Plot Twist In Paradise
by IAmHerEmma

 

 

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Chapter Fourteen: Slower Kicks, You're Working Too Hard

 

The porch had been there the whole time, apparently. Four days at this place and I hadn't sat on it once — too busy being everywhere else. But this morning I'd run out of everywhere else. The chair was wooden and sun-warm already, even though it was barely eight. The shutters were open and the view through the palms was the kind of still, blue, impossibly calm water that made you feel like the world had been put on pause for your benefit. I didn't trust it, but I sat with it anyway. I had the notebook. I had, theoretically, an idea.

That was the problem with theoretically.

I opened to the last entry — yesterday morning's, the character sketches that had come so easily it felt like someone else was holding the pen. Milo's full-volume everything. Cass's precision. Talia's chaos that somehow always landed upright. And then the turn inward, the part where I'd started writing about the block itself and realized I'd been stealing Renee's language without noticing. Showing up anyway. Staying in the room. Not forcing what isn't ready.

And underneath all of that, the seed. The thing I kept circling like it might bite me if I reached for it too fast: a character who spends her days putting other people back together while quietly, methodically, falling apart herself.

It was good. I knew it was good. I could feel the weight of it sitting in the notebook like something waiting to be picked up.

I put my pen underneath the last line and tried to push it further. She carries other people's weight for a living and — I stopped. And what? I didn't know yet. I crossed it out and tried again. There's a woman who — Worse. The idea was alive when I wasn't looking at it directly, and the second I put my pen on it, it went still.

I closed the notebook and leaned back. The water through the palms didn't have any advice.

I picked up my phone and texted Sasha.

Me: You up

I put the phone down. Picked it up again. The screen sat there doing nothing for long enough that I considered the possibility Sasha was ignoring me, which would be fair at this hour. Then three dots appeared on my screen.

Sasha: Tell me something interesting or I'm going back to sleep

Me: I'm sitting on my porch staring at a notebook that won't cooperate

Sasha: So paradise is going well

Me: Thriving

Sasha: The writing thing. Is it still the same nothing or a different nothing

Me: I have an idea. I think. It won't come out

Sasha: That's better than nothing though right

Me: It's worse actually. Nothing is clean. An idea you can't reach is just frustrating

Sasha: So you have an idea you can't write and you're texting me at this hour. Anything else going on

Sasha: How's Renee

Me: You're not subtle you know that right

Sasha: Last time we talked you said she was different than you thought. I'm following up. Like a good friend

Me: She's fine. She's been hanging out with the group more

Sasha: With you

Me: With the group

Sasha: Right. The group. And you just happen to be in the group

Me: I am literally in the group yes that is how groups work

Sasha: And she's still different than you thought

Me: Can we talk about something else

Sasha: Oh this is going to be so good

Me: Something actually happened last night that I want your take on

Sasha: Did it involve Renee

Me: No. Well. No. There's this travel writer at the resort. She wants to do a piece on the place and she asked if she could write about the people I've been spending time with. Observe them. Use them as material

Sasha: Write about them how

Me: The group dynamic. How strangers become friends at a place like this. She said it would be the heart of the piece

Sasha: That's not a bad idea for an article

Me: I know

Sasha: So what did you do

Me: I said no. Didn't even think about it. Told her it was their vacation and she couldn't just turn them into content

Sasha: Huh

Me: What

Sasha: Nothing. Just thinking about the fact that you've known these people for four days and you went full mama bear on a stranger for them

Me: It wasn't mama bear. It was basic decency

Sasha: You don't do basic decency for strangers Ade. You do basic decency for people you care about

Me: They're not strangers anymore

Sasha: No. They're clearly not

Sasha: You know what I think is the most interesting part of this whole story

Me: I'm scared to ask

Sasha: You cared. Like actually cared. That's new

Me: Shut up

Sasha: I'm being sincere. It's good

Me: Don't make it a thing

I put the phone down and looked at the notebook in my lap. Closed, unhelpful. The idea was in there somewhere between the pages, but the words weren't coming. And behind me through the open door, the laptop on the desk still had its cursor blinking like a passive-aggressive smoke detector.

The group would be at breakfast by now. Milo holding court over something that happened last night. Talia planning an activity nobody had agreed to yet. Cass reading the table with a coffee she'd defend with her life. And Renee, who would be there, because Renee was part of this now.

