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…that one time I almost drowned…
Call me crazy, but the ocean looked pretty deep from the tiny outrigger canoe we battled the waves in. The flimsy thing had definitely seen better days—days that had happened at least seventy-five years ago.
I wished there was a less oceany place that we could have paddled that itty bitty thing Kai called a boat.
But no.
“Do boats have expiration dates?” I asked.
Kai’s only answer was to laugh as we bobbed along, parallel to shore—much, much too far away from the beach for my taste.
He’d tossed me a lifejacket after he hopped in, but my initial sense of safety had worn off pretty quickly once I couldn’t look into his mesmerizing eyes anymore. I cast a longing look to the shore, kicking myself for ever having taken good ‘ole terra firma for granted.
“You may laugh now, but drowning would totally ruin my day,” I said with my eye on the swells heading our way.
“You’re not drowning as long as I’m around.” His voice dripped with a sexy self-confidence that made me wonder what it might be like to be the recipient of his lifeguarding skills. Maybe even a little bit of mouth-to-mouth?
Cue the Baywatch flashback.
“So, what’s the deal with your stepmom?” Kai’s words totally killed the private moment I was sharing with his lifeguard alter ego in my imagination.
My left eye narrowed and twitched the tiniest bit while my nose scrunched and my nostrils flared. A perfectly reasonable response for a person to have when the woman their father chose to marry was brought into the conversation.
“Can we please talk about a more pleasant subject? Like, just how many people are eaten alive by sharks each year in Hawaii?
Kai laughed, again—at least one of us was enjoying this conversation. “I already gathered you didn’t enjoy working for her, but I had no idea it was that bad. What went wrong?”
Excuse me? No, no, no, mister. I’m the one who’s going to be conducting the interrogations around here.
That was the response in my head, at least. My actual words had been an incoherent jumble of mumblings about personality clashes, homewreckers, and witches.
I was really going to have to do something about my propensity for oversharing. Knocking that bad habit out was second on my to-do list… right after kicking my donut addiction.
Something told me I had a lot of years of oversharing ahead of me.
“So, basically you’re telling me you’re not going to miss Sunday dinner with the folks while you’re here?” I heard the smile in Kai’s voice. It eased the tension in my shoulders.
“Sunday dinner? No, that was never a thing at our house.” I sighed, wondering how different life might have been if family traditions had been a bigger part of it. “I will miss my mom though.”
“Yeah?”
I stopped paddling and rested my oar in front of me across the sides of the boat. “She doesn’t do my neurotic side any favors, but she’s pretty great.”
“You have a neurotic side? I never would have guessed.” The rhythm of his paddle remained unchanged while I imagined the teasing look that must have been in his eyes.
“Only a little.” I laughed this time. It was easy to laugh with him.
I put my oar back into the water and nudged us toward land. “This move was a good thing for me. I needed to get away from everything for a while. Mom’s a worrier, and it rubs off on me. Then there’s my stepmom, Eva…”
“That sounds ominous.”
“She thinks it’s her calling in life to make sure I know anything I do without her help is doomed to failure.”
“Do you believe that?”
I hesitated. I didn’t believe her, did I?
I’d bucked against Eva’s onslaught ever since Dad had said “I do.” I’d always imagined myself as a tough-as-nails pit bull-type, never willing to let go of the truth about myself. But if I was honest, somewhere along the line, I’d let her wear me down.
