Scene 9

There weren't a significant number of things in life that terrified me. I had always been adventurous, even as a child. I didn't mind heights. I loved swimming in the ocean. Every spider I'd ever come across in my apartment I'd gently trapped and relocated outside.

There were, however, three things I was not fond of.

1. Planes with fewer than four engines.

2. Planes flying over water.

3. Planes flying in heavy wind.

Okay, fine. Planes . Planes flying. Planes as soon as they left the ground.

It wasn't one of those terrors so overwhelming I couldn't fly. I flew. A lot. And I knew my a lot was about to quintuple—or sextuple—or whatever mathematical multiplication meant my time in the air was soon to increase exponentially. But I didn't like it. And I admit, I'd grown accustomed to downing Dramamine like it was going out of style. Nor will I deny irresponsibly chasing it with a shot of vodka if the slightest hint of turbulence arose. Whatever it took to put me to sleep as the steel death rocket hurdled at breakneck speeds seven and a half miles above the clouds.

But still, I flew. Even in twin engines—the unfortunate majority of all commercial aircraft. Even in the wind. And, more often than not, even over large bodies of water.

However, when I stepped onto the tarmac to catch the last minute flight I'd booked to Key West, I skidded to a halt so hard the family of four in matching I Heart Miami t-shirts piled into the back of me. I don't know what in the Indiana-Jones-relic-archive was sitting in front of me, but the brightly painted prop plane was not part of my future.

This was where I drew the line.

I stumbled aside, allowing the other eleven people on my scheduled flight to go around me—they were welcome to test their death-defying fortune—and pulled out my phone.

I quickly scrolled American Airlines. United. Delta .

Nothing. Nothing until tomorrow mid-morning. Shit . I'd already told Dillon I was catching a flight this evening. After Hawaii, I couldn't imagine standing her up again.

But I also couldn't fathom stepping into a fuselage the size of Dani's Range Rover.

I looked up the ferry. Four hour trip—okay, not bad. I clicked book now .

Double shit . Next departure: tomorrow morning.

I considered running back up the steps to the terminal and renting a car, but realized my license was in the backpack I'd willingly handed over during check-in. Something about "space saving." I should have taken that as a hint.

"Miss?"

I looked up to find a man in a suit peering out the cabin door. The flight attendant. No, God help me, the co-pilot. The co-pilot was seating passengers on this Lego-sized rust-rocket.

"Care to join us?"

In what, death?

The windsock on the flagpole was beginning to flutter, the breeze fanning my burning cheeks.

Stone me .

I don't know what the hell was wrong with me, but my feet started moving against my will, forward, up the rickety six-step ladder, and into the cramped cabin. If part one of this trip hadn't already proven I'd lost my mind, there was no question now.

I sank into the last seat available and clipped my seatbelt—all the good that strip of nylon was going to do me—forcing myself to try and breathe. It would be okay. I would be okay. Everything would be okay. Thousands of these puddle jumper planes flew safely every single day.

Well, except for the ones that didn't.

Just ask John Denver. Patsy Cline. Jim Croce. James Horner.

It's okay. I wasn't famous. The gravitational pull of the earth only seemed to want the talented elite.

Right?

I looked over the head of the grinning silver-haired grandma sitting next to me, trying to see out the window.

"Exciting, isn't it?" She had a Midwestern accent. "It's like stepping back in time with Amelia Earhart."

Lady , I wanted to say to her, don't you know they never found her body?

Instead, I closed my eyes and wondered who would be cast as Addison Riley after they dragged my lifeless corpse from the sea.

After the longest thirty-one minutes of my life—which turned out not to be the last thirty-one minutes of my life, so at least there was that to be grateful for—I bolted out of the aerial sardine can on shaky legs. Subduing the urge to kiss the ground, I shouldered my way through the single glass door to the baggage claim area. Neither of the two carousels had yet to kick to life, so I took the opportunity to call Sophie.

"What the hell am I doing here?"

Sophie's laugh, always perfectly melodic, sounded on the other end of the line. "I take it you made it to Key West. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

I couldn't have said. My eyes had been squeezed shut the entire flight, trying to keep down the coffee I'd had on my way to the airport. Now, however, with the concern of imminent death no longer relevant, a whole new anxiety was settling in my stomach.

"She's going to think I'm a psycho. What if she asks what I'm doing in Miami?"

I could practically hear Sophie's eye roll from three thousand miles away. "Kam, we've gone over this. You're an actress."

"I don't want to lie."

"Don't think of it as lying—think of it more as exploring a part. Just massage the truth. Tell her you came to do some research. You don't have to say what for." She paused. "And you did come for research. Research on yourself."