I wasn't going, and it wasn't that I didn't want to see them — that was the strange part. A week ago, the idea of voluntarily joining a group breakfast four days running would have sounded like a prison sentence. Now the table felt like a place I belonged, which was precisely why I needed to sit alone on a porch for another hour. I had the idea. I had the notebook. I had silence and a view. A writer with fewer excuses would have been typing by now.

None of it was working, though. Maybe it was the chair, or the view, or the fact that handwriting made every failed attempt feel permanent in a way the cursor didn't.

I went inside, grabbed the laptop, and headed for the pool.

The pool was empty — everyone was probably still at breakfast or sleeping off whatever the bar had served last night. I found a lounger in the shade, opened the laptop, and tried to coax the idea from notebook to screen. The notebook version had felt warm. Possible. The cursor turned it into a task.

She had the kind of stillness that made other people want to confess. I stared at it. It was a line about an idea, not a woman. I highlighted it and let it go.

You could tell her anything and she'd hold it without flinching — No. That was a greeting card.

She made you want to be honest, which was the first problem. Closer, maybe, but still just sitting there. Every sentence came out like I was describing the effect of the character instead of writing her.

I tried for twenty minutes. The blank page and the cursor had formed an alliance that was only getting stronger, and they were enjoying themselves enormously. Every time I put a sentence down it sat there looking competent and hollow, like a model home nobody had moved into.

I was mid-deletion when I heard the voice.

"There she is."

Milo. I turned and saw all of them coming down the path from the restaurant like a search party that had decided to enjoy themselves along the way. Milo in front, still chewing something, Talia and Cass a step behind, and Renee at the back, her eyes already on me in a way that made me want to close the laptop faster.

"We thought you died," Milo said, pulling a lounger next to mine without asking.

"That's a perfectly reasonable conclusion after missing one breakfast," I said, not looking up from the screen.

"I was going to send Lyle with a wellness check."

Talia dropped into the lounger on my other side. Cass settled on the arm of Talia's chair. Renee took the one across from me, crossing her legs and saying nothing.

"Why weren't you at breakfast?" Milo asked.

"I'm working."

"You're staring at a white screen. I can see it from here."

I closed the laptop an inch. "I'm between thoughts."

"Is that what we're calling it," Talia said, with enough affection that I couldn't argue.

"Are you okay?" Renee asked. Quiet, direct, like she was taking a reading.

"Fine. Just wanted a quiet morning."

The look Renee gave me sat somewhere between concern and patience, and I didn't have an answer for either. She didn't push. That was the thing about Renee that made her harder to dismiss than the pushers — she left a silence exactly where the honest answer was supposed to go and waited for you to hear it yourself I guess.

"GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE."

"What the fuck —" Milo shot upright so fast his lounger scraped against the deck, hand flat on his chest like he was checking for a pulse.

Talia screamed. Full volume, no words, the kind of sound that sent something rustling out of the nearest palm tree.

"Jesus Christ," Cass said, with the flatness of a woman already composing the complaint.

My laptop slid off my thighs and I caught it an inch from the deck with both hands. "Shit —"

Renee flinched — actually flinched, visibly, her whole body going tight for a second — and then said, "What the hell is wrong with you," in a tone so level it was almost scarier than the screaming.

Lyle stood behind the towel station with his clipboard, whistle, and a grin that said he absolutely meant to do that. "Who's ready for the best snorkeling of their lives?"

"So," Lyle said, flipping a page on his clipboard like he was about to present quarterly earnings. "On the far side of the island, we have a reef. And I don't mean a nice little reef. I mean the reef. The one people come back from and won't shut up about for days."

"Is that a guarantee or a warning," Cass said, without blinking.

"Both. Exclusively both." He didn't miss a beat. "I have personally taken over two hundred guests to this reef. Not a single one has come back disappointed."

"Has anyone not come back at all?" I asked, not entirely joking.

Lyle blinked. "Everyone has come back."

"She's asking if anyone drowned, Lyle," Talia said, patting his arm like she was breaking bad news.

"No one has drowned. No one has ever come close to drowning. We have safety equipment, we have life vests, we have me." He said this like the third item was the most important. "The boat leaves after lunch. Gear is provided. Sunscreen is mandatory — and I will be checking. I checked last time and three people hadn't reapplied and I had to have a conversation with each of them individually and I will do it again."

