Paradise Lust (14 page)

Chapter 21

Blessedly, she slept through the night. And she managed to make it through most of class—taught by Val, as Ajuni had apparently gone to his healer in the inland mountains to “realign his body and spirit”—with a still and empty mind. It was as if her brain had gone on strike in protest of all the volatility she’d subjected it to in the past few weeks.

Toward the end of class, however, her mind continued to turn to one persistent thought. Well, an image really. She kept picturing that person she thought she’d seen, being tossed like a rag doll out in the ocean as the rogue wave broke on the beach. The more she recalled the vision, the surer she’d become that she’d really seen it, and that it really had been a human.

And that the human had been Danny.

This last notion came to her toward the end of class, but once she’d alit upon it, those last twenty minutes seemed endlessly painful. Danny was out there when the wave hit. More than that, he hadn’t been there when she’d looked back, which meant he’d been either held deep underwater, or tossed who knows how many feet in another direction. If four people sitting on the beach had been injured enough to merit medical treatment, she didn’t want to begin to imagine what could’ve happened to somebody out in the ocean when the wave hit.

Finally, class ended, and she rolled up her mat in a frenzy and ran out of the yoga hut. Jogging across the lawn, she let her cloth bag and mat drop to the ground, freeing her to run faster. Her breasts bounced weightily as she ran—in her distracted state, she’d forgotten to put on a sports bra under her tight black tank top—and she cupped them with her hands, not caring in the slightest how ridiculous she looked. Her rain-sea-sweat-infused hair flew wildly behind her, and her bare feet, calloused from weeks of walking barefoot, felt no pain as they flew over prickly grass and pebbles. She felt different, and renewed, and full, and—

—and utterly lost. She’d arrived at Danny’s hut, and had abruptly stuttered to a halt below the porch steps. What had she thought she was going to do when she arrived?

Standing stupidly at the foot of the steps, she glanced around her, and was relieved to see that nobody was in sight to witness her awkwardness. Her lack of a bra suddenly seemed absurdly conspicuous, and she crossed her arms across her chest.

She would go inside. She would go in, and wouldn’t try to apologize or explain or even
touch
him (though she felt a pang deep in her stomach at the thought of restraining that urge); she would only see if he was alright, she just wanted—needed—to know if he was alright. Then she would leave. He couldn’t fault her for that.

She mounted the first step, tentative in spite of her internal firmness.

Or could he?

Yes, on second thought, he could fault her greatly for coming by. She’d hurt him, been careless and sloppy and selfish, and he’d asked her, told her really, to leave him alone. And now he was quite possibly injured, and the least she could do was respect his wishes. Right?

She was about to step back down onto the grass when she heard voices. Coming from inside Danny’s cabin. Involuntarily, she leaned forward, then quietly crept up the remaining two steps. They were distinctly male voices, two of them at least, and though she couldn’t hear what they were saying she thought she heard the sound of chuckling. That’s good! He couldn’t be too injured if he was laughing.

Giving in completely to her insanity, she pressed herself against the side of the cabin, straining to hear the words coming from inside. The front door was slightly open, and snatches of phrases drifted through.

“…just feel pretty stupid…didn’t think that…y’know?”

“Aye, but ya can’t think of it like that.”

The second voice was louder, more clear. She could tell from the Aussie drawl and volume that it was J.T.. The first, though soft and muffled, was unmistakably Danny. He sounded sad, despite the chuckle she thought she’d heard. Adele felt her entire body pulled downward by a heavy cloud of regret.

His voice again: “….bullshit…so I think…doesn’t matter anyway, so…”

“Got your head on right, mate.” J.T. was clearly trying his best to be a sympathetic ear, but it didn’t seem like feelings were his strong suit. She could just see him shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

As if he was having the exact same thought, Danny spoke again, his voice noticeably cheerful, putting J.T. out of his misery. “…behind me….drink?”

“Brilliant idea!” J.T. responded almost before Danny had finished. The next moment, she could hear his heavy footsteps approaching the door, and then he was right next to her, half his body out, calling back in to Danny. Adele’s heart threatened to bust through her chest.

“The usual, mate?”

“Sure.”

