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“And then what?” Faith asked. “I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s shit crazy. My tattoos are my crazy. I don’t care where they go either.”
She wasn’t saying it in a snooty, snippy way at all. That was Faith and that was her crazy. She said shit that sometimes made no sense to anyone but her, but she said it so matter-of-factly that nobody questioned it. Kalina found herself thinking, “She’s right. Who cares where the shit goes and who cares where the tattoos go.”
“We did good today,” Faith said. “He made it back okay.”
“He was a kid,” Kalina added. “Did you see his face? He was like eighteen, maybe nineteen. Let’s hope that shark is long gone.”
“I doubt it, but it could have been a hit and run. A drive by shark on his way to someplace else.”
“When I mentioned Thane, his reaction was strange.”
“Thane has a reputation,” Faith reminded her. “He’s loved, he’s hated, he’s respected…could have been any of those.”
“The shark definitely took off as soon as I mentioned him.”
“See? He wanted nothing to do with us.”
The sun was growing lazy off in the distance. This was Kalina’s favorite time of the day. It reminded her of a scene in Point Break, one of her favorite movies. She wasn’t even sure which scene it was, maybe one with Keanu and Lori Petty sitting on surfboards at sunrise or maybe sunset. Maybe the scene didn’t even exist. Kalina was fully aware that her mind worked like that sometimes. Certain situations conjured up unrealistic add-on scenes. If she didn’t like the ending of a movie, she sometimes tricked herself into believing it ended diff
erently. A human friend of hers, a psychologist friend, once told her that it was her coping mechanism. She created her own happily-ever-afters. She’d done it since she was a child. In her mind, the Titanic never sank, Dorothy hadn’t been dreaming of Oz, and Thane had cherished their time together as much as she had.
What the fuck is wrong with me? He’s not my man anymore. Change your ending, Kalina. He didn’t leave you. You left him. You decided he wasn’t good enough and that you need to find your real Prince Charming. Your story begins here.
When she made up her mind, there was no stopping her, and she’d suddenly decided to begin her own story. She would start over from scratch. She would do something she’d never done before.
“Take me out,” Kalina said.
“What?” Faith asked.
“Get me off this island. Show me what you do at night. Show me how you get down.”
“Get down? What do you think I do, battle rap in the evenings?”
“I don’t know. You go out a lot. Help me be more…more you, Faith. Make me the single woman I am. Show me what I would do if I were my age and not a fucking shark.”
“You sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
“What I do involves lots of drinks and finding a hot stud, probably someone Thane would never agree with, and fucking him ‘til the sun comes up.”
“Thane’s not my dad,” Kalina said with a snicker.
“Right,” Faith said. “But we all know you don’t tend to do things he’d frown upon.”
“That was the old me,” Kalina said. “Let’s go re-invent myself.”
Chapter 4 – Sylvia
It had taken Sylvia forever to pack her bags. What does one pack when they’re considering the possibility of never returning. It was a ridiculous thought. Of course, she’d be back. Yet, Penny hadn’t returned, at least not for the long term. They’d set out on a short vacation; a getaway Sylvia had hoped would help her best friend forget about her health problems or at least let them slip from mind for a short while. It had turned into so much more. When she’d returned, Penny had only shown up to put the finishing touches on a life she was leaving behind. One of those loose ends had been Sylvia. Penny had begged her to tag along, promising to hook her up with a hot shark man of her own.
Shark man. That’s fucking ridiculous.
Yet, here she was, returning to the place that had haunted her dreams since returning from her trip. She’d wanted to tell Penny the real reason she couldn’t be the person she’d been before. That every ounce of cheer she’d once possessed was still out there on that bloody barge. She felt wrong anytime she even smiled, knowing all those young people would never smile again. She wished she had told her friend all these thoughts, but she hadn’t. Instead, she’d probably come across as a bitch, pushing her only real friend away. All Penny had wanted to do was go get a coffee and gossip like the good ol’ days. Sylvia had been happy to see the new glowing aura around her friend. She looked healthier than she ever had before, even more lively and energetic than she had been when they first met, back before the illness set in.
In all the years she’d known Penny, not once had they gone on a jog or even to the gym. This time around, it was all the new healed Penny could talk about. She wanted to go outdoors and do something physical. Anything but go to the beach. Apparently, that might cause some problems. But Sylvia had been a party pooper. She’d sent her best friend, the girl who’d been like a sister to her, back to Australia with barely more than an ass-out hug.
Ass-out hugs are the worst. I should have at least thrown my arms around her and told her I loved her before watching her walk away forever.