"He'll do it again," Milo confirmed to no one.

"I will do it again," Lyle said.

"How long are we out there," Cass said.

"Great question. Approximately two hours on the water, including travel time, the snorkeling itself, and a brief debrief on the boat."

"A debrief," I said, turning to Talia because I needed a witness.

"I like to go over what everyone saw. It helps contextualize the experience."

"He debriefs the snorkeling," Talia said to Cass.

"I heard." Cass pinched the bridge of her nose.

"It's optional," Lyle said. "So — who's in?"

"I'm in," Milo said, already standing.

"We're in," Talia confirmed, gesturing at Cass without consulting her.

"Were we?" Cass said.

"We were," Talia said, already done with the discussion.

I looked at my laptop. The cursor was still winning. "I was going to try to work this afternoon."

"Come snorkeling," Milo said, like it was the most obvious solution to every problem I'd ever had.

"I haven't snorkeled since I was a kid."

"It's like riding a bike. Except underwater. And you can't fall off."

"You can absolutely fall off," Cass said.

"You can't fall off water, Cass," Milo said, like he was explaining gravity to a child.

"You can fall off a boat," Cass said, unmoved.

"Nobody's falling off the boat." Lyle looked mildly alarmed, like the possibility of boat-falling hadn't been in his risk assessment.

I looked at Renee. She hadn't said a word about whether she was going, but she also hadn't refused, and I was learning that with Renee the absence of a no was a significant data point. She caught me looking and gave a half-shrug — somewhere between why not and it's just water.

"Come," she said. No argument, no pitch.

It caught me off guard — not the word, but the fact that Renee had bothered to say it. She didn't recruit. She didn't campaign. If you showed up, fine. If you didn't, also fine. So the fact that she'd actually asked was — something. I lost the rest of it because Milo and Talia were watching the two of us with expressions that were trying very hard to be casual and failing completely.

"Fine," I said, glaring at Milo and Talia until they looked elsewhere. "After lunch."

"Excellent," Lyle said, and wrote it on his clipboard like he was ratifying a treaty. "Boat leaves at two. Gear provided. Sunscreen mandatory."

Lyle clicked his pen, flipped the clipboard shut, and walked off toward the main building — already calling something over his shoulder to a staff member halfway down the path.

"So what's the lunch plan," Talia said, pulling out her phone. "We need to eat before two or we're snorkeling on empty stomachs."

"I could eat," Milo said.

"You could always eat," Cass said.

"That's not an insult, that's a lifestyle."

I closed the laptop. "I'm going to head back. Try to get some writing in before we go."

Milo sat up. "No. Absolutely not. You're coming to lunch."

"I'll order room service."

"You'll order nothing and stare at your laptop." He pointed at me. Four days and he already had me figured out.

"You've been having fun the last couple of days," Talia said, and there was something careful in it. "Real fun. Why go back to the screen now?"

"Because I actually have something," I said. "For the first time in months. I just want to try."

The group went quiet for a second. My head was loud enough without the silence, and I needed to be somewhere with fewer people in it.

"Let her work," Cass said. "She'll be there at two."

"Will she, though?" Milo said.

"She'll be there at two," Cass said again, looking directly at me, and it wasn't a question.

I stood, tucked the laptop under my arm, and turned to go. I glanced back once without meaning to — Renee hadn't moved, but her eyes were on me, and she wasn't asking me to stay. She was just watching me choose to leave.

I kept walking. By the time I reached the bungalow the idea of sitting at the desk felt like something that belonged to a different morning. I put the laptop down, kicked off my shoes, and lay on the bed instead.

The ceiling fan turned in slow circles. My brain wouldn't stop. I closed my eyes and told myself it was just for a minute.

I woke up to knocking and Milo's voice through the door. "Ade. It's ten to two and the boat's leaving."

Behind him, Talia: "I told you she'd fall asleep."

I sat up, disoriented, mouth dry, hair committed to a direction I hadn't approved. The clock on the nightstand said 1:48. Shit.

"Coming," I called, already pulling open drawers.

So much for the writing. I was going snorkeling instead — with fins and water and the strong possibility of looking ridiculous in front of people whose opinions I apparently now cared about.

