Page 10 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Six

“If you go back to LA without screaming your face off on my homemade zip line,” Sam says to me later that morning as we enter a grove of cedar and eucalyptus trees, “were you even here?”

In preparation for the day ahead, Sam has instructed me to wear closed-toed shoes, a strong coat of sunscreen, and a bathing suit under my clothes.

He’s decked out in fitted black swim trunks, a well-worn pair of gray New Balances, and a sleeveless gray tank that’s been washed so many times it’s practically translucent.

Which makes it practically perfect. The sight of his tanned, bare shoulder flexing as he lifted the backpack he brought with us was something I feel I should have paid admission to see.

“Did you just say zip line ?” I ask.

“It’s more than a zip line,” Sam says. “It’s my masterpiece.”

“Your fireplace isn’t your masterpiece?” I ask, adding in my mind, Or your butt?

“My fireplace is good for warmth and contemplation. But this zip line, Fenny. This zip line lets you slip the bonds of Earth and dance in the skies. This zip line touches the face of God.” He glances at me. “Or whatever you believe is out there.”

“Out there or in here?” I ask, thumb to my heart.

I stop speaking when we reach the wooden platform that abruptly ends the trail.

Beyond it lies an endless expanse of scary sky.

The platform is nailed into a crook of branches in a stately cedar tree.

A few feet above my head, two thick steel ropes have been tied around the trunk of the cedar.

They run parallel to each other, stretching out into an unknown downward distance, ending somewhere unseen.

A silver pulley is attached to the ropes above my head.

“Oh, hell no,” I say and start back the way I came.

Sam laughs and puts his hands on my shoulders. There’s that soft, penetrating look in his eyes again, the one that signals to my brain, Trust him . “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ve ridden it a thousand times. Look at me.” Sam gestures at his fantastic body. “Not a scratch.”

It’s hard to refute that he’s anything less than physically perfect.

“These ropes are made from galvanized steel,” he says. “I could send a hundred Fennys down them at the same time, and these ropes wouldn’t flinch.”

As he unknots the pulley, I gaze down from the platform into the abyss.

I cringe at the jagged boulders only twenty feet below, at the drought-parched cacti covering every visible piece of disappearing slope.

Vertigo darts around my chest, scorching a path of fear.

I’d rather not show up to set to direct my first episode wearing a full-body cast.

“Where exactly does this end?” I ask.

“Sooner than you’ll want it to,” Sam says. “The ride is less than two minutes, but about three seconds in, you enter an endorphin-flooded state you’ll crave for the rest of your life—”

“Ooh, another flood. How fun .”

“This is the kind of flood we want,” Sam says. “Not that last night wasn’t.”

He smiles. I gulp.

“And right before the end, the pulley slows enough for you to put your feet down and walk.”

“And where will this slow walk occur?”

“It’s a surprise,” he says and hands me a helmet.

“Where’s your helmet?” I ask.

“I only have one helmet,” he says. “I’ve never done a…duet.”

“Never made the beast with two backs?”

“Not on a zip line.”

“Well,” I say, feeling my cheeks turn red, “I’m honored.”

“Me, too. I’m really excited to do this with you.”

I’m not used to guys like him, who speak so plainly, whose compliments don’t come out coded in self-protection and self-promotion. It makes Sam seem even younger than twenty-three. It’s like he hasn’t been hurt yet. Maybe that’s what makes him so sure I won’t be hurt today.

It’s contagious. He’s contagious. I put on the helmet and snap the chin strap in place.

“All you have to do is hold on to me. And lift your feet a little.”

“Unless I die of a heart attack.”

I grip the galvanized steel rope and stare out at my wide-open future.

I wish I could call Edie or Olivia or Masha right now and have them tell me that this is okay.

Or maybe I wish I simply could know all by myself that my intuition could speak up louder, more clearly, that it could guide me toward what I’m supposed to do.

“Now is all there is,” Sam whispers in my ear as he lifts me in his arms and puts his cheek against mine. He kicks off the platform, and we fly down through cedar branches, my boots barely clearing the boulders just beneath the platform.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” I scream.

I can feel Sam’s smile in my cheek. He’s got his knees up, making his lap a seat for me to sit in. His firm body presses hard against my back, my ass. When I lift up my knees to settle into him a little more, he groans.

I realize I’m riding an Adonis down a mountain. When the ocean bursts into view, wild and blue and endless, I become aware that I don’t want this to end.

This feeling alone is worth coming back from the dead for. I can see how albatrosses go years without touching land. I can see why stars stay in the sky. I want to do this every day.

