Authors: S. Jackson Rivera
The door opened up and the only thing that came to mind was,
small
. A very small living room lay ahead with two doors immediately on the right. Both had padlocks, making Rhees look at Tracy before they both broke into another laugh.
“That’s your room.” Tracy tapped on the first door at a right angle to the apartment entrance. She tapped on the second door a foot away from the first. “Regina and I are in this one.”
“Everything is so little.” Rhees huffed a quiet laugh.
“From what I’ve seen, this is probably the biggest apartment on the island.”
“Wow, really?” Rhees laughed again.
A small couch sat on the same wall as the bedrooms while a window and a very small television sat on a very small coffee table at the end of the room. The wall on the other side of the room opened into the kitchen through a wide doorway and a recliner sat in the corner behind the opened front door.
“Huh. It’s cute . . .
small,
but cute.” She wished she could think of another word than small, but nope.
Rhees left her bag at the door and walked into the kitchen. She immediately fell in love, especially with the round table sitting in the corner. The two large windows over the table let in more light than the smaller windows in the living room, while sheer white curtains fluttered gently in the breeze blowing through the screens. She couldn’t wait to sit at the table and enjoy a cup of coffee in the mornings.
The other half of the kitchen didn’t quite match the picturesque ambiance of the corner where the table sat. The fridge made her smile. It had to be from the fifties, only about as tall as she was, and with a rounded top and chrome handle. A single porcelain sink butted up to the left of the fridge while a crude countertop ran from the sink around the room, in a U-shape, dividing the room almost in half. Rhees thought it funny that anyone could use so much counter space since there was nothing to cook on except one small hotplate against the wall. She’d never used one of those.
“No microwave?”
Tracy didn’t seem to understand.
“I guess there’s going to be a bit of a learning curve. I’m not sure how to cook without a real stove and especially a microwave.” Other than the cooking set-up, the charming apartment delighted her. She would have to be sure to thank Paul.
“Cook? Who cooks?”
“I like to cook,” Rhees said.
“Everyone here just eats out.”
Rhees unlocked the door of her room and pulled her bag inside. The L-shaped room wrapped around the bathroom in the far, right corner. A full-sized bed sat against the left wall, next to a two-foot-wide window while a twin bed sat under an even smaller window on the right, looking out over the porch. Tracy didn’t waste time opening the windows of the room, which had been shut up tight for a few weeks. She turned on the fan.
“I don’t know why they don’t use bigger windows throughout the apartment,” Tracy said. “It gets pretty stuffy—no air conditioning. Electricity here is expensive and isn’t very reliable. You’ll want to run the fan and hope they don’t have another black-out whenever you’re home. That’s why Regina and I aren’t home very often. We spend the majority of our time at the shop, or we hang out at the bar, anywhere we can find a breeze.”
Rhees took note and continued to look around. Her nesting instincts had already kicked in as she made plans for where to put her things. There was a narrow table, with the same Formica as the kitchen counters, attached to the wall that divided the bathroom from the right side of the room—but no closet in sight.
“Where do I keep my clothes?”
“Clothes? No one needs a lot of clothes here. We all just live in our swimming suits most of the time. We throw on a T-shirt and shorts when we leave the shop.”
“If I take out the dive gear, I guess I can just use my bag as a place to store my things—oh, shoot! I should’ve left my dive gear at the shop. Now I’ll have to drag it all back.”
“You have your own gear? You must be rich. Even I don’t have
my
own gear.”
Rhees laughed. “I’m anything but rich.”
“That stuff costs a fortune. Everyone uses the shop’s gear, even Regina and I. It’s easier, less hassle—we don’t want to give anyone a reason to be jealous.”
“Jealous for having my own gear?” Rhees felt her face flush, having doubts about this—again. So far, she’d done just about everything wrong, and wondered if it was a sign she’d made a big mistake.
Tracy smiled. “Don’t worry about it. They’ll get over it.”
“Well, if I stick to my budget, I have enough money to stay for three weeks. Then I have to go back home and figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I’ll always have my gear as proof that I did this. Besides, I’m a bit of a germ-o-phobe. I can’t imagine putting a regulator in my mouth when I don’t know whose mouth sucked on it before.”
A tiny black girl walked through the front door.
“I heard we have a new roommate.” She noticed Rhees and looked her over quite thoroughly.
“You must be Regina.” Rhees offered a smile as she noted the huge camera hanging from Regina’s neck.
“We will get along just fine as long as you understand that the beer in the fridge, it belongs to me.” Regina said, wagging her finger at Rhees. “You cannot never have any, so don’t ask. Don’t take any thinking you will pay me back, cause no one ever does, and I would rather have my beer in the fridge than a million promises to buy me more.”
