How fitting,Kenny thought.The universe continues to bestow love and happiness on the blushing bride through stones of pink quartz while swallowing my stone for breakfast.
“Today I am grateful. Today my heart is filled with joy. I see positive in everything today,” Kenny read aloud from her affirmation card, trying to sound convincing, rather than sarcastic.
“This is one of my favorite affirmations in the deck,” Bonnie exclaimed. “How could we be anything but grateful, with hearts full of joy waking up among this beauty today? And let’s see your stone, Kennedy.”
“Well, this is embarrassing! I can’t find my stone,” Kenny tried to crack a smile and force a laugh. “It must’ve gotten buried in the sand when Cliff and I did our little beach dance. I’m sorry I lost your stone. But it was a beautiful shade of sea-foam green.”
“Oh, Miss Kennedy, a powerful gemstone chose you. Sea-foam green is the color of amazonite and is related to your throat and heart chakras. It encourages creative expression, confidence, and self-love. Inspiration abounds around you. And don’t worry about the stone. Someone on these sands will eventually stumble across it and reap the benefits of the strong energy the crystal radiates.”
“Thank you, Bonnie. I could use all that energy these days,” Kenny said with a genuine smile, feeling slightly recentered.
Maybe there’s something to this yoga voodoo,she thought.
“Thank you for practicing with me and sharing your energy with one another. The light within me honors and loves the light within you. Together, let’s bring our hands to our third eye space, bow our heads, and say ‘Namaste.’”
“Namaste,” the group replied in unison.
Kenny folded up her beach towel and was relieved that when she looked to the dunes, Bike Boy and Cliff were gone. She walked toward the ocean and dipped her feet in the water. The waves rolled gently over her toes, past her ankles, and then up her shins. The water was calm and warm and almost drowned her with a sense of inner peace.
Her mind started to wander, thinking about what sheshouldbe doing on this Tuesday morning. It was a little after 10:00 a.m. so sheshouldbe listening to the Network Editorial Call, the daily meeting of senior and executive producers who discuss story ideas, breaking news, reporter assignments, and predicted rundowns of what shows will broadcast that day. The Tuesdays after long holiday weekends were notoriously busy in the news world. But Kenny stopped herself. She didn’t want to think about anything other than being fully present at this moment, feeling her feet sink deeper and deeper in the sand with each current.
Her stomach growled and she took this as her cue to head back to Pelican Pointe. She sauntered up the desolate beach to collect her shoes. The flip-flops were the only pair left from what had been a large pile just a few moments earlier and when she bent over to pick them up, she saw Cliff charging back down the beach walk.
“You havegotto be kidding me,” Kenny accidentally said out loud, her red, itchy eyes growing larger as the tall, dark, handsome vision in blue following the canine got closer.
She was trapped. There was nowhere to go, except into the Atlantic Ocean, to avoid contact with Bike Boy. No vacant beach chair to sit in. No umbrella to hide under. No stranger to strike up conversation with.
“Hey, I’m J.P. I wanted to apologize, again, for what happened earlier. I really don’t know what got into Cliff. And I think this is yours,” the vision said, extending his arm and opening his palm to show a sea-foam green stone.
“Yes! That’s my chakra crystal. I’ve been looking for that,” Kenny squealed out in a nervous giggle.
“I’m sorry, it’s your what?” J.P. questioned with a funny expression.
“Well, it’s not technically mine. It’s Bonnie the yoga instructor’s crystal. She brought a bag of these stones that are supposed to effuse different energies. This one makes you confident and creative,” she babbled, taking the stone out of his hand.
J.P. let out a laugh, took the Ray-Ban’s off his face, and nodded, trying to pretend he was interested in the talk about the rock.
“Anyway, I’m Kennedy. Or Kenny. A lot of people call me Kenny,” she said putting her hands on her hips and shrugging her shoulders.
She couldfeelJ.P.’s ocean blue eyes scanning her up and down. Her empty stomach was doing somersaults, and she timidly cast her gaze to the sand waiting for him to say something. She caught a glimpse of her still unpolished toes and quickly buried them underneath the surface.
Of all things to not cross off my to-do list before I stopped making them!she thought.
“Very nice to meet you, Kenny. Gosh, it was bad enough that Cliff knocked you over. Now you tell me he ran off with your confidence stone in his mouth.” J.P. laughed at how ridiculous the statement sounded.
“Don’t mention it.” She giggled, slowly picking up her gaze again to meet his. She was hoping where her eyes went, her confidence would follow.
“I have to ask you, are you staying at Pelican Pointe?”
He remembers me,Kenny thought.He remembers that awkward moment at Fraser’s Circle. He must’ve followed me to see where the new island idiot was living so he could caution the rest of the bikers on the plantation.
“I am staying at Pelican Pointe. I’m going to be there for the next five weeks,” she answered.
TMI, Kenny. He doesn’t care how long you are there. He’s worried about the safety of himself and fellow bikers.
“Wow, good for you. I thought I saw you doing laps in the pool this morning. I recognized that blue thing in your hair.” He motioned to the silk scrunchie.
Kenny wanted to die. Freezing at the intersection was embarrassing but she could blame that on exhaustion. Losing balance in yoga was humiliating, but she could blame it on Cliff. But Bike Boy watching her swim in a dry-rotted Speedo with a blue scrunchie in her hair was catastrophic. And she only had herself to blame. That was a situation she would never be able to recover from.