She flattened herself against the wall, squinting her eyes shut tight as if that would prevent her from being seen. J.T. stepped out of the hut and trotted down the steps, jogging across the lawn toward the resort bar. He hadn’t seen her. Dear Lord how had he not seen her?

As he disappeared from view, she inched closer to the now-slightly-more-ajar door and peered in. Her heart fluttered violently as she realized she could see him.

He lay on the couch, shirtless, one leg propped up on a mountain of pillows, deep purple bruises around his knee. He bore an expression of seriousness that she’d never seen before on his playful face. Looking up at the ceiling, he abruptly let out a deep sigh, almost causing Adele to gasp audibly. She caught herself, and forced her breathing to slow down.

As if pulling them through thick mud, he drew his hands up from where they lay by his sides and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing them. After some time, he released them back down, sighed again, and mumbled something that sounded that sounded to Adele like “Just like Nikki.”

Then he fell to stillness, staring straight up, eyes glazed. Adele suddenly felt as if she was looking in on something deeply private, and was overcome with guilt. Glancing across the lawn to make sure J.T. wasn’t back in sight, she crept quietly away from the door and toward the edge of the porch, then clambered over the side railing, regained her balance, and fell into a trot toward her cabin. One thought reverberated in her mind:
I really damaged him.

Chapter 22

He’d been looking forward to his confrontation with Adele with a zealousness that, in retrospect, made no sense. The deep pain he’d felt at the Ajuni revelation had all been channeled into anticipation of really letting her have it, of getting it all off his chest; he hadn’t mentally articulated what he was expecting from the confrontation—catharsis? Suddenly being over her? Maybe, possibly, discovering that it was actually untrue?—but whatever it was, he hadn’t gotten it. And once he’d said all he could say, he still felt filled with a hot bubble of emotion. It was some mix of anger and frustration and despair and disappointment, and he could no longer channel it toward her—he’d already said as much as he could. Too much, maybe—and so he’d opted to channel it toward something productive. Toward surfing.

Great idea. Brilliant, as J.T. would have said.
              He’d spent most of the afternoon out there, yet never achieved that state of empty-minded, fully-focused immersion that he normally did when surfing. He’d been too in his head, too edgy, and couldn’t seem to strike his rhythm. So he’d stayed out there, stayed out until sunset, hoping to get just a few minutes of good surf, a snatch of mental clarity among the chaos. But the waves weren’t cooperating, nor was his mind. Everything was unsettled.

And then the wave had hit.

It had pummeled him down with the force of a fire hose, a massive fire hose whose pressure covered his whole body. Lying there on his couch now, he couldn’t remember much from the incident. Just snatches here and there—when he initially went under, when his head slammed back against his board, when he’d been hurled upward and had briefly gotten to take frenzied inhales of oxygen, when his knee had crashed directly into the board, exploding in splintering pain—and he was glad for it. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed a miracle that he’d survived. People who had been on the shore had sustained injuries, and he’d been right in the heart of it.

A miracle. He tossed that phrase around in his head, trying to squeeze some meaning from it, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

He was alone in his hut. J.T. had left an hour or so ago, wanting to “give ya some space to rest,” though Danny knew that J.T. just desperately needed a break from the seriousness of it all. It was for the best—Danny was growing exhausted of putting on a good face to keep J.T. from feeling awkward. J.T. was a great guy, but there was only so much he could handle talking about.

Not that Danny really wanted to talk.

His knee throbbed dully. He and J.T. had shared a few drinks, which had numbed the physical pain, but now it was starting to wear off. His mind, on the other hand, still felt completely numb.

There was a knock at the door.

Adrenaline flooded his system, his heart beating fast. The numbness must not have been very deep.
Was it her? Had she come? She’d come. Of course she’d come. How dare she come? But maybe it’s—no it can’t be her. Yes it must be.

A thousand thoughts flooded his head, coming in almost as fast as the pulses of his heart. He forced a deep inhale, trying to quiet his body down with minimal success. Steeling himself for whoever—
Adele? Was it Adele? Do I want it to be?
—stood on the other side of the door, he spoke.

“Come on in.” He’d tried to affect a nonchalance in his voice, but it had come out as comically jovial, which was way off-tone given the context. But all self-judgment flushed from his system as he saw his visitor revealed behind the opening door.

“Hey there,” Val said.

