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When she sat down, I said, “Aiden and I were making plans to go scuba diving in Monterey next month.”
“Sounds like fun!” With her gaze still locked on Aiden, Annisa added, “I think I will join you guys.”
I coughed as I choked on the wine that I’d just sipped. Aiden and Annisa looked at me.
“Are you okay?” Aiden asked, startled. He was about to come over and pat my back, but I raised my hand and waved him off.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled. “Wrong pipe,” I said still coughing.
I dabbed my napkin over my lips and took a few moments to gather myself, but I finally said, “I didn’t realize you had your open water diving certificate.” I knew Annisa didn’t, but I wanted to give her a way out of her earlier declaration to join us on the dive.
“What?” Annisa’s eyes grew large at my comment. “What’s an open water certification?” If it were anyone else, the whole situation would be comical, and I would have made a joke about becoming an instant diver. Instead, I gritted my teeth and explained that she needed to be certified for scuba diving.
“Oh, how silly of me. I thought I could just sign up for the trip.” She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and smiled as though it was no big deal.
I let out a weak chuckle as I thought to myself how idiotic the excuse sounded.
“Before you can rent scuba diving equipment, you need to take a two-week course. It’s not difficult, but you have to take classroom sessions where you’ll read the material and take tests. Once you pass the exams, you’ll do your practice sessions in the pool before you do your four qualifying dives in the open water. If you pass all that, you’ll be certified to dive anywhere in the world.” I tried to sum up the training in a nutshell.
“Sounds fascinating,” Annisa replied. My eyebrows flew up in surprise because I knew she couldn’t possibly be interested in anything that involved getting her hair wet and ruining her hairstyle.
“If you’re really interested in scuba diving, we can wait until you get certified to go on the trip,” Aiden said. He smiled at me thinking that he solved a problem. He looked proud of himself, and I didn’t have the heart to chide him for inviting my frenemy on our next date. I smiled back, but my heart dropped thinking about Annisa joining us on the dive.
“Perfect! I’m sure I can find someone to certify me soon.” Annisa responded with all the confidence of someone who was completely clueless about how things worked in the scuba diving world.
I felt bad for whoever her instructor was going to be. They didn’t know who they were dealing with. I didn’t want to show my reservations, so I smiled.
“Perfect,” I echoed and took another drink of my chardonnay. I pasted a smile on my face, but I had a queasy feeling that somehow, things would not go as planned.
Chapter Two
“It’s only 6:50,” I muttered and took a deep, calming breath.
Aiden was picking me up at 7:00 to go scuba diving in Monterey. I was excited to go on this excursion because I hadn’t dived this site before. I usually liked to go to places that were warm, and the last time that I dove was with Aiden in Cozumel, Mexico.
Even though the average water temperature in Monterey was in the mid-fifties, and the visibility was ten to thirty feet, I was looking forward to swimming through the kelp forest and exploring the underwater canyon. I also hoped that the 7mm wetsuits we rented from Bay Area Divers were going to be warm enough. The shop’s owner assured Aiden that we didn’t need dry suits and that we should be able to stay underwater for at least thirty minutes. Well, we’ll find out, I thought and looked down out the window.
“No Aiden,” I mumbled and paced back and forth on the wooden floors of Julia’s guest bedroom. After Julia married Tristan, she moved into his apartment, but she needed someone to look after her Jack Russell Terrier, Grumpy.
Even though Tristan’s place was larger, she couldn’t bring her pup because the building had a no-pet policy. So, as Grumpy’s pseudo-aunt, I had the honor of staying with him until Julia and Tristan found a place that accepted pets.
The timing worked out because I was in between teaching jobs and technically homeless. Pet sitting was infinitely better than staying with my parents in Arkansas while I waited to find out where I was going next. The thought of being trapped with my intrusive Asian mother was extremely unappealing. I could picture her saying, “Claire, why don’t you go back to school and get your doctorate?” My mother always wanted me to be a doctor, and even if I couldn’t be an M.D., I could still get my Ph.D.
“Aigoo,” I repeated the expression I heard my mother say countless times when she was exasperated with me. Just thinking about my mother made me involuntarily shudder.
I glanced out the window again to see if a car had parked outside in the one second that I looked away at my phone.
Nothing yet. I heaved a sigh and tapped my heel on the floor, thinking about today’s dive. My excitement for diving someplace new was slightly diminished, knowing that Annisa was joining us today. After her unexpected appearance during my lunch date with Aiden, she surprised me by texting Julia the next day saying that she had signed up for a private open water diving class.
We were eating bibimbap in the H Mart food court when she got Annisa’s text. “What’s this all about?” Jula asked and turned her phone around to show me the message.
I rolled my eyes and replied, “Aiden and I ran into Annisa during our lunch date, and Aiden invited her to join us on our next dive trip to Monterey.”
“But Annisa doesn’t have her diving certification, and she doesn’t like cold water!”
“I know. What can I say?” I raised my hands in resignation.
Julia picked on the rice with her chopsticks. She narrowed her eyes and said, “I wonder if she’ll like diving. I know I thought I would, but I quickly changed my mind when I had to take my mask off in the water and tried to put it back on. The only reason why I continued with it was because I knew you loved it.”
