Page 21 of The Hitchhiker in Panama
I nodded.
He leaned in. “I will tell you my secrets.”
Eivind taught me how to do some breathing exercises and had me float on my back, his palms lifting me up. “Breathe in,” he coached, “and out.” We breathed together for several minutes. He told me it was all about relaxing and thinking about something else.
On his cue, I emptied my lungs of air and then refilled them deeply. We sunk to the bottom together, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the pool, peddling our arms to stay down. To distract myself, I looked right at Eivind—and immediately laughed all my air out.
I broke the surface, panting, and Eivind popped up again. “Okay,” I sputtered. “You can’t look at me while I do this!”
He tossed his head back and laughed, gathering me up into his arms. “Okay, okay. Try again.”
I leaned back into his arms, a little bit closer to his body this time. I closed my eyes as I breathed in rhythm with his voice.
On our next deep inhale, we went down again. Eivind arranged our knees to touch as we sat on the floor. I looked at him and found his eyes closed. He looked transcendental in his calm, even with his arms swirling and keeping him down.
I distracted myself by studying his face: the strong jaw, the slight stubble, the narrowing to his chin. With his eyes closed, without the view of those startlingly blue eyes, I focused on his mouth. I tried to ignore the burn of my lungs and focus on those soft pink lips, but as distracting as they were, I couldn’t take it anymore.
As I rose to the surface, Eivind came up after me.
“Very good!” he exclaimed.
“How long did I last?”
He screwed up his face in thought. “Thirty seconds?”
“What? That’s it?”
He laughed. “If you want, next time I can bring weights to sink us to the bottom. It makes it easier to stay down.”
I grinned at him. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
We practiced several more times, and Marcella eventually joined us, standing by the rim and using a phone as a stopwatch. I got up to forty-five seconds once.
When we tired of the pool, we hopped out and basked in the sun to dry off. The light was fading, the shadows growing longer, until the lights around the pool clicked on. We gathered our things, and Jonas invited me back toEikfor a sundowner.
Walking down the dock, we found a party going on at one of the sailboats. I’d had sundowners with this couple before. In their late fifties, Fred was tall and athletic with a nose that had been broken once or twice, and Poppy was an energetic and lithe retired schoolteacher. They were a hoot, gregarious and generous.
They were enjoying the cooler evening with a few neighbors I didn’t know as well. The six of them crowded around their cockpit table, drinking and laughing as we approached.
As soon as Poppy spotted me, her eyes lit up, and she waved us on board. We all climbed into the seats, the eleven of us making it a tight fit. Fred passed out tinnies, one of the men asked Jonas about his watermaker project, and Poppy sidled up next to me.
She squeezed my shoulders. “I’m so glad you found a boat to crew on! We would have taken you, of course, but with this engine issue, we just don’t know when we will be able to go through.”
“I know, no worries. And I think it’s gonna work out well onEik,” I said.
We chatted about a few other things, Poppy filling me in on her trip to Panama City a few days earlier. She’d asked on the VHF net for a dentist recommendation, so I knew she’d gone in to have a crown replaced.
Breaking off her thought, she leaned into me. “Girlfriend,whatis going on with Eivind?”
I blushed. “What?”
She scoffed and shimmied her shoulder against mine. “Don’t act all innocent. He keeps looking at you.”
I glanced across the room, and Eivind’s eyes caught mine. We grinned at each other. I glanced back at Poppy, who looked at me smugly.
“Yup.”
I laughed. “Yeah, nah. Nothing yet. He’s been great, though. He’s teaching me a lot of boat stuff, and today we did some free diving in the pool.”