I found the swimsuit — a dark green one-piece I'd packed with no real expectation of wearing — and pulled it on with the speed and grace of someone dressing during a fire drill. I threw the cover-up over it, stepped into sandals, and put on sunglasses that I hoped would hide the evidence of the nap. My hair went back in whatever configuration it would accept without negotiation. I grabbed a towel and opened the door.

Milo looked me up and down. "Forty-five seconds. I'm impressed and concerned."

"Called it," Talia said, already walking. "You owe me five dollars, Milo."

"I was resting my eyes," I said, falling into step beside her.

"Were you," Talia said, without turning around.

"They were very tired eyes."

We walked down the path toward the dock, Milo and Talia flanking me like an escort detail.

"Have you ever snorkeled?" Milo asked Talia.

"Twice. Once in Cancún, once in a cenote that turned out to be mostly mud."

"Was the Cancún one good?"

"The cenote was a war crime." Talia shuddered. "But the Cancún one was gorgeous."

Milo considered this like it was new information about the world. "I've never snorkeled. How hard can it be? You float and you look down."

"You have to breathe through a tube, Milo," Talia said, with the patience of someone who'd already accepted how this would end.

Milo was undeterred. "I breathe through things all the time."

"That's not the selling point you think it is," I said.

Talia pointed at me. "Thank you."

"Cass is going to hate it." Milo was warming to his theory. "She's going to get in the water and immediately want to file a complaint."

"Cass is going to be better at it than all of us," I said. "Out of pure spite."

"Cass has been ready since noon," Talia said. "Cass has opinions about people who aren't ready."

The path curved and opened up and I could feel the heat pressing through my cover-up and the last of the nap burning off, and whatever was waiting at the dock was getting closer whether I was ready for it or not.

We reached the dock and I could see the others already assembled near a white boat with a sun-bleached canopy. Cass sat in the shade, scrolling her phone like she'd been there long enough to get bored of the view. Renee stood near the railing in a black bikini top and shorts, her hair pulled back, having an exchange with Lyle that appeared to involve her nodding once and Lyle talking for thirty seconds.

"She's alive," Cass said, without looking up. "I had my doubts."

"Ade fell asleep," Milo announced to the dock at large. "We physically had to remove her from the bungalow. She put up resistance."

"I didn't put up resistance. I opened the door."

"After we knocked long enough to file a noise complaint," Milo said, still wounded by the ordeal.

"That's a normal amount of knocking," I said, adjusting my sunglasses.

Renee turned from Lyle to face me. "Glad you made it," she said.

Lyle blew his whistle — one sharp blast that made Cass look up from her phone for what might have been the first time all afternoon.

"Gather round, team," Lyle said, clipboard raised. He was in a rashguard that was somehow tighter than his polo. "Safety briefing before we board."

"How long is this briefing," Cass said, already looking back at her phone.

"As long as it needs to be for everyone's safety and enjoyment." Lyle tapped his pen against the clipboard. "Rule one: stay within visual range of the group at all times. If you can't see me, you've gone too far."

"What if we can see you and wish we couldn't?" I said, raising my hand like I was in a seminar.

Lyle considered this with more sincerity than it deserved. "I'm going to move past that. Rule two: do not touch the coral. The coral is alive. It is fragile. It does not want to be touched."

Talia tilted her head. "You're making it sound sentient."

Lyle looked personally wounded. "It's been growing for thousands of years. I think we can all agree that deserves a certain level of consideration and care."

"Rule three," Lyle continued, flipping a page. "Life vests are available. The current is gentle today but currents change and I'd rather you wore one than didn't."

"Are there sharks?" Milo asked.

Lyle lowered the clipboard. "There are no sharks. I have personally led over — many excursions to this reef and no one has ever encountered a shark."

"You answered that very fast," Milo said, not reassured.

"Because it's a common question and the answer is always no." Lyle looked at him with genuine concern. "Are you okay? Do you need a moment?"

Milo looked at the water like he was waiting for it to weigh in.

We boarded one at a time. The boat was open-decked with benches along the sides, a sun-bleached canopy, and an outboard motor that sounded like it was considering retirement. Milo picked the bench closest to the middle and sat down like the water might reach up and grab him.

