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“A little. There were a lot of wonderful parts too.”
“Like what?”
“Well, every year we visited my great aunts and uncles across the US. I learned so much from those trips.” I shrug, and Anna purses her lips, which have grown a deeper shade of cherry with each day she’s spent in the sun.
“Say more about what you learned.” Something about the way she doesn’t ask it, but demands it, makes my heart rate go up. What is it about this woman? A shiver runs down my chest, despite the heat.
“Let me think.” I rub a damp hand over my face. “I learned to plant veggies at my great uncle’s farm in Idaho and all about art history from my curator great-aunt in Boston. Then there was Jerry the gold trader, and Jean the restaurateur. And of course, I learned all about divorce law from Great Uncle Abe, the lawyer in Chicago.”
“Divorce law!” Anna laughs. “Did you want any of their jobs when you grew up?”
“I dunno. Never thought about it. Mostly I didn’t want my grandparents to pay for my college, so I joined the ROTC and went into the military. In the end, I wound up pretty different from my family.”
“What do you do for work now?” As soon as Anna asks, my pulse races. I led her straight to this question. What was I thinking? I splash her feet with mine, sending our raft spinning. She laughs and splashes me back, and we spin and splash while I grind on what to say.
“I’m in intelligence,” I say, choosing my words with care. “I got into it early on. The army logistics job I had right after school was boring as hell, so I went through training for covert ops.” But I don’t tell her I’m working as an investigator, or how, now that Gran has a new kidney and doesn’t need daily treatments anymore, I’ve applied for a job with her husband.
“Would you look at that?” I point into the jungle. A second river- a smaller tributary- curves towards ours. A gushing waterfall dumps over a cliff into a deep pool before pounding down another set of rocky steps to where the two rivers merge.
“That’s gorgeous,” Anna says with awe, my career forgotten.
We’ve reached the sandbar where we’re stopping, and I step out of our raft to drag it onto the sand. Then I help Anna out. She leans on my arm to take the weight off her ankle, and we stand, still connected, watching the water flow over the falls and down to the confluence between the two rivers. Jamie and Oscar run over the sand, headed our way.
“Those guys are jumping off the waterfall!” Jamie says, pointing, as a couple of guys emerge from the trees at the top of the falls. Anna’s eyes widen.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” I say. I can already tell she wants to. “There are rules.”
“You’re beach-bound, remember?” Jamie puts a hand on her shoulder.
“My ankle is back to normal,” she says. “Thanks to that sport massage.”
“Oh yeah? You’re good to stand on your own?” Jamie gives our intertwined arms a pointed look. She steps away from me and looks up at the falls again. The first man leaps off the edge and plunges into the pool. He surfaces with a whoop. Two guides rush across the shallow river and start down the path towards the waterfall, yelling at the men to come down. But Anna’s face grows determined.
“I promised your sister,” Jamie warns her.
“Let’s not break the rules,” I say. “It’s not worth it.”
“Don’t you worry,” Anna says, breezily. “Let’s go get a snack.”
There are a couple of refreshment stations here, one for watermelon and chips, and one for water and rum, and when Oscar peels off after Anna to get food, I follow Jamie for drinks.
“How’s it going with Oscar?” I ask him.
“We might date,” Jamie says. “Like back in LA. Can you believe it?”
“Do you always date men?” It comes out weird, I know. Jamie gives me a puzzled look.
“Why, do you know someone who’s interested?”
“Only curious. Aniston seems to go both ways, so…” This is painful. I’ve found the worst way to bring this up. I’m sure I sound vaguely homophobic and definitely uninformed.
“I’m all men, all the time,” Jamie says. “Don’t put baby in a corner, based on some friends baby just met.”
“You didn’t know these guys before?”
“Anna and I met them on the ship.”
“So you and Oscar only met three days ago? I thought you had something before.”