“Okay,” Rhees said. “I don’t really drink. I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
Regina spoke with an accent that Rhees didn’t recognize. Her English was only a little off. She enunciated each word a little more distinctly and emphasized different syllables than an American would.
“Almost everyone here has an accent. Am I the only American on this island?” Rhees asked with a nervous laugh.
“You guys have accents, I don’t,” Tracy said. “But North Americans
are
a minority here. Pirates settled the island, so there are a lot of whites here, but they’ve been here forever. There are a lot of descendants of slaves too. Surprisingly, there aren’t many mainlanders. The islanders don’t really like them coming over, except on holiday.”
“Paul is North American. He’s from Miami, Florida.” Regina suddenly acted nervous about sounding a little too much like an authority on Paul. She, to hide her self-imposed unease about possibly knowing so much about him, added, “I think the man running Island Divers is North American too.”
“Ray is North American,” Tracy added. “He runs the best restaurant on the island.”
Rhees listened as they discussed how few there were, making her feel more out of place than she already did. “Where are you from?”
“I’m from Leeds,” Tracy said. “England.”
“That is not none of your business,” Regina snapped.
“Don’t mind her. She’s a princess that had to escape from her country. She can’t tell anyone where she’s from because she’s worried the rebels might still be looking for her.”
“Tracy!” Regina yelled. “You cannot never keep your mouth shut, can you? I wish I never tell you these things.”
“She’s our roommate.” Tracy glanced at Rhees, hoping to remedy her blunder. “We can trust you, right?”
“Yeah, I promise I’ll never mention it to anyone.” Rhees wondered if they were playing some sort of initiation joke on her. She wished she remembered her geography and world history better.
“Did Paul get a look at her?” Regina asked Tracy.
“Yes. He’s going to want her . . .
real bad
.” Tracy acted excited.
“Of course. I figured that the second I saw her.” Regina didn’t seem very excited. “Lucky girl.” They both looked Rhees over.
“What are you talking about?” Rhees asked.
Regina looked Rhees over once more.
“What? Tell me,” Rhees demanded.
“Paul!”
“What about him?”
Regina and Tracy looked at each other and smiled. There was a bit of jealousy in their tone as they announced, “He’s going to sleep with you!”
“Oh no, he’s not!” It came out sharply.
Tracy and Regina looked at each other again. “Are you crazy?” they said in unison.
“You noticed how beautiful that man is, right?” Regina asked.
“Every woman on this island would kill to be you right now. Shelli’s going to be hard to live with for a while.”
“I didn’t notice.” Rhees thought again about how she never noticed that kind of thing. Other girls always seemed to go on and on about how guys they’d seen once were so good looking. All of her crushes, the three of them, had just kind of sneaked up on her. It wasn’t until after she got to know a guy that she would suddenly realize how cute he was.
“I don’t care what he looks like. I’m not sleeping with him—I don’t sleep with anyone!”
The room fell silent. Regina and Tracy stared at Rhees with their mouths hanging open.
Rhees closed her eyes, knowing she’d said too much.
“Are you—” Regina asked.
“You’re a virgin!” Tracy gasped.
“Holy shit!” they said in unison.
After a few seconds of silence, Tracy asked, “Just how old are you?”
“Twenty-four. Why?” Rhees was starting to feel awkward. She’d never been confronted about it before.
“Cause you’re plenty old enough, plenty cute enough—why
not?”
“Because I made a decision that I wasn’t going to do that until I married. There’s never been a reason to change my mind.”
They were both dumfounded for several seconds. Regina broke the silence first. “No one can know this. Rhees, this is something you do not want anyone on this island to know about.”
“Well it’s not like I advertise it!
‘Hello, I’m Rhees, and I’m a virgin’.
” She mocked how silly the idea sounded. “You guys just went on and on about how I was going to
be
with Paul, but I’m not! I’m not going to have sex with him or anyone else here—anywhere. That is something I’m saving until I have a ring on my finger and a formal, legal promise that the man I give it to really loves me.” Rhees hung her head, knowing her opinion on the subject was old-fashioned. She’d never had to defend her position so strongly before.
She was from Orem, Utah. She’d known a few girls who were brave enough to admit to losing their virginity, but she was under the impression that she was in no way a minority. Saving oneself for marriage seemed to be the socially acceptable thing to do. Chastity was a virtue—the norm. Most of her friends were either virgins or liars.
She waited for them to ridicule her. No one said anything. “I’m guessing by your reaction—I don’t know what it’s like here, but where I come from, my attitude about this is actually common.”
