Page 42 of Sucker For You

“You want to try any of that on?” from the clerk.

“Is there a changing room?”

“Nah, my dude.”

“Then no.”

It didn’t matter how she looked in the nylon-and-spandex leotard. Everyone seemed fish-eyed under a snorkel mask and tube. No one could make the “giant stride” in fins through the surf appear anything other than ridiculous, either.

It wasn’t a real date.

“We’ll need towels and lunch,” Wes concluded during their walk back to the bungalow, after they’d decided on entering the bay just south of Elkhorn Slough, in the nutrient- and species-rich tidal zone near Moss Landing. “Even without the swim,a picnic’s a good date idea. We’ve got some leftover chickpea spread and your half-sandwich in the fridge. I think there’s a travel cooler under the sink, too. Can you find a couple of beach blankets while I make myself another sandwich and get my equipment?”

They split at the threshold, reconvened in swimming gear with their food a few minutes later, and were juddering north along the Pacific Coast Highway before noon.

“Shame about the topside scenery.” Wes steered his Jeep past rusty Private Property and No Trespassing signs that cordoned off a few derelict cannery buildings overhanging the beach in the southern commercial outskirts of Moss Landing. “At least California’s weird zoning regulations don’t affect the underwater preserves. You’d think the land would be valuable enough that someone could find a loophole to tear down these eyesores and build condos, though. This stretch has got to be costing the city, sitting empty like this.”

The buildingswerean eyesore.

Were they empty, however?

Pulling against her seat belt, Isabel swiveled to keep the ugly constructs in view. Tire tracks led off the highway through the sand and a sagging gate, past chain-link fences. . . but with his eyes on the road, Wes didn’t pause. He drove on another few thousand feet to pull into MORI’s half-empty parking lot. He cut the engine and grabbed their equipment from the back seat, then led the way down to Sandholdt Beach.

She forgot about the tracks.

Sandals were shucked off. Masks were snapped over noses and eyes and ponytails. Snorkel tubes dangled under their chins. Fins lengthened their feet as they waddled past rocks draped in red seaweed and—

“Christ on a cracker!” Wes yelped, knuckles whitening around his camera’s underwater housing when the first swells swept over his ankles. But he kept pace with her while she waded through the buffeting currents and the chill; kept pace with her eagerness to submerge her skin, to clamp her teeth over her tube’s silicone mouthpiece and duck her head under the waves, to escape this transient, liminal state, caught between air and water.

There.

The next wave knocked her awkward, elongated feet from under her. It tossed her up from the marine substrate and pulled her out with a tidal exhale, into the ocean’s weightless embrace. She gave no resistance. It would have been futile, fighting the sea. Instead, she surrendered to the submersion and the cold.V-v-very cold. But if the temperature was shocking, it was also a seeping chill, not like the brutal cut of wind. She stretched herself into it, opening her body, softening despite the prickle of her skin. Roaring, the ocean dragged her deeper. She stroked along with it. Now her hands parted slippery gas bladders and fronds. When an experimental kick downward through the spume connected with nothing solid, she filled her lungs, kicked again—once and hard—and dove.

Quiet.

Sinking beneath the turbulence, she drifted into bars of gold-green sunlight and an undulating forest of kelp. The algae weren’t brown, but a gleaming topaz here under the waves. She expelled a few bubbles and sank farther through a slow, descending circle, her chest aching with relief.

Safe.

A striped and speckled surfperch flitted between her knees. On the rocky bottom, lingcod scuttled among holdfasts and a colony of bright sea stars. Sand dabs buried themselves in gravel.Two spotted leopard sharks cruised for lunch. A glossy, twisting shadow in the distance was either an otter or a juvenile California sea lion. Musical, keening moans were the conversations of migrating whales beyond the kelp. Closer by, a cormorant sped down from a nesting rock tower to puncture the surface. She turned to follow its flight—and found Wes underwater with her.

Okay?he flashed his fingers.

Okay.

Even with the distortion of his mouth around his snorkel gear, his smile was visible. He gestured: at the chalky-pink curves of abalone rooted to the sea floor, at schooling sardines in their effervescent balls, at a dozing swell shark, at an otter prying up a hapless red sea urchin. Around them, the forest teemed with activity.

Life, resurgent.

Bubbles drifted through his tube as Wes expelled air to reduce his body’s buoyancy. Then the muscle in his shoulders, stomach, and thighs—ink and power visible beneath his rash guard, which billowed with the swells against his skin—flexed. He flipped head-down with his camera, kicking to the substrate.

His movements were quick and streamlined and graceful in the dappled sun and shadow, just like any other marine mammal.

. . . gorgeous, she exhaled.

Submerged, her own muscles seared with cold, the heat in her cheeks was a distant thing. Maybe she could let herself examine—admire—him without fear or shame for a moment. Just here. Just for a little while?

Shape and movement.