“Oh,” Danny blurted back, and a punch of dull discontent landed in his stomach, surprising him. “Hey there.”

Val stepped out of the doorframe and into the room. She wore a patterned sarong, wrapped and knotted just above her cleavage line—the type of cover-up women normally wore over bathing suits, though it didn’t look to Danny like she had on much of anything underneath.

“How you doing?” She asked, and her voice had that softened, sympathetic tone that made Danny’s hackles rise. He hated sympathy. He would not have it. Sure, part of that probably had to do with the memories it brought back of the end of his first marriage, but he stood by the fact that it was a disingenuous and useless sentiment, and he didn’t want any of it spent on him.

Becoming aware of himself again, he forced the irrational anger back down, as he had become so skilled at doing with so many feelings. Val was just trying to be nice.

“I’m alright,” he said, displeased to hear that irritating cheesiness in his voice. How did everything come to feel so fake? “It’s really nothing serious. Just a minor knee tweak.”

“Yeah?” Val asked, and despite her obvious efforts to be polite and encouraging, it was clear that she didn’t buy it. She wasn’t an idiot. Anyone could see that it was a pretty major knee injury.

“I’ll be okay,” Danny said in vague response.

Val sauntered toward him, her tanned leg slipping out of the slit in the sarong as she did. She was standing over him then, her tanned arm dangling down, her fingertips by his face. She brushed his cheek lightly, and Danny jerked involuntarily, surprised. She drew her fingertips away, blushing.

“Do you mind if I…?” Her voice trailed off as she gestured toward the end of the couch, where his feet lay. It took him a moment to understand that she was asking if she could sit down.

“Oh, yeah, sure, yeah.”

Val settled onto the couch next to his calves, perched on the edge, facing Danny. She was statuesque in the true definition of the word, her body’s muscles so perfectly and beautifully defined that they could have been an artist’s model for a sculpture. He gazed upon her, taking in the smooth ripples of her sculpted shoulders, her firm chest muscles finally giving way to the soft pillows of her breasts. She was quite a girl. And yet—and yet what?

“So, we’re off to Ubud tomorrow,” she said.

“Yeah,” Danny said. The truth of that statement had been circling in his head since the accident, and every time it surfaced, he felt overwhelmed by the implications it brought and pushed it back down. “Crazy the way this is ending for you guys, I bet.”

“Yeah,” Val said, laughing a bit. “Definitely not the way he planned it.”

“Ajuni?”

“Yeah, sorry, Ajuni.” She paused, looking at Danny inquiringly for a moment, searching for something in his face, then quickly looking away. “He ran off like a dog with its tail between its legs. Not exactly the superhuman transcendent guru man he’s been trying to project.”

She laughed bitterly, and Danny could tell that she was just speaking ill of Ajuni for his sake, which made him bristle inside once again.

“Well, he did get pretty injured, right?” He said, as surprised as anyone to hear words of defense for Ajuni coming out of his mouth.

“Whiplash,” Val said. She shrugged slightly, but the zeal with which she’d put down Ajuni a moment before was gone. She seemed to sense that Danny wasn’t interested in that line of conversation. “I’m not sure how bad, or even really what whiplash is, but it was probably wise of him to take a break, at least for a bit.”

Danny felt himself involuntarily grimace at that seemingly innocuous yet loaded word:
wise
.

“I’ll lead the classes up in Ubud until he’s ready to rejoin us. Hopefully it’ll only be a few days—I’m definitely not qualified to fill his shoes long-term,” she continued, furrowing her brow, an anxious expression coming over her face for a moment. She gave a small shake of her head, as if to dislodge any negative thoughts, and conjured up her big smile once more. “So what’s next for you?” She asked, her voice bright and chipper once again.

Danny gave a vague shrug and made a face that he hoped indicated
I have no idea but I’m fine and please don’t ask anything else
. After a moment, he realized that unfortunately he’d need to volunteer more, and spoke.

“I’ll probably head back to my apartment in Seminyak in a few days, try to find some sports medicine specialist who can help me do PT. Just build my strength back up, get back on the board as soon as possible.” It was the first time he’d vocalized—or even really consciously had—these thoughts. He wasn’t sure he believed the words as they left his mouth.

“A sports medicine specialist?”