Still not a word from either of them.
“I am
not
the only virgin left in the world!” she said anxiously. Regina moved closer and put her hands on Rhees’ shoulders to get her attention.
“I am serious! You listen to me. It may be normal in the culture where you are coming from, but there are other cultures in this world too—cultures that . . .” She shook her head. “There are people who pay fortunes to buy pretty white virgin girls like you. Do you understand what I am trying to saying to you?”
“Say to you,” Tracy corrected Regina. Regina gave her a look but continued.
“There are too many stupid men out there. Some of them even think that if they have a virgin, it will cure their disease. There are men who keep track of the virgins they have had, simply because they think it is a symbol of their masculinity parts. There are people—men from all over this world on this one little island.” Regina was shaking her head. “This is very dangerous information—almost as dangerous as
my
secrets. No one else can know about this.” She stared intently into Rhees’ eyes as if trying to will her to take her seriously.
Rhees opened her mouth to say something but shut it again.
“Tracy!” Regina let go of Rhees’ shoulders. She turned to Tracy and yelled, “No one can know about this! Do you understand for once in your stupid, big-mouth life? No one!”
Chapter 2
R
hees’ first day at the shop went well. She wasn’t due to show up until later, but she followed her roommates at seven thirty because she didn’t know what else to do with herself—and she didn’t think she could find her way back to the shop on her own.
She filled out the paperwork, she received her books and worksheets, and her instructor introduced herself. Shelli, an instructor-in-training, assigned her to read the first four chapters of the
Open Water: Learn to Dive
book by the next day.
Four chapters at a time meant the course really would go fast. The thought made Rhees’ stomach do a flip. As soon as she finished the bookwork, it would be time to get in the water. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm her nerves. She told herself over and over not to give up now.
Everyone at the shop seemed impressed with her gear, and as Tracy had predicted, a few were possibly jealous. Claire, in a detached, business-like manner, showed her around, explaining where things went and the penalties if she were to get caught putting anything in the wrong place.
“The students get lazy and think it won’t hurt to put this here, or that there, just this once.” The inflection in her voice changed to mock the other people at the shop.
Rhees began to realize the students were a constant annoyance to her, and she wondered how long it would take before Claire lumped her in with the rest of them.
“How many students are there?” Rhees finally dared to ask. “I’m having trouble distinguishing who works here and who the other students are.”
“Paul owns the place.” Rhees detected a hint of resentment in Claire’s tone. “Randy’s the boat captain, I manage the office. Dobbs is Paul’s right hand, an instructor, and my husband. Mitch is also an instructor, but I honestly don’t understand why Paul keeps him on the payroll. The man’s a bloody muppet—nice, but a bit daft. Everyone else pays for the abuse.” Claire laughed as if being sarcastic, but Rhees wasn’t really sure.
Claire was fairly pretty and though she was only a little older than the average person at the shop, she came across more like a mother figure. She wore her ash blonde hair in what would be a bob cut, but with unruly waves. Claire spent most of the day in the office and no one questioned the orders she gave in her British accent and cynical tone of voice. Rhees had the impression she wasn’t the only one a little intimidated by Claire.
“You can put your BCD on this rack with the others. Your reg goes on those hooks.” She pointed to all the regulators hanging on pegs on the other side of the room.
“BCD?” Rhees asked.
“Bouyancy Control Device.” Claire pointed to the black vests in the room.
“Oh,” Rhees let her relief show. “The store where I bought it just called it a buoyancy compensator, a BC.”
“Same thing.” Claire sounded grumpy about having to explain it.
Paul appeared from the deck and walked through the gear room toward the office. As he walked by, he told Claire he didn’t want Rhees to mix her gear in with the shop’s. Claire didn’t seem to think it strange that he knew what she’d been saying before he even entered the room.
“Just where do you suggest she keep it then?” Claire snapped. “I’m not a magician. We’re bursting at the seams here and I can’t pull a bigger storage room out of my arse.”
Rhees didn’t like Paul escalating Claire’s already bad attitude when she still had to spend time with her. She couldn’t tell if he was concerned someone else might try to use her equipment, and he didn’t want the confusion, or that it might get stolen.
“Put it in the closet with mine.” He walked out the other door into a short hallway they called the tunnel and turned right into the office, leaving Claire with her mouth hanging open.
