friend.”
Lorelei went silent as she found all the ingredients she needed, thinking of the animals she still missed. The rabbits were a good fresh start though. She loved their bratty little personalities, and they kept her company in this drafty old house, their presence a constant fuzzy reminder to be Zen about all things.
“Want to hear something totally crazy?” Ryan said as she began shredding parmesan cheese with a grater.
“How could I not?”
“When I picked up those flowers for you at the flower shop in Santa Rey? There was this Christmas tree with little cards all over it, and a sign that said if you buy a card, the proceeds would go to charity.”
“Oh, yeah, I think I heard about that on the radio the other day.”
“So I bought one of the cards, and…this is going to sound really weird, but…I think you’ll understand why I felt like I had to come here right now and apologize when you hear this. And I swear, I didn’t know what was on the card before I bought it.”
“What was it?”
“It’s a gift certificate to Linden Rock Hot Springs.”
Kinsei’s face appeared in her mind. That sneaky little man…She might be a doctor with a scientifically trained mind, but the medicine man had taught her to believe in the inexplicable.
In a soap opera, this would be the part where Lorelei would halt the cheese grating and turn slowly to stare at Ryan. A weighty, emotional moment would pass between them as they contemplated the significance of his words, of the way fate-and one wily old Kenyan medicine man-had twisted and turned to make their lives intertwine again.
Linden Rock Hot Springs was where they’d had sex all those years ago. Back then, it hadn’t been the luxury spa and retreat it was now. It had just been the hot springs located on undeveloped private property where teenagers and hippies loved to hang out naked. But its location overlooking the Pacific, among sheer cliffs down to the ocean and majestic cypress trees, had guaranteed that sooner or later it would be commercially developed.
But of all the cards for Ryan to have picked…Yeah, she could see why he’d come straight here, looking all earnest and sorry.
She felt the cheese grater slip from her hands as she looked back at him.
“Wow, weird coincidence, huh?” she said casually, as if she didn’t already know it was the hand of fate telling her to get laid and overcome her past.
“Totally weird. I have to admit, it kind of freaked me out.”
Lorelei turned her attention back to the cheese. She scooped the shreds up in her hands and dumped them into a bowl. Then she began washing and chopping vegetables.
“I guess, being a doctor, you probably don’t believe in anything mystical,” Ryan said to her back.
She shrugged, thinking again of Kinsei. “Back in medical school, I would have said no, but being a doctor, I’ve seen all kinds of things I can’t explain. The only thing experience teaches me is that there’s a lot I don’t understand.”
She mixed eggs with the frittata ingredients, then greased a pie pan, poured everything in, and put the dish in the oven to bake. It was her lazy-cook’s method for making a frittata, since it didn’t require her to stand over the stove and watch anything.
Once she’d poured them each a cup of coffee, she set the table with sugar and cream, then pulled up a chair across from Ryan.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you believe in fate or ghosts or UFOs or anything?”
“I’m probably in the same camp as you. Experience has taught me to be open-minded.”
“So,” she finally dared to ask, seeing now how easy her resolution with the past might be. “Do you think fate is telling us we need to go back to the hot springs?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding a little odd. “I feel silly saying it, but I do.”
6
RYAN COULD hardly believe his luck. He’d never expected his apology to Lorelei to go so smoothly, and better yet, to end with her asking
As he sipped his coffee, he relaxed. With the heat from the kitchen stove and the morning light pouring in through the big picture window, the room felt cozy and intimate. If he closed his eyes, he’d have felt like he was home.
But with Lorelei sitting across from him, the last thing he wanted to do was close his eyes. He could hardly stop staring at her. She held such familiarity, this nearly forgotten piece of his past, like an old beloved toy that had slipped from his memory until he’d stumbled upon it by accident. Except, of course, she hadn’t been sitting around in an attic waiting to be rediscovered. She’d been wandering the world, having what had no doubt been an interesting life, and he wanted to know what had filled the space between then and now.
Not that she owed him any such information. They’d had sex exactly once-he’d even been her first lover, which kind of blew his mind now that he’d had the fact confirmed-but everything he knew about her was based on his very limited perspective of who she had been fifteen years ago.
He wanted to know more, but she spoke up first.
“It must have been a busy night for you guys last night, with the storm and all.”
“It was the most calls in one night that we’ve had all year. And that’s saying something considering the fire season we had this year.”
“Wow. I hope no one was hurt.”
“Luckily, you were the most endangered soul I encountered,” he said with a grin. “There was an oak tree branch that caved in a roof over on El Segundo Avenue, but no one was in the part of the house that was affected.”
She smiled into her coffee. “I was horrified when you showed up to get me off the roof.”
“I don’t blame you. That was a pretty spectacular screwup, with the pj bottoms and all.”
“I’m not as handy as I think I am sometimes.”
“So you just moved in here a few weeks ago, huh?”
“Yes. For the past two years I was serving in the Peace Corps, in Kenya, and when my tour ended, I felt… drawn back home, I guess.”
“That must have been an incredible experience.”
“It was life-changing. I thought for a while that I’d never leave Africa. I had this dream of joining Doctors without Borders, but lots of different things…signs…whatever…just kept telling me I needed to come back here to Ocean Harbor Beach.”
“I’m glad you did. It’s great to see you again. I’m not really in touch with many people from high school anymore, but I always wondered what happened to you.”
Which was true. He might have been a shallow, self-centered shithead as a teen, but Lorelei was unique enough that she had come to mind now and again, and he couldn’t help wondering what had become of his most brilliant classmate.
“What have you been up to since high school?” she asked.
“Oh, the usual. Going to college, surfing, backpacking around Europe, getting married, getting divorced- perhaps not exactly in that order, but you get the idea.”
“You’ve been married?”
“To a girl I met in college. Bad idea. It lasted two years, and then we realized we hated each other. Or, at least, I realized it when she told me she thought she was in love with my best friend.”
“Ouch. I’m sorry,” she said, wincing.
“It’s okay. We already knew the marriage wasn’t working when it happened. But it still hurt like hell. Definitely