"You're very far from the edge," Cass said, stepping past him.

"That's where I want to be," Milo said, already holding the bench with both hands.

Talia settled next to Cass. Renee took the bench across from me. I sat down and pulled the cover-up tighter against the wind.

Lyle took the wheel and the motor coughed to life, and then we were moving, the dock getting smaller behind us and the island flattening out into a green line against the sky.

"How deep is the water here?" Milo said, peering over the side without letting go of the bench.

"Great question," Lyle called back from the wheel. "Right now we're passing over about eight feet. As we get closer to the reef it'll drop to twelve, maybe fifteen in some spots. Visibility is excellent today so you'll be able to see the bottom clearly, which I find helps with any anxiety about depth."

"I don't have anxiety about depth," Milo said, gripping the bench harder.

Talia stretched her legs out and tilted her face toward the sun. "Stop asking questions you don't want the answers to."

"I do want the answers. That's why I'm asking."

"Twelve to fifteen feet is very manageable," Lyle added, still going. "And you'll be on the surface the whole time. The reef does all the work. You just float and look down."

"Right," Milo said. "Float. On top of fifteen feet of ocean."

Cass closed her eyes. "Fifteen is the maximum. He said twelve in some spots."

"That's not the comfort you think it is, Cass."

The water changed as we went — cloudy green near the shore, then something clearer, then something closer to glass. The motor hummed and the wind pulled at my cover-up, and when I looked around Talia had her face tilted toward the sun and Cass had her eyes closed and even Milo's grip on the bench had gone slack, like his body had given up the argument his brain was still trying to have.

I looked at Renee. She was watching the water with the ease of someone who didn't need to think about being comfortable around it — just was.

The motor cut out and the boat drifted into silence.

"All right," Lyle said, killing the engine with a flourish. "This is it. Gear's in the bin. Take your time getting in — there's a ladder on the port side."

Everyone started stripping down to swimsuits. Talia had a bright coral bikini that matched her energy. Cass wore a navy one-piece with the efficient air of someone who had selected it in under thirty seconds. Milo had bright orange trunks that were somehow the loudest thing on the boat. Renee pulled her shorts off and adjusted the strap on her bikini top, and the whole thing was so casually, unfairly distracting that I forgot what I was doing with my hands for a second.

I pulled my cover-up over my head and tried to look like I knew what I was doing with the snorkeling gear. The mask smelled like rubber and salt. The fins were slightly too large — my feet slid around inside them, two sizes too big and committed to nothing.

One by one they went in. Talia launched herself off the side and hit the water like she was punishing it. Cass lowered herself down the ladder without a single wasted movement. Milo went in with his arms out and his eyes closed, and the splash he produced was heroic and deeply unnecessary. Renee slipped off the side of the boat and was just — in.

And then it was just me, standing at the ladder in fins that didn't fit, watching four people who'd all managed to get into the ocean without making it look like a decision that required deliberation.

The water was clear enough that I could see the bottom, or at least a version of it — white sand giving way to darker shapes that were probably coral, probably beautiful, probably not interested in my participation. The mask was already fogging. I put one foot on the ladder and my fin caught on the rung and I grabbed the railing with both hands and most of my dignity. Water was not, technically, a solid surface, and my body had just remembered that.

Everyone else was already in and moving toward the reef. I could see Milo's orange trunks bobbing ahead, Talia pulling Cass along by the arm, Lyle already halfway there. I watched them go and took another step down the ladder and my other fin caught and I stopped, one foot in the water, one foot on a rung, both hands on the railing, doing absolutely nothing with any confidence.

Not in, not out, just stuck on a ladder in the middle of the ocean, wondering how every single person I knew had gotten into the water without turning it into a crisis.

I was considering my options — which were limited to going down or climbing back up and pretending I'd never agreed to this — when I noticed Renee had stopped moving, maybe twenty feet from the boat, and was swimming back toward me.

"Put your weight on the balls of your feet, not your heels," Renee said, treading water an arm's length away. "The fin catches if you lead with the heel."

"Okay," I said, which came out sharper than I meant it to.

"You're leading with your heel," Renee said.

She was right. I adjusted. The next step didn't catch. I got down two more rungs and then the water was at my waist and the ladder ended and there was a moment where I had to actually let go and trust that the fins and the vest and the laws of buoyancy would do their jobs.