“That’s a first. I’ve never seen him offer his private closet to anyone.” Claire had a thoughtful look on her face for a second and then slowly turned to look at Rhees. “Ah, bugger. I think that makes you one of the
special
ones, Duck. Surprise,” she muttered under her breath and turned her attention back to the business at hand, leaving Rhees feeling a little dazed about what just happened.
oOo
Rhees spent the day lounging on the deck, watching everyone and reading her assignment—three times. That morning, the deck bustled with what seemed like organized chaos before the dives. Randy, Dobbs, and six of the fourteen students boarded the boat with gear and tanks, and pulled away from the dock before Randy hit the throttle and they raced south.
The boat came back about three hours later and again, everyone seemed to know exactly what to do—docking the boat, dismantling gear, rinsing gear, schlepping tanks, and putting everything away.
Rhees began to worry about when she would be expected to join in, and if anyone would show her what to do first. She hated how insecure she always felt. She reminded herself that was why she was here.
Once the dives and the work associated with it were done, things seemed pretty laid-back at the shop. Except for the way everyone tried to stay out of Paul and Claire’s way, the shop had no real structure in the afternoon. Even the lessons were casual. Students sat in the rectangular gazebo on the deck and listened to their instructors or ran through verbal tests with each other. Others read their own assignments, watched instruction videos in the media room, or just sat around talking.
The favorite activity at the shop seemed to be logging dives and going through the shop’s ocean wildlife books. People sat at the tables under the gazebo for hours, discussing their dives or trying to identify the creatures they saw while diving that morning.
There were several mats rolled up and stowed in the eaves of the gazebo that students would pull out and sleep on, right on the deck. Throughout the day, it seemed, almost everyone took a long nap at some point. As the day wore on, the deck began to look like a slumber party, everyone choosing to sleep there where the breeze was best, instead of going home to their stuffy apartments.
The two hammocks hanging between posts on the side of the shop near the office, right on the edge of the dock, stayed occupied most of the afternoon as well. Rhees didn’t see herself ever trying one out. She’d never been a competent hammock sleeper, and she pictured herself falling out of it, into the water below.
She couldn’t picture herself using any of the mats either—not with all the perspiration stains on them from years of one after another stranger’s use. She couldn’t allow herself to even think about it without wanting a shower.
Almost everyone at the shop made it a point to welcome her. Some were friendlier than others. Several more girls told her that Paul would want her, as if she should be flattered. She followed Regina’s advice by not giving away her sexual status again, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She opted to play it modestly.
“A man that good-looking . . .” she said using their words, “would never be interested in someone as plain as me.”
She began to be able to distinguish between the girls he had been with, and the ones he hadn’t. The ones she guessed he’d slept with seemed to want to believe her, while the girls who fit into the not-his-type category enthusiastically insisted she was wrong. “You’ll see!” they told her.
Tracy, always nearby, made sure Rhees knew the life story of each and every person she talked to. Most importantly—to Tracy anyway—which girls Paul had been with and which ones he would never be with, including Regina and herself. Rhees had guessed right almost every time, but she would have preferred it if her roommate would stop throwing out so much information.
She didn’t know Tracy well enough yet to dare to ask her to stop. It was her first day; she’d be living with the girl for three weeks and Rhees hated confrontations and hurting people’s feelings, something she only did if she was very upset, which she almost never was, and she always regretted it afterward.
“
So
, have you still
not noticed
how good-looking Paul is?” Tracy asked with a smirk.
“Okay, I admit it. He’s cute,” Rhees smiled. “But I prefer a more clean-cut, businessman look. Paul’s a bit scruffy for me, so you and all the other female students can take me off the list of competition.”
Tracy groaned, refusing to believe her. Rhees almost felt bad about her attempt to use Tracy’s lack of gab filters to help her cause, but she didn’t doubt word would get around quickly and all the girls would stop talking about Paul getting it on with her. She shuddered at the thought.
“See that pole about thirty meters out there in the water?” Tracy asked. Most of the people on the island used the metric system and Rhees found it hard to adjust. The pole Tracy pointed to looked to be about a hundred feet away—a good reference, which Rhees committed to memory. “It’s attached to a block of cement under the water.” She leaned down and whispered, “Paul takes girls out there, and they do it.” She giggled.
“Right there? But everyone can see.” Rhees couldn’t have been more shocked.
“Not really. You can tell . . .
kind
of, but it’s far enough away, you can’t really hear or see anything. But knowing Paul, and the way he is, you just
know
. That’s why everyone calls it Frock.”
“Frock?”
“Effing Rock, you know . . .” Tracy giggled again and leaned in to say the word without the codename.
Rhees felt her face growing hotter. She had the feeling Tracy wished she could give a firsthand account of her own experience on Frock with Paul. “Sometimes he just uses the bathroom.” She giggled again. “Of course he uses the bathroom, but I mean for sex.”