"I don't know how I let you talk me into this." The creaking surveyor belt of the baggage carousel lurched in front of me and the first suitcase came tumbling down the luggage chute, followed by my backpack. "Okay," I sighed, swooping my arm through the strap. "I gotta go."

"Just breathe, Kam. You've got this."

I wasn't exactly sure what this was, but I definitely didn't have it.

I'd told Dillon I would take an Uber from the airport. After the stress of her race earlier in the morning, I didn't want her having to come and get me. But when I stepped out of the single terminal exit, I caught a glimpse of wayward blonde hair sticking out from beneath a flat-billed snapback, and found Dillon perched on one of the sidewalk benches, her attention turned halfheartedly toward a chattering young woman.

"Welsh, actually," she was saying as I drew closer.

"So, basically English."

"Well, Wales shares a border with England, but we are not English. The English come only from England. Welsh come from Wales."

"But you sound British." The woman had grown almost impertinent.

"I am British. But there's really no such thing as a single British accent."

I was within a few feet of them, but neither had noticed me yet.

"British?" I interrupted their conversation, feigning shock. "I thought you told me you were from the United Kingdom?"

Dillon looked up, amusement appearing with her crooked smile. I'd forgotten how incredibly green her eyes were.

"I'm actually from the Commonwealth," she winked, climbing to her feet. "Hello, Kam-Kameryn."

I was at once reminded what had possessed me to fly across the country, pretending to have business in a city I hated, with absolutely no guarantee I'd even get to see a girl I'd spent less than five hours with three weeks earlier on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

It had been worth the last thirty-one minutes of mind-numbing terror, if just to hear her say those two words.

"Hello, Dillon from Cymru." It was a word I'd learned while browsing a UK travel magazine on my flight from Los Angeles to Miami. The Welsh word for Wales. "Did I pronounce that right?" I asked, suddenly self-conscious.

"Perffaith."

I had no idea what that meant, but she was smiling, so I took it as a good sign.

Taking hold of the crook of my arm, she glanced down at the woman still sitting on the bench. "Safe travels, mate."

"Oh!" Loath to give up the conversation, the woman tried again. "Australian!"

But Dillon was done, and steered me toward the street, looping her arm through mine.

"You made it."

"On a wing and a prayer," I said, meaning it quite literally. I matched her stride—longer than mine, despite her not being much taller than me—and noticed each time our hips brushed as we walked side by side. "You didn't have to come meet me. I would have just caught an Uber."

"Don't be daft—you just flew a hundred and twenty miles to get here. Of course I was going to meet you."

A hundred and twenty miles . Thank God that was all she thought I'd done. I tried to play it cool. "Yeah, and you covered thirty-two miles in your race this morning. I'm sure the last thing you wanted to do was trek across town to the airport." I second-guessed my choice of shooting off my newly acquired knowledge of Olympic triathlon distances. I should have said thirty. Something less accurate. At least I hadn't said 31.99, to prove how crazy I was.

If she was alarmed about my sudden mathematical insight, she didn't show it.

"So what drew Hollywood's rising star all the way to Miami?"

I momentarily forgot about the conundrum of answering her question. The term rising star threw me. It was something Dani called me, but always with a sense of mockery. Like my entire existence was as a social climbing upstart who would never quite make it to the top.

Well, wouldn't she be surprised.

My focus snapped back to Dillon. She wasn't mocking me.

"Uh—research." My voice sounded tight and I wondered if she could see straight through me. For all of Sophie's pep talk about being an actress, at the moment I was on track to receive a big green splat on Rotten Tomatoes for my inability to sound anything other than robotic.

"A new role?"

I nodded. Something like that .

She didn't press me.

We caught a cab on Roosevelt Blvd. and headed downtown. I'd been anxious about seeing her again, worried I'd made an enormous mistake. I didn't know this girl. She didn't know me. I didn't even know what I was expecting—or what I even wanted. I just knew I hadn't wanted to leave it the way we did. And now, sitting beside her in the taxi, watching the sun sink closer to the horizon, I found her relaxed affability put me at ease all over again.

"You haven't told me about your race." I was glad to steer the conversation in a different direction.

She pulled her hat off, running her fingers through her hair. Sun-bleached. Salt-bleached. Chlorine-bleached. Whatever it was, I loved the color of it.

"Another day, another dollar."

"That good, huh?"

She shrugged. "Nah, any day racing is good. It just could have been better."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. I'd really hoped she'd win. Everything online had indicated she was a strong favorite amongst the field. There were a number of high-ranking athletes competing, but according to the articles I'd read, the fast, flat track had favored Dillon. The race, being offseason, hadn't been televised or streamed, and the results hadn't been posted by the time I boarded the bucket of bolts I'd flown in on.

"I'm sorry."

She brushed off my sympathy. "Only one I've got to blame is myself."

