The boat slowed again, and the green hills sharpened in focus, as well as the town’s buildings. She spotted the hotel where she had sipped coffee with the other Witch’s Rock surfers on that first trip with Bruce, its white wrap-around porch glowing bright in the dawn’s silvery light.
A small skiff left the shore and headed straight for them. Soon it was idling next to the Trinity, with Bruce rattling off instructions to the boy in charge. And then it was time to say goodbye.
“Sorry for all of this,” she said.
“Sorry for what? Caring about your brother?”
She studied his swollen and bruised face. He was still dashingly handsome, maybe more so. “Thanks for bringing me back,” she said.
“Thanks for saving my life,” he replied, taking her hand. He closed his eyes and kissed her palm, and she took that moment to study him, to imprint him in her mind. He opened his eyes and saw her watching, then leaned down and kissed her softly on the cheek. It wasn’t a surprise, but the way her body reacted surprised her; it was as if she melted right into him, as if she had been waiting for this closeness. Leaving him now felt strange, as if their story was not quite at an end.
He pulled away, and grinned. “Adiós, Cassidy,” he said, his eyes sparkling.
Cassidy climbed into the skiff, and the boy steered the boat towards the shore. When she looked back, Bruce was climbing into the wheelhouse, and he leaned out, his long arm extended in a wave. She waved back, her heart feeling strangely empty.
Arriving in Tamarindo after a hot taxi ride, she stopped at a beachside café for breakfast. It felt unnerving to eat alone; since coming to Costa Rica she had been surrounded by the constant chatter of other diners—whether friends or fellow travelers. She savored her coffee and watched the children playing in the small waves breaking on the cocoa-colored sand, and ate her beans and eggs slowly, letting her thoughts shift and tumble in her mind. A cloud of melancholy hovered just off her horizon—she kept it at bay but knew the moment she stepped off the plane in the States it would engulf her. After staying for as long as she felt was polite, she paid her bill and walked along the beach to Crazy Mike’s.
She walked the cold sand, empty of vacationers this early, but the lineup was dotted with surfers, and Macho stood giving a lesson to a group of college-aged women in bikinis. He gave her a wink as she passed by, and she smiled to herself, content to know that Pura Vida was alive and well.
Inside the restaurant, Mel wasn’t behind the bar. Cassidy felt disoriented, as if his lack of presence signified that she might have stepped into the wrong wrinkle in time. Indeed, the whole restaurant felt different without him at the center of it. She continued to the small counter near the board cage where a clipboard showed guests’ names and room numbers. Aliana greeted Cassidy and welcomed her back. Behind her, a whiteboard announced the day’s surf tours and lessons in block letters.
Cassidy asked about calling the airlines, and Aliana immediately picked up the phone. After a short wait, she rattled off Cassidy’s request to the agent on the other end of the line. After a series of back and forth exchanges—too rapid for Cassidy to follow—her travel was arranged. “Tomorrow at nine a.m.,” Aliana said, looking triumphant.
Cassidy had been banking on the afternoon flight, like Bruce had suggested. “Do you have a room for tonight?” she asked, realizing that she was so tired she might just crawl into one of the beds and sleep until dinnertime. She also needed to charge her phone and laptop. Her flight home would give her a chance to start catching up on her substantial workload.
“No,” Aliana’s smile crumpled into a sorrowful frown. “I’m so sorry, but we are booked.”
Cassidy forced a smile. “Do you have a recommendation?” she asked.
“Of course,” Aliana said, and went to the phone.
After a series of calls, Cassidy was booked at Casa Pacifica, with her airport shuttle arranged as well. “But check-in there is not until four o’clock,” Aliana warned. “You are welcome to use our pool and restaurant until then. We also have very comfortable hammocks,” she added with a smile.
By mid-afternoon Cassidy’s laptop’s battery was long dead, as was her phone, and she had edited the hard copy of her upcoming submission, a piece for Nature Geoscience about the correlation between the number of harmonics in a tremor signal and eruption intensity. While working, she had consumed a gallon of coffee plus an entire plate of fluffy pancakes with butter and syrup. She did enjoy one last dip in the pool and used the outdoor shower to rinse off and ready her mind for her final night in Tamarindo. Every now and then she looked towards the bar, expecting to see Mel, but he never showed. She considered sending him a message, but then thought better of it. Inside her mind, a strange tug of war was taking place. Images of Bruce and what they had been through revisited her throughout the day, and the strange feeling she had experienced while saying goodbye wouldn’t leave her alone.
Finally, unable to resist the pull of a soft bed and quiet, she paid her bill and packed up her things. After a last look around the restaurant and the pool, the scraggly trees with their yellow trumpet-shaped blossoms and the beautiful beach, she turned away and walked out into the street.
The temperature on the road felt several degrees hotter than in the breeze-cooled restaurant,
