Chapter 10: Dive
Seeley zipped up her wetsuit and the rest of her gear in her big waterproof bag and followed the others out onto the beach where the small dive boat was docked. The salty breeze played with Seeley’s copper hair, the sun floated golden behind some fuzzy white clouds, and the sky was such a deep shade of blue you could get lost in it.
The teal ocean sparkled like a magical spell had lit the surface, and Seeley had half expected something crazy like a mermaid to jump out. Some people, mostly fishermen and aging tourists milled about the beach.
Well, that wasn’t all who was on the beach.
Usually, she’d look for an interesting seashell to take home as a souvenir, but something, or rather someone else had caught her eye.
A few surfers a little way down the beach floated in the water, and she watched one in awe as he caught a wave. The toffee-eyed woman paused to watch Asher carve down the tube of a large wave, and then as if he defied gravity, launched his surfboard into the air.
He flew above the wave, grabbing the back of his board before finally descending and smoothly catching the wave again, whipping around. Though she couldn’t see his face from this distance, she knew he was completely in his element, having fun.
She thought of one of the influencers she watched on the way to Tucunia, and how they said that one way to spot a great place to vacation is if the people there are passionate about what they do.
“Got your eye on a surfer over there?” a woman, almost old enough to be her grandmother, asked, holding her fins.
“Maybe… They are graceful, and it looks fun,” Seeley commented to the woman next to her, wearing a visor over her graying hair.
“I have a surf lesson booked through the resort with them. I’ve never tried that before in my life, but after Eugene passed, I figured time doesn’t wait for anyone,” the woman said.
The freckle-cheeked woman should’ve been paying attention, but her brain skipped across an innocuous detail.
“Resort? Which resort?” the copper-haired diver asked, resuming their walk, then realized how rude she sounded “Sorry, I’m Seeley.”
“The Wooten, and I’m Mary,” the older lady introduced herself, but Seeley’s mind was spinning.
Asher worked for her ex? Did they know each other? Wait, did it even matter if he worked for Colton?
“Yep, the one who just did the trick until recently was a pro surfer.” Loretta appeared next to them, pointing to Asher. “That Wooten resort got lucky hiring him, he’s making them a TON of money. He’s a good boy, but he accidentally gets every tubby tourist from here to Tokyo thinking they can do what he does.”
Seeley’s heart twisted a little, watching him catch another wave, riding the tube.
“I’ve seen a lot of surfers in my day, but none as natural or hardworking as him. Shame he’s stuck working for some hoity-toity resort. He could do better,” Mrs. Kennedy continued, and Mary nodded.
“You know, she’s right, he had me thinking I could just fly into the air like that.” Mary chuckled and Seeley smiled despite her heart wrenching a little.
Why was Asher here if he used to be a pro? Why work for someone like Colton? She had seen how he treated Clark, that poor concierge. Before then, she had never seen Colton be rude to anyone, but of course, that was just some mask, some ruse he used to play with her emotions.
The thought of Colton treating Asher like that made her blood simmer. Not that Asher couldn’t handle himself, but he didn’t deserve it.
“You all right, dear? You dropped your mask.”
Seeley snapped out of it and thanked Mary.
What did it matter if Asher worked for Wooten? Plenty of great people did, and besides, for all she knew what she and Asher had was just a one-time fling.
“Let’s go! Morning is burning!” Loretta and Barlow helped everyone into the boat, and as soon as everyone was seated, they hauled up the anchor and away they went. Seeley sat next to Mary, and they determined they’d be dive buddies for the trip.
The dive boat skipped over little waves like a skipped stone on a lake, making a wide, sloping turn towards a far-off island.
“Tucunia has more islands than just Grand and Little Tucunia, they’re just all uninhabited,” Loretta informed the guests on the boat. “It also has one located shipwreck, a warship called the Hercules, which sunk here half a century ago. We will be doing dives out to Hercules throughout the week, but this dive will be a reef dive out past that little island there.”
Loretta pointed to a small island they had curved to approach, and then a man wearing a red rashguard raised his hand.
“What about the Charm of Tucunia? Is that real?”
Barlow threw up his index finger as if counting, and Loretta laughed.
“Don’t mind him, we get asked that every trip out here. The Charm of Tucunia is a fabled treasure galleon that pirates sunk somewhere around these waters. It’s rumored to have by now upwards of nearly 200 billion, billion with a B, dollars worth of gold and priceless artifacts on it.”
The man whistled, and even Seeley was impressed, but Mary just snorted, and Loretta pointed to her.
“She has the right attitude. No amount of money has been able to find that ship, and boy some have tried. Rumor has it that an expedition party forty years ago got close, maybe even found it, but if they did, they kept its location a secret.”
Then a few things clicked into place for Seeley, like a puzzle that was finally forming a picture.
“Seacret divers! Your logo is the Charm and Charm bar,” Seeley exclaimed, remembering the logo on the sign for both the dive shop and the bar.