I would have teased that at least this time no crazy motorists had tried to turn her into a pancake, but I didn't want to prolong the subject if she wasn't happy with her results. I imagined her competitive drive didn't handle losses lightly.

When the cab let us out downtown, the sun had dropped low enough for its golden orb to brush the cerulean water, turning the surface of the ocean into a mosaic of topaz glass. I'd learned on the ride over that Dillon had a destination in mind, but seemed in no hurry to get there as we strolled along the waterfront, comfortable in our intermittent silence.

"So when do you head for Sydney?" I asked, our steps slowing as we crossed a pedestrian bridge in front of the cruise ship terminal. A sign indicated we were approaching Mallory Square, where a small army of people had gathered to watch the sunset. Over the top of the crowd, I could see street performers on stilts and high wires, and pyrotechnic hoops being raised in preparation for an evening oceanside show.

Dillon stopped in the middle of the bridge, appearing as unenthusiastic as I was to enter the fray. The glint of a smile touched her green eyes as she turned to face me. "You remembered that?"

I was confused. "Remembered what?"

"That my next race is in Australia."

"Oh." For once it wasn't my internet sleuthing that was at fault for my rampant mouth. She'd mentioned Sydney the first night we'd had dinner on the lanai at the hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Still, I could feel my color rising. It probably wasn't normal to remember schedule details about a person you'd barely met. "I…" I stopped talking. I didn't need to dig this hole any deeper.

Her smile broadened. "It's nice, Kam-Kameryn. That you remembered." She reached out, sliding her fingers between the strap of my backpack and bare skin of my arm, lifting it to sling over her shoulder. "The race is the first weekend of December, so I'll head over a week early to get acclimated to the change in weather."

"Oh, right—it'll be winter on that side of the globe," I announced brightly, my thoughts too focused on where her fingers had grazed my skin to stop my mouth from committing its blunder. As soon as the words came tumbling out, however, I was aware of my error. " Summer ," I corrected emphatically, "I mean—because, well," I gestured around us, "obviously it's winter here. Or, will be, after it's not fall."

Oh my God, Kam. Just stop talking . Clearly she didn't need my sixth-grade geography lesson on hemispheres.

"I've generally found it to work that way—winter coming after fall," Dillon teased, slipping her arm through mine once more as she turned our steps toward the growing crowd.

A schooner sailed by, the deck packed with party-goers on a sunset cruise. They waved and shouted and raised plastic glasses in a toast to the mob on land, who responded with an enthusiastic cheer of their own. It was loud and chaotic with far too many people, and my silent relief soared when I realized Dillon was navigating us away from the square, and down a lesser-populated brick road.

"Alright," she said, stopping in front of a weathered two-story building with an old-fashioned ticket booth out front. Beside the door was a replica jaw of a megalodon, displaying the 276 teeth of the extinct shark, and above the blue and white canopy, a sign that read AQUARIUM . "You up for a little excursion?"

I glanced from her to the ticket booth, uncertain whether she had noticed the sign indicating they had closed for the evening.

"I think we might be too late."

"I have it on good authority they make exceptions for Almost Marine Biologists."

I tilted my head, raising an eyebrow. "Apparently I'm not the only one who remembers random bits of conversation."

Throwing her arm around my shoulders, she drew me toward the landing. "Trust me, I remember everything about that evening," she said, her lips close to my ear, before knocking on the door.

Every hair on my neck stood up at the whispered admission, but I wasn't granted time to dwell on it as a million-year-old man appeared at the threshold.

"You came!" His wrinkled face transformed into a boyish grin when he spied Dillon, and he threw the door wide open. "And you brought your friend! Come in, come in!"

We were ushered into the aquarium—small, by the standards of the world-class aquariums I had grown up with—but it was clean and the animals well cared for. I learned quickly we weren't there for casual browsing, but instead Dillon had volunteered us to help "tuck-in" the marine life, assisting the caretakers as they prepared the animals for bedtime. It was a program, Roger—our guide—explained, exclusively offered over the summer months, but when Dillon had stopped by earlier, she'd convinced him to make an exception.

"She can be very charming, this one," he wagged a knotted finger toward Dillon, winking at me with one of his diluted blue eyes. "And you're very pretty, so I can see why."

I laughed at his compliment, very aware of Dillon's eyes on me as we were walked through the nightly routine.

"Do you always go to this much effort for pre-dinner-entertainment?" I asked, half an hour later when we'd been left on our own to drop a dinner of clams into the tank of a Caribbean Reef octopus named Sid. "A drive along the most scenic road in Maui, a hike to the top of a hill created by a god, now—this," I twirled my finger to indicate the sea life around us.

Dillon shrugged, holding out the bucket for me to grab another clam. "Are you having fun?"

