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“Bumped into each other.” Mary’s gaze shifted between them before settling on Luke with dawning horror. “Oh, god, please don’t tell me I just hired one of your—”
“No.” The interruption was swift, and as the two engaged in some silent sibling exchange, it didn’t take long for Andy to sort out the subtext. “Hell, no,” Luke tacked on with a level of emphasis that was, in Andy’s opinion, highly unnecessary.
Please.
As if she wanted to be another one of his balcony girls.
The man had way too big of a head.
Really, everything about him was just way too big for her liking.
Standing up as tall as she could in response, Andy imagined herself as Yennefer from her favorite video game when she said very coolly — and, in her opinion, with just the right note of witchy imperiousness — “He stole my towel.”
Luke barked out a laugh. One that was seriously annoying.
Mary, meanwhile, let out a softer chuckle that sounded noticeably relieved. “Oh, is that all?” She thumped her brother affectionately. “Don’t worry, Andy. Stealing towels is kind of this rascal’s thing. It means he likes you. Now, come on. Let’s give you that tour.”
Following the woman from the sales counter, Andy glanced back to find Luke frowning again, as though he very much didnotlike her and found her hella sus for some reason. Okay, yeah, which might have something to do with her peeping on him and his friends at the beach.
But whatever. He could just get over it already. She shot him a withering glance. Or what she hoped passed for a withering glance. Strangely, this had the effect of making his frown fade to an amused sort of look. Andy didn’t know how to take that, so she gave him her back and trailed after his sister.
Mary, at least, seemed thrilled to have her as part of the team. Walking about the shop with one hand on her bump and the other in near-constant motion, she happily pointed out where various merchandise was stocked.
With the sales floor being a fraction the size of Andy’s old one, it didn’t take long to start committing things to memory. Below the window panes lining the store's front wall was a series of large, mesh-wire bins that held everything from boogie boards and folding chairs to sand bucket sets and packaged inflatables.
The side wall opposite the cashwrap — painted an airy shade of aquamarine like the rest of the store — had been outfitted with panels of gray pegboard for holding beach shoes, hats, and accessories, as well as tiered metal racks for stocking sunscreens and various ointments.
Mary paused the tour there to snag a rolled towel from a wooden crate on the bottom of the rack. “Consider this a signing bonus,” she said, handing it to Andy.
“Thanks. I’ll be sure to keep it away from your brother.”
Mary snorted and continued on with the tour. “So in the back corner here is our changing room, and then” — she gave another ta-da flourish — “our quiver.”
“Quiver?”
“Yeah, that’s what the guys call our board collection.”
Strolling down the back wall of the store, Andy could understand the pride in Mary’s voice. Slid vertically into racks were dozens of surfboards in various sizes and colors. All were turned so their skinny side faced out, but even the side view was impressive. Periodically, Mary would pull out a board to show off the front of it — or, as she called it, “the deck.”
“And this is one of Luke’s designs,” she said, holding up a light blue board with a swirl of sunny, petal-like shapes. “It’s one of our most popular.”
Fascinated by the image, Andy reached out to trace it, her finger starting at the middle of the spiral, which was the darkest gold, and steadily curving outwards.
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
follow the yellow brick road…
The refrain dancing in Andy’s head was appropriate. She certainly felt a bit like Dorothy landing in Oz. Maybe she hadn’t gone from black and white to Technicolor, but there was still something about the new environment she found herself in that seemed surreal. If her old job had sometimes felt like wandering through a vast forest, this one felt like stepping into a tide pool. And she was only just acclimating to getting her feet wet.
When she reached the end of the design — which faded to a pale yellow K-M logo — Andy felt a tingling awareness. Her gaze flickered to the sales counter where Luke was bent over a sketch pad. His attention wasn’t on whatever he was drawing, however. It was on her, and though he wasn’t looking at her with the same level of hostility he had been a few minutes ago, Andy was still discomfited. Jerking her hand back to her side, Andy flashed the woman beside her a smile. “It’s very nice.”
“I know, right? We’ve got the best shapers in town. All the boards you see here are ready-to-ride Kahele-Mac designs, but if a client prefers them in a different color, size, whatever, the guys can easily do a custom for them. They did one for me with this graphic in red. It looks just like a bunch of rose petals scattered to the wind.”
“Sounds beautiful,” Andy murmured as Mary slid the board between two long, felt-lined pegs. “So I take it you enjoy surfing too?”
“Oh yeah. I love anything that gets me out in the water.” Mary smiled nostalgically. “My mom used to tell me I was part mermaid.”
Andy could believe it. With her long, red hair spilling down the back of a periwinkle crop top and her dark green skirt swishing about her sandaled feet, Mary did bear a striking resemblance to a certain Disney princess. Minus the swollen belly, of course.