"Lean back," Renee said. She was treading water an arm's length away. "Don't step off. Lean."

I leaned back and the water took my weight and I was in — graceless, startled, but floating. The mask was still fogging.

"Spit in it," Renee said.

"Excuse me?" I said, still clinging to the idea that snorkeling had standards.

"In the mask. Rub it on the inside of the lens. It stops the fog."

"That's disgusting," I said, holding the mask at arm's length.

"That's physics," Renee said. "Do you want to see the reef or not?"

I spat in the mask and rubbed it on the inside of the lens and put it back on, hating every second of the process. The world through the lens went from blurry to sharp, and Renee nodded once and said, "Breathe through the snorkel. Slow. Don't think about it."

She turned and swam toward the reef, and I followed her because there was nothing else to do except float alone next to a boat I'd already embarrassed myself on, and at least this way I was moving in a direction.

The first few minutes were bad. I breathed too fast and the snorkel made a sound like a straw at the bottom of a milkshake. My arms did too much. My fins felt like someone had strapped planks to my feet. I couldn't find the rhythm that everyone else had apparently been born with. I was the only one still struggling, and I was aware of it in the specific, burning way of someone who is deeply uncomfortable with anything that might make them look ridiculous.

Renee stayed close without hovering. Every few minutes she'd glance back, and once she called over, "Slower kicks. You're working too hard." I wanted to argue but she was right again, and when I slowed down the fins started doing what fins were supposed to do and my body stopped fighting the water and started cooperating with it, and then the reef was underneath us.

I don't know how to describe what I saw down there without making it sound like the brochure I'd mocked at Sorrentino's. But the reef was — it was like someone had taken every color I'd ever seen and made it alive. Fans of coral in purples and oranges that moved with the current like they were breathing. Fish in colors that didn't make evolutionary sense — electric blue, neon yellow, a stripe of black and white that looked hand-painted. Something darted past me that was so bright it seemed like it should make a sound. The sand below was white and rippled, and the sunlight came down through the water in shifting columns that moved across the bottom like searchlights.

I could see Lyle ahead of me, pointing enthusiastically at something near the base of a coral formation. He turned to make sure someone was watching, gave a thumbs-up, and pointed again like someone who had just discovered fire. Talia was near him, grabbing Cass's arm and gesturing at a school of silver fish that turned as one body, like a single thing made of hundreds of pieces.

But the sound — that was what got me. There was no sound. Or there was, but it was so different from anything I was used to that my brain registered it as silence. My own breathing, amplified and close, filling my head in a slow rhythm that left no room for anything else. Just the breathing, and the water, and the fact of being there.

Renee was a few feet to my right, unhurried, completely at home in the water. She pointed at something below us, a starfish sprawled across a rock in a shade of orange that didn't look real, and I looked at it and then I looked at her looking at it and neither of us was trying to be anything. We were just two people suspended in blue-green light, watching a starfish exist.

I stayed out there longer than I expected. The reef didn't end — it just kept unfolding, one formation giving way to another, colors shifting as the light moved. At some point I realized my brain had gone quiet in a way it hadn't in months. Maybe longer. The noise I'd been living with — the constant loop of thinking and overthinking and thinking about the overthinking — had just stopped. And what was left wasn't empty. It was full of something I didn't have a name for yet.

Eventually I saw the others lifting their heads, pulling off masks, starting to swim back toward the boat. Renee tilted her head toward the surface and I nodded. We rose together, and breaking through into air and sun and noise was a shock, the way waking up is when you didn't know you'd fallen asleep.

The boat was thirty feet away. We swam to it, and Renee went up the ladder first, then leaned over and offered me a hand. I took it. Her grip was firm, practical, warm from the sun. I climbed up and she let go.

Everyone else was already on board, scattered across the benches in various states of wet exhaustion. Milo was lying flat on his back with his mask pushed up on his forehead. Talia was wringing out her hair. Cass was sitting very still with her eyes closed, which from anyone else would have looked like rest but from Cass looked like a verdict she'd decided not to appeal. Lyle was at the wheel, starting the motor, already debriefing to nobody in particular about the coral formations and the water clarity and had anyone seen the parrotfish near the south edge?