I couldn't begin to hide the ridiculousness of my goofy smile as I watched Sid's bright green arms swoop in on his sinking meal.

Her lips flickered at the corners of her mouth. "I'll take that as a yes."

For another hour, we schlepped croaker fish and snappers to nurse sharks, skimmed a cleaning net through a tank of Moray eels, and, to my utter delight, found ourselves entirely soaked after helping the aquarium veterinarian scrub the backs of Lola and Hector—the resident sea turtles.

"I didn't even know this was on my bucket list," I laughed, leaning my head close to Dillon's as Erika—the veterinarian—offered to take our photo. We were still on our knees, just finishing washing the algae from Lola's shell.

"I may have been wrong about you," Dillon said, after we'd thanked Roger and waved our goodbyes, heading out the door. "Marine biology might have suited you perfectly."

We stopped in front of the building adjacent to the aquarium, the hokey facade resembling a high school theatre backdrop advertising the Key West Shipwreck Museum . With the sun having set, the building was locked up tight, the surrounding area vacant after all the tourists had disappeared to the nightlife down by the ocean.

"I can't believe we just did that." I wrung out the hem of my tank top, salt water dripping onto my tennis shoes. "I can't believe you arranged that," I looked up, "for me."

She didn't say anything, just leaned against the figure of a peg-legged man who looked like he'd been stolen from the set of Pirates of the Caribbean . In the distance, the music pounded into the night, reverberating from the Mallory Square party.

I wanted to kiss her. I mean, I'd been thinking about it since I stepped off the plane. Okay, fine, since I stepped on the plane. Not the prop plane. The plane from Maui. Over two weeks ago. I'd been thinking about it while L.R. Sims assured Waylon MacArthur I was pretty, but not too pretty. And while Sophie and I devised a ludicrous plan for me to fly to Florida. And yet again while I tossed anchovies into the barracuda exhibit and watched as the enormous slender bodies swept up from the coral reef to snap up their supper.

I wanted to, and yet, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

It sounds absolutely stupid, but I didn't know how. Carter I would have simply stepped forward and kissed. The way I had when I'd pursued him my Freshman year in gym class. The way I'd kissed a dozen or more boys during all the times Carter and I had been "taking a break."

But for some reason, with Dillon, I couldn't do it. Maybe, because, out of all those boys, not one of them had made me feel like this. Like I was suspended, walking along the tightropes with the acrobats performing in the square. Like I was floating, weightless through the water, as buoyant as the moon jellyfish in the aquarium tank. Yet also as frozen, as incapable, as the inanimate pirate grinning down at us from the museum display.

Dani had once told me, when she first met Tom, he made her insides ache.

I'd chalked the sentiment up to a silly cliché. But now, standing there in the dark, paralyzed in place, I knew exactly what she'd meant.

But amidst the desire—the newfound longing I'd discovered—was also the underlying discomfort of uncertainty. That was something, I was sure, Dani had not had to face.

She could fall in love with Tom, marry Tom, spend her life with Tom, without a single eyebrow lifted. Well, other than Darlene Hallwell's gross initial fit when she'd discovered his father was Mexican. That aside—Tom was idyllic. Educated, handsome, hardworking. Sure to be worth ten figures before he turned thirty.

But, obviously, more than anything, Tom was, well—a man.

I'd spent the last two weeks analyzing my feelings. I'd reached what I felt was a solid acceptance of the fact that I'd developed a crush on a woman. I'd convinced myself it didn't bother me. Queer, after all, was practically the new normal. So why, suddenly, did I find myself so nervous? Why, in the fleeting moments she'd held my hand in the aquarium, had I worried if anyone else was watching?

That wasn't me. I'd never cared what anyone else thought.

I was being ridiculous.

I loved the way her hand fit in mine. The way it felt like it belonged there. I loved the way she made me feel. The way my heart galloped its anarchic sprint whenever I knew her eyes were on me.

Nothing Carter had ever done had made me feel like this, and not for lack of trying. He was sweet, he was considerate, without a single domineering bone in his body. He'd never pressured me. He wasn't clingy. I couldn't have found a guy who was more laid-back, or ridiculously good-looking. I had no excuse not to be head-over-heels in love with him.

Yet never, in the eight years of our erratic dating history, had I ever once wanted to reach out and touch him so badly my fingers were shaking.

So what if Dillon hadn't been in the script I originally envisioned?

There was always time for a last-minute rewrite.

I released an unsteady breath and, though I didn't find the courage to kiss her, I did manage to shove aside the tilt-a-whirl of my uncertainties enough to catch her hand as she stepped in the direction of the ongoing party.

"Should we sort dinner?" she asked, and through the shadows I could feel her gaze on me again as I laced our fingers together, falling into step beside her.