“Yes, I believe it exists, but is just waiting for the right person to fin—” Loretta smiled, but before she could finish her sentence, the boat veered to the right, almost knocking over some tanks.
“Lo’ what the…”
“Dolphins!” Barlow exclaimed, pointing out toward the horizon.
Everyone stood up, including Seeley. She loved all ocean life but loved dolphins. If she could see the incredibly rare Pink Tucunia Dolphin, she could die happy.
“Everyone sit! If we all go to the starboar–right side of the boat, the boat will tip,” Loretta warned, and people calmed.
The caramel-eyed woman sat down as well as the boat slowed and closer than she expected, a curved gray fin popped out of the water, followed by a curved, sloping back. Then a spurt of spay from another. Most people scrambled to get out their phones.
“Ah, the ocean bottlenose. These guys are playful. Take some photos, just don’t stick your hands out of the boat! Just because they look nice doesn’t mean they act it, they may think you’re feeding them, or get territorial,” the feisty dive instructor said as they slowed the boat to a crawl.
“Words to live by,” Mary said, echoing ‘just because they look nice doesn’t mean they act it’.
Seeley nodded in agreement thinking of the blond blue-eyed man who lured her out here just to play her for a fool. She was also thinking back to what Loretta said about the Charm of Tucunia. Her grandmother, her best friend Dr. Elbaz (who she always called She-ra though Seeley couldn’t ever figure out why!), and the quirky Dr. Monroe were all exploring out here forty years ago, the same time that Mrs. Kennedy had said that a crew almost found the Charm.
That was one crazy coincidence, but Seeley didn’t remember her grandmother referring to the Charm in any of the stories she told or her journal entries.
“I guess their pink friends didn’t feel like getting out of bed to see us today,” Loretta sassed and everyone laughed, curbing any disappointment anyone may have felt.
After every one, Seeley included, took some videos and photos of the dolphins, they set back off for the dive and went over the dive so that everyone knew what to expect. As Seeley put on her double-checked their gear and put it on, heavy tanks included, her pulse picked up like a drumbeat in her chest. She lived for the ocean and everything in it.
And with one giant stride off the side, she was back in it.
She and Mary took their time descending into the teal paradise, while schools of glittering silver and yellow fish darted past them. Beneath them, jewel-toned corals of all shapes and sizes blanketed the ocean floor like a garden. Beside them was a tall wall of corals as well, with rainbows of fish swimming in and out of nooks and crannies.
Soundlessly, a black spotted eagle ray glided along the coral floor to sand like a bird through the air.
The peace of silence and the peerless beauty of the ocean calmed Seeley and she felt the last of the stress of the past few days lift away. A certain tall, dark, and handsome surfer had done a great job of that, but the ocean was what cleansed the caramel-eyed woman of her troubles. Always had.
Her family, save her grandmother, didn’t dive, and didn’t really understand why she would want to. They said it looked scary or even boring, but Seeley loved to unplug and immerse herself in things.
It's why she got in the zone while playing billiards, and why she loved simply being surrounded by a different world. Down here, the real world could drift away, and she could focus on just…being.
She saw spotted colorful clown fish, brilliant blue tangs, and even a harmless reef shark, which reminded her of what Asher called her, a pool shark. Wasn’t the first time someone called her that, but it was the first time she felt that attractive when someone did. She wondered if he was still surfing, or maybe doing lifeguarding at the beach.
She then wondered what the gorgeous green-eyed surfer looked like in just his red tank top. She wondered if she’d be able to take it off him, to feel the firm, flat planes of his chest, to tilt her chin up and have his lips capture hers again, the slight stubble scratching her face in a way that she’d never anticipate would turn her on but it did.
The copper-haired woman snapped out of it; she couldn’t keep daydreaming about Asher like that! It wasn’t right.
But maybe that’s what enticed her so much, what got her blood pumping, was that she just had hooked up with Colton’s star surfer. Maybe it was sort of far-fetched revenge, but it felt good in a dark, shadowy kind of way.
She’d never use the forest-eyed surfer, no, but she knew if Colton found out he’d be furious. She had blocked his number, but she was then morbidly curious how he’d react if she sent that moonlight selfie they took together to him.
She nearly laughed through her regulator at the thought of Colton losing his mind over that selfie.
Before she knew it, they were motioned to go up to the boat, the wonderful, magical time of being under the ocean drew to a close. As they surfaced, they all checked their air.
“I still got 70 bar! I could go another twenty minutes!” Mary exclaimed at the surface, and Seeley looked down to see she had the same.
She had noticed the entire time Mary had kept up with her. She was not only a great diver, but also a good athlete at her age!
“That was incredible,” was all that Seeley could say.
And as much as she wished she could stay out longer, she didn’t mind going back to shore, not just to see if Asher was wearing his sexy ‘Baywatch’ get-up, but also to check on Pirate, her trooper black kitten, at Yasmine’s.