I peeled off my mask and my fins and sat down on the bench at the stern. The sun was on my shoulders. The motor started and the boat began to move and I was sitting very still, watching the reef get smaller behind us.

It was quiet. Not a wave, not a rush — just a slow unraveling I hadn't braced for. Maribel across the table asking when I'd last done something fun, and my voice lying and saying the writing was flowing. Sasha on the video call telling me I wasn't a person anymore. All of it hitting differently now, on a boat, with the sun on my arms and the reef behind us.

I didn't realize I was crying until I felt it on my face — just a few tears, quiet, arriving before I could do anything about them. I didn't know what they were for. The water was still sliding past the hull and the sun was still warm on my shoulders and I was sitting very still on a bench at the back of a boat, crying for a reason I couldn't fathom.

I looked up and Renee was watching me from across the deck. Quiet, still, and then she turned her head toward the water like something had caught her attention out there. It hadn't. We both knew it hadn't. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and took a breath.

A minute passed, maybe longer. I got my face under control and sat with the engine humming and the water sliding past the hull and the wind drying the last of it from my cheeks, and by the time I looked up again I almost believed I could pass for someone who'd just been squinting at the sun.

"You okay?" Renee said, like she was asking about the water.

"Yeah," I said. "That was — yeah."

Renee nodded once and let it go, and that was the thing that made me feel like I could breathe again.

I let out a breath and looked across the boat and found Cass watching me. She didn't say anything. She just gave me the faintest smile, then turned her face toward the water. Something in me settled, the way it does when someone tells you without words that you don't have to explain.

The boat carried us back. Milo had been staring at the water since we'd pulled away from the reef, which was the longest I'd seen him go without talking, and then he turned to Talia and said, "Did you see the parrotfish?"

Talia pulled her hair over one shoulder. "Which one?"

"The big green one near the coral on the left side. It looked directly at me."

"Fish don't look at people, Milo," Talia said.

"This one did. It stopped swimming and turned its whole body and looked at me with its entire face."

"With its entire face?" Cass repeated, eyes still closed.

"It had intentions," Milo said. "I'm not saying they were good intentions. But they were there."

"Fish don't have intentions," Cass said.

"You didn't see this fish."

I laughed, maybe a beat too loud, the way you do when you're trying to convince everyone including yourself that you're fine. Milo glanced over and grinned at me like he'd been waiting for it, and I realized nobody else had noticed anything.

"What did it look like?" I asked, and my voice came out almost normal.

"Green," Milo said. "And judgmental."

"You just described yourself," Talia said, not missing a beat.

"I'm not green."

The boat reached the dock. Lyle tied off and offered everyone a hand stepping off.

"So what was everyone's highlight?" Lyle asked, and then didn't wait for an answer. "For me it was the water clarity. Today was exceptional. Some days you get a slight current from the east and it affects the visibility, but today was just —"

"Lyle," Talia said gently.

Lyle stopped. "Right. I'll save the rest."

We stood around drying off, the heat already doing most of the work. Milo was still slightly damp and fully converted.

"I need to go back," Milo said, to nobody in particular. "Tomorrow. Or tonight. Can we go at night? Is that a thing?"

Lyle perked up. "Night snorkeling is a thing. I would need to check the tide tables and coordinate with —"

"He's not going night snorkeling," Talia said.

"I might go night snorkeling."

"You were gripping the bench with both hands three hours ago," I said, still toweling off.

Milo waved this off. "That was before the fish and I had a moment."

Cass toweled off her arms. "The coral was impressive." From Cass, that was a standing ovation.

"See?" Lyle gestured at Cass like she'd just proved his entire life thesis. "This is why I do the debriefs."

"That was not a debrief," Cass said, examining her nails. "That was a statement."

"I'm counting it." Lyle was already writing something on his clipboard.

Milo wrung out the hem of his shirt. "I'm starving. Is it too early to talk about dinner?"

Cass checked her phone. "It's four o'clock."

"So that's a yes?"

"Bar at seven?" Talia asked. "I need a shower and a nap before I'm presentable."

"I might sit this one out," I said. "I'm kind of wiped."

Milo looked at me. "Don't disappear on us, Ade."

"I'm not disappearing. I just need a quiet night."

"Come to dinner, Ade," Renee said.

I looked at her and didn't know why my answer changed.

"Okay."