The Best Of Me. Tina Wainscott

tilted, and she lost her balance. Arms flailing, she fell toward the sparkling water with that huge form moving beneath it. Dignity be damned, she thought, as a scream tore from her throat. Her fingers slid across Chris’s slick skin as she tried to grab for anything. She felt his hands on her arms, but it was too late. Momentum was doing its thing, and they both tumbled into the pool.

      She came to the surface with a loud gasp, shoving herself toward the shallow platform. Chris came up a second later, flicking his head back and sending a spray of water behind him. And the big fish…the dolphin swam toward her.

      She felt her eyes bulge out in panic. “Get it away from me!”

      When she turned to Chris for help, her fear bubbled to anger. He was laughing! Then the sound of more laughter filled the air. She turned toward the clapping crowd. The only person not laughing was Bailey. He looked shell-shocked. She pressed her palm to her forehead, and then realized she was still in the pool with the big fish. Its head was now out of the water, and even it seemed to be grinning at her.

      “This is not funny,” she said to no one in particular, pushing wet strands of hair from her face. She hated the tremble that crept through her voice. “Just keep that fish away from me.”

      “He’s not a fish, he’s a dolphin,” Chris corrected again, though he still had the same kind of grin on his face the dolphin had.

      “Fine, please keep the dolphin away while I get out of here.”

      Her linen pants felt leaden as she turned to the side of the pool. Earlier he had pressed down on the edge and lifted himself right out of the water. But he wasn’t wearing wet pants or heels, and she didn’t have the muscles he did.

      “Need some help?”

      “No, I’ve got it.”

      She kicked off her expensive, and ruined, pumps and threw them onto the concrete deck. Then she pushed up on the edge. If only she could manage a shred of dignity…that was not to be the case, she realized as she shoved and grunted and not even Bailey moved from the spot he seemed riveted in.

      “Let me help you,” Chris said from behind her.

      “I can manage. It’s just that my pants are heav—”

      Before she could even finish the sentence, he placed his hands on her behind and pushed her right out of the water. She was so surprised, she almost forgot to do her part, which was grab for the ground and gain her balance. Even then, she could still feel the imprint of his hands on her bottom.

      “I’m not sure whether to thank you for being gallant or remark on where you put your hands,” she said, feeling irritated and flustered at once.

      A wicked gleam sparked in his eyes as he slipped easily from the pool. “I enjoyed it, too.”

      She could only roll her eyes at his attempt to goad her on. When she looked at the small crowd watching with interest, she realized she’d become the sideshow at her own park.

      “Bailey, please get these people out of here,” she said, trying not to sound impatient and out of sorts.

      He jerked, as if from a trance. “Yes, Miss Lucy, right away.” Before he turned toward the crowd, he said, “Don’t let him take da fish. Remember my six childrens at home starving.”

      “You said five before.”

      His black face screwed up. “Did I? Well, six counting da goat.”

      “You said you had three goats.”

      He paused for a minute, then smiled. “Two are only visitin’.”

      She shook her head and waved him away. When she turned back to Chris, he was watching her with a curious expression. At least he wasn’t crowding her zone. She knew about business power plays and how body zones worked, and she didn’t much like when they were used on her.

      “Can we go into the office and talk about this like two businesspeople?” she asked, trying to ignore the rivers of water running down her legs and pooling at her stocking feet.

      He glanced down at his nearly naked self. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Miz Lucy—” that last part in Bailey’s accent “—I’m not a business person, and this isn’t negotiable. I gave your employee the letter that states the dolphin is mine. That should clear the matter up.” Then he slid back into the pool in one liquid movement and waded to the bucket of fish. She followed him and crouched by the side, careful of the edge this time.

      “What you said about this dolphin, about the chlorinated pool, and the snout….”

      “What you’re doing to this dolphin is cruel and inhumane. Liberty—or Randy as you call him—wasn’t put on this earth to entertain us. Dolphins are probably smarter than we are. How would you like to live in something like this day in and out, eating trash fish, and having to suffer the indignity of performing to get even that? To look at white walls instead of the endless variety the ocean and the reefs offer?”

      Liberty poked his head out of the water as if to second Chris’s words, or probably to get the shiny fish he held. Her heart twisted when she saw the bruises on Liberty’s snout. Then she realized that Chris thought she was the one who had been running this park all along.

      “I haven’t done anything to this dolphin.”

      “You said you were the owner.”

      “I just inherited it from my father, Sonny Boland. I didn’t even know he owned this park, or where he even was for most of my life.” Why was she telling him all this? Stick to the facts, Lucy. “Anyway, I arrived today, and Bailey told me about a man stealing a big fish.” He rolled his eyes, and she added, “I know, I know, it’s a dolphin.”

      He reached out to touch Liberty, but the dolphin shied away. Another fish lured him close again, but Chris didn’t try to touch him this time. He was again immersed in his world, and she had faded into oblivion. If she had any dignity whatsoever, she would walk away. Just get up and hold her soggy shoulders high. Unfortunately, her curiosity overwhelmed any shred of dignity she’d managed to maintain.

      “Why do you call him Liberty?” She glanced up at the banner. “His name is Randy.”

      “Calling dolphins by human names encourages people to humanize them, so I renamed him Liberty.”

      “What are you going to do with him?” she asked after a few awkward minutes of silence. She wanted to change into dry clothes, but she couldn’t leave without his acknowledging that she wasn’t an evil person who abused dolphins. Though she didn’t explore why that was so important.

      “I have to untrain him, teach him how to catch live fish and to live in the wild again. He’s come to depend on humans and their language now. He has to learn to be a dolphin again, to use his sonar.”

      He hadn’t glanced up at her even once as he’d spoken. She wanted to see something other than disdain in his eyes. She ran her hands down her pant legs, squishing water out of them.

      “What do you mean, his sonar?”

      His fingers made circles on the water’s surface. “Dolphins use echolocation sonar to map out their surroundings the same way we use our eyes. They send out signals that bounce back to their lower jaw, telling them where they are and where their prey is. Here in this shallow pool, the signals bounce crazily back to him, so he stopped using them.”

      Sonar? It sounded so high-tech, so…advanced. She watched Liberty circle, trying to imagine what he saw down there. White walls. Chris’s legs. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

      The sun glistened off his wet curls as he shook his head. “Just leave me and Liberty alone, and we’ll be fine.”

      He hadn’t even thanked her for offering. Still hadn’t looked at her. He reached for Liberty, and again the dolphin shied away. As she watched Chris, she wondered if her father wasn’t like him, other than the dolphin-saving thing.

      “Is