“You know what, Tracy?” Rhees was beginning to feel upset. “I really don’t want to know
any
of this.”
“But, you should know . . . just in case.” Tracy eyed her, sure she would change her mind.
Rhees put her hands over her ears and gave Tracy a bug-eyed look to assure her it wasn’t going to happen. Hearing the constant predictions of her imminent destiny with Paul, over and over again, freaked her out. She found herself looking his direction, a lot, too much.
Every now and then, she found him watching her too. He would smile, and she would—more from an ingrained sense of courtesy and habit—smile back, but hurry to look away as she imagined him undressing her with his eyes. She’d never had a man after her—not just for that. She’d never thought much about it before, but now, the first time she’d been so personally confronted by it, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She felt sick.
“How’s the new place?” Paul sneaked up on Rhees as she sat on the deck, going over the questions at the end of the second chapter. She’d finally been able to get him off her mind and stop sneaking peeks at him over the top of her book.
It took her a minute to gather her senses enough to talk. “It’s so cute. It’s perfect. I figure I’ll have to skip a few meals a week to afford it, but I really like it. Thank you.”
“Good. I didn’t think it would do to have you staying at Strawberry Hill.” Paul sat down next to her and leaned toward her so their shoulders touched. She nervously leaned away. He stared at her a second and then he looked down. He reminded her of a shy little boy—or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. All the things people had said about him were right back in her head again.
It hadn’t taken her long to figure out why all the girls thought of him as the most beautiful man in the world. All the stolen glances she’d cast his direction had helped, but at the moment, he looked sweet and almost vulnerable
,
nothing like the sex hound everyone made him out to be. She found it hard to believe all the gossip. Other than his attempts to check her out too, he’d done nothing to make her believe all the other girls . . . but what did she know?
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
The words popped into her head. Her mom always said she didn’t like gossip, but when the same thing keeps going around about someone . . .
You shouldn’t judge people, but that doesn’t mean you should throw discernment out the window either. That’s why we have brains, Rhees. It’s better to be safe than sorry,
she’d warned.
Paul was tall, she guessed six-foot-two or -three. She had yet to see him wear more than just his swimming trunks, so it was easy to see he was in great shape, muscular, but not the football-player or body-builder kind of muscle. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on his body, so his toned muscles were just hard to miss . . . each and every one of them . . . everywhere.
Yes, Paul was good-looking enough. His face balanced nicely between the chiseled, rugged features of the stereotypical movie star handsome while being just soft enough to make him feel approachable. He wore his light brown hair with natural, sun-kissed highlights, shoulder length, slightly curly and kind of shaggy but it all somehow stayed tucked behind his ears on the sides while his sideburns blended into the scruffy beard on his face. Cute, but not her type, Rhees reminded herself.
“That’s a pretty swimming suit—very unique.” Paul said, looking her over.
“Um, thanks.” Rhees had been feeling out of place about her swimming suit all morning. All the other girls wore bikinis, even the heavier girls who she thought might look better if they weren’t showing so much . . . skin.
Darn Utah. Everyone at home wore modest swimming suits. Tankinis and one-piece swimsuits were the norm. She brought three to the island, and not one bikini, as if she would dare to wear one anyway. “I was worried I looked weird . . . compared to everyone else.” She wondered why she’d said it and wanted to kick herself. She always pointed out her faults, making sure no one missed them.
“Maybe that’s what I like about you. You’re different.” He put his hand on her back in a reassuring gesture but she tensed up and jerked away.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she squeaked. She cleared her throat, but she couldn’t relax. She told herself to calm down before he realized she was crazy, but then she thought that might be a good thing. He wouldn’t want to sleep with a crazy girl
.
Even after he removed his hand, she could still feel his handprint on her skin. She couldn’t get her nerves to settle.
“It’s normal to be a little nervous about diving,” Paul said. “I think nerves keep us sharp—safe. They remind us to respect the sport, respect the ocean. But you’re going to be okay. I haven’t lost a student yet.” He chuckled and then turned his gaze to the ocean. He looked back with a warm smile. “If you’d like, I could take you out to do a Discovery Dive tonight, after the shop closes. Do you know what that is?”
She shook her head.
“I can take people who aren’t certified, for a one-time diving experience—just to see if they like it. It gives them an opportunity to see if they want to go ahead before plunking down all their money to get certified. You’d be perfectly safe. I wouldn’t leave your side.”
She stared at him, not knowing what to say. She thought a Discovery Dive sounded great. Just the thing she needed to get her over her fears. But the thought of being alone with him scared her to death.