voice had that softened, sympathetic tone that made Danny’s hackles rise. He hated sympathy. He would not have it. Sure, part of that probably had to do with the memories it brought back of the end of his first marriage, but he stood by the fact that it was a disingenuous and useless sentiment, and he didn’t want any of it spent on him.
Becoming aware of himself again, he forced the irrational anger back down, as he had become so skilled at doing with so many feelings. Val was just trying to be nice.
“I’m alright,” he said, displeased to hear that irritating cheesiness in his voice. How did everything come to feel so fake? “It’s really nothing serious. Just a minor knee tweak.”
“Yeah?” Val asked, and despite her obvious efforts to be polite and encouraging, it was clear that she didn’t buy it. She wasn’t an idiot. Anyone could see that it was a pretty major knee injury.
“I’ll be okay,” Danny said in vague response.
Val sauntered toward him, her tanned leg slipping out of the slit in the sarong as she did. She was standing over him then, her tanned arm dangling down, her fingertips by his face. She brushed his cheek lightly, and Danny jerked involuntarily, surprised. She drew her fingertips away, blushing.
“Do you mind if I…?” Her voice trailed off as she gestured toward the end of the couch, where his feet lay. It took him a moment to understand that she was asking if she could sit down.
Paradise Lust Page 13