“Yeah.”

“In Bali?”

“There’s gotta be someone. All those surfer tourists down on the southern tip. I’m sure things like this happen all the time.”

Val nodded.

“How long do you think you’ll need to stay off the board?”

“Probably not that long,” he said. “I can already walk pretty fine.” Now he was just flat out lying. “Though I should probably rest up for now, since I think I overdid it this morning,” he added quickly, lest she suggest a stroll down the beach—or even a walk across the room.

“Oh,” Val said, eyebrows raised. “That’s great.”

The air in the room felt impossibly thick. More humid than ever, despite the cleanness in the atmosphere the wave and storm had brought.

“Well, I’ll let you rest,” she said, standing. “I just wanted to make sure I had a chance to say goodbye.”

Danny felt a profound relief at these words. “Well I’m glad you did,” he said. “It’s really nice of you to come visit.”

She walked toward the end of the couch where his head lay, propped up with pillows, and leaned down, her cleavage spilling out from the top of the sarong. She kissed him on the cheek, her lips sticky with some sort of gloss, her hair smelling like coconut.

“Be well,” she said, the coconut smell fading as she stood back up. She turned and walked toward the door and was gone.

“You too,” Danny murmured belatedly, staring at the now empty door, which she’d left ajar.

He sat like that for some time, turning over and over the question that Val had asked him, trying to figure out what the answer was. The real answer, not the pleasant answer, the polite answer, the answer he wanted to be true.

His knee was very messed up. Bali had doctors, sure, but probably not the type or caliber of specialists he’d want—hypocritically, he knew—for himself.  Then there was all the other stuff, the stuff he didn’t have the energy to think about right now.

What was next for him?

After her failed visit to Danny, Adele walked for a long time. She walked the same path she’d taken that evening she got caught in the rainstorm, when Danny had taken her in and dried her off. She walked beyond the place where she’d turned back before, now more comfortable with the lay of the land and confident that she could make her way back, even in the semi-dark. The rhythm of her steps, echoing the waves gently falling on the sand, kept her mind clear. She wondered if this could be considered noble, some kind of meditation, or if she was just numb. Then she stopped wondering and just walked.

On her way back, she stopped by a roadside
warung
for dinner. She hadn’t eaten for a long time and was starving, and didn’t want to eat at the hotel restaurant. The thought of making conversation drained her. She ate slowly by herself, silent except to order her food from the petite older woman who ran the eatery and to muster a “
Terimah kasih
”—thank you—as she left.

Walking through the dew-damp grass of the resort, long blades tickling her flip-flopped feet, she harbored a vague hope that she’d run into Danny, or that he’d see her and call out, but she knew that was absurd for any number of reasons. Glancing toward his door, she saw that the door was ajar but the lights were off.

When she returned to her cabin, she stayed on the porch for a long time and stared out at the water. The numbness began to wear off, but tiredness had not yet taken hold, and she felt a surge of panic in her stomach. She didn’t want to—honestly didn’t know if she
could
—deal with the thoughts that would come.

The thoughts about what she’d done to Danny. About how she’d completely squandered this entire opportunity, not only sacrificing her self-enlightenment but also destroying a relationship, arguably becoming a
worse
person and not a better one. About how she hadn’t gained any clarity on what she wanted to do professionally, had barely even thought about it at all, though that had been the ostensible reason she’d shelled out many thousands of dollars for this trip. Sure, she’d become better at yoga, but that was about it. And did that matter, on any more meaningful level? Maybe.

Thinking about her professional trajectory reminded her of something, though it took her fuzzy brain some time to articulate just what it was. Writing. Not that she should be a writer—she’d given up that fantasy years ago, when she’d gone to law school—but writing as a skill she had, a power to make a difference, both at work and in life. And, perhaps more importantly, to process her emotions in a manageable way, as well as gain clarity into what she was feeling and why.

She needed to write. Right that moment.

On the small table on the side porch of her cabin, she found her computer and pressed the power button. While she waited for it to boot up, she puttered around inside, absently collecting her items into various piles. They would be leaving the next day, the yoga retreat over, and she hadn’t begun to pack. This was extremely unlike her. Yet, in this moment, the familiar feelings of anxiety and panic seemed so distant as to be almost incomprehensible.