We begin to slow naturally, and I look down and see a brilliant white blanket of ultra-secret beach.

Sam and I jog together as our feet touch down on sand.

Twenty feet ahead is a stately pine tree with a tire nailed to it as a cushion.

We come to a stop before we need the tire, and I exhale deeply. I’m buzzing with adrenaline.

I gaze in wonder around me. This pristine beach is a tenth the size of Parson’s Landing.

Whereas at my camp the shore was pebbly and strewn with boulders, this one is made of fine, white sand.

Lizards dash here and there. Cluster lilies bloom.

There’s even a C-shaped cove, shaded by boughs of pine that hang low with sap-heavy cones.

This place is indeed a surprise, the best one I’ve had in a while.

“Did you love it?” Sam asks.

It’s a big word. Love . I try not to overuse it, but in this case, it applies.

“Yes,” I say. It brings out Sam’s dimples like morning brings out the sun.

“Good,” he says, “because there’s more. Come on!”

We kick off our shoes and bound toward the water with an abandon I haven’t known in twenty years. It’s like I’m eleven, and school’s out, and nothing stands between me and summer but a heartbeat and a smile. Sam stops at a wooden post tethering a canoe and what appears to be a tarp-covered Jet Ski.

“Are these yours?” I ask.

“Which one should we ride first?”

I run my hand over his canoe. “Nice gunwale.”

“You know your canoes.”

“I have one like this at home.”

“I take it out at sunset,” Sam says. “That’s when the whales sing.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever heard a whale in the canals of Venice.”

“What do you hear?”

“Families eating dinner. Teenagers getting stoned. Dogs chasing squirrels up palm trees.”

What I don’t tell Sam is that I’ve only used my canoe once, at Olivia’s and Masha’s insistence, on the night I closed on the house it came with.

Our tour of my new neighborhood’s canals was soothing and tranquil and deeply Venetian.

We toasted with champagne, and I promised myself I’d pick up that paddle at least a few times every week.

But somehow, eighteen months after I moved in, I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t found the time.

“I bet you don’t have a Jet Ski in Venice,” Sam finally says.

“That would violate section sixty-three fifty of the LA Municipal Code.”

“We have a winner!” He flings back the cover on the Jet Ski. I watch his body move as he prepares our watercraft, checking various gauges and earnestly turning several knobs.

“There’s so much I want to show you,” he says. “So much I want you to see with your director’s eye. I know you’re going to want to come back here and shoot some of these places someday. I can almost guarantee it.”

“I can’t wait.”

“There’s a bald eagle’s nest on a cliff about a mile north. You can only see it from the water. Nothing has prepared you for the cuteness of a baby bald eagle.”

“Do you name the babies?”

“Rogaine and Propecia.”

“Because they’re bald ?” I ask, then burst out laughing. “Wow.”

He winces. “You’d kick me out of the writers’ group for that one, wouldn’t you?”

“The writers’ room? No way. We’d take you out for beers. That’s comedy gold. Or at least bronze.”

“I bet it’s fun. Working on your show. I bet you’re good at what you do. I bet people look up to you.”

“It is fun, and…thank you.” I feel a little embarrassed that he’s put his finger on my insecurities so quickly, but mostly, I’m grateful for his kindness.

My defenses are crumbling around this man.

Maybe his being the physical paragon of the male species has something to do with it?

Maybe it’s because when my eyes catch on his full lips I feel like I’m going to turn inside out?

“You snorkel, right?” Sam asks. “Wait ’til you see this reef I’m going to show you. We can picnic there. I brought food! Sometimes I think about getting scuba certified—”

“When was the last time you had a visitor, Sam?”

“Have you ever spearfished? Your face is saying no, but when I put the shaft of that polespear in your hands, you’ll know what to do.”

I almost laugh—because the sexual innuendo is getting a little ridiculous—but when Sam meets my eyes, I see that he meant it not as a ha-ha joke, but a flirtatious and very direct one. And my stomach flips.

“Now get over here,” Sam says, as if he knows all this. “And take off your clothes.”

“What?” I gulp.

He lifts the seat of the Jet Ski to reveal a waterproof compartment. “We need to store them here. Otherwise, they’ll get soaked.”

“This is my favorite place on island to snorkel,” Sam calls over the waning motor of the Jet Ski. The sun is high in the sky, and my arms are wrapped around his waist. My cheek is pressed against his sun-warmed back and also aching from the grin that hasn’t budged since we first kicked up a wake.