I want to protest that I’m okay, but she’s already half-dragging me through the water towardEmpress. When we reach the yacht, she links my arm around the bottom rung of a small ladder attached to the hull that leads up to a swim platform higher above us.
Piper releases me, treading water again, watching my face.
“I’m okay,” I insist, dangling from the rung, glad there’s no gap betweenEmpressand ocean today. I’m attached to the boat like a barnacle, lower half floating in the surf.
But I’mnotokay. The thought of Sage obliterated my brain and body. There are shock waves crashing through me. Every summer since we met, Sage and I had gone swimming together, but I had avoided water since her death for obvious reasons.
And then Piper asked me to jump off the side of the boat after the story I told earlier.
I shake the thought from my waterlogged brain. I’m sure Piper didn’t mean to trigger anything.
“Can’t have you drowning on your second day. Viv would kill me.” Piper’s hair fans out on the surface around her like yellow tendrils of seaweed.
The waves gently rock us up and down as we drift there, face-to-face.
Another cough forces itself from my throat, and I keep the inside of my elbow hooked around the ladder, anchored even as the current tenderly pulls at my legs. “How deep is this water?”
“The caissons can’t be in open ocean.” Piper spins in a circle a few feet away, her head tilted back to the sky. “We’re about twenty feet from the ocean floor. Maybe twenty-five. Look down, you can see it today.”
Even though the surface is inches from my face, I glance down. She’s right. The sandy floor is visible through the crystal water. It makes me feel better, being able to see the bottom. And being able to see that it’s only us in the water. No clumps of seaweed shaped like women rapping on the boat.
You better hope that wasn’t Sage.
“Stop!” I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until Piper smirks.
She leans backward so that her feet flip up to the surface and says, “And they all think I’m the messed-up one.”
I’m too shaken to feel embarrassed. “All right, what’s your deal?”
Piper swims farther away from me, Ligia behind her, and the distant palm trees frame her face. “Nothing exciting. Same sad story a million girls have: daddy issues, looking for external validationin all the wrong places, a desire to be noticed and loved. BeforeEmpress, my choices were sugar baby or begging my father to let me back in his life. I didn’t like either of those options, so I came up with something else.” She nods at the lavish yacht above us. “It turned out to be a big mistake, but c’est la vie.”
“Mistake?”
She grins; her teeth are pearly white and stand out against her tanned skin. “Did I say mistake? Must have been a Freudian slip.”
“Listen, is there something I need to know, because—”
“Check that out,” Piper interrupts, nodding at the water, her eyes fixed on something I can’t see.
“What? Shit, is it…” I twist on the ladder, sending bubbles flying everywhere, squinting into the waves.
The woman. The face in the water. Is Piper—
“Stop wiggling around and you’ll be able to see it,” Piper demands. “Something’s on the bottom of the ocean floor. It’s glinting. Maybe we’re above buried treasure.” She raises her brows at me, smirking. “People shipwrecked here all the time, I bet.”
My pulse steadies. I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed. It’s not that Iwantthere to be a face in the water, but it would be nice to know I’m not losing my mind either.
“How can you see anything at the bottom with all the waves and ripples?”
Piper ignores me. She takes a deep breath.
“Wait, you’re not—”
She flips over and plunges into the ocean. Still holding the ladder, I sink down lower into the water and duck my head under, opening my eyes again, tracking her progress. The salt stings, and it’s hard to see through the millions of little bubbles, but I can make out Piper’s lithe shape cutting her way toward the ocean floor.
I have to come up for air way before Piper returns.
When her head finally breaks the surface, gulping down fresh oxygen, I am officially in awe of her. Last night she could barely stand, this morning she was drinking a glass of straight vodka, and now here she is free diving as easily as if she was walking down the street.
